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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:38:56 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:38:56 -0700 |
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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/12089-0.txt b/12089-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7606768 --- /dev/null +++ b/12089-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6867 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12089 *** + +LETTERS OF TRAVEL + +THE DOMINIONS EDITION + +LETTERS OF TRAVEL + +(1892-1913) + +BY RUDYARD KIPLING + + +MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED +ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON +1920 + +The Letters entitled 'FROM TIDEWAY TO TIDEWAY' were published +originally in _The Times_; those entitled 'LETTERS TO THE FAMILY' in +_The Morning Post_; and those entitled 'EGYPT OF THE MAGICIANS' in +_Nash's Magazine_. + +COPYRIGHT + +_This Edition is intended for circulation only in India +and the British Dominions over the Seas_ + + + + +CONTENTS + + +FROM TIDEWAY TO TIDEWAY (1892)-- + +In Sight of Monadnock +Across a Continent +The Edge of the East +Our Overseas Men +Some Earthquakes +Half-a-Dozen Pictures +'Captains Courageous' +On One Side Only +Leaves from a Winter Note-Book + + +LETTERS TO THE FAMILY (1907)-- + +The Road to Quebec +A People at Home +Cities and Spaces +Newspapers and Democracy +Labour +The Fortunate Towns +Mountains and the Pacific +A Conclusion + + +EGYPT OF THE MAGICIANS (1913)-- + +Sea Travel +A Return to the East +A Serpent of Old Nile +Up the River +Dead Kings +The Face of the Desert +The Riddle of Empire + + * * * * * + +FROM TIDEWAY TO TIDEWAY + +1892-95 + +IN SIGHT OF MONADNOCK. +ACROSS A CONTINENT. +THE EDGE OF THE EAST. +OUR OVERSEAS MEN. +SOME EARTHQUAKES. +HALF-A-DOZEN PICTURES. +'CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS.' +ON ONE SIDE ONLY. +LEAVES FROM A WINTER NOTE-BOOK. + + * * * * * + +IN SIGHT OF MONADNOCK + +After the gloom of gray Atlantic weather, our ship came to America in a +flood of winter sunshine that made unaccustomed eyelids blink, and the +New Yorker, who is nothing if not modest, said, 'This isn't a sample of +our really fine days. Wait until such and such times come, or go to such +and a such a quarter of the city.' We were content, and more than +content, to drift aimlessly up and down the brilliant streets, wondering +a little why the finest light should be wasted on the worst pavements in +the world; to walk round and round Madison Square, because that was full +of beautifully dressed babies playing counting-out games, or to gaze +reverently at the broad-shouldered, pug-nosed Irish New York policemen. +Wherever we went there was the sun, lavish and unstinted, working nine +hours a day, with the colour and the clean-cut lines of perspective that +he makes. That any one should dare to call this climate muggy, yea, even +'subtropical,' was a shock. There came such a man, and he said, 'Go +north if you want weather--weather that _is_ weather. Go to New +England.' So New York passed away upon a sunny afternoon, with her roar +and rattle, her complex smells, her triply over-heated rooms, and much +too energetic inhabitants, while the train went north to the lands where +the snow lay. It came in one sweep--almost, it seemed, in one turn of +the wheels--covering the winter-killed grass and turning the frozen +ponds that looked so white under the shadow of lean trees into pools of +ink. + +As the light closed in, a little wooden town, white, cloaked, and dumb, +slid past the windows, and the strong light of the car lamps fell upon a +sleigh (the driver furred and muffled to his nose) turning the corner of +a street. Now the sleigh of a picture-book, however well one knows it, +is altogether different from the thing in real life, a means of +conveyance at a journey's end; but it is well not to be over-curious in +the matter, for the same American who has been telling you at length how +he once followed a kilted Scots soldier from Chelsea to the Tower, out +of pure wonder and curiosity at his bare knees and sporran, will laugh +at your interest in 'just a cutter.' + +The staff of the train--surely the great American nation would be lost +if deprived of the ennobling society of brakeman, conductor, Pullman-car +conductor, negro porter, and newsboy--told pleasant tales, as they +spread themselves at ease in the smoking compartments, of snowings up +the line to Montreal, of desperate attacks--four engines together and a +snow-plough in front--on drifts thirty feet high, and the pleasures of +walking along the tops of goods wagons to brake a train, with the +thermometer thirty below freezing. 'It comes cheaper to kill men that +way than to put air-brakes on freight-cars,' said the brakeman. + +Thirty below freezing! It was inconceivable till one stepped out into it +at midnight, and the first shock of that clear, still air took away the +breath as does a plunge into sea-water. A walrus sitting on a woolpack +was our host in his sleigh, and he wrapped us in hairy goatskin coats, +caps that came down over the ears, buffalo robes and blankets, and yet +more buffalo-robes till we, too, looked like walruses and moved almost +as gracefully. The night was as keen as the edge of a newly-ground +sword; breath froze on the coat-lapels in snow; the nose became without +sensation, and the eyes wept bitterly because the horses were in a hurry +to get home; and whirling through air at zero brings tears. But for the +jingle of the sleigh-bells the ride might have taken place in a dream, +for there was no sound of hoofs upon the snow, the runners sighed a +little now and again as they glided over an inequality, and all the +sheeted hills round about were as dumb as death. Only the Connecticut +River kept up its heart and a lane of black water through the packed +ice; we could hear the stream worrying round the heels of its small +bergs. Elsewhere there was nothing but snow under the moon--snow drifted +to the level of the stone fences or curling over their tops in a lip of +frosted silver; snow banked high on either side of the road, or lying +heavy on the pines and the hemlocks in the woods, where the air seemed, +by comparison, as warm as a conservatory. It was beautiful beyond +expression, Nature's boldest sketch in black and white, done with a +Japanese disregard of perspective, and daringly altered from time to +time by the restless pencils of the moon. + +In the morning the other side of the picture was revealed in the colours +of the sunlight. There was never a cloud in the sky that rested on the +snow-line of the horizon as a sapphire on white velvet. Hills of pure +white, or speckled and furred with woods, rose up above the solid white +levels of the fields, and the sun rioted over their embroideries till +the eyes ached. Here and there on the exposed slopes the day's +warmth--the thermometer was nearly forty degrees--and the night's cold +had made a bald and shining crust upon the snow; but the most part was +soft powdered stuff, ready to catch the light on a thousand crystals and +multiply it sevenfold. Through this magnificence, and thinking nothing +of it, a wood-sledge drawn by two shaggy red steers, the unbarked logs +diamond-dusted with snow, shouldered down the road in a cloud of frosty +breath. It is the mark of inexperience in this section of the country to +confound a sleigh which you use for riding with the sledge that is +devoted to heavy work; and it is, I believe, a still greater sign of +worthlessness to think that oxen are driven, as they are in most places, +by scientific twisting of the tail. The driver with red mittens on his +hands, felt overstockings that come up to his knees, and, perhaps, a +silvery-gray coon-skin coat on his back, walks beside, crying, 'Gee, +haw!' even as is written in American stories. And the speech of the +driver explains many things in regard to the dialect story, which at its +best is an infliction to many. Now that I have heard the long, unhurried +drawl of Vermont, my wonder is, not that the New England tales should be +printed in what, for the sake of argument, we will call English and its +type, but rather that they should not have appeared in Swedish or +Russian. Our alphabet is too limited. This part of the country belongs +by laws unknown to the United States, but which obtain all the world +over, to the New England story and the ladies who write it. You feel +this in the air as soon as you see the white-painted wooden houses left +out in the snow, the austere schoolhouse, and the people--the men of the +farms, the women who work as hard as they with, it may be, less +enjoyment of life--the other houses, well painted and quaintly roofed, +that belong to Judge This, Lawyer That, and Banker Such an one; all +powers in the metropolis of six thousand folk over by the railway +station. More acutely still, do you realise the atmosphere when you read +in the local paper announcements of 'chicken suppers' and 'church +sociables' to be given by such and such a denomination, sandwiched +between paragraphs of genial and friendly interest, showing that the +countryside live (and without slaying each other) on terms of terrifying +intimacy. + +The folk of the old rock, the dwellers in the older houses, born and +raised hereabouts, would not live out of the town for any consideration, +and there are insane people from the South--men and women from Boston +and the like--who actually build houses out in the open country, two, +and even three miles from Main Street which is nearly 400 yards long, +and the centre of life and population. With the strangers, more +particularly if they do not buy their groceries 'in the street,' which +means, and is, the town, the town has little to do; but it knows +everything, and much more also, that goes on among them. Their dresses, +their cattle, their views, the manners of their children, their manner +towards their servants, and every other conceivable thing, is reported, +digested, discussed, and rediscussed up and down Main Street. Now, the +wisdom of Vermont, not being at all times equal to grasping all the +problems of everybody else's life with delicacy, sometimes makes +pathetic mistakes, and the town is set by the ears. You will see, +therefore, that towns of a certain size do not differ materially all the +world over. The talk of the men of the farms is of their +farms--purchase, mortgage, and sale, recorded rights, boundary lines, +and road tax. It was in the middle of New Zealand, on the edge of the +Wild horse plains, that I heard this talk last, when a man and his wife, +twenty miles from the nearest neighbour, sat up half the night +discussing just the same things that the men talked of in Main Street, +Vermont, U.S.A. + +There is one man in the State who is much exercised over this place. He +is a farm-hand, raised in a hamlet fifteen or twenty miles from the +nearest railway, and, greatly daring, he has wandered here. The bustle +and turmoil of Main Street, the new glare of the electric lights and the +five-storeyed brick business block, frighten and distress him much. He +has taken service on a farm well away from these delirious delights, +and, says he, 'I've been offered $25 a month to work in a bakery at New +York. But you don't get me to no New York, I've seen this place an' it +just scares me,' His strength is in the drawing of hay and the feeding +of cattle. Winter life on a farm does not mean the comparative idleness +that is so much written of. Each hour seems to have its sixty minutes of +work; for the cattle are housed and eat eternally; the colts must be +turned out for their drink, and the ice broken for them if necessary; +then ice must be stored for the summer use, and then the real work of +hauling logs for firewood begins. New England depends for its fuel on +the woods. The trees are 'blazed' in the autumn just before the fall of +the leaf, felled later, cut into four-foot lengths, and, as soon as the +friendly snow makes sledging possible, drawn down to the woodhouse. +Afterwards the needs of the farm can be attended to, and a farm, like an +arch, is never at rest. A little later will come maple-sugar time, when +the stately maples are tapped as the sap begins to stir, and be-ringed +with absurd little buckets (a cow being milked into a thimble gives some +idea of the disproportion), which are emptied into cauldrons. +Afterwards (this is the time of the 'sugaring-off parties') you pour the +boiled syrup into tins full of fresh snow, where it hardens, and you +pretend to help and become very sticky and make love, boys and girls +together. Even the introduction of patent sugar evaporators has not +spoiled the love-making. + +There is a certain scarcity of men to make love with; not so much in +towns which have their own manufactories and lie within a lover's +Sabbath-day journey of New York, but in the farms and villages. The men +have gone away--the young men are fighting fortune further West, and the +women remain--remain for ever as women must. On the farms, when the +children depart, the old man and the old woman strive to hold things +together without help, and the woman's portion is work and monotony. +Sometimes she goes mad to an extent which appreciably affects statistics +and is put down in census reports. More often, let us hope, she dies. In +the villages where the necessity for heavy work is not so urgent the +women find consolation in the formation of literary clubs and circles, +and so gather to themselves a great deal of wisdom in their own way. +That way is not altogether lovely. They desire facts and the knowledge +that they are at a certain page in a German or an Italian book before a +certain time, or that they have read the proper books in a proper way. +At any rate, they have something to do that seems as if they were doing +something. It has been said that the New England stories are cramped +and narrow. Even a far-off view of the iron-bound life whence they are +drawn justifies the author. You can carve a nut in a thousand different +ways by reason of the hardness of the shell. + +Twenty or thirty miles across the hills, on the way to the Green +Mountains, lie some finished chapters of pitiful stories--a few score +abandoned farms, started in a lean land, held fiercely so long as there +was any one to work them, and then left on the hill-sides. Beyond this +desolation are woods where the bear and the deer still find peace, and +sometimes even the beaver forgets that he is persecuted and dares to +build his lodge. These things were told me by a man who loved the woods +for their own sake and not for the sake of slaughter--a quiet, +slow-spoken man of the West, who came across the drifts on show-shoes +and refrained from laughing when I borrowed his foot-gear and tried to +walk. The gigantic lawn-tennis bats strung with hide are not easy to +manoeuvre. If you forget to keep the long heels down and trailing in the +snow you turn over and become as a man who fails into deep water with a +life-belt tied to his ankles. If you lose your balance, do not attempt +to recover it, but drop, half-sitting and half-kneeling, over as large +an area as possible. When you have mastered the wolf-step, can slide one +shoe above the other deftly, that is to say, the sensation of paddling +over a ten-foot-deep drift and taking short cuts by buried fences is +worth the ankle-ache. The man from the West interpreted to me the signs +on the snow, showed how a fox (this section of the country is full of +foxes, and men shoot them because riding is impossible) leaves one kind +of spoor, walking with circumspection as becomes a thief, and a dog, who +has nothing to be ashamed of, but widens his four legs and plunges, +another; how coons go to sleep for the winter and squirrels too, and how +the deer on the Canada border trample down deep paths that are called +yards and are caught there by inquisitive men with cameras, who hold +them by their tails when the deer have blundered into deep snow, and so +photograph their frightened dignity. He told me of people also--the +manners and customs of New Englanders here, and how they blossom and +develop in the Far West on the newer railway lines, when matters come +very nearly to civil war between rival companies racing for the same +cañon; how there is a country not very far away called Caledonia, +populated by the Scotch, who can give points to a New Englander in a +bargain, and how these same Scotch-Americans by birth, name their +townships still after the cities of their thrifty race. It was all as +new and delightful as the steady 'scrunch' of the snow-shoes and the +dazzling silence of the hills. + +Beyond the very furthest range, where the pines turn to a faint blue +haze against the one solitary peak--a real mountain and not a +hill--showed like a gigantic thumbnail pointing heavenward. + +'And that's Monadnock,' said the man from the West; 'all the hills have +Indian names. You left Wantastiquet on your right coming out of town,' + +You know how it often happens that a word shuttles in and out of many +years, waking all sorts of incongruous associations. I had met Monadnock +on paper in a shameless parody of Emerson's style, before ever style or +verse had interest for me. But the word stuck because of a rhyme, in +which one was + + ... crowned coeval + With Monadnock's crest, + And my wings extended + Touch the East and West. + +Later the same word, pursued on the same principle as that blessed one +Mesopotamia, led me to and through Emerson, up to his poem on the peak +itself--the wise old giant 'busy with his sky affairs,' who makes us +sane and sober and free from little things if we trust him. So Monadnock +came to mean everything that was helpful, healing, and full of quiet, +and when I saw him half across New Hampshire he did not fail. In that +utter stillness a hemlock bough, overweighted with snow, came down a +foot or two with a tired little sigh; the snow slid off and the little +branch flew nodding back to its fellows. + +For the honour of Monadnock there was made that afternoon an image of +snow of Gautama Buddha, something too squat and not altogether equal on +both sides, but with an imperial and reposeful waist. He faced towards +the mountain, and presently some men in a wood-sledge came up the road +and faced him. Now, the amazed comments of two Vermont farmers on the +nature and properties of a swag-bellied god are worth hearing. They were +not troubled about his race, for he was aggressively white; but rounded +waists seem to be out of fashion in Vermont. At least, they said so, +with rare and curious oaths. + +Next day all the idleness and trifling were drowned in a snowstorm that +filled the hollows of the hills with whirling blue mist, bowed the +branches of the woods till you ducked, but were powdered all the same +when you drove through, and wiped out the sleighing tracks. Mother +Nature is beautifully tidy if you leave her alone. She rounded off every +angle, broke down every scarp, and tucked the white bedclothes, till not +a wrinkle remained, up to the chine of the spruces and the hemlocks that +would not go to sleep. + +'Now,' said the man of the West, as we were driving to the station, and +alas! to New York, 'all my snow-tracks are gone; but when that snow +melts, a week hence or a month hence, they'll all come up again and show +where I've been.' + +Curious idea, is it not? Imagine a murder committed in the lonely woods, +a snowstorm that covers the tracks of the flying man before the avenger +of blood has buried the body, and then, a week later, the withdrawal of +the traitorous snow, revealing step by step the path Cain took--the +six-inch dee-trail of his snow-shoes--each step a dark disk on the +white till the very end. + +There is so much, so very much to write, if it were worth while, about +that queer little town by the railway station, with its life running, to +all outward seeming, as smoothly as the hack-coupés on their sleigh +mounting, and within disturbed by the hatreds and troubles and +jealousies that vex the minds of all but the gods. For instance--no, it +is better to remember the lesson Monadnock, and Emerson has said, 'Zeus +hates busy-bodies and people who do too much.' + +That there are such folk, a long nasal drawl across Main Street attests. +A farmer is unhitching his horses from a post opposite a store. He +stands with the tie-rope in his hand and gives his opinion to his +neighbour and the world generally--'But them there Andersons, they ain't +got no notion of etikwette!' + + + + +ACROSS A CONTINENT + + +It is not easy to escape from a big city. An entire continent was +waiting to be traversed, and, for that reason, we lingered in New York +till the city felt so homelike that it seemed wrong to leave it. And +further, the more one studied it, the more grotesquely bad it grew--bad +in its paving, bad in its streets, bad in its street-police, and but for +the kindness of the tides would be worse than bad in its sanitary +arrangements. No one as yet has approached the management of New York in +a proper spirit; that is to say, regarding it as the shiftless outcome +of squalid barbarism and reckless extravagance. No one is likely to do +so, because reflections on the long, narrow pig-trough are construed as +malevolent attacks against the spirit and majesty of the great American +people, and lead to angry comparisons. Yet, if all the streets of London +were permanently up and all the lamps permanently down, this would not +prevent the New York streets taken in a lump from being first cousins to +a Zanzibar foreshore, or kin to the approaches of a Zulu kraal. Gullies, +holes, ruts, cobbles-stones awry, kerbstones rising from two to six +inches above the level of the slatternly pavement; tram-lines from two +to three inches above street level; building materials scattered half +across the street; lime, boards, cut stone, and ash-barrels generally +and generously everywhere; wheeled traffic taking its chances, dray +_versus_ brougham, at cross roads; sway-backed poles whittled and +unpainted; drunken lamp-posts with twisted irons; and, lastly, a +generous scatter of filth and more mixed stinks than the winter wind can +carry away, are matters which can be considered quite apart from the +'Spirit of Democracy' or 'the future of this great and growing country.' +In any other land, they would be held to represent slovenliness, +sordidness, and want of capacity. Here it is explained, not once but +many times, that they show the speed at which the city has grown and the +enviable indifference of her citizens to matters of detail. One of these +days, you are told, everything will be taken in hand and put straight. +The unvirtuous rulers of the city will be swept away by a cyclone, or a +tornado, or something big and booming, of popular indignation; everybody +will unanimously elect the right men, who will justly earn the enormous +salaries that are at present being paid to inadequate aliens for road +sweepings, and all will be well. At the same time the lawlessness +ingrained by governors among the governed during the last thirty, forty, +or it may be fifty years; the brutal levity of the public conscience in +regard to public duty; the toughening and suppling of public morals, and +the reckless disregard for human life, bred by impotent laws and +fostered by familiarity with needless accidents and criminal neglect, +will miraculously disappear. If the laws of cause and effect that +control even the freest people in the world say otherwise, so much the +worse for the laws. America makes her own. Behind her stands the ghost +of the most bloody war of the century caused in a peaceful land by long +temporising with lawlessness, by letting things slide, by shiftlessness +and blind disregard for all save the material need of the hour, till the +hour long conceived and let alone stood up full-armed, and men said, +'Here is an unforeseen crisis,' and killed each other in the name of God +for four years. + +In a heathen land the three things that are supposed to be the pillars +of moderately decent government are regard for human life, justice, +criminal and civil, as far as it lies in man to do justice, and good +roads. In this Christian city they think lightly of the first--their own +papers, their own speech, and their own actions prove it; buy and sell +the second at a price openly and without shame; and are, apparently, +content to do without the third. One would almost expect racial sense of +humour would stay them from expecting only praise--slab, lavish, and +slavish--from the stranger within their gates. But they do not. If he +holds his peace, they forge tributes to their own excellence which they +put into his mouth, thereby treating their own land which they profess +to honour as a quack treats his pills. If he speaks--but you shall see +for yourselves what happens then. And they cannot see that by untruth +and invective it is themselves alone that they injure. + +The blame of their city evils is not altogether with the gentlemen, +chiefly of foreign extraction, who control the city. These find a people +made to their hand--a lawless breed ready to wink at one evasion of the +law if they themselves may profit by another, and in their rare leisure +hours content to smile over the details of a clever fraud. Then, says +the cultured American, 'Give us time. Give us time, and we shall +arrive.' The otherwise American, who is aggressive, straightway proceeds +to thrust a piece of half-hanged municipal botch-work under the nose of +the alien as a sample of perfected effort. There is nothing more +delightful than to sit for a strictly limited time with a child who +tells you what he means to do when he is a man; but when that same +child, loud-voiced, insistent, unblushingly eager for praise, but +thin-skinned as the most morbid of hobbledehoys, stands about all your +ways telling you the same story in the same voice, you begin to yearn +for something made and finished--say Egypt and a completely dead mummy. +It is neither seemly nor safe to hint that the government of the largest +city in the States is a despotism of the alien by the alien for the +alien, tempered with occasional insurrections of the decent folk. Only +the Chinaman washes the dirty linen of other lands. + +St. Paul, Minnesota. + +Yes, it is very good to get away once more and pick up the old and ever +fresh business of the vagrant, loafing through new towns, learned in +the manners of dogs, babies, and perambulators half the world over, and +tracking the seasons by the up-growth of flowers in stranger-people's +gardens. St. Paul, standing at the barn-door of the Dakota and Minnesota +granaries, is all things to all men except to Minneapolis, eleven miles +away, whom she hates and by whom she is patronised. She calls herself +the capital of the North-West, the new North-West, and her citizens +wear, not only the tall silk hat of trade, but the soft slouch of the +West. She talks in another tongue than the New Yorker, and--sure sign +that we are far across the continent--her papers argue with the San +Francisco ones over rate wars and the competition of railway companies. +St. Paul has been established many years, and if one were reckless +enough to go down to the business quarters one would hear all about her +and more also. But the residential parts of the town are the crown of +it. In common with scores of other cities, broad-crowned suburbs--using +the word in the English sense--that make the stranger jealous. You get +here what you do not get in the city--well-paved or asphalted roads, +planted with trees, and trim side-walks, studded with houses of +individuality, not boorishly fenced off from each other, but standing +each on its plot of well-kept turf running down to the pavement. It is +always Sunday in these streets of a morning. The cable-car has taken the +men down town to business, the children are at school, and the big dogs, +three and a third to each absent child, lie nosing the winter-killed +grass and wondering when the shoots will make it possible for a +gentleman to take his spring medicine. In the afternoon, the children on +tricycles stagger up and down the asphalt with due proportion of big +dogs at each wheel; the cable-cars coming up hill begin to drop the men +each at his own door--the door of the house that he builded for himself +(though the architect incited him to that vile little attic tower and +useless loggia), and, naturally enough, twilight brings the lovers +walking two by two along the very quiet ways. You can tell from the +houses almost the exact period at which they were built, whether in the +jig-saw days, when if behoved respectability to use unlovely turned +rails and pierced gable-ends, or during the Colonial craze, which means +white paint and fluted pillars, or in the latest domestic era, a most +pleasant mixture, that is, of stained shingles, hooded dormer-windows, +cunning verandas, and recessed doors. Seeing these things, one begins to +understand why the Americans visiting England are impressed with the old +and not with the new. He is not much more than a hundred years ahead of +the English in design, comfort, and economy, and (this is most +important) labour-saving appliances in his house. From Newport to San +Diego you will find the same thing to-day. + +Last tribute of respect and admiration. One little brown house at the +end of an avenue is shuttered down, and a doctor's buggy stands before +it. On the door a large blue and white label says--' Scarlet Fever.' Oh, +most excellent municipality of St. Paul. It is because of these little +things, and not by rowdying and racketing in public places, that a +nation becomes great and free and honoured. In the cars to-night they +will be talking wheat, girding at Minneapolis, and sneering at Duluth's +demand for twenty feet of water from Duluth to the Atlantic--matters of +no great moment compared with those streets and that label. + + +_A day later_. + +'Five days ago there wasn't a foot of earth to see. It was just +naturally covered with snow,' says the conductor standing in the rear +car of the Great Northern train. He speaks as though the snow had hidden +something priceless. Here is the view: One railway track and a line of +staggering telegraph poles ending in a dot and a blur on the horizon. To +the left and right, a sweep as it were of the sea, one huge plain of +corn land waiting for the spring, dotted at rare intervals with wooden +farmhouses, patent self-reapers and binders almost as big as the houses, +ricks left over from last year's abundant harvest, and mottled here and +there with black patches to show that the early ploughing had begun. The +snow lies in a last few streaks and whirls by the track; from sky-line +to sky-line is black loam and prairie grass so dead that it seems as +though no one year's sun would waken it. This is the granary of the land +where the farmer who bears the burdens of the State--and who, therefore, +ascribes last year's bumper crop to the direct action of the McKinley +Bill--has, also, to bear the ghastly monotony of earth and sky. He keeps +his head, having many things to attend to, but his wife sometimes goes +mad as the women do in Vermont. There is little variety in Nature's big +wheat-field. They say that when the corn is in the ear, the wind, +chasing shadows across it for miles on miles, breeds as it were a +vertigo in those who must look and cannot turn their eyes away. And they +tell a nightmare story of a woman who lived with her husband for +fourteen years at an Army post in just such a land as this. Then they +were transferred to West Point, among the hills over the Hudson, and she +came to New York, but the terror of the tall houses grew upon her and +grew till she went down with brain fever, and the dread of her delirium +was that the terrible things would topple down and crush her. That is a +true story. + +They work for harvest with steam-ploughs here. How could mere horses +face the endless furrows? And they attack the earth with toothed, +cogged, and spiked engines that would be monstrous in the shops, but +here are only speckles on the yellow grass. Even the locomotive is +cowed. A train of freight cars is passing along a line that comes out of +the blue and goes on till it meets the blue again. Elsewhere the train +would move off with a joyous, vibrant roar. Here it steals away down the +vista of the telegraph poles with an awed whisper--steals away and sinks +into the soil. + +Then comes a town deep in black mud--a straggly, inch-thick plank town, +with dull red grain elevators. The open country refuses to be subdued +even for a few score rods. Each street ends in the illimitable open, and +it is as though the whole houseless, outside earth were racing through +it. Towards evening, under a gray sky, flies by an unframed picture of +desolation. In the foreground a farm wagon almost axle deep in mud, the +mire dripping from the slow-turning wheels as the man flogs the horses. +Behind him on a knoll of sodden soggy grass, fenced off by raw rails +from the landscape at large, are a knot of utterly uninterested citizens +who have flogged horses and raised wheat in their time, but to-day lie +under chipped and weather-worn wooden headstones. Surely burial here +must be more awful to the newly-made ghost than burial at sea. + +There is more snow as we go north, and Nature is hard at work breaking +up the ground for the spring. The thaw has filled every depression with +a sullen gray-black spate, and out on the levels the water lies six +inches deep, in stretch upon stretch, as far as the eye can reach. Every +culvert is full, and the broken ice clicks against the wooden +pier-guards of the bridges. Somewhere in this flatness there is a +refreshing jingle of spurs along the cars, and a man of the Canadian +Mounted Police swaggers through with his black fur cap and the yellow +tab aside, his well-fitting overalls and his better set-up back. One +wants to shake hands with him because he is clean and does not slouch +nor spit, trims his hair, and walks as a man should. Then a +custom-house officer wants to know too much about cigars, whisky, and +Florida water. Her Majesty the Queen of England and Empress of India has +us in her keeping. Nothing has happened to the landscape, and Winnipeg, +which is, as it were, a centre of distribution for emigrants, stands up +to her knees in the water of the thaw. The year has turned in earnest, +and somebody is talking about the 'first ice-shove' at Montreal, 1300 or +1400 miles east. + +They will not run trains on Sunday at Montreal, and this is Wednesday. +Therefore, the Canadian Pacific makes up a train for Vancouver at +Winnipeg. This is worth remembering, because few people travel in that +train, and you escape any rush of tourists running westward to catch the +Yokohama boat. The car is your own, and with it the service of the +porter. Our porter, seeing things were slack, beguiled himself with a +guitar, which gave a triumphal and festive touch to the journey, +ridiculously out of keeping with the view. For eight-and-twenty long +hours did the bored locomotive trail us through a flat and hairy land, +powdered, ribbed, and speckled with snow, small snow that drives like +dust-shot in the wind--the land of Assiniboia. Now and again, for no +obvious reason to the outside mind, there was a town. Then the towns +gave place to 'section so and so'; then there were trails of the +buffalo, where he once walked in his pride; then there was a mound of +white bones, supposed to belong to the said buffalo, and then the +wilderness took up the tale. Some of it was good ground, but most of it +seemed to have fallen by the wayside, and the tedium of it was eternal. + +At twilight--an unearthly sort of twilight--there came another curious +picture. Thus--a wooden town shut in among low, treeless, rolling +ground, a calling river that ran unseen between scarped banks; barracks +of a detachment of mounted police, a little cemetery where ex-troopers +rested, a painfully formal public garden with pebble paths and foot-high +fir trees, a few lines of railway buildings, white women walking up and +down in the bitter cold with their bonnets off, some Indians in red +blanketing with buffalo horns for sale trailing along the platform, and, +not ten yards from the track, a cinnamon bear and a young grizzly +standing up with extended arms in their pens and begging for food. It +was strange beyond anything that this bald telling can suggest--opening +a door into a new world. The only commonplace thing about the spot was +its name--Medicine Hat, which struck me instantly as the only possible +name such a town could carry. This is that place which later became a +town; but I had seen it three years before when it was even smaller and +was reached by me in a freight-car, ticket unpaid for. + +That next morning brought us the Canadian Pacific Railway as one reads +about it. No pen of man could do justice to the scenery there. The +guide-books struggle desperately with descriptions, adapted for summer +reading, of rushing cascades, lichened rocks, waving pines, and +snow-capped mountains; but in April these things are not there. The +place is locked up--dead as a frozen corpse. The mountain torrent is a +boss of palest emerald ice against the dazzle of the snow; the +pine-stumps are capped and hooded with gigantic mushrooms of snow; the +rocks are overlaid five feet deep; the rocks, the fallen trees, and the +lichens together, and the dumb white lips curl up to the track cut in +the side of the mountain, and grin there fanged with gigantic icicles. +You may listen in vain when the train stops for the least sign of breath +or power among the hills. The snow has smothered the rivers, and the +great looping trestles run over what might be a lather of suds in a huge +wash-tub. The old snow near by is blackened and smirched with the smoke +of locomotives, and its dulness is grateful to aching eyes. But the men +who live upon the line have no consideration for these things. At a +halting-place in a gigantic gorge walled in by the snows, one of them +reels from a tiny saloon into the middle of the track where half-a-dozen +dogs are chasing a pig off the metals. He is beautifully and eloquently +drunk. He sings, waves his hands, and collapses behind a shunting +engine, while four of the loveliest peaks that the Almighty ever moulded +look down upon him. The landslide that should have wiped that saloon +into kindlings has missed its mark and has struck a few miles down the +line. One of the hillsides moved a little in dreaming of the spring and +caught a passing freight train. Our cars grind cautiously by, for the +wrecking engine has only just come through. The deceased engine is +standing on its head in soft earth thirty or forty feet down the slide, +and two long cars loaded with shingles are dropped carelessly atop of +it. It looks so marvellously like a toy train flung aside by a child, +that one cannot realise what it means till a voice cries, 'Any one +killed?' The answer comes back, 'No; all jumped'; and you perceive with +a sense of personal insult that this slovenliness of the mountain is an +affair which may touch your own sacred self. In which case.... But the +train is out on a trestle, into a tunnel, and out on a trestle again. It +was here that every one began to despair of the line when it was under +construction, because there seemed to be no outlet. But a man came, as a +man always will, and put a descent thus and a curve in this manner, and +a trestle so; and behold, the line went on. It is in this place that we +heard the story of the Canadian Pacific Railway told as men tell a +many-times-repeated tale, with exaggerations and omissions, but an +imposing tale, none the less. In the beginning, when they would federate +the Dominion of Canada, it was British Columbia who saw objections to +coming in, and the Prime Minister of those days promised it for a bribe, +an iron band between tidewater and tidewater that should not break. Then +everybody laughed, which seems necessary to the health of most big +enterprises, and while they were laughing, things were being done. The +Canadian Pacific Railway was given a bit of a line here and a bit of a +line there and almost as much land as it wanted, and the laughter was +still going on when the last spike was driven between east and west, at +the very place where the drunken man sprawled behind the engine, and the +iron band ran from tideway to tideway as the Premier said, and people in +England said 'How interesting,' and proceeded to talk about the 'bloated +Army estimates.' Incidentally, the man who told us--he had nothing to do +with the Canadian Pacific Railway--explained how it paid the line to +encourage immigration, and told of the arrival at Winnipeg of a +train-load of Scotch crofters on a Sunday. They wanted to stop then and +there for the Sabbath--they and all the little stock they had brought +with them. It was the Winnipeg agent who had to go among them arguing +(he was Scotch too, and they could not quite understand it) on the +impropriety of dislocating the company's traffic. So their own minister +held a service in the station, and the agent gave them a good dinner, +cheering them in Gaelic, at which they wept, and they went on to settle +at Moosomin, where they lived happily ever afterwards. Of the manager, +the head of the line from Montreal to Vancouver, our companion spoke +with reverence that was almost awe. That manager lived in a palace at +Montreal, but from time to time he would sally forth in his special car +and whirl over his 3000 miles at 50 miles an hour. The regulation pace +is twenty-two, but he sells his neck with his head. Few drivers cared +for the honour of taking him over the road. A mysterious man he was, who +'carried the profile of the line in his head,' and, more than that, knew +intimately the possibilities of back country which he had never seen nor +travelled over. There is always one such man on every line. You can hear +similar tales from drivers on the Great Western in England or Eurasian +stationmasters on the big North-Western in India. Then a +fellow-traveller spoke, as many others had done, on the possibilities of +Canadian union with the United States; and his language was not the +language of Mr. Goldwin Smith. It was brutal in places. Summarised it +came to a pronounced objection to having anything to do with a land +rotten before it was ripe, a land with seven million negroes as yet +unwelded into the population, their race-type unevolved, and rather more +than crude notions on murder, marriage, and honesty. 'We've picked up +their ways of politics,' he said mournfully. 'That comes of living next +door to them; but I don't think we're anxious to mix up with their other +messes. They say they don't want us. They keep on saying it. There's a +nigger on the fence somewhere, or they wouldn't lie about it.' + +'But does it follow that they are lying?' + +'Sure. I've lived among 'em. They can't go straight. There's some dam' +fraud at the back of it.' + +From this belief he would not be shaken. He had lived among +them--perhaps had been bested in trade. Let them keep themselves and +their manners and customs to their own side of the line, he said. + +This is very sad and chilling. It seemed quite otherwise in New York, +where Canada was represented as a ripe plum ready to fell into Uncle +Sam's mouth when he should open it. The Canadian has no special love for +England--the Mother of Colonies has a wonderful gift for alienating the +affections of her own household by neglect--but, perhaps, he loves his +own country. We ran out of the snow through mile upon mile of +snow-sheds, braced with twelve-inch beams, and planked with two-inch +planking. In one place a snow slide had caught just the edge of a shed +and scooped it away as a knife scoops cheese. High up the hills men had +built diverting barriers to turn the drifts, but the drifts had swept +over everything, and lay five deep on the top of the sheds. When we woke +it was on the banks of the muddy Fraser River and the spring was +hurrying to meet us. The snow had gone; the pink blossoms of the wild +currant were open, the budding alders stood misty green against the blue +black of the pines, the brambles on the burnt stumps were in tenderest +leaf, and every moss on every stone was this year's work, fresh from the +hand of the Maker. The land opened into clearings of soft black earth. +At one station a hen had laid an egg and was telling the world about it. +The world answered with a breath of real spring--spring that flooded the +stuffy car and drove us out on the platform to snuff and sing and +rejoice and pluck squashy green marsh-flags and throw them at the +colts, and shout at the wild duck that rose from a jewel-green lakelet. +God be thanked that in travel one can follow the year! This, my spring, +I lost last November in New Zealand. Now I shall hold her fast through +Japan and the summer into New Zealand again. + +Here are the waters of the Pacific, and Vancouver (completely destitute +of any decent defences) grown out of all knowledge in the last three +years. At the railway wharf, with never a gun to protect her, lies the +_Empress of India_--the Japan boat--and what more auspicious name could +you wish to find at the end of one of the strong chains of empire? + + + + +THE EDGE OF THE EAST + + +The mist was clearing off Yokohama harbour and a hundred junks had their +sails hoisted for the morning breeze, so that the veiled horizon was +stippled with square blurs of silver. An English man-of-war showed +blue-white on the haze, so new was the daylight, and all the water lay +out as smooth as the inside of an oyster shell. Two children in blue and +white, their tanned limbs pink in the fresh air, sculled a marvellous +boat of lemon-hued wood, and that was our fairy craft to the shore +across the stillness and the mother o' pearl levels. + +There are ways and ways of entering Japan. The best is to descend upon +it from America and the Pacific--from the barbarians and the deep sea. +Coming from the East, the blaze of India and the insolent tropical +vegetation of Singapore dull the eye to half-colours and little tones. +It is at Bombay that the smell of All Asia boards the ship miles off +shore, and holds the passenger's nose till he is clear of Asia again. +That is a violent, and aggressive smell, apt to prejudice the stranger, +but kin none the less to the gentle and insinuating flavour that stole +across the light airs of the daybreak when the fairy boat went to +shore--a smell of very clean new wood; split bamboo, wood-smoke, damp +earth, and the things that people who are not white people eat--a +homelike and comforting smell. Then followed on shore the sound of an +Eastern tongue, that is beautiful or not as you happen to know it. The +Western races have many languages, but a crowd of Europeans heard +through closed doors talk with the Western pitch and cadence. So it is +with the East. A line of jinrickshaw coolies sat in the sun discoursing +to each other, and it was as though they were welcoming a return in +speech that the listener must know as well as English. They talked and +they talked, but the ghosts of familiar words would not grow any clearer +till presently the Smell came down the open streets again, saying that +this was the East where nothing matters, and trifles old as the Tower of +Babel mattered less than nothing, and that there were old acquaintances +waiting at every corner beyond the township. Great is the Smell of the +East! Railways, telegraphs, docks, and gunboats cannot banish it, and it +will endure till the railways are dead. He who has not smelt that smell +has never lived. + +Three years ago Yokohama was sufficiently Europeanised in its shops to +suit the worst and wickedest taste. To-day it is still worse if you keep +to the town limits. Ten steps beyond into the fields all the +civilisation stops exactly as it does in another land a few thousand +miles further West. The globe-trotting, millionaires anxious to spend +money, with a nose on whatever caught their libertine fancies, had +explained to us aboard-ship that they came to Japan in haste, advised by +their guide-books to do so, lest the land should be suddenly civilised +between steamer-sailing and steamer-sailing. When they touched land they +ran away to the curio shops to buy things which are prepared for +them--mauve and magenta and blue-vitriol things. By this time they have +a 'Murray' under one arm and an electric-blue eagle with a copperas beak +and a yellow '_E pluribus unum_' embroidered on apple-green silk, under +the other. + +We, being wise, sit in a garden that is not ours, but belongs to a +gentleman in slate-coloured silk, who, solely for the sake of the +picture, condescends to work as a gardener, in which employ he is +sweeping delicately a welt of fallen cherry blossoms from under an +azalea aching to burst into bloom. Steep stone steps, of the colour that +nature ripens through long winters, lead up to this garden by way of +clumps of bamboo grass. You see the Smell was right when it talked of +meeting old friends. Half-a-dozen blue-black pines are standing akimbo +against a real sky--not a fog-blur nor a cloud-bank, nor a gray +dish-clout wrapped round the sun--but a blue sky. A cherry tree on a +slope below them throws up a wave of blossom that breaks all creamy +white against their feet, and a clump of willows trail their palest +green shoots in front of all. The sun sends for an ambassador through +the azalea bushes a lordly swallow-tailed butterfly, and his squire +very like the flitting 'chalk-blue' of the English downs. The warmth of +the East, that goes through, not over, the lazy body, is added to the +light of the East--the splendid lavish light that clears but does not +bewilder the eye. Then the new leaves of the spring wink like fat +emeralds and the loaded branches of cherry-bloom grow transparent and +glow as a hand glows held up against flame. Little, warm sighs come up +from the moist, warm earth, and the fallen petals stir on the ground, +turn over, and go to sleep again. Outside, beyond the foliage, where the +sunlight lies on the slate-coloured roofs, the ridged rice-fields beyond +the roofs, and the hills beyond the rice-fields, is all Japan--only all +Japan; and this that they call the old French Legation is the Garden of +Eden that most naturally dropped down here after the Fall. For some +small hint of the beauties to be shown later there is the roof of a +temple, ridged and fluted with dark tiles, flung out casually beyond the +corner of the bluff on which the garden stands. Any other curve of the +eaves would not have consorted with the sweep of the pine branches; +therefore, this curve was made, and being made, was perfect. The +congregation of the globe-trotters are in the hotel, scuffling for +guides, in order that they may be shown the sights of Japan, which is +all one sight. They must go to Tokio, they must go to Nikko; they must +surely see all that is to be seen and then write home to their barbarian +families that they are getting used to the sight of bare, brown legs. +Before this day is ended, they will all, thank goodness, have splitting +headaches and burnt-out eyes. It is better to lie still and hear the +grass grow--to soak in the heat and the smell and the sounds and the +sights that come unasked. + +Our garden overhangs the harbour, and by pushing aside one branch we +look down upon a heavy-sterned fishing-boat, the straw-gold mats of the +deck-house pushed back to show the perfect order and propriety of the +housekeeping that is going forward. The father-fisher, sitting +frog-fashion, is poking at a tiny box full of charcoal, and the light, +white ash is blown back into the face of a largish Japanese doll, price +two shillings and threepence in Bayswater. The doll wakes, turns into a +Japanese baby something more valuable than money could buy--a baby with +a shaven head and aimless legs. It crawls to the thing in the polished +brown box, is picked up just as it is ready to eat live coals, and is +set down behind a thwart, where it drums upon a bucket, addressing the +firebox from afar. Half-a-dozen cherry blossoms slide off a bough, and +waver down to the water close to the Japanese doll, who in another +minute will be overside in pursuit of these miracles. The father-fisher +has it by the pink hind leg, and this time it is tucked away, all but +the top-knot, out of sight among umber nets and sepia cordage. Being an +Oriental it makes no protest, and the boat scuds out to join the little +fleet in the offing. + +Then two sailors of a man-of-war come along the sea face, lean over the +canal below the garden, spit, and roll away. The sailor in port is the +only superior man. To him all matters rare and curious are either 'them +things' or 'them other things.' He does not hurry himself, he does not +seek Adjectives other than those which custom puts into his mouth for +all occasions; but the beauty of life penetrates his being insensibly +till he gets drunk, falls foul of the local policeman, smites him into +the nearest canal, and disposes of the question of treaty revision with +a hiccup. All the same, Jack says that he has a grievance against the +policeman, who is paid a dollar for every strayed seaman he brings up to +the Consular Courts for overstaying his leave, and so forth. Jack says +that the little fellows deliberately hinder him from getting back to his +ship, and then with devilish art and craft of wrestling tricks--'there +are about a hundred of 'em, and they can throw you with every qualified +one'--carry him to justice. Now when Jack is softened with drink he does +not tell lies. This is his grievance, and he says that them blanketed +consuls ought to know. 'They plays into each other's hands, and stops +you at the Hatoba'--the policemen do. The visitor who is neither a +seaman nor drunk, cannot swear to the truth of this, or indeed anything +else. He moves not only among fascinating scenes and a lovely people +but, as he is sure to find out before he has been a day ashore, between +stormy questions. Three years ago there were no questions that were not +going to be settled off-hand in a blaze of paper lanterns. The +Constitution was new. It has a gray, pale cover with a chrysanthemum at +the back, and a Japanese told me then, 'Now we have Constitution same as +other countries, and _so_ it is all right. Now we are quite civilised +because of Constitution.' + +[A perfectly irrelevant story comes to mind here. Do you know that in +Madeira once they had a revolution which lasted just long enough for the +national poet to compose a national anthem, and then was put down? All +that is left of the revolt now is the song that you hear on the +twangling _nachettes_, the baby-banjoes, of a moonlight night under the +banana fronds at the back of Funchal. And the high-pitched nasal refrain +of it is 'Consti-tuci-_oun_!'] + +Since that auspicious date it seems that the questions have +impertinently come up, and the first and the last of them is that of +Treaty Revision. Says the Japanese Government, 'Only obey our laws, our +new laws that we have carefully compiled from all the wisdom of the +West, and you shall go up country as you please and trade where you +will, instead of living cooped up in concessions and being judged by +consuls. Treat us as you would treat France or Germany, and we will +treat you as our own subjects.' + +Here, as you know, the matter rests between the two thousand foreigners +and the forty million Japanese--a God-send to all editors of Tokio and +Yokohama, and the despair of the newly arrived in whose nose, remember, +is the smell of the East, One and Indivisible, Immemorial, Eternal, and, +above all, Instructive. + +Indeed, it is only by walking out at least half a mile that you escape +from the aggressive evidences of civilisation, and come out into the +rice-fields at the back of the town. Here men with twists of blue and +white cloth round their heads are working knee deep in the thick black +mud. The largest field may be something less than two tablecloths, while +the smallest is, say, a speck of undercliff, on to which it were hard to +back a 'rickshaw, wrested from the beach and growing its clump of barley +within spray-shot of the waves. The field paths are the trodden tops of +the irrigating cuts, and the main roads as wide as two perambulators +abreast. From the uplands--the beautiful uplands planted in exactly the +proper places with pine and maple--the ground comes down in terraced +pocket on pocket of rich earth to the levels again, and it would seem +that every heavily-thatched farmhouse was chosen with special regard to +the view. If you look closely when the people go to work you will see +that a household spreads itself over plots, maybe, a quarter of a mile +apart. A revenue map of a village shows that this scatteration is +apparently designed, but the reason is not given. One thing at least is +certain. The assessment of these patches can be no light piece of +work--just the thing, in fact, that would give employment to a large +number of small and variegated Government officials, any one of whom, +assuming that he was of an Oriental cast of mind, might make the +cultivator's life interesting. I remember now--a second-time-seen place +brings back things that were altogether buried--seeing three years ago +the pile of Government papers required in the case of one farm. They +were many and systematic, but the interesting thing about them was the +amount of work that they must have furnished to those who were neither +cultivators nor Treasury officials. + +If one knew Japanese, one could collogue with that gentleman in the +straw-hat and the blue loincloth who is chopping within a sixteenth of +an inch of his naked toes with the father and mother of all weed-spuds. +His version of local taxation might be inaccurate, but it would sure to +be picturesque. Failing his evidence, be pleased to accept two or three +things that may or may not be facts of general application. They differ +in a measure from statements in the books. The present land-tax is +nominally 2-1/2 per cent, payable in cash on a three, or as some say a +five, yearly settlement. But, according to certain officials, there has +been no settlement since 1875. Land lying fallow for a season pays the +same tax as land in cultivation, unless it is unproductive through flood +or calamity (read earthquake here). The Government tax is calculated on +the capital value of the land, taking a measure of about 11,000 square +feet or a quarter of an acre as the unit. + +Now, one of the ways of getting at the capital value of the land is to +see what the railways have paid for it. The very best rice land, taking +the Japanese dollar at three shillings, is about £65:10s per acre. +Unirrigated land for vegetable growing is something over £9:12s., and +forest £2:11s. As these are railway rates, they may be fairly held to +cover large areas. In private sales the prices may reasonably be higher. + +It is to be remembered that some of the very best rice land will bear +two crops of rice in the year. Most soil will bear two crops, the first +being millet, rape, vegetables, and so on, sown on dry soil and ripening +at the end of May. Then the ground is at once prepared for the wet crop, +to be harvested in October or thereabouts. Land-tax is payable in two +instalments. Rice land pays between the 1st November and the middle of +December and the 1st January and the last of February. Other land pays +between July and August and September and December. Let us see what the +average yield is. The gentleman in the sun-hat and the loin-cloth would +shriek at the figures, but they are approximately accurate. Rice +naturally fluctuates a good deal, but it may be taken in the rough at +five Japanese dollars (fifteen shillings) per _koku_ of 330 lbs. Wheat +and maize of the first spring crop is worth about eleven shillings per +_koku_. The first crop gives nearly 1-3/4 _koku_ per _tau_ (the quarter +acre unit of measurement aforesaid), or eighteen shillings per quarter +acre, or £3:12s. per acre. The rice crop at two _koku_ or £1:10s. the +quarter acre gives £6 an acre. Total £9:12s. This is not altogether bad +if you reflect that the land in question is not the very best rice land, +but ordinary No. 1, at £25:16s. per acre, capital value. + +A son has the right to inherit his father's land on the father's +assessment, so long as its term runs, or, when the term has expired, has +a prior claim as against any one else. Part of the taxes, it is said, +lies by in the local prefecture's office as a reserve fund against +inundations. Yet, and this seems a little confusing, there are between +five and seven other local, provincial, and municipal taxes which can +reasonably be applied to the same ends. No one of these taxes exceeds a +half of the land-tax, unless it be the local prefecture tax of 2-1/2 per +cent. + +In the old days the people were taxed, or perhaps squeezed would be the +better word, to about one-half of the produce of the land. There are +those who may say that the present system is not so advantageous as it +looks. Beforetime, the farmers, it is true, paid heavily, but only, on +their nominal holdings. They could, and often did, hold more land than +they were assessed on. Today a rigid bureaucracy surveys every foot of +their farms, and upon every foot they have to pay. Somewhat similar +complaints are made still by the simple peasantry of India, for if there +is one thing that the Oriental detests more than another, it is the +damnable Western vice of accuracy. That leads to doing things by rule. +Still, by the look of those terraced fields, where the water is led so +cunningly from level to level, the Japanese cultivator must enjoy at +least one excitement. If the villages up the valley tamper with the +water supply, there must surely be excitement down the valley--argument, +protest, and the breaking of heads. + +The days of romance, therefore, are not all dead. + + * * * * * + +This that follows happened on the coast twenty miles through the fields +from Yokohama, at Kamakura, that is to say, where the great bronze +Buddha sits facing the sea to hear the centuries go by. He has been +described again and again--his majesty, his aloofness, and every one of +his dimensions, the smoky little shrine within him, and the plumed hill +that makes the background to his throne. For that reason he remains, as +he remained from the beginning, beyond all hope of description--as it +might be, a visible god sitting in the garden of a world made new. They +sell photographs of him with tourists standing on his thumb nail, and, +apparently, any brute of any gender can scrawl his or its ignoble name +over the inside of the massive bronze plates that build him up. Think +for a moment of the indignity and the insult! Imagine the ancient, +orderly gardens with their clipped trees, shorn turf, and silent ponds +smoking in the mist that the hot sun soaks up after rain, and the +green-bronze image of the Teacher of the Law wavering there as it half +seems through incense clouds. The earth is all one censer, and myriads +of frogs are making the haze ring. It is too warm to do more than to sit +on a stone and watch the eyes that, having seen all things, see no +more--the down-dropped eyes, the forward droop of the head, and the +colossal simplicity of the folds of the robe over arm and knee. Thus, +and in no other fashion, did Buddha sit in the-old days when Ananda +asked questions and the dreamer began to dream of the lives that lay +behind him ere the lips moved, and as the Chronicles say: 'He told a +tale.' This would be the way he began, for dreamers in the East tell +something the same sort of tales to-day: 'Long ago when Devadatta was +King of Benares, there lived a virtuous elephant, a reprobate ox, and a +King without understanding.' And the tale would end, after the moral had +been drawn for Ananda's benefit: 'Now, the reprobate ox was such an one, +and the King was such another, but the virtuous elephant was I, myself, +Ananda.' Thus, then, he told the tales in the bamboo grove, and the +bamboo grove is there to-day. Little blue and gray and slate robed +figures pass under its shadow, buy two or three joss-sticks, disappear +into the shrine, that is, the body of the god, come out smiling, and +drift away through the shrubberies. A fat carp in a pond sucks at a +fallen leaf with just the sound of a wicked little worldly kiss. Then +the earth steams, and steams in silence, and a gorgeous butterfly, full +six inches from wing to wing, cuts through the steam in a zigzag of +colour and flickers up to the forehead of the god. And Buddha said that +a man must look on everything as illusion--even light and colour--the +time-worn bronze of metal against blue-green of pine and pale emerald of +bamboo--the lemon sash of the girl in the cinnamon dress, with coral +pins in her hair, leaning against a block of weather-bleached +stone--and, last, the spray of blood-red azalea that stands on the pale +gold mats of the tea-house beneath the honey-coloured thatch. To overcome +desire and covetousness of mere gold, which is often very vilely designed, +that is conceivable; but why must a man give up the delight of the eye, +colour that rejoices, light that cheers, and line that satisfies the +innermost deeps of the heart? Ah, if the Bodhisat had only seen his own +image! + + + + +OUR OVERSEAS MEN + + +All things considered, there are only two kinds of men in the +world--those that stay at home and those that do not. The second are the +most interesting. Some day a man will bethink himself and write a book +about the breed in a book called 'The Book of the Overseas Club,' for it +is at the clubhouses all the way from Aden to Yokohama that the life of +the Outside Men is best seen and their talk is best heard. A strong +family likeness runs through both buildings and members, and a large and +careless hospitality is the note. There is always the same open-doored, +high-ceiled house, with matting on the floors; the same come and go of +dark-skinned servants, and the same assembly of men talking horse or +business, in raiment that would fatally scandalise a London committee, +among files of newspapers from a fortnight to five weeks old. The life +of the Outside Men includes plenty of sunshine, and as much air as may +be stirring. At the Cape, where the Dutch housewives distil and sell the +very potent Vanderhum, and the absurd home-made hansom cabs waddle up +and down the yellow dust of Adderley Street, are the members of the big +import and export firms, the shipping and insurance offices, inventors +of mines, and exploiters of new territories with now and then an officer +strayed from India to buy mules for the Government, a Government House +aide-de-camp, a sprinkling of the officers of the garrison, tanned +skippers of the Union and Castle Lines, and naval men from the squadron +at Simon's Town. Here they talk of the sins of Cecil Rhodes, the +insolence of Natal, the beauties or otherwise of the solid Boer vote, +and the dates of the steamers. The _argot_ is Dutch and Kaffir, and +every one can hum the national anthem that begins 'Pack your kit and +trek, Johnny Bowlegs.' In the stately Hongkong Clubhouse, which is to +the further what the Bengal Club is to the nearer East, you meet much +the same gathering, _minus_ the mining speculators and _plus_ men whose +talk is of tea, silk, shortings, and Shanghai ponies. The speech of the +Outside Men at this point becomes fearfully mixed with pidgin-English +and local Chinese terms, rounded with corrupt Portuguese. At Melbourne, +in a long verandah giving on a grass plot, where laughing-jackasses +laugh very horribly, sit wool-kings, premiers, and breeders of horses +after their kind. The older men talk of the days of the Eureka Stockade +and the younger of 'shearing wars' in North Queensland, while the +traveller moves timidly among them wondering what under the world every +third word means. At Wellington, overlooking the harbour (all +right-minded clubs should command the sea), another, and yet a like, +sort of men speak of sheep, the rabbits, the land-courts, and the +ancient heresies of Sir Julius Vogel; and their more expressive +sentences borrow from the Maori. And elsewhere, and elsewhere, and +elsewhere among the Outside Men it is the same--the same mixture of +every trade, calling, and profession under the sun; the same clash of +conflicting interests touching the uttermost parts of the earth; the +same intimate, and sometimes appalling knowledge of your neighbour's +business and shortcomings; the same large-palmed hospitality, and the +same interest on the part of the younger men in the legs of a horse. +Decidedly, it is at the Overseas Club all the world over that you get to +know some little of the life of the community. London is egoistical, and +the world for her ends with the four-mile cab radius. There is no +provincialism like the provincialism of London. That big slack-water +coated with the drift and rubbish of a thousand men's thoughts esteems +itself the open sea because the waves of all the oceans break on her +borders. To those in her midst she is terribly imposing, but they forget +that there is more than one kind of imposition. Look back upon her from +ten thousand miles, when the mail is just in at the Overseas Club, and +she is wondrous tiny. Nine-tenths of her news--so vital, so epoch-making +over there--loses its significance, and the rest is as the scuffling of +ghosts in a back-attic. + +Here in Yokohama the Overseas Club has two mails and four sets of +papers--English, French, German, and American, as suits the variety of +its constitution--and the verandah by the sea, where the big telescope +stands, is a perpetual feast of the Pentecost. The population of the +club changes with each steamer in harbour, for the sea-captains swing +in, are met with 'Hello! where did you come from?' and mix at the bar +and billiard-tables for their appointed time and go to sea again. The +white-painted warships supply their contingent of members also, and +there are wonderful men, mines of most fascinating adventure, who have +an interest in sealing-brigs that go to the Kurile Islands, and somehow +get into trouble with the Russian authorities. Consuls and judges of the +Consular Courts meet men over on leave from the China ports, or it may +be Manila, and they all talk tea, silk, banking, and exchange with its +fixed residents. Everything is always as bad as it can possibly be, and +everybody is on the verge of ruin. That is why, when they have decided +that life is no longer worth living, they go down to the +skittle-alley--to commit suicide. From the outside, when a cool wind +blows among the papers and there is a sound of smashing ice in an inner +apartment, and every third man is talking about the approaching races, +the life seems to be a desirable one. 'What more could a man need to +make him happy?' says the passer-by. A perfect climate, a lovely +country, plenty of pleasant society, and the politest people on earth to +deal with. The resident smiles and invites the passer-by to stay through +July and August. Further, he presses him to do business with the +politest people on earth, and to continue so doing for a term of years. +Thus the traveller perceives beyond doubt that the resident is +prejudiced by the very fact of his residence, and gives it as his +matured opinion that Japan is a faultless land, marred only by the +presence of the foreign community. And yet, let us consider. It is the +foreign community that has made it possible for the traveller to come +and go from hotel to hotel, to get his passport for inland travel, to +telegraph his safe arrival to anxious friends, and generally enjoy +himself much more than he would have been able to do in his own country. +Government and gunboats may open a land, but it is the men of the +Overseas Club that keep it open. Their reward (not alone in Japan) is +the bland patronage or the scarcely-veiled contempt of those who profit +by their labours. It is hopeless to explain to a traveller who has been +'ohayoed' into half-a-dozen shops and 'sayonaraed' out of half-a-dozen +more and politely cheated in each one, that the Japanese is an Oriental, +and, therefore, embarrassingly economical of the truth. 'That's his +politeness,' says the traveller. 'He does not wish to hurt your +feelings. Love him and treat him like a brother, and he'll change.' To +treat one of the most secretive of races on a brotherly basis is not +very easy, and the natural politeness that enters into a signed and +sealed contract and undulates out of it so soon as it does not +sufficiently pay is more than embarrassing. It is almost annoying. The +want of fixity or commercial honour may be due to some natural infirmity +of the artistic temperament, or to the manner in which the climate has +affected, and his ruler has ruled, the man himself for untold centuries. + +Those who know the East know, where the system of 'squeeze,' which is +commission, runs through every transaction of life, from the sale of a +groom's place upward, where the woman walks behind the man in the +streets, and where the peasant gives you for the distance to the next +town as many or as few miles as he thinks you will like, that these +things must be so. Those who do not know will not be persuaded till they +have lived there. The Overseas Club puts up its collective nose +scornfully when it hears of the New and Regenerate Japan sprung to life +since the 'seventies. It grins, with shame be it written, at an Imperial +Diet modelled on the German plan and a Code Napoléon à la Japonaise. It +is so far behind the New Era as to doubt that an Oriental country, +ridden by etiquette of the sternest, and social distinctions almost as +hard as those of caste, can be turned out to Western gauge in the +compass of a very young man's life. And it _must_ be prejudiced, because +it is daily and hourly in contact with the Japanese, except when it can +do business with the Chinaman whom it prefers. Was there ever so +disgraceful a club! + +Just at present, a crisis, full blown as a chrysanthemum, has developed +in the Imperial Diet. Both Houses accuse the Government of improper +interference--this Japanese for 'plenty stick and some bank-note'--at +the recent elections. They then did what was equivalent to passing a +vote of censure on the Ministry and refusing to vote government +measures. So far the wildest advocate of representative government could +have desired nothing better. Afterwards, things took a distinctly +Oriental turn. The Ministry refused to resign, and the Mikado prorogued +the Diet for a week to think things over. The Japanese papers are now at +issue over the event. Some say that representative government implies +party government, and others swear at large. The Overseas Club says for +the most part--'Skittles!' + +It is a picturesque situation--one that suggests romances and +extravaganzas. Thus, imagine a dreaming Court intrenched behind a triple +line of moats where the lotus blooms in summer--a Court whose outer +fringe is aggressively European, but whose heart is Japan of long ago, +where a dreaming King sits among some wives or other things, amused from +time to time with magic-lantern shows and performing fleas--a holy King +whose sanctity is used to conjure with, and who twice a year gives +garden-parties where every one must come in top-hat and frock coat. +Round this Court, wavering between the splendours of the sleeping and +the variety shows of the Crystal Palace, place in furious but +carefully-veiled antagonism the fragments of newly shattered castes, +their natural Oriental eccentricities overlaid with borrowed Western +notions. Imagine now, a large and hungry bureaucracy, French in its +fretful insistence on detail where detail is of no earthly moment, +Oriental in its stress on etiquette and punctillo, recruited from a +military caste accustomed for ages past to despise alike farmer and +trader. This caste, we will suppose, is more or less imperfectly +controlled by a syndicate of three clans, which supply their own +nominees to the Ministry. These are adroit, versatile, and unscrupulous +men, hampered by no western prejudice in favour of carrying any plan to +completion. Through and at the bidding of these men, the holy Monarch +acts; and the acts are wonderful. To criticise these acts exists a +wild-cat Press, liable to suppression at any moment, as morbidly +sensitive to outside criticism as the American, and almost as childishly +untruthful, fungoid in the swiftness of its growth, and pitiable in its +unseasoned rashness. Backers of this press in its wilder moments, +lawless, ignorant, sensitive and vain, are the student class, educated +in the main at Government expense, and a thorn in the side of the State. +Judges without training handle laws without precedents, and new measures +are passed and abandoned with almost inconceivable levity. Out of the +welter of classes and interests that are not those of the common folk is +evolved the thing called Japanese policy that has the proportion and the +perspective of a Japanese picture. + +Finality and stability are absent from its councils. To-day, for reasons +none can explain, it is pro-foreign to the verge of servility. +To-morrow, for reasons equally obscure, the pendulum swings back, +and--the students are heaving mud at the foreigners in the streets. +Vexatious, irresponsible, incoherent, and, above all, cheaply +mysterious, is the rule of the land--stultified by intrigue and +counter-intrigue, chequered with futile reforms begun on European lines +and light-heartedly thrown aside; studded, as a bower-bird's run is +studded with shells and shining pebbles, with plagiarisms from half the +world--an operetta of administration, wherein the shadow of the King +among his wives, Samurai policemen, doctors who have studied under +Pasteur, kid-gloved cavalry officers from St. Cyr, judges with +University degrees, harlots with fiddles, newspaper correspondents, +masters of the ancient ceremonies of the land, paid members of the Diet, +secret societies that borrow the knife and the dynamite of the Irish, +sons of dispossessed Daimios returned from Europe and waiting for what +may turn up, with ministers of the syndicate who have wrenched Japan +from her repose of twenty years ago, circle, flicker, shift, and reform, +in bewildering rings, round the foreign resident. Is the extravaganza +complete? + +Somewhere in the background of the stage are the people of the land--of +whom a very limited proportion enjoy the privileges of representative +government. Whether in the past few years they have learned what the +thing means, or, learning, have the least intention of making any use of +it, is not clear. Meantime, the game of government goes forward as +merrily as a game of puss-in-the-corner, with the additional joy that +not more than half-a-dozen men know who is controlling it or what in +the wide world it intends to do. In Tokio live the steadily-diminishing +staff of Europeans employed by the Emperor as engineers, railway +experts, professors in the colleges and so forth. Before many years they +will all be dispensed with, and the country will set forth among the +nations alone and on its own responsibility. + +In fifty years then, from the time that the intrusive American first +broke her peace, Japan will experience her new birth and, reorganised +from sandal to top-knot, play the _samisen_ in the march of modern +progress. This is the great advantage of being born into the New Era, +when individual and community alike can get something for nothing--pay +without work, education without effort, religion without thought, and +free government without slow and bitter toil. + +The Overseas Club, as has been said, is behind the spirit of the age. It +has to work for what it gets, and it does not always get what it works +for. Nor can its members take ship and go home when they please. Imagine +for a little, the contented frame of mind that is bred in a man by the +perpetual contemplation of a harbour full of steamers as a Piccadilly +cab-rank of hansoms. The weather is hot, we will suppose; something has +gone wrong with his work that day, or his children are not looking so +well as might be. Pretty tiled bungalows, bowered in roses and wistaria, +do not console him, and the voices of the politest people on earth jar +sorely. He knows every soul in the club, has thoroughly talked out +every subject of interest, and would give half a year's--oh, five +years'--pay for one lung-filling breath of air that has life in it, one +sniff of the haying grass, or half a mile of muddy London street where +the muffin bell tinkles in the four o'clock fog. Then the big liner +moves out across the staring blue of the bay. So-and-so and such-an-one, +both friends, are going home in her, and some one else goes next week by +the French mail. He, and he alone, it seems to him, must stay on; and it +is so maddeningly easy to go--for every one save himself. The boat's +smoke dies out along the horizon, and he is left alone with the warm +wind and the white dust of the Bund. Now Japan is a good place, a place +that men swear by and live in for thirty years at a stretch. There are +China ports a week's sail to the westward where life is really hard, and +where the sight of the restless shipping hurts very much indeed. +Tourists and you who travel the world over, be very gentle to the men of +the Overseas Clubs. Remember that, unlike yourselves, they have not come +here for the good of their health, and that the return ticket in your +wallet may possibly colour your views of their land. Perhaps it would +not be altogether wise on the strength of much kindness from Japanese +officials to recommend that these your countrymen be handed over lock, +stock, and barrel to a people that are beginning to experiment with +fresh-drafted half-grafted codes which do not include juries, to a +system that does not contemplate a free Press, to a suspicious +absolutism from which there is no appeal. Truly, it might be +interesting, but as surely it would begin in farce and end in tragedy, +that would leave the politest people on earth in no case to play at +civilised government for a long time to come. In his concession, where +he is an apologetic and much sat-upon importation, the foreign resident +does no harm. He does not always sue for money due to him on the part of +a Japanese. Once outside those limits, free to move into the heart of +the country, it would only be a question of time as to where and when +the trouble would begin. And in the long run it would not be the foreign +resident that would suffer. The imaginative eye can see the most +unpleasant possibilities, from a general overrunning of Japan by the +Chinaman, who is far the most important foreign resident, to the +shelling of Tokio by a joyous and bounding Democracy, anxious to +vindicate her national honour and to learn how her newly-made navy +works. + +But there are scores of arguments that would confute and overwhelm this +somewhat gloomy view. The statistics of Japan, for instance, are as +beautiful and fit as neatly as the woodwork of her houses. By these it +would be possible to prove anything. + + + + +SOME EARTHQUAKES + + +A Radical Member of Parliament at Tokio has just got into trouble with +his constituents, and they have sent him a priceless letter of reproof. +Among other things they point out that a politician should not be 'a +waterweed which wobbles hither and thither according to the motion of +the stream.' Nor should he 'like a ghost without legs drift along before +the wind.' 'Your conduct,' they say, 'has been both of a waterweed and a +ghost, and we purpose in a little time to give you proof of our true +Japanese spirit.' That member will very likely be mobbed in his +'rickshaw and prodded to inconvenience with sword-sticks; for the +constituencies are most enlightened. But how in the world can a man +under these skies behave except as a waterweed and a ghost? It is in the +air--the wobble and the legless drift An energetic tourist would have +gone to Hakodate, seen Ainos at Sapporo, ridden across the northern +island under the gigantic thistles, caught salmon, looked in at +Vladivostock, and done half a hundred things in the time that one lazy +loafer has wasted watching the barley turn from green to gold, the +azaleas blossom and burn out, and the spring give way to the warm rains +of summer. Now the iris has taken up the blazonry of the year, and the +tide of the tourists ebbs westward. + +The permanent residents are beginning to talk of hill places to go to +for the hot weather, and all the available houses in the resort are let. +In a little while the men from China will be coming over for their +holidays, but just at present we are in the thick of the tea season, and +there is no time to waste on frivolities. 'Packing' is a valid excuse +for anything, from forgetting a dinner to declining a tennis party, and +the tempers of husbands are judged leniently. All along the sea face is +an inspiring smell of the finest new-mown hay, and canals are full of +boats loaded up with the boxes jostling down to the harbour. At the club +men say rude things about the arrivals of the mail. There never was a +post-office yet that did not rejoice in knocking a man's Sabbath into +flinders. A fair office day's work may begin at eight and end at six, +or, if the mail comes in, at midnight. There is no overtime or +eight-hours' baby-talk in tea. Yonder are the ships; here is the stuff, +and behind all is the American market. The rest is your own affair. + +The narrow streets are blocked with the wains bringing down, in boxes of +every shape and size, the up-country rough leaf. Some one must take +delivery of these things, find room for them in the packed warehouse, +and sample them before they are blended and go to the firing. + +More than half the elaborate processes are 'lost work' so far as the +quality of the stuff goes; but the markets insist on a good-looking +leaf, with polish, face and curl to it, and in this, as in other +businesses, the call of the markets is the law. The factory floors are +made slippery with the tread of bare-footed coolies, who shout as the +tea whirls through its transformations. The over-note to the clamour--an +uncanny thing too--is the soft rustle-down of the tea itself--stacked in +heaps, carried in baskets, dumped through chutes, rising and falling in +the long troughs where it is polished, and disappearing at last into the +heart of the firing-machine--always this insistent whisper of moving +dead leaves. Steam-sieves sift it into grades, with jarrings and +thumpings that make the floor quiver, and the thunder of steam-gear is +always at its heels; but it continues to mutter unabashed till it is +riddled down into the big, foil-lined boxes and lies at peace. + +A few days ago the industry suffered a check which, lasting not more +than two minutes, lost several hundred pounds of hand-fired tea. It was +something after this way. Into the stillness of a hot, stuffy morning +came an unpleasant noise as of batteries of artillery charging up all +the roads together, and at least one bewildered sleeper waking saw his +empty boots where they 'sat and played toccatas stately at the +clavicord.' It was the washstand really but the effect was awful. Then a +clock fell and a wall cracked, and heavy hands caught the house by the +roof-pole and shook it furiously. To preserve an equal mind when things +are hard is good, but he who has not fumbled desperately at bolted +jalousies that will not open while a whole room is being tossed in a +blanket does not know how hard it is to find any sort of mind at all. +The end of the terror was inadequate--a rush into the still, heavy +outside air, only to find the servants in the garden giggling (the +Japanese would giggle through the Day of Judgment) and to learn that the +earthquake was over. Then came the news, swift borne from the business +quarters below the hill, that the coolies of certain factories had fled +shrieking at the first shock, and that all the tea in the pans was +burned to a crisp. That, certainly, was some consolation for undignified +panic; and there remained the hope that a few tall chimneys up the line +at Tokio would have collapsed. They stood firm, however, and the local +papers, used to this kind of thing, merely spoke of the shock as +'severe.' Earthquakes are demoralising; but they bring out all the +weaknesses of human nature. First is downright dread; the stage +of--'only let me get into the open and I'll reform,' then the impulse to +send news of the most terrible shock of modern times flying east and +west among the cables. (Did not your own hair stand straight on end, +and, therefore, must not everybody else's have done likewise?) Last, as +fallen humanity picks itself together, comes the cry of the mean little +soul: 'What! Was _that_ all? I wasn't frightened from the beginning.' + +It is wholesome and tonic to realise the powerlessness of man in the +face of these little accidents. The heir of all the ages, the +annihilator of time and space, who politely doubts the existence of his +Maker, hears the roof-beams crack and strain above him, and scuttles +about like a rabbit in a stoppered warren. If the shock endures for +twenty minutes, the annihilator of time and space must camp out under +the blue and hunt for his dead among the rubbish. Given a violent +convulsion (only just such a slipping of strata as carelessly piled +volumes will accomplish in a book-case) and behold, the heir of all the +ages is stark, raving mad--a brute among the dishevelled hills. Set a +hundred of the world's greatest spirits, men of fixed principles, high +aims, resolute endeavour, enormous experience, and the modesty that +these attributes bring--set them to live through such a catastrophe as +that which wiped out Nagoya last October, and at the end of three days +there would remain few whose souls might be called their own. + +So much for yesterday's shock. To-day there has come another; and a most +comprehensive affair it is. It has broken nothing, unless maybe an old +heart or two cracks later on; and the wise people in the settlement are +saying that they predicted it from the first. None the less as an +earthquake it deserves recording. + +It was a very rainy afternoon; all the streets were full of gruelly mud, +and all the business men were at work in their offices when it began. A +knot of Chinamen were studying a closed door from whose further side +came a most unpleasant sound of bolting and locking up. The notice on +the door was interesting. With deep regret did the manager of the New +Oriental Banking Corporation, Limited (most decidedly limited), announce +that on telegraphic orders from home he had suspended payment. Said one +Chinaman to another in pidgin-Japanese: 'It is shut,' and went away. The +noise of barring up continued, the rain fell, and the notice stared down +the wet street. That was all. There must have been two or three men +passing by to whom the announcement meant the loss of every penny of +their savings--comforting knowledge to digest after tiffin. In London, +of course, the failure would not mean so much; there are many banks in +the City, and people would have had warning. Here banks are few, people +are dependent on them, and this news came out of the sea unheralded, an +evil born with all its teeth. + +After the crash of a bursting shell every one who can picks himself up, +brushes the dirt off his uniform, and tries to make a joke of it. Then +some one whips a handkerchief round his hand--a splinter has torn +it--and another finds warm streaks running down his forehead. Then a +man, overlooked till now and past help, groans to the death. Everybody +perceives with a start that this is no time for laughter, and the dead +and wounded are attended to. + +Even so at the Overseas Club when the men got out of office. The brokers +had told them the news. In filed the English, and Americans, and +Germans, and French, and 'Here's a pretty mess!' they said one and all. +Many of them were hit, but, like good men, they did not say how +severely. + +'Ah!' said a little P. and O. official, wagging his head sagaciously (he +had lost a thousand dollars since noon), 'it's all right _now_. They're +trying to make the best of it. In three or four days we shall hear more +about it. I meant to draw my money just before I went down coast, +but----' Curiously enough, it was the same story throughout the Club. +Everybody had intended to withdraw, and nearly everybody had--not done +so. The manager of a bank which had _not_ failed was explaining how, in +his opinion, the crash had come about. This was also very human. It +helped none. Entered a lean American, throwing back his waterproof all +dripping with the rain; his face was calm and peaceful. 'Boy, whisky and +soda,' he said. + +'How much haf you losd?' said a Teuton bluntly. 'Eight-fifty,' replied +the son of George Washington sweetly. 'Don't see how that prevents me +having a drink. My glass, sirr.' He continued an interrupted whistling +of 'I owe ten dollars to O'Grady' (which he very probably did), and his +countenance departed not from its serenity. If there is anything that +one loves an American for it is the way he stands certain kinds of +punishment. An Englishman and a heavy loser was being chaffed by a +Scotchman whose account at the Japan end of the line had been a trifle +overdrawn. True, he would lose in England, but the thought of the few +dollars saved here cheered him. + +More men entered, sat down by tables, stood in groups, or remained +apart by themselves, thinking with knit brows. One must think quickly +when one's bills are falling due. The murmur of voices thickened, and +there was no rumbling in the skittle alley to interrupt it. Everybody +knows everybody else at the Overseas Club, and everybody sympathises. A +man passed stiffly and some one of a group turned to ask lightly, 'Hit, +old man?' 'Like hell,' he said, and went on biting his unlit cigar. +Another man was telling, slowly and somewhat bitterly, how he had +expected one of his children to join him out here, and how the passage +had been paid with a draft on the O.B.C. But now ... _There_, ladies and +gentlemen, is where it hurts, this little suspension out here. It +destroys plans, pretty ones hoped for and prayed over, maybe for years; +it knocks pleasant domestic arrangements galleywest over and above all +the mere ruin that it causes. The curious thing in the talk was that +there was no abuse of the bank. The men were in the Eastern trade +themselves and they knew. It was the Yokohama manager and the clerks +thrown out of employment (connection with a broken bank, by the way, +goes far to ruin a young man's prospects) for whom they were sorry. +'We're doing ourselves well this year,' said a wit grimly. 'One +free-shooting case, one thundering libel case, and a bank smash. Showing +off pretty before the globe-trotters, aren't we?' + +'Gad, think of the chaps at sea with letters of credit. Eh? They'll land +and get the best rooms at the hotels and find they're penniless,' said +another. + +'Never mind the globe-trotters,' said a third. 'Look nearer home. This +does for so-and-so, and so-and-so, and so-and-so, all old men; and every +penny of theirs goes.' Poor devils!' + +'That reminds me of some one else,' said yet another voice, '_His_ +wife's at home, too. Whew!' and he whistled drearily. So did the tide of +voices run on till men got to talking over the chances of a dividend, +'They went to the Bank of England,' drawled an American, 'and the Bank +of England let them down; said their securities weren't good enough.' + +'Great Scott!'--a hand came down on a table to emphasise the remark--'I +sailed half way up the Mediterranean once with a Bank of England +director; wish I'd tipped him over the rail and lowered him a boat on +his own security--if it was good enough.' + +'Baring's goes. The O.B.C. don't,' replied the American, blowing smoke +through his nose. 'This business looks de-ci-ded-ly prob-le-mat-i-cal. +What-at?' + +'Oh, they'll pay the depositors in full. Don't you fret,' said a man who +had lost nothing and was anxious to console. + +'I'm a shareholder,' said the American, and smoked on. + +The rain continued to fall, and the umbrellas dripped in the racks, and +the wet men came and went, circling round the central fact that it was a +bad business, till the day, as was most fit, shut down in drizzling +darkness. There was a refreshing sense of brotherhood in misfortunes in +the little community that had just been electrocuted and did not want +any more shocks. All the pain that in England would be taken home to be +borne in silence and alone was here bulked, as it were, and faced in +line of company. Surely the Christians of old must have fought much +better when they met the lions by fifties at a time. + +At last the men departed; the bachelors to cast up accounts by +themselves (there should be some good ponies for sale shortly) and the +married men to take counsel. May heaven help him whose wife does not +stand by him now! But the women of the Overseas settlements are as +thorough as the men. There will be tears for plans forgone, the changing +of the little ones' schools and elder children's careers, unpleasant +letters to be written home, and more unpleasant ones to be received from +relatives who 'told you so from the first.' There will be pinchings too, +and straits of which the outside world will know nothing, but the women +will pull it through smiling. + +Beautiful indeed are the operations of modern finance--especially when +anything goes wrong with the machine. To-night there will be trouble in +India among the Ceylon planters, the Calcutta jute and the Bombay +cotton-brokers, besides the little households of small banked savings. +In Hongkong, Singapore, and Shanghai there will be trouble too, and +goodness only knows what wreck at Cheltenham, Bath, St. Leonards, +Torquay, and the other camps of the retired Army officers. They are +lucky in England who know what happens when it happens, but here the +people are at the wrong end of the cables, and the situation is not +good. Only one thing seems certain. There is a notice on a shut door, in +the wet, and by virtue of that notice all the money that was theirs +yesterday is gone away, and it may never come back again. So all the +work that won the money must be done over again; but some of the people +are old, and more are tired, and all are disheartened. It is a very +sorrowful little community that goes to bed to-night, and there must be +as sad ones the world over. Let it be written, however, that of the +sections under fire here (and some are cruelly hit) no man whined, or +whimpered, or broke down. There was no chance of fighting. It was bitter +defeat, but they took it standing. + + + + +HALF-A-DOZEN PICTURES + + +'Some men when they grow rich, store pictures in a gallery,' Living, +their friends envy them, and after death the genuineness of the +collection is disputed under the dispersing hammer. + +A better way is to spread your picture over all earth; visiting them as +Fate allows. Then none can steal or deface, nor any reverse of fortune +force a sale; sunshine and tempest warm and ventilate the gallery for +nothing, and--in spite of all that has been said of her +crudeness--Nature is not altogether a bad frame-maker. The knowledge +that you may never live to see an especial treasure twice teaches the +eyes to see quickly while the light lasts; and the possession of such a +gallery breeds a very fine contempt for painted shows and the smeary +things that are called pictures. + +In the North Pacific, to the right hand as you go westward, hangs a +small study of no particular value as compared with some others. The +mist is down on an oily stretch of washed-out sea; through the mist the +bats-wings of a sealing schooner are just indicated. In the foreground, +all but leaping out of the frame, an open rowboat, painted the rawest +blue and white, rides up over the shoulder of a swell. A man in +blood-red jersey and long boots, all shining with moisture, stands at +the bows holding up the carcase of a silver-bellied sea-otter from whose +pelt the wet drips in moonstones. Now the artist who could paint the +silver wash of the mist, the wriggling treacly reflection of the boat, +and the raw red wrists of the man would be something of a workman. + +But my gallery is in no danger of being copied at present. Three years +since, I met an artist in the stony bed of a brook, between a line of +300 graven, lichened godlings and a flaming bank of azaleas, swearing +horribly. He had been trying to paint one of my pictures--nothing more +than a big water-worn rock tufted with flowers and a snow-capped hill +for background. Most naturally he failed, because there happened to be +absolutely no perspective in the thing, and he was pulling the lines +about to make some for home consumption. No man can put the contents of +a gallon jar into a pint mug. The protests of all uncomfortably-crowded +mugs since the world began have settled that long ago, and have given us +the working theories, devised by imperfect instruments for imperfect +instruments, which are called Rules of Art. + +Luckily, those who painted my gallery were born before man. Therefore, +my pictures, instead of being boxed up by lumbering bars of gold, are +disposed generously between latitudes, equinoxes, monsoons, and the +like, and, making all allowance for an owner's partiality, they are +really not so bad. + +'Down in the South where the ships never go'--between the heel of New +Zealand and the South Pole, there is a sea-piece showing a steamer +trying to come round in the trough of a big beam sea. The wet light of +the day's end comes more from the water than the sky, and the waves are +colourless through the haze of the rain, all but two or three blind +sea-horses swinging out of the mist on the ship's dripping weather side. +A lamp is lighted in the wheel-house; so one patch of yellow light falls +on the green-painted pistons of the steering gear as they snatch up the +rudder-chains. A big sea has got home. Her stern flies up in the lather +of a freed screw, and her deck from poop to the break of the foc's'le +goes under in gray-green water level as a mill-race except where it +spouts up above the donkey-engine and the stored derrick-booms. Forward +there is nothing but this glare; aft, the interrupted wake drives far to +leeward, a cut kite-string dropped across the seas. The sole thing that +has any rest in the turmoil is the jewelled, unwinking eye of an +albatross, who is beating across wind leisurely and unconcerned, almost +within hand's touch. It is the monstrous egotism of that eye that makes +the picture. By all the rules of art there should be a lighthouse or a +harbour pier in the background to show that everything will end happily. +But there is not, and the red eye does not care whether the thing +beneath its still wings stays or staves. + +The sister-panel hangs in the Indian Ocean and tells a story, but is +none the worse for that. Here you have hot tropical sunlight and a +foreshore clothed in stately palms running out into a still and steamy +sea burnished steel blue. Along the foreshore, questing as a wounded +beast quests for lair, hurries a loaded steamer never built for speed. +Consequently, she tears and threshes the water to pieces, and piles it +under her nose and cannot put it under her cleanly. Coir-coloured cargo +bales are stacked round both masts, and her decks are crammed and +double-crammed with dark-skinned passengers--from the foc's'le where +they interfere with the crew to the stern where they hamper the wheel. + +The funnel is painted blue on yellow, giving her a holiday air, a little +out of keeping with the yellow and black cholera flag at her main. She +dare not stop; she must not communicate with any one. There are leprous +streaks of lime-wash trickling down her plates for a sign of this. So +she threshes on down the glorious coast, she and her swarming +passengers, with the sickness that destroyeth in the noonday eating out +her heart. + +Yet another, the pick of all the East rooms, before we have done with +blue water. Most of the nations of the earth are at issue under a +stretch of white awning above a crowded deck. The cause of the dispute, +a deep copper bowl full of rice and fried onions, is upset in the +foreground. Malays, Lascars, Hindus, Chinese, Japanese, Burmans--the +whole gamut of racetints, from saffron to tar-black--are twisting and +writhing round it, while their vermilion, cobalt, amber, and emerald +turbans and head-cloths are lying underfoot. Pressed against the yellow +ochre of the iron bulwarks to left and right are frightened women and +children in turquoise and isabella-coloured clothes. They are half +protected by mounds of upset bedding, straw mats, red lacquer boxes, and +plaited bamboo trunks, mixed up with tin plates, brass and copper +_hukas_, silver opium pipes, Chinese playing cards, and properties +enough to drive half-a-dozen artists wild. In the centre of the crowd of +furious half-naked men, the fat bare back of a Burman, tattooed from +collar-bone to waist-cloth with writhing patterns of red and blue +devils, holds the eye first. It is a wicked back. Beyond it is the +flicker of a Malay _kris_. A blue, red, and yellow macaw chained to a +stanchion spreads his wings against the sun in an ecstasy of terror. +Half-a-dozen red-gold pines and bananas have been knocked down from +their ripening-places, and are lying between the feet of the fighters. +One pine has rolled against the long brown fur of a muzzled bear. His +owner, a bushy-bearded Hindu, kneels over the animal, his body-cloth +thrown clear of a hard brown arm, his fingers ready to loose the +muzzle-strap. The ship's cook, in blood-stained white, watches from the +butcher's shop, and a black Zanzibari stoker grins through the bars of +the engine-room-hatch, one ray of sun shining straight into his pink +mouth. The officer of the watch, a red-whiskered man, is kneeling down +on the bridge to peer through the railings, and is shifting a long, thin +black revolver from his left hand to his right. The faithful sunlight +that puts everything into place, gives his whiskers and the hair on the +back of his tanned wrist just the colour of the copper pot, the bear's +fur and the trampled pines. For the rest, there is the blue sea beyond +the awnings. + +Three years' hard work, beside the special knowledge of a lifetime, +would be needed to copy--even to copy--this picture. Mr. So-and-so, +R.A., could undoubtedly draw the bird; Mr. Such-another (equally R.A.) +the bear; and scores of gentlemen the still life; but who would be the +man to pull the whole thing together and make it the riotous, tossing +cataract of colour and life that it is? And when it was done, some +middle-aged person from the provinces, who had never seen a pineapple +out of a plate, or a _kris_ out of the South Kensington, would say that +it did not remind him of something that it ought to remind him of, and +therefore that it was bad. If the gallery could be bequeathed to the +nation, something might, perhaps, be gained, but the nation would +complain of the draughts and the absence of chairs. But no matter. In +another world we shall see certain gentlemen set to tickle the backs of +Circe's swine through all eternity. Also, they will have to tickle with +their bare hands. + +The Japanese rooms, visited and set in order for the second time, hold +more pictures than could be described in a month; but most of them are +small and, excepting always the light, within human compass. One, +however, might be difficult. It was an unexpected gift, picked up in a +Tokio bye-street after dark. Half the town was out for a walk, and all +the people's clothes were indigo, and so were the shadows, and most of +the paper-lanterns were drops of blood red. By the light of smoking +oil-lamps people were selling flowers and shrubs--wicked little dwarf +pines, stunted peach and plum trees, wisteria bushes clipped and twisted +out of all likeness to wholesome plants, leaning and leering out of +green-glaze pots. In the flickering of the yellow flames, these forced +cripples and the yellow faces above them reeled to and fro fantastically +all together. As the light steadied they would return to the pretence of +being green things till a puff of the warm night wind among the flares +set the whole line off again in a crazy dance of dwergs, their shadows +capering on the house fronts behind them. + +At a corner of a street, some rich men had got together and left +unguarded all the gold, diamonds, and rubies of the East; but when you +came near you saw that this treasure was only a gathering of goldfish in +glass globes--yellow, white, and red fish, with from three to five +forked tails apiece and eyes that bulged far beyond their heads. There +were wooden pans full of tiny ruby fish, and little children with nets +dabbled and shrieked in chase of some special beauty, and the frightened +fish kicked up showers of little pearls with their tails. The children +carried lanterns in the shape of small red paper fish bobbing at the end +of slivers of bamboo, and these drifted through the crowd like a strayed +constellation of baby stars. When the children stood at the edge of a +canal and called down to unseen friends in boats the pink lights were +all reflected orderly below. The light of the thousand small lights in +the street went straight up into the darkness among the interlacing +telegraph wires, and just at the edge of the shining haze, on a sort of +pigeon-trap, forty feet above ground, sat a Japanese fireman, wrapped up +in his cloak, keeping watch against fires. He looked unpleasantly like a +Bulgarian atrocity or a Burmese 'deviation from the laws of humanity,' +being very still and all huddled up in his roost. That was a superb +picture and it arranged itself to admiration. Now, disregarding these +things and others--wonders and miracles all--men are content to sit in +studios and, by light that is not light, to fake subjects from pots and +pans and rags and bricks that are called 'pieces of colour.' Their +collection of rubbish costs in the end quite as much as a ticket, a +first-class one, to new worlds where the 'props' are given away with the +sunshine. To do anything because it is, or may not be, new on the market +is wickedness that carries its own punishment; but surely there must be +things in this world paintable other and beyond those that lie between +the North Cape, say, and Algiers. For the sake of the pictures, putting +aside the dear delight of the gamble, it might be worth while to +venture out a little beyond the regular circle of subjects and--see what +happens. If a man can draw one thing, it has been said, he can draw +anything. At the most he can but fail, and there are several matters in +the world worse than failure. Betting on a certainty, for instance, or +playing with nicked cards is immoral, and secures expulsion from clubs. +Keeping deliberately to one set line of work because you know you can do +it and are certain to get money by so doing is, on the other hand, +counted a virtue, and secures admission to clubs. There must be a middle +way somewhere, as there must be somewhere an unmarried man with no +position, reputation, or other vanity to lose, who most keenly wants to +find out what his palette is set for in this life. He will pack his +steamer-trunk and get into the open to wrestle with effects that he can +never reproduce. All the same his will be a superb failure. + + + + +'CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS' + +From Yokohama to Montreal is a long day's journey, and the forepart is +uninviting. In three voyages out of five, the North Pacific, too big to +lie altogether idle, too idle to get hands about the business of a +storm, sulks and smokes like a chimney; the passengers fresh from Japan +heat wither in the chill, and a clammy dew distils from the rigging. +That gray monotony of sea is not at all homelike, being as yet new and +not used to the procession of keels. It holds a very few pictures and +the best of its stories--those relating to seal-poaching among the +Kuriles and the Russian rookeries--are not exactly fit for publication. +There is a man in Yokohama who in a previous life burned galleons with +Drake. He is a gentleman adventurer of the largest and most +resourceful--by instinct a carver of kingdoms, a ruler of men on the +high seas, and an inveterate gambler against Death. Because he supplies +nothing more than sealskins to the wholesale dealers at home, the fame +of his deeds, his brilliant fights, his more brilliant escapes, and his +most brilliant strategy will be lost among sixty-ton schooners, or told +only in the mouths of drunken seamen whom none believe. Now there sits +a great spirit under the palm trees of the Navigator Group, a thousand +leagues to the south, and he, crowned with roses and laurels, strings +together the pearls of those parts. When he has done with this down +there perhaps he will turn to the Smoky Seas and the Wonderful +Adventures of Captain--. Then there will be a tale to listen to. + +But the first touch of dry land makes the sea and all upon it unreal. +Five minutes after the traveller is on the C.P.R, train at Vancouver +there is no romance of blue water, but another kind--the life of the +train into which he comes to grow as into life aboard ship. A week on +wheels turns a man into a part of the machine. He knows when the train +will stop to water, wait for news of the trestle ahead, drop the +dining-car, slip into a siding to let the West-bound mail go by, or yell +through the thick night for an engine to help push up the bank. The +snort, the snap and whine of the air-brakes have a meaning for him, and +he learns to distinguish between noises--between the rattle of a +loose lamp and the ugly rattle of small stones on a scarped +embankment--between the 'Hoot! toot!' that scares wandering cows from +the line, and the dry roar of the engine at the distance-signal. In +England the railway came late into a settled country fenced round with +the terrors of the law, and it has remained ever since just a little +outside daily life--a thing to be respected. Here it strolls along, with +its hands in its pockets and a straw in its mouth, on the heels of the +rough-hewn trail or log road--a platformless, regulationless necessity; +and it is treated even by sick persons and young children with a +familiarity that sometimes affects the death-rate. There was a small +maiden aged seven, who honoured our smoking compartment with her +presence when other excitements failed, and it was she that said to the +conductor, 'When do we change crews? I want to pick water-lilies--yellow +ones.' A mere halt she knew would not suffice for her needs; but the +regular fifteen-minute stop, when the red-painted tool-chest was taken +off the rear car and a new gang came aboard. The big man bent down to +little Impudence--'Want to pick lilies, eh? What would you do if the +cars went on and took mama away, Sis?' 'Take the, next train,' she +replied, 'and tell the conductor to send me to Brooklyn. I live there.' +'But s'pose he wouldn't?' 'He'd have to,' said Young America. 'I'd be a +lost child.' + +Now, from the province of Alberta to Brooklyn, U.S.A., may be three +thousand miles. A great stretch of that distance is as new as the day +before yesterday, and strewn with townships in every stage of growth +from the city of one round house, two log huts, and a Chinese camp +somewhere in the foot-hills of the Selkirks, to Winnipeg with her +league-long main street and her warring newspapers. Just at present +there is an epidemic of politics in Manitoba, and brass bands and +notices of committee meetings are splashed about the towns. By reason +of their closeness to the Stages they have caught the contagion of +foul-mouthedness, and accusations of bribery, corruption, and +evil-living are many. It is sweet to find a little baby-city, with only +three men in it who can handle type, cursing and swearing across the +illimitable levels for all the world as though it were a grown-up +Christian centre. + +All the new towns have their own wants to consider, and the first of +these is a railway. If the town is on a line already, then a new line to +tap the back country; but at all costs a line. For this it will sell its +corrupted soul, and then be very indignant because the railway before +which it has grovelled rides rough-shod over the place. + +Each new town believes itself to be a possible Winnipeg until the +glamour of the thing is a little worn off, and the local paper, sliding +down the pole of Pride with the hind legs of despair, says defiantly: +'At least, a veterinary surgeon and a drug store would meet with +encouragement in our midst, and it is a fact that five new buildings +have been erected in our midst since the spring.' From a distance +nothing is easier than to smile at this sort of thing, but he must have +a cool head who can keep his pulse level when just such a wildcat +town--ten houses, two churches, and a line of rails--gets 'on the boom,' +The reader at home says, 'Yes, but it's all a lie.' It may be, but--did +men lie about Denver, Leadville, Ballarat, Broken Hill, Portland, or +Winnipeg twenty years ago--or Adelaide when town lots went begging +within the memory of middle-aged men? Did they lie about Vancouver six +years since, or Creede not twenty months gone? Hardly; and it is just +this knowledge that leads the passer-by to give ear to the wildest +statements of the wildest towns. Anything is possible, especially among +the Rockies where the minerals lie over and above the mining towns, the +centres of ranching country, and the supply towns to the farming +districts. There are literally scores upon scores of lakelets in the +hills, buried in woods now, that before twenty years are run will be +crowded summer resorts. You in England have no idea of what 'summering' +means in the States, and less of the amount of money that is spent on +the yearly holiday. People have no more than just begun to discover the +place called the Banff Hot Springs, two days west of Winnipeg.[1] In a +little time they will know half-a-dozen spots not a day's ride from +Montreal, and it is along that line that money will be made. In those +days, too, wheat will be grown for the English market four hundred miles +north of the present fields on the west side; and British Columbia, +perhaps the loveliest land in the world next to New Zealand, will have +her own line of six thousand ton steamers to Australia, and the British +investor will no longer throw away his money on hellicat South American +republics, or give it as a hostage to the States. He will keep it in the +family as a wise man should. Then the towns that are to-day the only +names in the wilderness, yes, and some of those places marked on the map +as Hudson Bay Ports, will be cities, because--but it is hopeless to make +people understand that actually and indeed, we _do_ possess an Empire of +which Canada is only one portion--an Empire which is not bounded by +election-returns on the North and Eastbourne riots on the South--an +Empire that has not yet been scratched. + +[Footnote 1: See pp. 187-188.] + +Let us return to the new towns. Three times within one year did fortune +come knocking to the door of a man I know. Once at Seattle, when that +town was a gray blur after a fire; once at Tacoma, in the days when the +steam-tram ran off the rails twice a week; and once at Spokane Falls. +But in the roar of the land-boom he did not hear her, and she went away +leaving him only a tenderness akin to weakness for all new towns, and a +desire, mercifully limited by lack of money, to gamble in every one of +them. Of all the excitements that life offers there are few to be +compared with the whirl of a red-hot boom; also it is strictly moral, +because you _do_ fairly earn your 'unearned increment' by labour and +perspiration and sitting up far into the night--by working like a fiend, +as all pioneers must do. And consider all that is in it! The headlong +stampede to the new place; the money dashed down like counters for +merest daily bread; the arrival of the piled cars whence the raw +material of a city--men, lumber, and shingle--are shot on to the not yet +nailed platform; the slashing out and pegging down of roads across the +blank face of the wilderness; the heaving up amid shouts and yells of +the city's one electric light--a raw sizzling arc atop of an unbarked +pine pole; the sweating, jostling mob at the sale of town-lots; the roar +of 'Let the woman have it!' that stops all bidding when the one other +woman in the place puts her price on a plot; the packed real-estate +offices; the real-estate agents themselves, lost novelists of prodigious +imagination; the gorgeous pink and blue map of the town, hung up in the +bar-room, with every railroad from Portland to Portland meeting in its +heart; the misspelled curse against 'this dam hole in the ground' +scrawled on the flank of a strayed freight-car by some man who had lost +his money and gone away; the conferences at street corners of syndicates +six hours established by men not twenty-five years old; the outspoken +contempt for the next town, also 'on the boom,' and, therefore, utterly +vile; the unceasing tramp of heavy feet on the board pavement, where +stranger sometimes turns on stranger in an agony of conviction, and, +shaking him by the shoulder, shouts in his ear, 'By G--d! Isn't it +grand? Isn't it glorious? 'and last, the sleep of utterly worn-out men, +three in each room of the shanty hotel: 'All meals two dollars. All +drinks thirty-five cents. No washing done here. The manager not +responsible for anything.' Does the bald catalogue of these recitals +leave you cold? It is possible; but it is also possible after three days +in a new town to set the full half of a truck-load of archbishops +fighting for corner lots as they never fought for mitre or crozier. +There is a contagion in a boom as irresistible as that of a panic in a +theatre. + +After a while things settle down, and then the carpenter, who is also an +architect, can lay his bare arms across the bar and sell them to the +highest bidder, for the houses are coming up like toadstools after rain. +The men who do not build cheer those who do, in that building means +backing your belief in your town--yours to you and peculiarly. Confound +all other towns whatsoever. Behind the crowd of business men the weekly +town paper plays as a stockwhip plays on a mob of cattle. There is +honour, heaped, extravagant, imperial for the good--the employer of +labour, the builder of stores, the spender of money; there is abuse, +savage and outrageous, for the bad, the man who 'buys out of the town,' +the man who intends to go, the sitter on the fence; with persuasion and +invitation in prose, verse, and zincograph for all that outside world +which prefers to live in cities other than Ours. + +Now the editor, as often as not, begins as a mercenary and ends as a +patriot. This, too, is all of a piece with human nature. A few years +later, if Providence is good, comes the return for judicious investment. +Perhaps the town has stood the test of boom, and that which was +clapboard is now Milwaukee brick or dressed stone, vile in design but +permanent. The shanty hotel is the Something House, with accommodation +for two hundred guests. The manager who served you in his shirt-sleeves +as his own hotel clerk, is gorgeous in broadcloth, and needs to be +reminded of the first meeting. Suburban villas more or less adorn the +flats, from which the liveliest fancy (and fancy was free in the early +days) hung back. Horse-cars jingle where the prairie schooner used to +stick fast in the mud-hole, scooped to that end, opposite the saloon; +and there is a Belt Electric Service paying fabulous dividends. Then, do +you, feeling older than Methuselah and twice as important, go forth and +patronise things in general, while the manager tells you exactly what +sort of millionaire you would have been if you had 'stayed by the town.' + +Or else--the bottom has tumbled out of the boom, and the town new made +is dead--dead as a young man's corpse laid out in the morning. Success +was not justified by success. Of ten thousand not three hundred remain, +and these live in huts on the outskirts of the brick streets. The hotel, +with its suites of musty rooms, is a big tomb; the factory chimneys are +cold; the villas have no glass in them, and the fire-weed glows in the +centre of the driveways, mocking the arrogant advertisements in the +empty shops. There is nothing to do except to catch trout in the stream +that was to have been defiled by the city sewage. A two-pounder lies +fanning himself just in the cool of the main culvert, where the alders +have crept up to the city wall. You pay your money and, more or less, +you take your choice. + +By the time that man has seen these things and a few others that go +with a boom he may say that he has lived, and talk with his enemies in +the gate. He has heard the Arabian Nights retold and knows the inward +kernel of that romance, which some? little folk say is vanished. Here +they lie in their false teeth, for Cortes is not dead, nor Drake, and +Sir Philip Sidney dies every few months if you know where to look. The +adventurers and captains courageous of old have only changed their dress +a little and altered their employment to suit the world in which they +move. Clive came down from Lobengula's country a few months ago +protesting that there was an empire there, and finding very few that +believed. Hastings studied a map of South Africa in a corrugated iron +hut at Johannesburg ten years ago. Since then he has altered the map +considerably to the advantage of the Empire, but the heart of the Empire +is set on ballot-boxes and small lies. The illustrious Don Quixote +to-day lives on the north coast of Australia where he has found the +treasure of a sunken Spanish galleon. Now and again he destroys black +fellows who hide under his bed to spear him. Young Hawkins, with a still +younger Boscawen for his second, was till last year chasing slave-dhows +round Tajurrah; they have sent him now to the Zanzibar coast to be +grilled into an admiral; and the valorous Sandoval has been holding the +'Republic' of Mexico by the throat any time these fourteen years gone. +The others, big men all and not very much afraid of responsibility, are +selling horses, breaking trails, drinking sangaree, running railways +beyond the timberline, swimming rivers, blowing up tree-stumps, and +making cities where no cities were, in all the five quarters of the +world. Only people will not believe this when you tell them. They are +too near things and a great deal too well fed. So they say of the most +cold-blooded realism: 'This is romance. How interesting!' And of +over-handled, thumb-marked realism: 'This is indeed romance!' It is the +next century that, looking over its own, will see the heroes of our time +clearly. + +Meantime this earth of ours--we hold a fair slice of it so far--is full +of wonders and miracles and mysteries and marvels, and, in default, it +is good to go up and down seeing and hearing tell of them all. + + + + +ON ONE SIDE ONLY + + +NEW OXFORD, U.S.A., _June-July_ 1892. + +'The truth is,' said the man in the train, 'that we live in a tropical +country for three months of the year, only we won't recognise. Look at +this.' He handed over a long list of deaths from heat that enlivened the +newspapers. All the cities where men live at breaking-strain were +sending in their butcher-bills, and the papers of the cities, themselves +apostles of the Gospel of Rush, were beseeching their readers to keep +cool and not to overwork themselves while the hot wave was upon them. +The rivers were patched and barred with sun-dried pebbles; the logs and +loggers were drought-bound somewhere up the Connecticut; and the grass +at the side of the track was burned in a hundred places by the sparks +from locomotives. Men--hatless, coatless, and gasping--lay in the shade +of that station where only a few months ago the glass stood at 30 below +zero. Now the readings were 98 degrees in the shade. Main Street--do you +remember Main Street of a little village locked up in the snow this +spring?[2]--had given up the business of life, and an American flag +with some politician's name printed across the bottom hung down across +the street as stiff as a board. There were men with fans and alpaca +coats curled up in splint chairs in the verandah of the one hotel--among +them an ex-President of the United States. He completed the impression +that the furniture of the entire country had been turned out of doors +for summer cleaning in the absence of all the inhabitants. Nothing looks +so hopelessly 'ex' as a President 'returned to stores,' The stars and +stripes signified that the Presidential Campaign had opened in Main +Street--opened and shut up again. Politics evaporate at summer heat when +all hands are busy with the last of the hay, and, as the formers put it, +'Vermont's bound to go Republican.' The custom of the land is to drag +the scuffle and dust of an election over several months--to the +improvement of business and manners; but the noise of that war comes +faintly up the valley of the Connecticut and is lost among the fiddling +of the locusts. Their music puts, as it were, a knife edge upon the heat +of the day. In truth, it is a tropical country for the time being. +Thunder-storms prowl and growl round the belted hills, spit themselves +away in a few drops of rain, and leave the air more dead than before. In +the woods, where even the faithful springs are beginning to run low, the +pines and balsams have thrown out all their fragrance upon the heat and +wait for the wind to bring news of the rain. The clematis, wild carrot, +and all the gipsy-flowers camped by sufferance between fence line and +road net are masked in white dust, and the golden-rod of the pastures +that are burned to flax-colour burns too like burnished brass. A pillar +of dust on the long hog-back of the road across the hills shows where a +team is lathering between farms, and the roofs of the wooden houses +flicker in the haze of their own heat. Overhead the chicken-hawk is the +only creature at work, and his shrill kite-like call sends the gaping +chickens from the dust-bath in haste to their mothers. The red squirrel +as usual feigns business of importance among the butternuts, but this is +pure priggishness. When the passer-by is gone he ceases chattering and +climbs back to where the little breezes can stir his tail-plumes. From +somewhere under the lazy fold of a meadow comes the drone of a +mowing-machine among the hay--its _whurr-oo_ and the grunt of the tired +horses. + +[Footnote 2: See 'In Sight of Monadnock.'] + +Houses are only meant to eat and sleep in. The rest of life is lived at +full length in the verandah. When traffic is brisk three whole teams +will pass that verandah in one day, and it is necessary to exchange news +about the weather and the prospects for oats. When oats are in there +will be slack time on the farm, and the farmers will seriously think of +doing the hundred things that they have let slide during the summer. +They will undertake this and that, 'when they get around to it.' The +phrase translated is the exact equivalent to the _mañana_ of the +Spaniard, the _kul hojaiga_ of Upper India, the _yuroshii_ of the +Japanese, and the long drawled _taihod_ of the Maori. The only person +who 'gets around' in this weather is the summer boarder--the refugee +from the burning cities of the Plain, and she is generally a woman. She +walks, and botanizes, and kodaks, and strips the bark off the white +birch to make blue-ribboned waste-paper baskets, and the farmer regards +her with wonder. More does he wonder still at the city clerk in a +blazer, who has two weeks' holiday in the year and, apparently, +unlimited money, which he earns in the easiest possible way by 'sitting +at a desk and writing,' The farmer's wife sees the fashions of the +summer boarder, and between them man and woman get a notion of the +beauties of city life for which their children may live to blame them. +The blazer and the town-made gown are innocent recruiting sergeants for +the city brigades; and since one man's profession is ever a mystery to +his fellow, blazer and gown believe that the farmer must be happy and +content. A summer resort is one of the thousand windows whence to watch +the thousand aspects of life in the Atlantic States. Remember that +between June and September it is the desire of all who can to get away +from the big cities--not on account of wantonness, as people leave +London--but because of actual heat. So they get away in their millions +with their millions--the wives of the rich men for five clear months, +the others for as long as they can; and, like drawing like, they make +communities set by set, breed by breed, division by division, over the +length and breadth of the land--from Maine and the upper reaches of the +Saguenay, through the mountains and hot springs of half-a-dozen +interior States, out and away to Sitka in steamers. Then they spend +money on hotel bills, among ten thousand farms, on private companies who +lease and stock land for sporting purposes, on yachts and canoes, +bicycles, rods, châlets, cottages, reading circles, camps, tents, and +all the luxuries they know. But the luxury of rest most of them do not +know; and the telephone and telegraph are faithfully dragged after them, +lest their men-folk should for a moment forget the ball and chain at +foot. + +For sadness with laughter at bottom there are few things to compare with +the sight of a coat-less, muddy-booted, millionaire, his hat adorned +with trout-flies, and a string of small fish in his hand, clawing wildly +at the telephone of some back-of-beyond 'health resort.' Thus: + +'Hello! Hello! Yes. Who's there? Oh, all right. Go ahead. Yes, it's me! +Hey, what? Repeat. Sold for _how_ much? Forty-four and a half? Repeat. +No! I _told_ you to hold on. What? What? _Who_ bought at that? Say, hold +a minute. Cable the other side. No. Hold on. I'll come down. (_Business +with watch_.) Tell Schaefer I'll see him to-morrow.' (_Over his shoulder +to his wife, who wears half-hoop diamond rings at_ 10 A.M.) 'Lizzie, +where's my grip? I've got to go down.' + +And he goes down to eat in a hotel and sleep in his shut-up house. Men +are as scarce at most of the summer places as they are in Indian +hill-stations in late April. The women tell you that they can't get +away, and if they did they would only be miserable to get back. Now +whether this wholesale abandonment of husbands by wives is wholesome let +those who know the beauties of the Anglo-Indian system settle for +themselves. + +That both men and women need rest very badly a glance at the crowded +hotel tables makes plain--so plain, indeed, that the foreigner who has +not been taught that fuss and worry are in themselves honourable wishes +sometimes he could put the whole unrestful crowd to sleep for seventeen +hours a day. I have inquired of not less than five hundred men and women +in various parts of the States why they broke down and looked so gash. +And the men said: 'If you don't keep up with the procession in America +you are left'; and the women smiled an evil smile and answered that no +outsider yet had discovered the real cause of their worry and strain, or +why their lives were arranged to work with the largest amount of +friction in the shortest given time. Now, the men can be left to their +own folly, but the cause of the women's trouble has been revealed to me. +It is the thing called 'Help' which is no help. In the multitude of +presents that the American man has given to the American woman (for +details see daily papers) he has forgotten or is unable to give her good +servants, and that sordid trouble runs equally through the household of +the millionaire or the flat of the small city man. 'Yes, it's easy +enough to laugh,' said one woman passionately, 'we are worn out, and our +children are worn out too, and we're always worrying, I know it. What +can we do? If you stay here you'll know that this is the land of all +the luxuries and none of the necessities. You'll know and then you won't +laugh. You'll know why women are said to take their husbands to +boarding-houses and never have homes. You'll know what an Irish Catholic +means. The men won't get up and attend to these things, but _we_ would. +If _we_ had female suffrage, we'd shut the door to _all_ the Irish and +throw it open to _all_ the Chinese, and let the women have a little +protection.' It was the cry of a soul worn thin with exasperation, but +it was truth. To-day I do not laugh any more at the race that depends on +inefficient helot races for its inefficient service. When next you, +housekeeping in England, differ with the respectable, amiable, +industrious sixteen-pound maid, who wears a cap and says 'Ma'am,' +remember the pauper labour of America--the wives of the sixty million +kings who have no subjects. No man could get a thorough knowledge of the +problem in one lifetime, but he could guess at the size and the import +of it after he has descended into the arena and wrestled with the Swede +and the Dane and the German and the unspeakable Celt. Then he perceives +how good for the breed it must be that a man should thresh himself to +pieces in naked competition with his neighbour while his wife struggles +unceasingly over primitive savagery in the kitchen. In India sometimes +when a famine is at hand the life of the land starts up before your eyes +in all its bareness and bitter stress. Here, in spite of the trimmings +and the frillings, it refuses to be subdued and the clamour and the +clatter of it are loud above all other sounds--as sometimes the thunder +of disorganised engines stops conversations along the decks of a liner, +and in the inquiring eyes of the passengers you read the question--'This +thing is made and paid to bear us to port quietly. Why does it not do +so?' Only here, the rattle of the badly-put-together machine is always +in the ears, though men and women run about with labour-saving +appliances and gospels of 'power through repose,' tinkering and oiling +and making more noise. The machine is new. Some day it is going to be +the finest machine in the world. To the ranks of the amateur artificers, +therefore, are added men with notebooks tapping at every nut and +bolthead, fiddling with the glands, registering revolutions, and crying +out from time to time that this or that is or is not 'distinctively +American.' Meantime, men and women die unnecessarily in the wheels, and +they are said to have fallen 'in the battle of life.' + +The God Who sees us all die knows that there is far too much of that +battle, but we do not, and so continue worshipping the knife that cuts +and the wheel that breaks us, as blindly as the outcast sweeper worships +Lal-Beg the Glorified Broom that is the incarnation of his craft. But +the sweeper has sense enough not to kill himself, and to be proud of it, +with sweeping. + +A foreigner can do little good by talking of these things; for the same +lean dry blood that breeds the fever of unrest breeds also the savage +parochial pride that squeals under a steady stare or a pointed finger. +Among themselves the people of the Eastern cities admit that they and +their womenfolk overwork grievously and go to pieces very readily, and +that the consequences for the young stock are unpleasant indeed; but +before the stranger they prefer to talk about the future of their mighty +continent (which has nothing to do with the case) and to call aloud on +Baal of the Dollars--to catalogue their lines, mines, telephones, banks, +and cities, and all the other shells, buttons, and counters that they +have made their Gods over them. Now a nation does not progress upon its +brain-pan, as some books would have us believe, but upon its belly as +did the Serpent of old; and in the very long run the work of the brain +comes to be gathered in by a slow-footed breed that have unimaginative +stomachs and the nerves that know their place. + +All this is very consoling from the alien's point of view. He perceives, +with great comfort, that out of strain is bred impatience in the shape +of a young bundle of nerves, who is about as undisciplined an imp as the +earth can show. Out of impatience, grown up, habituated to violent and +ugly talk, and the impatience and recklessness of his neighbours, is +begotten lawlessness, encouraged by laziness and suppressed by violence +when it becomes insupportable. Out of lawlessness is bred rebellion (and +that fruit has been tasted once already), and out of rebellion comes +profit to those who wait. He hears of the power of the People who, +through rank slovenliness, neglect to see that their laws are soberly +enforced from the beginning; and these People, not once or twice in a +year, but many times within a month, go out in the open streets and, with +a maximum waste of power and shouting, strangle other people with ropes. +They are, he is told, law-abiding citizens who have executed 'the will +of the people'; which is as though a man should leave his papers +unsorted for a year and then smash his desk with an axe, crying, 'Am I +not orderly?' He hears lawyers, otherwise sane and matured, defend this +pig-jobbing murder on the grounds that 'the People stand behind the +Law'--the law that they never administered. He sees a right, at present +only half--but still half--conceded to anticipate the law in one's own +interests; and nervous impatience (always nerves) forejudging the +suspect in gaol, the prisoner in the dock, and the award between nation +and nation ere it is declared. He knows that the maxim in London, +Yokohama, and Hongkong in doing business with the pure-bred American is +to keep him waiting, for the reason that forced inaction frets the man +to a lather, as standing in harness frets a half-broken horse. He comes +across a thousand little peculiarities of speech, manner, and +thought--matters of nerve and stomach developed by everlasting +friction--and they are all just the least little bit in the world +lawless. No more so than the restless clicking together of horns in a +herd of restless cattle, but certainly no less. They are all good--good +for those who wait. + +On the other hand, to consider the matter more humanly, there are +thousands of delightful men and women going to pieces for the pitiful +reason that if they do not keep up with the procession, 'they are left.' +And they are left--in clothes that have no back to them, among mounds of +smilax. And young men--chance-met in the streets, talk to you about +their nerves which are things no young man should know anything about; +and the friends of your friends go down with nervous prostration, and +the people overheard in the trains talk about their nerves and the +nerves of their relatives; and the little children must needs have their +nerves attended to ere their milk-teeth are shed, and the middle-aged +women and the middle-aged men have got them too, and the old men lose +the dignity of their age in an indecent restlessness, and the +advertisements in the papers go to show that this sweeping list is no +lie. Atop of the fret and the stampede, the tingling self-consciousness +of a new people makes them take a sort of perverted pride in the futile +racket that sends up the death-rate--a child's delight in the blaze and +the dust of the March of Progress. Is it not 'distinctively American'? +It is, and it is not. If the cities were all America, as they pretend, +fifty years would see the March of Progress brought to a standstill, as +a locomotive is stopped by heated bearings.... + +Down in the meadow the mowing-machine has checked, and the horses are +shaking themselves. The last of the sunlight leaves the top of +Monadnock, and four miles away Main Street lights her electric lamps. It +is band-night in Main Street, and the folks from Putney, from +Marlboro', from Guildford, and even New Fane will drive in their +well-filled waggons to hear music and look at the Ex-President. Over the +shoulder of the meadow two men come up very slowly, their hats off and +their arms swinging loosely at their sides. They do not hurry, they have +not hurried, and they never will hurry, for they are of country--bankers +of the flesh and blood of the ever bankrupt cities. Their children may +yet be pale summer boarders; as the boarders, city-bred weeds, may take +over their farms. From the plough to the pavement goes man, but to the +plough he returns at last. + +'Going to supper?' + +'Ye-ep,' very slowly across the wash of the uncut grass. + +'Say, that corncrib wants painting.' + +''Do that when we get around to it.' + +They go off through the dusk, without farewell or salutation steadily as +their own steers. And there are a few millions of them--unhandy men to +cross in their ways, set, silent, indirect in speech, and as +impenetrable as that other Eastern fanner who is the bedrock of another +land. They do not appear in the city papers, they are not much heard in +the streets, and they tell very little in the outsider's estimate of +America. + +And _they_ are the American. + + + + +LEAVES FROM A WINTER NOTE-BOOK + +(1895) + + +We had walked abreast of the year from the very beginning, and that was +when the first blood-root came up between the patches of April snow, +while yet the big drift at the bottom of the meadow held fast. In the +shadow of the woods and under the blown pine-needles, clots of snow lay +till far into May, but neither the season nor the flowers took any note +of them, and, before we were well sure Winter had gone, the lackeys of +my Lord Baltimore in their new liveries came to tell us that Summer was +in the valley, and please might they nest at the bottom of the garden? + +Followed, Summer, angry, fidgety, and nervous, with the corn and tobacco +to ripen in five short months, the pastures to reclothe, and the fallen +leaves to hide away under new carpets. Suddenly, in the middle of her +work, on a stuffy-still July day, she called a wind out of the +Northwest, a wind blown under an arch of steel-bellied clouds, a wicked +bitter wind with a lacing of hail to it, a wind that came and was gone +in less than ten minutes, but blocked the roads with fallen trees, +toppled over a barn, and--blew potatoes out of the ground! When that was +done, a white cloud shaped like a dumb-bell whirled down the valley +across the evening blue, roaring and twisting and twisting and roaring +all alone by itself. A West Indian hurricane could not have been quicker +on its feet than our little cyclone, and when the house rose a-tiptoe, +like a cockerel in act to crow, and a sixty-foot elm went by the board, +and that which had been a dusty road became a roaring torrent all in +three minutes, we felt that the New England summer had creole blood in +her veins. She went away, red-faced and angry to the last, slamming all +the doors of the hills behind her, and Autumn, who is a lady, took +charge. + +No pen can describe the turning of the leaves--the insurrection of the +tree-people against the waning year. A little maple began it, flaming +blood-red of a sudden where he stood against the dark green of a +pine-belt. Next morning there was an answering signal from the swamp +where the sumacs grow. Three days later, the hill-sides as far as the +eye could range were afire, and the roads paved, with crimson and gold. +Then a wet wind blew, and ruined all the uniforms of that gorgeous army; +and the oaks, who had held themselves in reserve, buckled on their dull +and bronzed cuirasses and stood it out stiffly to the last blown leaf, +till nothing remained but pencil-shading of bare boughs, and one could +see into the most private heart of the woods. + +Frost may be looked for till the middle of May and after the middle of +September, so Summer has little time for enamel-work or leaf-embroidery. +Her sisters bring the gifts--Spring, wind-flowers, Solomon's-Seal, +Dutchman's-breeches, Quaker-ladies, and trailing arbutus, that smells as +divinely as the true May. Autumn has golden-rod and all the tribe of +asters, pink, lilac, and creamy white, by the double armful. When these +go the curtain comes down, and whatever Powers shift the scenery behind, +work without noise. In tropic lands you can hear the play of growth and +decay at the back of the night-silences. Even in England the tides of +the winter air have a set and a purpose; but here they are dumb +altogether. The very last piece of bench-work this season was the +trailed end of a blackberry-vine, most daringly conventionalised in +hammered iron, flung down on the frosty grass an instant before people +came to look. The blue bloom of the furnace was still dying along the +central rib, and the side-sprays were cherry red, even as they had been +lifted from the charcoal. It was a detail, evidently, of some invisible +gate in the woods; but we never found that workman, though he had left +the mark of his cloven foot as plainly as any strayed deer. In a week +the heavy frosts with scythes and hammers had slashed and knocked down +all the road-side growth and the kindly bushes that veil the drop off +the unfenced track. + +There the seasons stopped awhile. Autumn was gone, Winter was not. We +had Time dealt out to us--mere, clear, fresh Time--grace-days to enjoy. +The white wooden farm-houses were banked round two feet deep with dried +leaves or earth, and the choppers went out to get ready next year's +stores of wood. Now, chopping is an art, and the chopper in all respects +an artist. He makes his own axe-helve, and for each man there is but one +perfect piece of wood in all the world. This he never finds, but the +likest substitute is trimmed and balanced and poised to that ideal. One +man I know has evolved very nearly the weapon of Umslopogaas. It is +almost straight, lapped at the butt with leather, amazingly springy, and +carries a two-edged blade for splitting and chopping. If his Demon be +with him--and what artist can answer for all his moods?--he will cause a +tree to fall upon any stick or stone that you choose, uphill or down, to +the right or to the left. Artist-like, however, he explains that that is +nothing. Any fool can play with a tree in the open, but it needs the +craftsman to bring a tree down in thick timber and do no harm. To see an +eighty-foot maple, four feet in the butt, dropped, deftly as a fly is +cast, in the only place where it will not outrage the feelings and swipe +off the tops of fifty juniors, is a revelation. White pine, hemlock, and +spruce share this country with maples, black and white birches, and +beech. Maple seems to have few preferences, and the white birches +straggle and shiver on the outskirts of every camp; but the pines hold +together in solid regiments, sending out skirmishers to invade a +neglected pasture on the first opportunity. There is no overcoat warmer +than the pines in a gale when the woods for miles round are singing like +cathedral organs, and the first snow of the year powders the +rock-ledges. + +The mosses and lichens, green, sulphur, and amber, stud the copper floor +of needles, where the feathery ground-pine runs aimlessly to and fro +along the ground, spelling out broken words of half-forgotten charms. +There are checker-berries on the outskirts of the wood, where the +partridge (he is a ruffed grouse really) dines, and by the deserted +logging-roads toadstools of all colours sprout on the decayed stumps. +Wherever a green or blue rock lifts from the hillside, the needles have +been packed and matted round its base, till, when the sunshine catches +them, stone and setting together look no meaner than turquoise in dead +gold. The woods are full of colour, belts and blotches of it, the +colours of the savage--red, yellow, and blue. Yet in their lodges there +is very little life, for the wood-people do not readily go into the +shadows. The squirrels have their business among the beeches and +hickories by the road-side, where they can watch the traffic and talk. +We have no gray ones hereabouts (they are good to eat and suffer for +it), but five reds live in a hickory hard by, and no weather puts them +to sleep. The wood-chuck, a marmot and a strategist, makes his burrow in +the middle of a field, where he must see you ere you see him. Now and +again a dog manages to cut him off his base, and the battle is worth +crossing fields to watch. But the woodchuck turned in long ago, and will +not be out till April. The coon lives--well, no one seems to know +particularly where Brer Coon lives, but when the Hunter's Moon is large +and full he descends into the corn-lands, and men chase him with dogs +for his fur, which makes the finest kind of overcoat, and his flesh, +which tastes like chicken. He cries at night sorrowfully as though a +child were lost. + +They seem to kill, for one reason or other, everything that moves in +this land. Hawks, of course; eagles for their rarity; foxes for their +pelts; red-shouldered blackbirds and Baltimore orioles because they are +pretty, and the other small things for sport--French fashion. You can +get a rifle of a kind for twelve shillings, and if your neighbour be +fool enough to post notices forbidding 'hunting' and fishing, you +naturally seek his woods. So the country is very silent and unalive. + +There are, however, bears within a few miles, as you will see from this +notice, picked up at the local tobacconist's: + + JOHNNY GET YOUR GUN! BEAR HUNT! + +As bears are too numerous in the town of Peltyville Corners, Vt., the +hunters of the surrounding towns are invited to participate in a grand +hunt to be held on Blue Mountains in the town of Peltyville Corners, +Vt., Wednesday, Nov. 8th, if pleasant. If not, first fine day. Come one, +come all! + +They went, but it was the bear that would not participate. The notice +was printed at somebody's Electric Print Establishment. Queer mixture, +isn't it? + +The bear does not run large as a rule, but he has a weakness for swine +and calves which brings punishment. Twelve hours' rail and a little +marching take you up to the moose-country; and twenty-odd miles from +here as the crow flies you come to virgin timber, where trappers live, +and where there is a Lost Pond that many have found once but can never +find again. + +Men, who are of one blood with sheep, have followed their friends and +the railway along the river valleys where the towns are. Across the +hills the inhabitants are few, and, outside their State, little known. +They withdraw from society in November if they live on the uplands, +coming down in May as the snow gives leave. Not much more than a +generation ago these farms made their own clothes, soap, and candles, +and killed their own meat thrice a year, beef, veal, and pig, and sat +still between-times. Now they buy shop-made clothes, patent soaps, and +kerosene; and it is among their tents that the huge red and gilt +Biographies of Presidents, and the twenty-pound family Bibles, with +illuminated marriage-registers, mourning-cards, baptismal certificates, +and hundreds of genuine steel-engravings, sell best. Here, too, off the +main-travelled roads, the wandering quack--Patent Electric Pills, nerve +cures, etc.--divides the field with the seed and fruit man and the +seller of cattle-boluses. They dose themselves a good deal, I fancy, +for it is a poor family that does not know all about nervous +prostration. So the quack drives a pair of horses and a gaily-painted +waggon with a hood, and sometimes takes his wife with him. Once only +have I met a pedlar afoot. He was an old man, shaken with palsy, and he +pushed a thing exactly like a pauper's burial-cart, selling pins, tape, +scents, and flavourings. You helped yourself, for his hands had no +direction, and he told a long tale in which the deeding away of a farm +to one of his family was mixed up with pride at the distances he still +could cover daily. As much as six miles sometimes. He was no Lear, as +the gift of the farm might suggest, but sealed of the tribe of the +Wandering Jew--a tremulous old giddy-gaddy. There are many such rovers, +gelders of colts and the like, who work a long beat, south to Virginia +almost, and north to the frontier, paying with talk and gossip for their +entertainment. + +Yet tramps are few, and that is well, for the American article answers +almost exactly to the vagrant and criminal tribes of India, being a +predatory ruffian who knows too much to work. 'Bad place to beg in after +dark--on a farm--very--is Vermont. Gypsies pitch their camp by the river +in the spring, and cooper horses in the manner of their tribe. They have +the gypsy look and some of the old gypsy names, but say that they are +largely mixed with Gentile blood. + +Winter has chased all these really interesting people south, and in a +few weeks, if we have anything of a snow, the back farms will be +unvisited save by the doctor's hooded sleigh. It is no child's play to +hold a practice here through the winter months, when the drifts are +really formed, and a pair can drop in up to their saddle-pads. Four +horses a day some of them use, and use up--for they are good men. + +Now in the big silence of the snow is born, perhaps, not a little of +that New England conscience which her children write about. There is +much time to think, and thinking is a highly dangerous business. +Conscience, fear, undigested reading, and, it may be, not too well +cooked food, have full swing. A man, and more particularly a woman, can +easily hear strange voices--the Word of the Lord rolling between the +dead hills; may see visions and dream dreams; get revelations and an +outpouring of the spirit, and end (such things have been) lamentably +enough in those big houses by the Connecticut River which have been +tenderly christened The Retreat. Hate breeds as well as religion--the +deep, instriking hate between neighbours, that is born of a hundred +little things added up, brooded over, and hatched by the stove when two +or three talk together in the long evenings. It would be very +interesting to get the statistics of revivals and murders, and find how +many of them have been committed in the spring. But for undistracted +people winter is one long delight of the eye. In other lands one knows +the snow as a nuisance that comes and goes, and is sorely man-handled +and messed at the last. Here it lies longer on the ground than any +crop--from November to April sometimes--and for three months life goes +to the tune of sleigh-bells, which are not, as a Southern visitor once +hinted, ostentation, but safeguards. The man who drives without them is +not loved. The snow is a faithful barometer, foretelling good sleighing +or stark confinement to barracks. It is all the manure the stony +pastures receive; it cloaks the ground and prevents the frost bursting +pipes; it is the best--I had almost written the only--road-maker in the +States. On the other side it can rise up in the night and bid the people +sit still as the Egyptians. It can stop mails; wipe out all time-tables; +extinguish the lamps of twenty towns, and kill man within sight of his +own door-step or hearing of his cattle unfed. No one who has been +through even so modified a blizzard as New England can produce talks +lightly of the snow. Imagine eight-and-forty hours of roaring wind, the +thermometer well down towards zero, scooping and gouging across a +hundred miles of newly fallen snow. The air is full of stinging shot, +and at ten yards the trees are invisible. The foot slides on a reef, +polished and black as obsidian, where the wind has skinned an exposed +corner of road down to the dirt ice of early winter. The next step ends +hip-deep and over, for here an unseen wall is banking back the rush of +the singing drifts. A scarped slope rises sheer across the road. The +wind shifts a point or two, and all sinks down, like sand in the +hour-glass, leaving a pot-hole of whirling whiteness. There is a lull, +and you can see the surface of the fields settling furiously in one +direction--a tide that spurts from between the tree-boles. The hollows +of the pasture fill while you watch; empty, fill, and discharge anew. +The rock-ledges show the bare flank of a storm-chased liner for a +moment, and whitening, duck under. Irresponsible snow-devils dance by +the lee of a barn where three gusts meet, or stagger out into the open +till they are cut down by the main wind. At the worst of the storm there +is neither Heaven nor Earth, but only a swizzle into which a man may be +brewed. Distances grow to nightmare scale, and that which in the summer +was no more than a minute's bare-headed run, is half an hour's gasping +struggle, each foot won between the lulls. Then do the heavy-timbered +barns talk like ships in a cross-sea, beam working against beam. The +winter's hay is ribbed over with long lines of snow dust blown between +the boards, and far below in the byre the oxen clash their horns and +moan uneasily. + +The next day is blue, breathless, and most utterly still. The farmers +shovel a way to their beasts, bind with chains their large ploughshares +to their heaviest wood-sled and take of oxen as many as Allah has given +them. These they drive, and the dragging share makes a furrow in which a +horse can walk, and the oxen, by force of repeatedly going in up to +their bellies, presently find foothold. The finished road is a deep +double gutter between three-foot walls of snow, where, by custom, the +heavier vehicle has the right of way. The lighter man when he turns out +must drop waist-deep and haul his unwilling beast into the drift, +leaving Providence to steady the sleigh. + +In the towns, where they choke and sputter and gasp, the big snow turns +to horsepondine. With us it stays still: but wind, sun, and rain get to +work upon it, lest the texture and colour should not change daily. Rain +makes a granulated crust over all, in which white shagreen the trees are +faintly reflected. Heavy mists go up and down, and create a sort of +mirage, till they settle and pack round the iron-tipped hills, and then +you know how the moon must look to an inhabitant of it. At twilight, +again, the beaten-down ridges and laps and folds of the uplands take on +the likeness of wet sand--some huge and melancholy beach at the world's +end--and when day meets night it is all goblin country. To westward; the +last of the spent day--rust-red and pearl, illimitable levels of shore +waiting for the tide to turn again. To eastward, black night among the +valleys, and on the rounded hill slopes a hard glaze that is not so much +light as snail-slime from the moon. Once or twice perhaps in the winter +the Northern Lights come out between the moon and the sun, so that to +the two unearthly lights is added the leap and flare of the Aurora +Borealis. + +In January or February come the great ice-storms, when every branch, +blade, and trunk is coated with frozen rain, so that you can touch +nothing truly. The spikes of the pines are sunk into pear-shaped +crystals, and each fence-post is miraculously hilted with diamonds. If +you bend a twig, the icing cracks like varnish, and a half-inch branch +snaps off at the lightest tap. If wind and sun open the day together, +the eye cannot look steadily at the splendour of this jewelry. The woods +are full of the clatter of arms; the ringing of bucks' horns in flight; +the stampede of mailed feet up and down the glades; and a great dust of +battle is puffed out into the open, till the last of the ice is beaten +away and the cleared branches take up their regular chant. + +Again the mercury drops twenty and more below zero, and the very trees +swoon. The snow turns to French chalk, squeaking under the heel, and +their breath cloaks the oxen in rime. At night a tree's heart will break +in him with a groan. According to the books, the frost has split +something, but it is a fearful sound, this grunt as of a man stunned. + +Winter that is winter in earnest does not allow cattle and horses to +play about the fields, so everything comes home; and since no share can +break ground to any profit for some five months, there would seem to be +very little to do. As a matter of fact, country interests at all seasons +are extensive and peculiar, and the day is not long enough for them when +you take out that time which a self-respecting man needs to turn himself +round in. Consider! The solid undisturbed hours stand about one like +ramparts. At a certain time the sun will rise. At another hour, equally +certain, he will set. This much we know. Why, in the name of Reason, +therefore, should we vex ourselves with vain exertions? An occasional +visitor from the Cities of the Plains comes up panting to do things. He +is set down to listen to the normal beat of his own heart--a sound that +very few men have heard. In a few days, when the lather of impatience +has dried off, he ceases to talk of 'getting there' or 'being left.' He +does not desire to accomplish matters 'right away,' nor does he look at +his watch from force of habit, but keeps it where it should be--in his +stomach. At the last he goes back to his beleaguered city, unwillingly, +partially civilised, soon to be resavaged by the clash of a thousand +wars whose echo does not reach here. + +The air which kills germs dries out the very newspapers. They might be +of to-morrow or a hundred years ago. They have nothing to do with +to-day--the long, full, sunlit to-day. Our interests are not on the same +scale as theirs, perhaps, but much more complex. The movement of a +foreign power--an alien sleigh on this Pontic shore--must be explained +and accounted for, or this public's heart will burst with unsatisfied +curiosity. If it be Buck Davis, with the white mare that he traded his +colt for, and the practically new sleigh-robe that he bought at the +Sewell auction, _why_ does Buck Davis, who lives on the river flats, +cross our hills, unless Murder Hollow be blockaded with snow, or unless +he has turkeys for sale? _But_ Buck Davis with turkeys would surely +have stopped here, unless he were selling a large stock in town. A wail +from the sacking at the back of the sleigh tells the tale. It is a +winter calf, and Buck Davis is going to sell it for one dollar to the +Boston Market where it will be turned into potted chicken. This leaves +the mystery of his change of route unexplained. After two days' sitting +on tenter-hooks it is discovered, obliquely, that Buck went to pay a +door-yard call on Orson Butler, who lives on the saeter where the wind +and the bald granite scaurs fight it out together. Kirk Demming had +brought Orson news of a fox at the back of Black Mountain, and Orson's +eldest son, going to Murder Hollow with wood for the new barn floor that +the widow Amidon is laying down, told Buck that he might as well come +round to talk to his father about the pig. _But_ old man Butler meant +fox-hunting from the first, and what he wanted to do was to borrow +Buck's dog, who had been duly brought over with the calf, and left on +the mountain. No old man Butler did _not_ go hunting alone, but waited +till Buck came back from town. Buck sold the calf for a dollar and a +quarter and not for seventy-five cents as was falsely asserted by +interested parties. _Then_ the two went after the fox together. This +much learned, everybody breathes freely, if life has not been +complicated in the meantime by more strange counter-marchings. + +Five or six sleighs a day we can understand, if we know why they are +abroad; but any metropolitan rush of traffic disturbs and excites. + + + + +LETTERS TO THE FAMILY + + +1908 + +These letters appeared in newspapers during the spring of 1908, after a +trip to Canada undertaken in the autumn of 1907. They are now reprinted +without alteration. + +THE ROAD TO QUEBEC. +A PEOPLE AT HOME. +CITIES AND SPACES. +NEWSPAPERS AND DEMOCRACY. +LABOUR. +THE FORTUNATE TOWNS. +MOUNTAINS AND THE PACIFIC. +A CONCLUSION. + + * * * * * + +THE ROAD TO QUEBEC + +(1907) + + +It must be hard for those who do not live there to realise the cross +between canker and blight that has settled on England for the last +couple of years. The effects of it are felt throughout the Empire, but +at headquarters we taste the stuff in the very air, just as one tastes +iodoform in the cups and bread-and-butter of a hospital-tea. So far as +one can come at things in the present fog, every form of unfitness, +general or specialised, born or created, during the last generation has +combined in one big trust--a majority of all the minorities--to play the +game of Government. Now that the game ceases to amuse, nine-tenths of +the English who set these folk in power are crying, 'If we had only +known what they were going to do we should never have voted for them!' + +Yet, as the rest of the Empire perceived at the time, these men were +always perfectly explicit as to their emotions and intentions. They said +first, and drove it home by large pictures, that no possible advantage +to the Empire outweighed the cruelty and injustice of charging the +British working man twopence halfpenny a week on some of his provisions. +Incidentally they explained, so that all Earth except England heard it, +that the Army was wicked; much of the Navy unnecessary; that half the +population of one of the Colonies practised slavery, with torture, for +the sake of private gain, and that the mere name of Empire wearied and +sickened them. On these grounds they stood to save England; on these +grounds they were elected, with what seemed like clear orders to destroy +the blood-stained fetish of Empire as soon as possible. The present +mellow condition of Ireland, Egypt, India, and South Africa is proof of +their honesty and obedience. Over and above this, their mere presence in +office produced all along our lines the same moral effect as the +presence of an incompetent master in a classroom. Paper pellets, books, +and ink began to fly; desks were thumped; dirty pens were jabbed into +those trying to work; rats and mice were set free amid squeals of +exaggerated fear; and, as usual, the least desirable characters in the +forms were loudest to profess noble sentiments, and most eloquent grief +at being misjudged. Still, the English are not happy, and the unrest and +slackness increase. + +On the other hand, which is to our advantage, the isolation of the unfit +in one political party has thrown up the extremists in what the Babu +called 'all their naked _cui bono_.' These last are after satisfying the +two chief desires of primitive man by the very latest gadgets in +scientific legislation. But how to get free food, and free--shall we +say--love? within the four corners of an Act of Parliament without +giving the game away too grossly, worries them a little. It is easy +enough to laugh at this, but we are all so knit together nowadays that a +rot at what is called 'headquarters' may spread like bubonic, with every +steamer. I went across to Canada the other day, for a few weeks, mainly +to escape the Blight, and also to see what our Eldest Sister was doing. +Have you ever noticed that Canada has to deal in the lump with most of +the problems that afflict us others severally? For example, she has the +Double-Language, Double-Law, Double-Politics drawback in a worse form +than South Africa, because, unlike our Dutch, her French cannot well +marry outside their religion, and they take their orders from +Italy--less central, sometimes, than Pretoria or Stellenbosch. She has, +too, something of Australia's labour fuss, minus Australia's isolation, +but plus the open and secret influence of 'Labour' entrenched, with +arms, and high explosives on neighbouring soil. To complete the +parallel, she keeps, tucked away behind mountains, a trifle of land +called British Columbia, which resembles New Zealand; and New Zealanders +who do not find much scope for young enterprise in their own country are +drifting up to British Columbia already. + +Canada has in her time known calamity more serious than floods, frost, +drought, and fire--and has macadamized some stretches of her road toward +nationhood with the broken hearts of two generations. That is why one +can discuss with Canadians of the old stock matters which an Australian +or New Zealander could no more understand than a wealthy child +understands death. Truly we are an odd Family! Australia and New Zealand +(the Maori War not counted) got everything for nothing. South Africa +gave everything and got less than nothing. Canada has given and taken +all along the line for nigh on three hundred years, and in some respects +is the wisest, as she should be the happiest, of us all. She seems to be +curiously unconscious of her position in the Empire, perhaps because she +has lately been talked at, or down to, by her neighbours. You know how +at any gathering of our men from all quarters it is tacitly conceded +that Canada takes the lead in the Imperial game. To put it roughly, she +saw the goal more than ten years ago, and has been working the ball +toward it ever since. That is why her inaction at the last Imperial +Conference made people who were interested in the play wonder why she, +of all of us, chose to brigade herself with General Botha and to block +the forward rush. I, too, asked that question of many. The answer was +something like this: 'We saw that England wasn't taking anything just +then. Why should we have laid ourselves open to be snubbed worse than we +were? We sat still.' Quite reasonable--almost too convincing. There was +really no need that Canada should have done other than she did--except +that she was the Eldest Sister, and more was expected of her. She is a +little too modest. + +We discussed this, first of all, under the lee of a wet deck-house in +mid-Atlantic; man after man cutting in and out of the talk as he sucked +at his damp tobacco. The passengers were nearly all unmixed Canadian, +mostly born in the Maritime Provinces, where their fathers speak of +'Canada' as Sussex speaks of 'England,' but scattered about their +businesses throughout the wide Dominion. They were at ease, too, among +themselves, with that pleasant intimacy that stamps every branch of Our +Family and every boat that it uses on its homeward way. A Cape liner is +all the sub-Continent from the Equator to Simon's Town; an Orient boat +is Australasian throughout, and a C.P.R. steamer cannot be confused with +anything except Canada. It is a pity one may not be born in four places +at once, and then one would understand the half-tones and asides, and +the allusions of all our Family life without waste of precious time. +These big men, smoking in the drizzle, had hope in their eyes, belief in +their tongues, and strength in their hearts. I used to think miserably +of other boats at the South end of this ocean--a quarter full of people +deprived of these things. A young man kindly explained to me how Canada +had suffered through what he called 'the Imperial connection'; how she +had been diversely bedevilled by English statesmen for political +reasons. He did not know his luck, nor would he believe me when I tried +to point it out; but a nice man in a plaid (who knew South Africa) +lurched round the corner and fell on him with facts and imagery which +astonished the patriotic young mind. The plaid finished his outburst +with the uncontradicted statement that the English were mad. All our +talks ended on that note. + +It was an experience to move in the midst of a new contempt. One +understands and accepts the bitter scorn of the Dutch, the hopeless +anger of one's own race in South Africa is also part of the burden; but +the Canadian's profound, sometimes humorous, often bewildered, always +polite contempt of the England of to-day cuts a little. You see, that +late unfashionable war[3] was very real to Canada. She sent several men +to it, and a thinly-populated country is apt to miss her dead more than +a crowded one. When, from her point of view, they have died for no +conceivable advantage, moral or material, her business instincts, or it +may be mere animal love of her children, cause her to remember and +resent quite a long time after the thing should be decently forgotten. I +was shocked at the vehemence with which some men (and women) spoke of +the affair. Some of them went so far as to discuss--on the ship and +elsewhere--whether England would stay in the Family or whether, as some +eminent statesman was said to have asserted in private talk, she would +cut the painter to save expense. One man argued, without any heat, that +she would not so much break out of the Empire in one flurry, as +politically vend her children one by one to the nearest Power that +threatened her comfort; the sale of each case to be preceded by a +steady blast of abuse of the chosen victim. He quoted--really these +people have viciously long memories!--the five-year campaign of abuse +against South Africans as a precedent and a warning. + +[Footnote 3: Boer 'war' of 1899-1902.] + +Our Tobacco Parliament next set itself to consider by what means, if +this happened, Canada could keep her identity unsubmerged; and that led +to one of the most curious talks I have ever heard. It seemed to be +decided that she might--just might--pull through by the skin of her +teeth as a nation--if (but this was doubtful) England did not help +others to hammer her. Now, twenty years ago one would not have heard any +of this sort of thing. If it sounds a little mad, remember that the +Mother Country was throughout considered as a lady in violent hysterics. + +Just at the end of the talk one of our twelve or thirteen hundred +steerage-passengers leaped overboard, ulstered and booted, into a +confused and bitter cold sea. Every horror in the world has its fitting +ritual. For the fifth time--and four times in just such weather--I heard +the screw stop; saw our wake curve like a whiplash as the great township +wrenched herself round; the lifeboat's crew hurry to the boat-deck; the +bare-headed officer race up the shrouds and look for any sign of the +poor head that had valued itself so lightly. A boat amid waves can see +nothing. There was nothing to see from the first. We waited and +quartered the ground back and forth for a long hour, while the rain fell +and the seas slapped along our sides, and the steam fluttered drearily +through the escapes. Then we went ahead. + +The St. Lawrence on the last day of the voyage played up nobly. The +maples along its banks had turned--blood red and splendid as the banners +of lost youth. Even the oak is not more of a national tree than the +maple, and the sight of its welcome made the folks aboard still more +happy. A dry wind brought along all the clean smell of their +Continent-mixed odours of sawn lumber, virgin earth, and wood-smoke; and +they snuffed it, and their eyes softened as they, identified point after +point along their own beloved River--places where they played and fished +and amused themselves in holiday time. It must be pleasant to have a +country of one's very own to show off. Understand, they did not in any +way boast, shout, squeak, or exclaim, these even-voiced returned men and +women. They were simply and unfeignedly glad to see home again, and they +said: 'Isn't it lovely? Don't you think it's beautiful? We love it.' + +At Quebec there is a sort of place, much infested by locomotives, like a +coal-chute, whence rise the heights that Wolfe's men scaled on their way +to the Plains of Abraham. Perhaps of all the tide-marks in all our lands +the affair of Quebec touches the heart and the eye more nearly than any +other. Everything meets there; France, the jealous partner of England's +glory by land and sea for eight hundred years; England, bewildered as +usual, but for a wonder not openly opposing Pitt, who knew; those other +people, destined to break from England as soon as the French peril was +removed; Montcalm himself, doomed and resolute; Wolfe, the inevitable +trained workman appointed for the finish; and somewhere in the +background one James Cook, master of H.M.S. _Mercury_, making beautiful +and delicate charts of the St. Lawrence River. + +For these reasons the Plains of Abraham are crowned with all sorts of +beautiful things--including a jail and a factory. Montcalm's left wing +is marked by the jail, and Wolfe's right by the factory. There is, +happily, now a movement on foot to abolish these adornments and turn the +battle-field and its surroundings into a park, which by nature and +association would be one of the most beautiful in our world. + +Yet, in spite of jails on the one side and convents on the other and the +thin black wreck of the Quebec Railway Bridge, lying like a dumped +car-load of tin cans in the river, the Eastern Gate to Canada is noble +with a dignity beyond words. We saw it very early, when the under sides +of the clouds turned chilly pink over a high-piled, brooding, +dusky-purple city. Just at the point of dawn, what looked like the +Sultan Harun-al-Raschid's own private shallop, all spangled with +coloured lights, stole across the iron-grey water, and disappeared into +the darkness of a slip. She came out again in three minutes, but the +full day had come too; so she snapped off her masthead, steering and +cabin electrics, and turned into a dingy white ferryboat, full of cold +passengers. I spoke to a Canadian about her. 'Why, she's the old +So-and-So, to Port Levis,' he answered, wondering as the Cockney wonders +when a stranger stares at an Inner Circle train. This was _his_ Inner +Circle--the Zion where he was all at ease. He drew my attention to +stately city and stately river with the same tranquil pride that we each +feel when the visitor steps across our own threshold, whether that be +Southampton Water on a grey, wavy morning; Sydney Harbour with a regatta +in full swing; or Table Mountain, radiant and new-washed after the +Christmas rains. He had, quite rightly, felt personally responsible for +the weather, and every flaming stretch of maple since we had entered the +river. (The North-wester in these parts is equivalent to the +South-easter elsewhere, and may impress a guest unfavourably.) + +Then the autumn sun rose, and the man smiled. Personally and politically +he said he loathed the city--but it was his. + +'Well,' he asked at last, 'what do you think? Not so bad?' + +'Oh no. Not at all so bad,' I answered; and it wasn't till much later +that I realised that we had exchanged the countersign which runs clear +round the Empire. + + + + +A PEOPLE AT HOME + + +An up-country proverb says, 'She was bidden to the wedding and set down +to grind corn.' The same fate, reversed, overtook me on my little +excursion. There is a crafty network of organisations of business men +called Canadian Clubs. They catch people who look interesting, assemble +their members during the mid-day lunch-hour, and, tying the victim to a +steak, bid him discourse on anything that he thinks he knows. The idea +might be copied elsewhere, since it takes men out of themselves to +listen to matters not otherwise coming under their notice and, at the +same time, does not hamper their work. It is safely short, too. The +whole affair cannot exceed an hour, of which the lunch fills half. The +Clubs print their speeches annually, and one gets cross-sections of many +interesting questions--from practical forestry to State mints--all set +out by experts. + +Not being an expert, the experience, to me, was very like hard work. +Till then I had thought speech-making was a sort of conversational +whist, that any one could cut in at it. I perceive now that it is an Art +of conventions remote from anything that comes out of an inkpot, and of +colours hard to control. The Canadians seem to like listening to +speeches, and, though this is by no means a national vice, they make +good oratory on occasion. You know the old belief that the white man on +brown, red, or black lands, will throw back in manner and instinct to +the type originally bred there? Thus, a speech in the taal should carry +the deep roll, the direct belly-appeal, the reiterated, cunning +arguments, and the few simple metaphors of the prince of commercial +orators, the Bantu. A New Zealander is said to speak from his diaphragm, +hands clenched at the sides, as the old Maoris used. What we know of +first-class Australian oratory shows us the same alertness, swift +flight, and clean delivery as a thrown boomerang. I had half expected in +Canadian speeches some survival of the Redskin's elaborate appeal to +Suns, Moons, and Mountains--touches of grandiosity and ceremonial +invocations. But nothing that I heard was referable to any primitive +stock. There was a dignity, a restraint, and, above all, a weight in it, +rather curious when one thinks of the influences to which the land lies +open. Red it was not; French it was not; but a thing as much by itself +as the speakers. + +So with the Canadian's few gestures and the bearing of his body. During +the (Boer) war one watched the contingents from every point of view, +and, most likely, drew wrong inferences. It struck me then that the +Canadian, even when tired, slacked off less than the men from the hot +countries, and while resting did not lie on his back or his belly, but +rather on his side, a leg doubled under him, ready to rise in one surge. + +This time while I watched assemblies seated, men in hotels and +passers-by, I fancied that he kept this habit of semi-tenseness at home +among his own; that it was the complement of the man's still +countenance, and his even, lowered voice. Looking at their footmarks on +the ground they seem to throw an almost straight track, neither splayed +nor in-toed, and to set their feet down with a gentle forward pressure, +rather like the Australian's stealthy footfall. Talking among +themselves, or waiting for friends, they did not drum with their +fingers, fiddle with their feet, or feel the hair on their faces. These +things seem trivial enough, but when breeds are in the making everything +is worth while. A man told me once--but I never tried the +experiment--that each of our Four Races light and handle fire in their +own way. + +Small wonder we differ! Here is a people with no people at their backs, +driving the great world-plough which wins the world's bread up and up +over the shoulder of the world--a spectacle, as it might be, out of some +tremendous Norse legend. North of them lies Niflheim's enduring cold, +with the flick and crackle of the Aurora for Bifrost Bridge that Odin +and the Aesir visited. These people also go north year by year, and drag +audacious railways with them. Sometimes they burst into good wheat or +timber land, sometimes into mines of treasure, and all the North is +foil of voices--as South Africa was once--telling discoveries and making +prophecies. + +When their winter comes, over the greater part of this country outside +the cities they must sit still, and eat and drink as the Aesir did. In +summer they cram twelve months' work into six, because between such and +such dates certain far rivers will shut, and, later, certain others, +till, at last, even the Great Eastern Gate at Quebec locks, and men must +go in and out by the side-doors at Halifax and St. John. These are +conditions that make for extreme boldness, but not for extravagant +boastings. + +The maples tell when it is time to finish, and all work in hand is +regulated by their warning signal. Some jobs can be put through before +winter; others must be laid aside ready to jump forward without a lost +minute in spring. Thus, from Quebec to Calgary a note of drive--not +hustle, but drive and finish-up--hummed like the steam-threshers on the +still, autumn air. + +Hunters and sportsmen were coming in from the North; prospectors with +them, their faces foil of mystery, their pockets full of samples, like +prospectors the world over. They had already been wearing wolf and coon +skin coats. In the great cities which work the year round, +carriage--shops exhibited one or two seductive nickel-plated sledges, as +a hint; for the sleigh is 'the chariot at hand here of Love.' In the +country the farmhouses were stacking up their wood-piles within reach of +the kitchen door, and taking down the fly-screens, (One leaves these +on, as a rule, till the double windows are brought up from the cellar, +and one has to hunt all over the house for missing screws.) Sometimes +one saw a few flashing lengths of new stovepipe in a backyard, and +pitied the owner. There is no humour in the old, bitter-true stovepipe +jests of the comic papers. + +But the railways--the wonderful railways--told the winter's tale most +emphatically. The thirty-ton coal cars were moving over three thousand +miles of track. They grunted and lurched against each other in the +switch-yards, or thumped past statelily at midnight on their way to +provident housekeepers of the prairie towns. It was not a clear way +either; for the bacon, the lard, the apples, the butter, and the cheese, +in beautiful whitewood barrels, were rolling eastwards toward the +steamers before the wheat should descend on them. That is the fifth act +of the great Year-Play for which the stage must be cleared. On scores of +congested sidings lay huge girders, rolled beams, limbs, and boxes of +rivets, once intended for the late Quebec Bridge--now so much mere +obstruction--and the victuals had to pick their way through 'em; and +behind the victuals was the lumber--clean wood out of the +mountains--logs, planks, clapboards, and laths, for which we pay such +sinful prices in England--all seeking the sea. There was housing, food, +and fuel for millions, on wheels together, and never a grain yet shifted +of the real staple which men for five hundred miles were threshing out +in heaps as high as fifty-pound villas. + +Add to this, that the railways were concerned for their own new +developments--double-trackings, loops, cutoffs, taps, and feeder lines, +and great swoops out into untouched lands soon to be filled with men. So +the construction, ballast, and material trains, the grading machines, +the wrecking cars with their camel-like sneering cranes--the whole plant +of a new civilisation--had to find room somewhere in the general rally +before Nature cried, 'Lay off!' + +Does any one remember that joyful strong confidence after the war, when +it seemed that, at last, South Africa was to be developed--when men laid +out railways, and gave orders for engines, and fresh rolling-stock, and +labour, and believed gloriously in the future? It is true the hope was +murdered afterward, but--multiply that good hour by a thousand, and you +will have some idea of how it feels to be in Canada--a place which even +an 'Imperial' Government cannot kill. I had the luck to be shown some +things from the inside--to listen to the details of works projected; the +record of works done. Above all, I saw what had actually been achieved +in the fifteen years since I had last come that way. One advantage of a +new land is that it makes you feel older than Time. I met cities where +there had been nothing--literally, absolutely nothing, except, as the +fairy tales say, 'the birds crying, and the grass waving in the wind.' +Villages and hamlets had grown to great towns, and the great towns +themselves had trebled and quadrupled. And the railways rubbed their +hands and cried, like the Afrites of old, 'Shall we make a city where +no city is; or render flourishing a city that is dasolate?' They do it +too, while, across the water, gentlemen, never forced to suffer one +day's physical discomfort in all their lives, pipe up and say, 'How +grossly materialistic!' + +I wonder sometimes whether any eminent novelist, philosopher, dramatist, +or divine of to-day has to exercise half the pure imagination, not to +mention insight, endurance, and self-restraint, which is accepted +without comment in what is called 'the material exploitation' of a new +country. Take only the question of creating a new city at the junction +of two lines--all three in the air. The mere drama of it, the play of +the human virtues, would fill a book. And when the work is finished, +when the city is, when the new lines embrace a new belt of farms, and +the tide of the Wheat has rolled North another unexpected degree, the +men who did it break off, without compliments, to repeat the joke +elsewhere. + +I had some talk with a youngish man whose business it was to train +avalanches to jump clear of his section of the track. Thor went to +Jotunheim only once or twice, and he had his useful hammer Miolnr with +him. This Thor lived in Jotunheim among the green-ice-crowned peaks of +the Selkirks--where if you disturb the giants at certain seasons of the +year, by making noises, they will sit upon you and all your fine +emotions. So Thor watches them glaring under the May sun, or dull and +doubly dangerous beneath the spring rains. He wards off their strokes +with enormous brattices of wood, wing-walls of logs bolted together, and +such other contraptions as experience teaches. He bears the giants no +malice; they do their work, he his. What bothers him a little is that +the wind of their blows sometimes rips pines out of the opposite +hill-sides--explodes, as it were, a whole valley. He thinks, however, he +can fix things so as to split large avalanches into little ones. + +Another man, to whom I did not talk, sticks in my memory. He had for +years and years inspected trains at the head of a heavyish grade in the +mountains--though not half so steep as the Hex[4]--where all brakes are +jammed home, and the cars slither warily for ten miles. Tire-troubles +there would be inconvenient, so he, as the best man, is given the +heaviest job--monotony and responsibility combined. He did me the honour +of wanting to speak to me, but first he inspected his train--on all +fours with a hammer. By the time he was satisfied of the integrity of +the underpinnings it was time for us to go; and all that I got was a +friendly wave of the hand--a master craftsman's sign, you might call it. + +[Footnote 4: Hex River, South Africa.] + +Canada seems full of this class of materialist. + +Which reminds me that the other day I saw the Lady herself in the shape +of a tall woman of twenty-five or six, waiting for her tram on a street +corner. She wore her almost flaxen-gold hair waved, and parted low on +the forehead, beneath a black astrachan toque, with a red enamel +maple-leaf hatpin in one side of it. This was the one touch of colour +except the flicker of a buckle on the shoe. The dark, tailor-made dress +had no trinkets or attachments, but fitted perfectly. She stood for +perhaps a minute without any movement, both hands--right bare, left +gloved--hanging naturally at her sides, the very fingers still, the +weight of the superb body carried evenly on both feet, and the profile, +which was that of Gudrun or Aslauga, thrown out against a dark stone +column. What struck me most, next to the grave, tranquil eyes, was her +slow, unhurried breathing in the hurry about her. She was evidently a +regular fare, for when her tram stopped she smiled at the lucky +conductor; and the last I saw of her was a flash of the sun on the red +maple-leaf, the full face still lighted by that smile, and her hair very +pale gold against the dead black fur. But the power of the mouth, the +wisdom of the brow, the human comprehension of the eyes, and the +outstriking vitality of the creature remained. That is how _I_ would +have my country drawn, were I a Canadian--and hung in Ottawa Parliament +House, for the discouragement of prevaricators. + + + + +CITIES AND SPACES + +What would you do with a magic carpet if one were lent you? I ask +because for a month we had a private car of our very own--a trifling +affair less than seventy foot long and thirty ton weight. 'You may find +her useful,' said the donor casually, 'to knock about the country. Hitch +on to any train you choose and stop off where you choose.' + +So she bore us over the C.P.R. from the Atlantic to the Pacific and +back, and when we had no more need of her, vanished like the mango tree +after the trick. + +A private car, though many books have been written in it, is hardly the +best place from which to study a country, unless it happen that you have +kept house and seen the seasons round under normal conditions on the +same continent. Then you know how the cars look from the houses; which +is not in the least as the houses look from the cars. Then, the very +porter's brush in its nickel clip, the long cathedral-like aisle between +the well-known green seats, the toll of the bell and the deep organ-like +note of the engine wake up memories; and every sight, smell, and sound +outside are like old friends remembering old days together. A piano-top +buggy on a muddy, board-sidewalked street, all cut up by the narrow +tires; the shingling at the corner of a veranda on a new-built house; a +broken snake-fence girdling an old pasture of mulleins and skull-headed +boulders; a wisp of Virginia creeper dying splendidly on the edge of a +patch of corn; half a dozen panels of snow-fence above a cutting, or +even a shameless patent-medicine advertisement, yellow on the black of a +tobacco-barn, can make the heart thump and the eyes fill if the beholder +have only touched the life of which they are part. What must they mean +to the native-born? There was a prairie-bred girl on the train, coming +back after a year on the Continent, for whom the pine-belted hills, with +real mountains behind, the solemn loops of the river, and the intimate +friendly farm had nothing to tell. + +'You can do these landscapes better in Italy,' she explained, and, with +the indescribable gesture of plains folk stifled in broken ground, 'I +want to push these hills away and get into the open again! I'm +Winnipeg.' + +She would have understood that Hanover Road schoolmistress, back from a +visit to Cape Town, whom I once saw drive off into thirty miles of +mirage almost shouting, 'Thank God, here's something like home at last.' + +Other people ricochetted from side to side of the car, reviving this, +rediscovering that, anticipating t'other thing, which, sure enough, slid +round the next curve to meet them, caring nothing if all the world knew +they were home again; and the newly arrived Englishman with his large +wooden packing-cases marked 'Settlers' Effects' had no more part in the +show than a new boy his first day at school. But two years in Canada and +one run home will make him free of the Brotherhood in Canada as it does +anywhere else. He may grumble at certain aspects of the life, lament +certain richnesses only to be found in England, but as surely as he +grumbles so surely he returns to the big skies, and the big chances. The +failures are those who complain that the land 'does not know a gentleman +when it sees him.' They are quite right. The land suspends all judgment +on all men till it has seen them work. Thereafter as may be; but work +they must because there is a very great deal to be done. + +Unluckily the railroads which made the country are bringing in persons +who are particular as to the nature and amenities of their work, and if +so be they do not find precisely what they are looking for, they +complain in print which makes all men seem equal. + +The special joy of our trip lay in having travelled the line when it was +new and, like the Canada of those days, not much believed in, when all +the high and important officials, whose little fingers unhooked cars, +were also small and disregarded. To-day, things, men, and cities were +different, and the story of the line mixed itself up with the story of +the country, the while the car-wheels clicked out, 'John Kino--John +Kino! Nagasaki, Yokohama, Hakodate, Heh!' for we were following in the +wake of the Imperial Limited, all full of Hongkong and Treaty Ports men. +There were old, known, and wonderfully grown cities to be looked at +before we could get away to the new work out west, and, 'What d'you +think of this building and that suburb?' they said, imperiously. 'Come +out and see what has been done in this generation.' + +The impact of a Continent is rather overwhelming till you remind +yourself that it is no more than your own joy and love and pride in your +own patch of garden written a little large over a few more acres. Again, +as always, it was the dignity of the cities that impressed--an austere +Northern dignity of outline, grouping, and perspective, aloof from the +rush of traffic in the streets. Montreal, of the black-frocked priests +and the French notices, had it; and Ottawa, of the grey stone palaces +and the St. Petersburg-like shining water-frontages; and Toronto, +consumingly commercial, carried the same power in the same repose. Men +are always building better than they know, and perhaps this steadfast +architecture is waiting for the race when their first flurry of +newly-realised expansion shall have spent itself, and the present +hurrah's-nest of telephone poles in the streets shall have been +abolished. There are strong objections to any non-fusible, bi-lingual +community within a nation, but however much the French are made to hang +back in the work of development, their withdrawn and unconcerned +cathedrals, schools, and convents, and one aspect of the spirit that +breathes from them, make for good. Says young Canada: 'There are +millions of dollars' worth of church property in the cities which aren't +allowed to be taxed.' On the other hand, the Catholic schools and +universities, though they are reported to keep up the old medieval +mistrust of Greek, teach the classics as lovingly, tenderly, and +intimately as the old Church has always taught them. After all, it must +be worth something to say your prayers in a dialect of the tongue that +Virgil handled; and a certain touch of insolence, more magnificent and +more ancient than the insolence of present materialism, makes a good +blend in a new land. + +I had the good fortune to see the cities through the eyes of an +Englishman out for the first time. 'Have you been to the Bank?' he +cried. 'I've never seen anything like it!' 'What's the matter with the +Bank?' I asked: for the financial situation across the Border was at +that moment more than usual picturesque. 'It's wonderful!' said he; +'marble pillars--acres of mosaic--steel grilles--'might be a cathedral. +No one ever told me.' 'I shouldn't worry over a Bank that pays its +depositors,' I replied soothingly. 'There are several like it in Ottawa +and Toronto.' Next he ran across some pictures in some palaces, and was +downright angry because no one had told him that there were five +priceless private galleries in one city. 'Look here!' he explained. +'I've been seeing Corots, and Greuzes, and Gainsboroughs, and a +Holbein, and--and hundreds of really splendid pictures!' 'Why shouldn't +you?' I said. 'They've given up painting their lodges with vermilion +hereabouts.' 'Yes, but what I mean is, have you seen the equipment of +their schools and colleges--desks, libraries, and lavatories? It's miles +ahead of anything we have and--no one ever told me.' 'What was the good +of telling? You wouldn't have believed. There's a building in one of the +cities, on the lines of the Sheldonian, but better, and if you go as far +as Winnipeg, you'll see the finest hotel in all the world.' + +'Nonsense!' he said. 'You're pulling my leg! Winnipeg's a prairie-town.' + +I left him still lamenting--about a Club and a Gymnasium this time--that +no one had ever told him about; and still doubting all that he had heard +of Wonders to come. + +If we could only manacle four hundred Members of Parliament, like the +Chinese in the election cartoons, and walk them round the Empire, what +an all-comprehending little Empire we should be when the survivors got +home! + +Certainly the Cities have good right to be proud, and I waited for them +to boast; but they were so busy explaining they were only at the +beginning of things that, for the honour of the Family, I had to do the +boasting. In this praiseworthy game I credited Melbourne (rightly, I +hope, but the pace was too good to inquire) with acres of municipal +buildings and leagues of art galleries; enlarged the borders of Sydney +harbour to meet a statement about Toronto's, wharfage; and recommended +folk to see Cape Town Cathedral when it should be finished. But Truth +will out even on a visit. Our Eldest Sister has more of beauty and +strength inside her three cities alone than the rest of Us put together. +Yet it would do her no harm to send a commission through the ten great +cities of the Empire to see what is being done there in the way of +street cleaning, water-supply, and traffic-regulation. + +Here and there the people are infected with the unworthy superstition of +'hustle,' which means half-doing your appointed job and applauding your +own slapdasherie for as long a time as would enable you to finish off +two clean pieces of work. Little congestions of traffic, that an English +rural policeman, in a country town, disentangles automatically, are +allowed to develop into ten-minute blocks, where wagons and men bang, +and back, and blaspheme, for no purpose except to waste time. + +The assembly and dispersal of crowds, purchase of tickets, and a good +deal of the small machinery of life is clogged and hampered by this +unstable, southern spirit which is own brother to Panic. 'Hustle' does +not sit well on the national character any more than falsetto or +fidgeting becomes grown men. 'Drive,' a laudable and necessary quality, +is quite different, and one meets it up the Western Road where the new +country is being made. + +We got clean away from the Three Cities and the close-tilled farming +and orchard districts, into the Land of Little Lakes--a country of +rushing streams, clear-eyed ponds, and boulders among berry-bushes; all +crying 'Trout' and 'Bear.' + +Not so very long ago only a few wise people kept holiday in that part of +the world, and they did not give away their discoveries. Now it has +become a summer playground where people hunt and camp at large. The +names of its further rivers are known in England, and men, otherwise +sane, slip away from London into the birches, and come out again bearded +and smoke-stained, when the ice is thick enough to cut a canoe. +Sometimes they go to look for game; sometimes for minerals--perhaps, +even, oil. No one can prophesy. 'We are only at the beginning of +things.' + +Said an Afrite of the Railway as we passed in our magic carpet: 'You've +no notion of the size of our tourist-traffic. It has all grown up since +the early 'Nineties. The trolley car teaches people in the towns to go +for little picnics. When they get more money they go for long ones. All +this Continent will want playgrounds soon. We're getting them ready.' + +The girl from Winnipeg saw the morning frost lie white on the long grass +at the lake edges, and watched the haze of mellow golden birch leaves as +they dropped. 'Now that's the way trees ought to turn,' she said. 'Don't +you think our Eastern maple is a little violent in colour?' Then we +passed through a country where for many hours the talk in the cars was +of mines and the treatment of ores. Men told one tales--prospectors' +yarns of the sort one used to hear vaguely before Klondike or Nome were +public property. They did not care whether one believed or doubted. +They, too, were only at the beginning of things--silver perhaps, gold +perhaps, nickel perhaps. If a great city did not arise at such a +place--the very name was new since my day--it would assuredly be born +within a few miles of it. The silent men boarded the cars, and dropped +off, and disappeared beyond thickets and hills precisely as the first +widely spaced line of skirmishers fans out and vanishes along the front +of the day's battle. + +One old man sat before me like avenging Time itself, and talked of +prophecies of evil, that had been falsified. '_They_ said there wasn't +nothing here excep' rocks an' snow. _They_ said there never _wouldn't_ +be nothing here excep' the railroad. There's them that can't see _yit_,' +and he gimleted me with a fierce eye. 'An' all the while, fortunes is +made--piles is made--right under our noses.' + +'Have you made your pile?' I asked. + +He smiled as the artist smiles--all true prospectors have that lofty +smile--'Me? No. I've been a prospector most o' my time, but I haven't +lost anything. I've had my fun out of the game. By God, I've had my fun +out of it! + +I told him how I had once come through when land and timber grants +could have been picked up for half less than nothing. + +'Yes,' he said placidly. 'I reckon if you'd had any kind of an education +you could ha' made a quarter of a million dollars easy in those days. +And it's to be made now if you could see where. How? Can you tell me +what the capital of the Hudson Bay district's goin' to be? You can't. +Nor I. Nor yet where the six next new cities is going to arise, I get +off here, but if I have my health I'll be out next summer +again--prospectin' North.' + +Imagine a country where men prospect till they are seventy, with no fear +of fever, fly, horse-sickness, or trouble from the natives--a country +where food and water always taste good! He told me curious things about +some fabled gold--the Eternal Mother-lode--out in the North, which is +to humble the pride of Nome. And yet, so vast is the Empire, he had +never heard the name of Johannesburg! + +As the train swung round the shores of Lake Superior the talk swung over +to Wheat. Oh yes, men said, there were mines in the country--they were +only at the beginning of mines--but that part of the world existed to +clean and grade and handle and deliver the Wheat by rail and steamer. +The track was being duplicated by a few hundred miles to keep abreast of +the floods of it. By and by it might be a four-track road. They were +only at the beginning. Meantime here was the Wheat sprouting, tender +green, a foot high, among a hundred sidings where it had spilled from +the cars; there were the high-shouldered, tea-caddy grain-elevators to +clean, and the hospitals to doctor the Wheat; here was new, gaily +painted machinery going forward to reap and bind and thresh the Wheat, +and all those car-loads of workmen had been slapping down more sidings +against the year's delivery of the Wheat. + +Two towns stand on the shores of the lake less than a mile apart. What +Lloyd's is to shipping, or the College of Surgeons to medicine, that +they are to the Wheat. Its honour and integrity are in their hands; and +they hate each other with the pure, poisonous, passionate hatred which +makes towns grow. If Providence wiped out one of them, the survivor +would pine away and die--a mateless hate-bird. Some day they must unite, +and the question of the composite name they shall then carry already +vexes them. A man there told me that Lake Superior was 'a useful piece +of water,' in that it lay so handy to the C.P.R. tracks. There is a +quiet horror about the Great Lakes which grows as one revisits them. +Fresh water has no right or call to dip over the horizon, pulling down +and pushing up the hulls of big steamers; no right to tread the slow, +deep-sea dance-step between wrinkled cliffs; nor to roar in on weed and +sand beaches between vast headlands that run out for leagues into haze +and sea-fog. Lake Superior is all the same stuff as what towns pay taxes +for, but it engulfs and wrecks and drives ashore, like a fully +accredited ocean--a hideous thing to find in the heart of a continent. +Some people go sailing on it for pleasure, and it has produced a breed +of sailors who bear the same relation to the salt-water variety as a +snake-charmer does to a lion-tamer. + +Yet it is undoubtedly a useful piece of water. + + + + +NEWSPAPERS AND DEMOCRACY + + +Let it be granted that, as the loud-voiced herald hired by the Eolithic +tribe to cry the news of the coming day along the caves, preceded the +chosen Tribal Bard who sang the more picturesque history of the tribe, +so is Journalism senior to Literature, in that Journalism meets the +first tribal need after warmth, food, and women. + +In new countries it shows clear trace of its descent from the Tribal +Herald. A tribe thinly occupying large spaces feels lonely. It desires +to hear the roll-call of its members cried often and loudly; to comfort +itself with the knowledge that there are companions just below the +horizon. It employs, therefore, heralds to name and describe all who +pass. That is why newspapers of new countries seem often so outrageously +personal. The tribe, moreover, needs quick and sure knowledge of +everything that touches on its daily life in the big spaces--earth, air, +and water news which the Older Peoples have put behind them. That is why +its newspapers so often seem so laboriously trivial. + +For example, a red-nosed member of the tribe, Pete O'Halloran, comes in +thirty miles to have his horse shod, and incidentally smashes the +king-bolt of his buckboard at a bad place in the road. The Tribal +Herald--a thin weekly, with a patent inside--connects the red nose and +the breakdown with an innuendo which, to the outsider, is clumsy libel. +But the Tribal Herald understands that two-and-seventy families of the +tribe may use that road weekly. It concerns them to discover whether the +accident was due to Pete being drunk or, as Pete protests, to the +neglected state of the road. Fifteen men happen to know that Pete's nose +is an affliction, not an indication. One of them loafs across and +explains to the Tribal Herald, who, next week, cries aloud that the road +ought to be mended. Meantime Pete, warmed to the marrow at having +focussed the attention of his tribe for a few moments, retires thirty +miles up-stage, pursued by advertisements of buckboards guaranteed not +to break their king-bolts, and later (which is what the tribe were after +all the time) some tribal authority or other mends the road. + +This is only a big-scale diagram, but with a little attention you can +see the tribal instinct of self-preservation quite logically +underrunning all sorts of queer modern developments. + +As the tribe grows, and men do not behold the horizon from edge to +unbroken edge, their desire to know all about the next man weakens a +little--but not much. Outside the cities are still the long distances, +the 'vast, unoccupied areas' of the advertisements; and the men who come +and go yearn to keep touch with and report themselves as of old to +their lodges. A man stepping out of the dark into the circle of the +fires naturally, if he be a true man, holds up his hands and says, 'I, +So-and-So, am here.' You can watch the ritual in full swing at any hotel +when the reporter (_pro_ Tribal Herald) runs his eyes down the list of +arrivals, and before he can turn from the register is met by the +newcomer, who, without special desire for notoriety, explains his +business and intentions. Observe, it is always at evening that the +reporter concerns himself with strangers. By day he follows the +activities of his own city and the doings of nearby chiefs; but when it +is time to close the stockade, to laager the wagons, to draw the +thorn-bush back into the gap, then in all lands he reverts to the Tribal +Herald, who is also the tribal Outer Guard. + +There are countries where a man is indecently pawed over by chattering +heralds who bob their foul torches in his face till he is singed and +smoked at once. In Canada the necessary 'Stand and deliver your +sentiments' goes through with the large decency that stamps all the +Dominion. A stranger's words are passed on to the tribe quite +accurately; no dirt is put into his mouth, and where the heralds judge +that it would be better not to translate certain remarks they +courteously explain why. + +It was always delightful to meet the reporters, for they were men +interested in their land, with the keen, unselfish interest that one +finds in young house-surgeons or civilians. Thanks to the (Boer) war, +many of them had reached out to the ends of our earth, and spoke of the +sister nations as it did one good to hear. Consequently the +interviews--which are as dreary for the reporter as the reported--often +turned into pleasant and unpublished talks. One felt at every turn of +the quick sentences to be dealing with made and trained players of the +game--balanced men who believed in decencies not to be disregarded, +confidences not to be violated, and honour not to be mocked. (This may +explain what men and women have told me--that there is very little of +the brutal domestic terrorism of the Press in Canada, and not much +blackmailing.) They neither spat nor wriggled; they interpolated no +juicy anecdotes of murder or theft among their acquaintance; and not +once between either ocean did they or any other fellow-subjects +volunteer that their country was 'law-abiding.' + +You know the First Sign-post on the Great Main Road? 'When a Woman +advertises that she is virtuous, a Man that he is a gentleman, a +Community that it is loyal, or a Country that it is law-abiding--go the +other way!' + +Yet, while the men's talk was so good and new, their written word seemed +to be cast in conventional, not to say old-fashioned, moulds. A quarter +of a century ago a sub-editor, opening his mail, could identify the +Melbourne _Argus_, the Sydney _Morning Herald_, or the Cape _Times_ as +far as he could see them. Even unheaded clippings from them declared +their origin as a piece of hide betrays the beast that wore it. But he +noticed then that Canadian journals left neither spoor nor scent--might +have blown in from anywhere between thirty degrees of latitude--and had +to be carefully identified by hand. To-day, the spacing, the headlines, +the advertising of Canadian papers, the chessboard-like look of the open +page which should be a daily beautiful study in black and white, the +brittle pulp-paper, the machine-set type, are all as standardised as the +railway cars of the Continent. Indeed, looking through a mass of +Canadian journals is like trying to find one's own sleeper in a corridor +train. Newspaper offices are among the most conservative organisations +in the world; but surely after twenty-five years some changes might be +permitted to creep in; some original convention of expression or +assembly might be developed. + +I drew up to this idea cautiously among a knot of fellow-craftsmen. 'You +mean,' said one straight-eyed youth, 'that we are a back-number copying +back-numbers?' + +It was precisely what I did mean, so I made haste to deny it. 'We know +that,' he said cheerfully. 'Remember we haven't the sea all round +us--and the postal rates to England have only just been lowered. It will +all come right.' + +Surely it will; but meantime one hates to think of these splendid people +using second-class words to express first-class emotions. + +And so naturally from Journalism to Democracy. Every country is entitled +to her reservations, and pretences, but the more 'democratic' a land +is, the more make-believes must the stranger respect. Some of the Tribal +Heralds were very good to me in this matter, and, as it were, nudged me +when it was time to duck in the House of Rimmon. During their office +hours they professed an unflinching belief in the blessed word +'Democracy,' which means any crowd on the move--that is to say, the +helpless thing which breaks through floors and falls into cellars; +overturns pleasure-boats by rushing from port to starboard; stamps men +into pulp because it thinks it has lost sixpence, and jams and grills in +the doorways of blazing theatres. Out of office, like every one else, +they relaxed. Many winked, a few were flippant, but they all agreed that +the only drawback to Democracy was Demos--a jealous God of primitive +tastes and despotic tendencies. I received a faithful portrait of him +from a politician who had worshipped him all his life. It was +practically the Epistle of Jeremy--the sixth chapter of Baruch--done +into unquotable English. + +But Canada is not yet an ideal Democracy. For one thing she has had to +work hard among rough-edged surroundings which carry inevitable +consequences. For another, the law in Canada exists and is administered, +not as a surprise, a joke, a favour, a bribe, or a Wrestling Turk +exhibition, but as an integral part of the national character--no more +to be forgotten or talked about than one's trousers. If you kill, you +hang. If you steal, you go to jail. This has worked toward peace, +self-respect, and, I think, the innate dignity of the people. On the +other hand--which is where the trouble will begin--railways and steamers +make it possible nowadays to bring in persons who need never lose touch +of hot and cold water-taps, spread tables, and crockery till they are +turned out, much surprised, into the wilderness. They clean miss the +long weeks of salt-water and the slow passage across the plains which +pickled and tanned the early emigrants. They arrive with soft bodies and +unaired souls. I had this vividly brought home to me by a man on a train +among the Selkirks. He stood on the safely railed rear-platform, looked +at the gigantic pine-furred shoulder round which men at their lives' +risk had led every yard of the track, and chirruped: 'I say, why can't +all this be nationalised?' There was nothing under heaven except the +snows and the steep to prevent him from dropping off the cars and +hunting a mine for himself. Instead of which he went into the +dining-car. That is one type. + +A man told me the old tale of a crowd of Russian immigrants who at a big +fire in a city 'verted to the ancestral type, and blocked the streets +yelling, 'Down with the Czar!' That is another type. A few days later I +was shown a wire stating that a community of Doukhobors--Russians +again--had, not for the first time, undressed themselves, and were +fleeing up the track to meet the Messiah before the snow fell. Police +were pursuing them with warm underclothing, and trains would please +take care not to run over them. + +So there you have three sort of steam-borne unfitness--soft, savage, and +mad. There is a fourth brand, which may be either home-grown or +imported, but democracies do not recognise it, of downright bad +folk--grown, healthy men and women who honestly rejoice in doing evil. +These four classes acting together might conceivably produce a rather +pernicious democracy; alien hysteria, blood-craze, and the like, +reinforcing local ignorance, sloth, and arrogance. For example, I read a +letter in a paper sympathising with these same Doukhobors. The writer +knew a community of excellent people in England (you see where the rot +starts!) who lived barefoot, paid no taxes, ate nuts, and were above +marriage. They were a soulful folk, living pure lives. The Doukhobors +were also pure and soulful, entitled in a free country to live their own +lives, and not to be oppressed, etc. etc. (Imported soft, observe, +playing up to Imported mad.) Meantime, disgusted police were chasing the +Doukhobors into flannels that they might live to produce children fit to +consort with the sons of the man who wrote that letter and the daughters +of the crowd that lost their heads at the fire. + +'All of which,' men and women answered, 'we admit. But what can we do? +We want people.' And they showed vast and well-equipped schools, where +the children of Slav immigrants are taught English and the songs of +Canada. 'When they grow up,' people said, 'you can't tell them from +Canadians.' It was a wonderful work. The teacher holds up pens, reels, +and so forth, giving the name in English; the children repeating Chinese +fashion. Presently when they have enough words they can bridge back to +the knowledge they learned in their own country, so that a boy of +twelve, at, say, the end of a year, will produce a well-written English +account of his journey from Russia, how much his mother paid for food by +the way, and where his father got his first job. He will also lay his +hand on his heart, and say, 'I--am--a--Canadian.' This gratifies the +Canadian, who naturally purrs over an emigrant owing everything to the +land which adopted him and set him on his feet. The Lady Bountiful of an +English village takes the same interest in a child she has helped on in +the world. And the child repays by his gratitude and good behaviour? + +Personally, one cannot care much for those who have renounced their own +country. They may have had good reason, but they have broken the rules +of the game, and ought to be penalised instead of adding to their score. +Nor is it true, as men pretend, that a few full meals and fine clothes +obliterate all taint of alien instinct and reversion. A thousand years +cannot be as yesterday for mankind; and one has only to glance at the +races across the Border to realise how in outlook, manner, expression, +and morale the South and South-east profoundly and fatally affects the +North and North-west. That was why the sight of the beady-eyed, +muddy-skinned, aproned women, with handkerchiefs on their heads and +Oriental bundles in their hands, always distressed one. + +'But _why_ must you get this stuff?' I asked. 'You know it is not your +equal, and it knows that it is not your equal; and that is bad for you +both. What is the matter with the English as immigrants?' + +The answers were explicit: 'Because the English do not work. Because we +are sick of Remittance-men and loafers sent out here. Because the +English are rotten with Socialism. Because the English don't fit with +our life. They kick at our way of doing things. They are always telling +us how things are done in England. They carry frills! Don't you know the +story of the Englishman who lost his way and was found half-dead of +thirst beside a river? When he was asked why he didn't drink, he said, +"How the deuce can I without a glass?"' + +'But,' I argued over three thousand miles of country, 'all these are +excellent reasons for bringing in the Englishman. It is true that in his +own country he is taught to shirk work, because kind, silly people fall +over each other to help and debauch and amuse him. Here, General January +will stiffen him up. Remittance-men are an affliction to every branch of +the Family, but your manners and morals can't be so tender as to suffer +from a few thousand of them among your six millions. As to the +Englishman's Socialism, he is, by nature, the most unsocial animal +alive. What you call Socialism is his intellectual equivalent for +Diabolo and Limerick competitions. As to his criticisms, you surely +wouldn't marry a woman who agreed with you in everything, and you ought +to choose your immigrants on the same lines. You admit that the Canadian +is too busy to kick at anything. The Englishman is a born kicker. ("Yes, +he is all that," they said.) He kicks on principle, and that is what +makes for civilisation. So did your Englishman's instinct about the +glass. Every new country needs--vitally needs--one-half of one per cent +of its population trained to die of thirst rather than drink out of +their hands. You are always talking of the second generation of your +Smyrniotes and Bessarabians. Think what the second generation of the +English are!' + +They thought--quite visibly--but they did not much seem to relish it. +There was a queer stringhalt in their talk--a conversational shy across +the road--when one touched on these subjects. After a while I went to a +Tribal Herald whom I could trust, and demanded of him point-blank where +the trouble really lay, and who was behind it. + +'It is Labour,' he said. 'You had better leave it alone.' + + + + +LABOUR + + +One cannot leave a thing alone if it is thrust under the nose at every +turn. I had not quitted the Quebec steamer three minutes when I was +asked point-blank: 'What do you think of the question of Asiatic +Exclusion which is Agitating our Community?' + +The Second Sign-Post on the Great Main Road says: 'If a Community is +agitated by a Question--inquire politely after the health of the +Agitator,' This I did, without success; and had to temporise all across +the Continent till I could find some one to help me to acceptable +answers. The Question appears to be confined to British Columbia. There, +after a while, the men who had their own reasons for not wishing to talk +referred me to others who explained, and on the acutest understanding +that no names were to be published (it is sweet to see engineers afraid +of being hoist by their own petards) one got more or less at something +like facts. + +The Chinaman has always been in the habit of coming to British Columbia, +where he makes, as he does elsewhere, the finest servant in the world. +No one, I was assured on all hands, objects to the biddable Chinaman. +He takes work which no white man in a new country will handle, and when +kicked by the mean white will not grossly retaliate. He has always paid +for the privilege of making his fortune on this wonderful coast, but +with singular forethought and statesmanship, the popular Will, some few +years ago, decided to double the head-tax on his entry. Strange as it +may appear, the Chinaman now charges double for his services, and is +scarce at that. This is said to be one of the reasons why overworked +white women die or go off their heads; and why in new cities you can see +blocks of flats being built to minimise the inconveniences of +housekeeping without help. The birth-rate will fall later in exact +proportion to those flats. + +Since the Russo-Japanese War the Japanese have taken to coming over to +British Columbia. They also do work which no white man will; such as +hauling wet logs for lumber mills out of cold water at from eight to ten +shillings a day. They supply the service in hotels and dining-rooms and +keep small shops. The trouble with them is that they are just a little +too good, and when attacked defend themselves with asperity. + +A fair sprinkling of Punjabis--ex-soldiers, Sikhs, Muzbis, and Jats--are +coming in on the boats. The plague at home seems to have made them +restless, but I could not gather why so many of them come from Shahpur, +Phillour, and Jullundur way. These men do not, of course, offer for +house-service, but work in the lumber mills, and with the least little +care and attention could be made most valuable. Some one ought to tell +them not to bring their old men with them, and better arrangements +should be made for their remitting money home to their villages. They +are not understood, of course; but they are not hated. + +The objection is all against the Japanese. So far--except that they are +said to have captured the local fishing trade at Vancouver, precisely as +the Malays control the Cape Town fish business--they have not yet +competed with the whites; but I was earnestly assured by many men that +there was danger of their lowering the standard of life and wages. The +demand, therefore, in certain quarters is that they go--absolutely and +unconditionally. (You may have noticed that Democracies are strong on +the imperative mood.) An attempt was made to shift them shortly before I +came to Vancouver, but it was not very successful, because the Japanese +barricaded their quarters and flocked out, a broken bottle held by the +neck in either hand, which they jabbed in the faces of the +demonstrators. It is, perhaps, easier to haze and hammer bewildered +Hindus and Tamils, as is being done across the Border, than to stampede +the men of the Yalu and Liaoyang.[5] + +[Footnote 5: Battles in the Russo-Japanese War.] + +But when one began to ask questions one got lost in a maze of hints, +reservations, and orations, mostly delivered with constraint, as though +the talkers were saying a piece learned by heart. Here are some +samples:-- + +A man penned me in a corner with a single heavily capitalised sentence. +'There is a General Sentiment among Our People that the Japanese Must +Go,' said he. + +'Very good,' said I. 'How d'you propose to set about it?' + +'That is nothing to us. There is a General Sentiment,' etc. + +'Quite so. Sentiment is a beautiful thing, but what are you going to +do?' He did not condescend to particulars, but kept repeating the +sentiment, which, as I promised, I record. + +Another man was a little more explicit. 'We desire,' he said, 'to keep +the Chinaman. But the Japanese must go.' + +'Then who takes their place? Isn't this rather a new country to pitch +people out of?' + +'We must develop our Resources slowly, sir--with an Eye to the Interests +of our Children. We must preserve the Continent for Races which will +assimilate with Ours. We must not be swamped by Aliens.' + +'Then bring in your own races and bring 'em in quick,' I ventured. + +This is the one remark one must not make in certain quarters of the +West; and I lost caste heavily while he explained (exactly as the Dutch +did at the Cape years ago) how British Columbia was by no means so rich +as she appeared; that she was throttled by capitalists and monopolists +of all kinds; that white labour had to be laid off and fed and warmed +during the winter; that living expenses were enormously high; that they +were at the end of a period of prosperity, and were now entering on +lean years; and that whatever steps were necessary for bringing in more +white people should be taken with extreme caution. Then he added that +the railway rates to British Columbia were so high that emigrants were +debarred from coming on there. + +'But haven't the rates been reduced?' I asked. + +'Yes--yes, I believe they have, but immigrants are so much in demand +that they are snapped up before they have got so far West. You must +remember, too, that skilled labour is not like agricultural labour. It +is dependent on so many considerations. And the Japanese must go.' + +'So people have told me. But I heard stories of dairies and fruit-farms +in British Columbia being thrown up because there was no labour to milk +or pick the fruit. Is that true, d'you think?' + +'Well, you can't expect a man with all the chances that our country +offers him to milk cows in a pasture. A Chinaman can do that. We want +races that will assimilate with ours,' etc., etc. + +'But didn't the Salvation Army offer to bring in three or four thousand +English some short time ago? What came of that idea?' + +'It--er--fell through.' + +'Why?' + +'For political reasons, I believe. We do not want People who will lower +the Standard of Living. That is why the Japanese must go.' + +'Then why keep the Chinese?' + +'We can get on with the Chinese. We can't get on without the Chinese. +But we must have Emigration of a Type that will assimilate with Our +People. I hope I have made myself clear?' + +I hoped that he had, too. + +Now hear a wife, a mother, and a housekeeper. + +'We have to pay for this precious state of things with our health and +our children's. Do you know the saying that the Frontier is hard on +women and cattle? This isn't the frontier, but in some respects it's +worse, because we have all the luxuries and appearances--the pretty +glass and silver to put on the table. We have to dust, polish, and +arrange 'em after we've done our housework. I don't suppose that means +anything to you, but--try it for a month! We have no help. A Chinaman +costs fifty or sixty dollars a month now. Our husbands can't always +afford that. How old would you take me for? I'm not thirty. Well thank +God, I stopped my sister coming out West. Oh yes, it's a fine +country--for men.' + +'Can't you import servants from England?' + +'I can't pay a girl's passage in order to have her married in three +months. Besides, she wouldn't work. They won't when they see Chinamen +working.' + +'Do you object to the Japanese, too?' + +'Of course not. No one does. It's only politics. The wives of the men +who earn six and seven dollars a day--skilled labour they call it--have +Chinese and Jap servants. _We_ can't afford it. _We_ have to think of +saving for the future, but those other people live up to every cent they +earn. They know _they're_ all right. They're Labour. They'll be looked +after, whatever happens. You can see how the State looks after me.' + +A little later I had occasion to go through a great and beautiful city +between six and seven of a crisp morning. Milk and fish, vegetables, +etc., were being delivered to the silent houses by Chinese and Japanese. +Not a single white man was visible on that chilly job. + +Later still a man came to see me, without too publicly giving his name. +He was in a small way of business, and told me (others had said much the +same thing) that if I gave him away his business would suffer. He talked +for half an hour on end. + +'Am I to understand, then,' I said, 'that what you call Labour +absolutely dominates this part of the world?' + +He nodded. + +'That it is difficult to get skilled labour into here?' + +'Difficult? My God, if I want to get an extra hand for my business--I +pay Union wages, of course--I have to arrange to get him here secretly. +I have to go out and meet him, accidental-like, down the line, and if +the Unions find out that he is coming, they, like as not, order him back +East, or turn him down across the Border.' + +'Even if he has his Union ticket? Why?' + +'They'll tell him that labour conditions are not good here. He knows +what that means. He'll turn back quick enough. I'm in a small way of +business, and I can't afford to take any chances fighting the Unions.' + +'What would happen if you did?' + +'D'you know what's happening across the Border? Men get blown up +there--with dynamite.' + +'But this isn't across the Border?' + +'It's a damn-sight too near to be pleasant. And witnesses get blown up, +too. You see, the Labour situation ain't run from our side the line. +It's worked from down under. You may have noticed men were rather +careful when they talked about it?' + +'Yes, I noticed all that.' + +'Well, it ain't a pleasant state of affairs. I don't say that the Unions +here would do anything _to_ you--and please understand I'm all for the +rights of Labour myself. Labour has no better friend than me--I've been +a working man, though I've got a business of my own now. Don't run away +with any idea that I'm against Labour--will you?' + +'Not in the least. I can see that. You merely find that Labour's a +little bit--er--inconsiderate, sometimes?' + +'Look what happens across the Border! I suppose they've told you that +little fuss with the Japanese in Vancouver was worked from down under, +haven't they? I don't think our own people 'ud have done it by +themselves.' + +'I've heard that several times. Is it quite sporting, do you think, to +lay the blame on another country?' + +'_You_ don't live here. But as I was saying--if we get rid of the Japs +to-day, we'll be told to get rid of some one else to-morrow. There's no +limit, sir, to what Labour wants. None!' + +'I thought they only want a fair day's wage for a fair day's work?' + +'That may do in the Old Country, but here they mean to boss the country. +They do.' + +'And how does the country like it?' + +'We're about sick of it. It don't matter much in flush +times--employers'll do most anything sooner than stop work--but when we +come to a pinch, you'll hear something. We're a rich land--in spite of +everything they make out--but we're held up at every turn by Labour. +Why, there's businesses on businesses which friends of mine--in a small +way like myself--want to start. Businesses in every direction--if they +was only allowed to start in. But they ain't.' + +'That's a pity. Now, what do you think about the Japanese question?' + +'I don't think. I know. Both political parties are playing up to the +Labour vote--if you understand what that means.' + +I tried to understand. + +'And neither side'll tell the truth--that if the Asiatic goes, this side +of the Continent'll drop out of sight, unless we get free white +immigration. And any party that proposed white immigration on a large +scale 'ud be snowed under next election. I'm telling you what +politicians think. Myself, I believe if a man stood up to Labour--not +that I've any feeling against Labour--and just talked sense, a lot of +people would follow him--quietly, of course. I believe he could even get +white immigration after a while. He'd lose the first election, of +course, but in the long run.... We're about sick of Labour. I wanted you +to know the truth.' + +'Thank you. And you don't think any attempt to bring in white +immigration would succeed?' + +'Not if it didn't suit Labour. You can try it if you like, and see what +happens.' + +On that hint I made an experiment in another city. There were three men +of position, and importance, and affluence, each keenly interested in +the development of their land, each asserting that what the land needed +was white immigrants. And we four talked for two hours on the matter--up +and down and in circles. The one point on which those three men were +unanimous was, that whatever steps were taken to bring people into +British Columbia from England, by private recruiting or otherwise, +should be taken secretly. Otherwise the business of the people concerned +in the scheme would suffer. + +At which point I dropped the Great Question of Asiatic Exclusion which +is Agitating all our Community; and I leave it to you, especially in +Australia and the Cape, to draw your own conclusions. + +Externally, British Columbia appears to be the richest and the loveliest +section of the Continent. Over and above her own resources she has a +fair chance to secure an immense Asiatic trade, which she urgently +desires. Her land, in many places over large areas, is peculiarly fitted +for the small former and fruit-grower, who can send his truck to the +cities. On every hand I heard a demand for labour of all kinds. At the +same time, in no other part of the Continent did I meet so many men who +insistently decried the value and possibilities of their country, or who +dwelt more fluently on the hardships and privations to be endured by the +white immigrant. I believe that one or two gentlemen have gone to +England to explain the drawbacks _viva voce_. It is possible that they +incur a great responsibility in the present, and even a terrible one for +the future. + + + + +THE FORTUNATE TOWNS + +After Politics, let us return to the Prairie which is the High Veldt, +plus Hope, Activity, and Reward. Winnipeg is the door to it--a great +city in a great plain, comparing herself, innocently enough, to other +cities of her acquaintance, but quite unlike any other city. + +When one meets, in her own house, a woman not seen since girlhood she is +all a stranger till some remembered tone or gesture links up to the +past, and one cries: 'It _is_ you after all.' But, indeed, the child has +gone; the woman with her influences has taken her place. I tried vainly +to recover the gawky, graceless city I had known, so unformed and so +insistent on her shy self. I even ventured to remind a man of it. 'I +remember,' he said, smiling, 'but we were young then. This thing,' +indicating an immense perspective of asphalted avenue that dipped under +thirty railway tracks, 'only came up in the last ten years--practically +the last five. We've had to enlarge all those warehouses yonder by +adding two or three stories to 'em, and we've hardly begun to go ahead +yet. We're just beginning.' + +Warehouses, railway-sidings, and such are only counters in the White +Man's Game, which can be swept up and re-dealt as the play varies. It +was the spirit in the thin dancing air--the new spirit of the new +city--which rejoiced me. Winnipeg has Things in abundance, but has +learned to put them beneath her feet, not on top of her mind, and so is +older than many cities. None the less the Things had to be shown--for +what shopping is to the woman showing off his town is to the +right-minded man. First came the suburbs--miles on miles of the dainty, +clean-outlined, wooden-built houses, where one can be so happy and so +warm, each unjealously divided from its neighbour by the lightest of +boundaries. One could date them by their architecture, year after year, +back to the Early 'Nineties, which is when civilisation began; could +guess within a few score dollars at their cost and the incomes of their +owners, and could ask questions about the new domestic appliances of +to-day. + +'Asphalt streets and concrete sidewalks came up a few years ago,' said +our host as we trotted over miles of it. 'We found it the only way to +fight the prairie mud. Look!' Where the daring road ended, there lay +unsubdued, level with the pale asphalt, the tenacious prairie, over +which civilisation fought her hub-deep way to the West. And with asphalt +and concrete they fight the prairie back every building season. Next +came the show-houses, built by rich men with an eye to the honour and +glory of their city, which is the first obligation of wealth in a new +land. + +We twisted and turned among broad, clean, tree-lined, sunlit boulevards +and avenues, all sluiced down with an air that forbade any thought of +fatigue, and talked of city government and municipal taxation, till, in +a certain silence, we were shown a suburb of uncared-for houses, shops, +and banks, whose sides and corners were rubbed greasy by the shoulders +of loafers. Dirt and tin cans lay about the street. Yet it was not the +squalor of poverty so much as the lack of instinct to keep clean. One +race prefers to inhabit there. + +Next a glimpse of a cold, white cathedral, red-brick schools almost as +big (thank goodness!) as some convents; hospitals, institutions, a mile +or so of shops, and then a most familiar-feeling lunch at a Club which +would have amazed my Englishman at Montreal, where men, not yet old, +talked of Fort Garry as they remembered it, and tales of the founding of +the city, of early administrative shifts and accidents, mingled with the +younger men's prophecies and frivolities. + +There are a few places still left where men can handle big things with a +light touch, and take more for granted in five minutes than an +Englishman at home could puzzle out in a year. But one would not meet +many English at a lunch in a London club who took the contract for +building London Wall or helped bully King John into signing Magna +Charta. + +I had two views of the city--one on a gray day from the roof of a +monster building, whence it seemed to overflow and fill with noises the +whole vast cup of the horizon; and still, all round its edge, jets of +steam and the impatient cries of machinery showed it was eating out into +the Prairie like a smothered fire. + +The other picture was a silhouette of the city's flank, mysterious as a +line of unexplored cliffs, under a sky crimson--barred from the zenith +to the ground, where it lay, pale emerald behind the uneven ramparts. As +our train halted in the last of the dusk, and the rails glowed dull red, +I caught the deep surge of it, and seven miles across the purple levels +saw the low, restless aurora of its lights. It is rather an awesome +thing to listen to a vanguard of civilisation talking to itself in the +night in the same tone as a thousand-year-old city. + +All the country hereabouts is riddled with railways for business and +pleasure undreamed of fifteen years ago, and it was a long time before +we reached the clear prairie of air and space and open land. The air is +different from any air that ever blew; the space is ampler than most +spaces, because it runs back to the unhampered Pole, and the open land +keeps the secret of its magic as closely as the sea or the desert. + +People here do not stumble against each other around corners, but see +largely and tranquilly from a long way off what they desire, or wish to +avoid, and they shape their path accordingly across the waves, and +troughs, and tongues, and dips and fans of the land. + +When mere space and the stoop of the high sky begin to overwhelm, earth +provides little ponds and lakes, lying in soft-flanked hollows, where +people can step down out of the floods of air, and delight themselves +with small and known distances. Most of the women I saw about the houses +were down in the hollows, and most of the men were on the crests and the +flats. Once, while we halted a woman drove straight down at us from the +sky-line, along a golden path between black ploughed lands. When the +horse, who managed affairs, stopped at the cars, she nodded +mysteriously, and showed us a very small baby in the hollow of her arm. +Doubtless she was some exiled Queen flying North to found a dynasty and +establish a country. The Prairie makes everything wonderful. + +They were threshing the wheat on both sides or the track as far as the +eye could see. The smoke of the machines went up in orderly perspective +alongside the mounds of chaff--thus: a machine, a house, a mound of +chaff, a stretch of wheat in stocks--and then repeat the pattern over +the next few degrees of longitude. We ran through strings of nearly +touching little towns, where I remembered an occasional shack; and +through big towns once represented by a name-board, a siding, and two +troopers of the North-West Police. In those days men proved that Wheat +would not grow north of some fool's line, or other, or, if it did, that +no one would grow it. And now the Wheat was marching with us as far as +the eye could reach; the railways were out, two, three hundred miles +north, peopling a new wheat country; and north of that again the Grand +Trunk was laying down a suburban extension of a few thousand miles +across the Continent, with branches perhaps to Dawson City, certainly to +Hudson Bay. + +'Come north and look!' cried the Afrites of the Railway. 'You're only on +the fringe of it here.' I preferred to keep the old road, and to gape at +miracles accomplished since my day. The old, false-fronted, +hollow-stomached Western hotels were gone; their places filled by +five-storey brick or stone ones, with Post Offices to match. +Occasionally some overlooked fragment of the past still cleaved to a +town, and marked it for an old acquaintance, but often one had to get a +mile away and look back on a place--as one holds a palimpsest up against +the light--to identify the long overlaid lines of the beginnings. Each +town supplied the big farming country behind it, and each town school +carried the Union Jack on a flagstaff in its playground. So far as one +could understand, the scholars are taught neither to hate, nor despise, +nor beg from, their own country. + +I whispered to a man that I was a little tired of a three days' tyranny +of Wheat, besides being shocked at farmers who used clean bright straw +for fuel, and made bonfires of their chaff-hills. 'You're 'way behind +the times,' said he. 'There's fruit and dairying and any quantity of +mixed farming going forward all around--let alone irrigation further +West. Wheat's not our only king by a long sight. Wait till you strike +such and such a place.' It was there I met a prophet and a preacher in +the shape of a Commissioner of the Local Board of Trade (all towns have +them), who firmly showed me the vegetables which his district produced. +They _were_ vegetables too--all neatly staged in a little kiosk near the +station. + +I think the pious Thomas Tusser would have loved that man. 'Providence,' +said he, shedding pamphlets at every gesture, 'did not intend +everlasting Wheat in this section. No, sir! Our business is to keep +ahead of Providence--to meet her with mixed farming. Are you interested +in mixed farming? Psha! Too bad you missed our fruit and vegetable show. +It draws people together, mixed farming does. I don't say Wheat is +narrowing to the outlook, but I claim there's more sociability and money +in mixed farming. We've been hypnotised by Wheat and Cattle. Now--the +cars won't start yet awhile--I'll just tell you my ideas.' + +For fifteen glorious minutes he gave me condensed essence of mixed +farming, with excursions into sugar-beet (did you know they are making +sugar in Alberta?), and he talked of farmyard muck, our dark mother of +all things, with proper devotion. + +'What we want now,' he cried in farewell, 'is men--more men. Yes, and +women.' + +They need women sorely for domestic help, to meet the mad rush of work +at harvest time--maids who will help in house, dairy, and chicken-run +till they are married. + +A steady tide sets that way already; one contented settler recruiting +others from England; but if a tenth of that energy wasted on 'social +reform' could be diverted to decently thought out and supervised +emigration work ('Labour' does not yet object to people working on the +land) we might do something worth talking about. The races which work +and do not form Committees are going into the country at least as fast +as ours. It makes one jealous and afraid to watch aliens taking, and +taking honestly, so much of this treasure of good fortune and sane +living. + +There was a town down the road which I had first heard discussed nigh +twenty years ago by a broken-down prospector in a box-car. 'Young +feller,' said he, after he had made a professional prophecy,' you'll +hear of that town if you live. She's born lucky.' + +I saw the town later--it was a siding by a trestle bridge where Indians +sold beadwork--and as years passed I gathered that the old tramp's +prophecy had come true, and that Luck of some kind had struck the little +town by the big river. So, this trip, I stopped to make sure. It was a +beautiful town of six thousand people, and a railway junction, beside a +high-girdered iron bridge; there was a public garden with trees at the +station. A company of joyous men and women, whom that air and that +light, and their own goodwill, made our brothers and sisters, came along +in motors, and gave us such a day as never was. + +'What about the Luck?' I asked. + +'Heavens!' said one. 'Haven't you heard about our natural gas--the +greatest natural gas in the world? Oh, come and see!' + +I was whirled off to a roundhouse full of engines and machinery-shops, +worked by natural gas which comes out of the earth, smelling slightly of +fried onions, at a pressure of six hundred pounds, and by valves and +taps is reduced to four pounds. There was Luck enough to make a +metropolis. Imagine a city's heating and light--to say nothing of +power--laid on at no greater expense than that of piping! + +'Are there any limits to the possibilities of it?' I demanded. + +'Who knows? We're only at the beginning. We'll show you a brick-making +plant, out on the prairie, run by gas. But just now we want to show you +one of our pet farms.' + +Away swooped the motors, like swallows, over roads any width you please, +and up on to what looked like the High Veldt itself. A Major of the +Mounted Police, who had done a year at the (Boer) war, told us how the +ostrich-farm fencing and the little meercats sitting up and racing about +South Africa had made him homesick for the sight of the gophers by the +wayside, and the endless panels of wire fencing along which we rushed. +(The Prairie has nothing to learn from the Veldt about fencing, or +tricky gates.) + +'After all,' said the Major, 'there's no country to touch this. I've had +thirty years of it--from one end to the other.' + +Then they pointed out all the quarters of the horizon--say, fifty miles +wherever you turned--and gave them names. + +The show farmer had taken his folk to church, but we friendly slipped +through his gates and reached the silent, spick-and-span house, with its +trim barn, and a vast mound of copper-coloured wheat, piled in the sun +between two mounds of golden chaff. Every one thumbed a sample of it and +passed judgment--it must have been worth a few hundred golden sovereigns +as it lay, out on the veldt--and we sat around, on the farm machinery, +and, in the hush that a shut-up house always imposes, we seemed to hear +the lavish earth getting ready for new harvests. There was no true wind, +but a push, as it were, of the whole crystal atmosphere. + +'Now for the brickfield!' they cried. It was many miles off. The road +fed by a never-to-be-forgotten drop, to a river broad as the Orange at +Norval's Pont, rustling between mud hills. An old Scotchman, in the very +likeness of Charon, with big hip boots, controlled a pontoon, which +sagged back and forth by current on a wire rope. The reckless motors +bumped on to this ferry through a foot of water, and Charon, who never +relaxed, bore us statelily across the dark, broad river to the further +bank, where we all turned to look at the lucky little town, and discuss +its possibilities. + +'I think you can see it best from here,' said one. + +'No, from here,' said another, and their voices softened on the very +name of it. + +Then for an hour we raced over true prairie, great yellow-green plains +crossed by old buffalo trails, which do not improve motor springs, till +a single chimney broke the horizon like a mast at sea; and thereby were +more light-hearted men and women, a shed and a tent or two for workmen, +the ribs and frames of the brick-making mechanism, a fifteen foot square +shaft sunk, sixty foot down to the clay, and, stark and black, the pipe +of a natural-gas well. The rest was Prairie--the mere curve of the +earth--with little grey birds calling. + +I thought it could not have been simpler, more audacious or more +impressive, till I saw some women in pretty frocks go up and peer at the +hissing gas-valves. + +'We fancied that it might amuse you,' said all those merry people, and +between laughter and digressions they talked over projects for building, +first their own, and next other cities, in brick of all sorts; giving +figures of output and expenses of plant that made one gasp. To the eye +the affair was no more than a novel or delicious picnic. What it +actually meant was a committee to change the material of civilisation +for a hundred miles around. I felt as though I were assisting at the +planning of Nineveh; and whatever of good comes to the little town that +was born lucky I shall always claim a share. + +But there is no space to tell how we fed, with a prairie appetite, in +the men's quarters, on a meal prepared by an artist; how we raced home +at speeds no child could ever hear of, and no grown-up should attempt; +how the motors squattered at the ford, and took pot-shots at the pontoon +till even Charon smiled; how great horses hauled the motors up the +gravelly bank into the town; how there we met people in their Sunday +best, walking and driving, and pulled ourselves together, and looked +virtuous; and how the merry company suddenly and quietly evanished +because they thought that their guests might be tired. I can give you no +notion of the pure, irresponsible frolic of it--of the almost +affectionate kindness, the gay and inventive hospitality that so +delicately controlled the whole affair--any more than I can describe a +certain quiet half-hour in the dusk just before we left, when the +company gathered to say good-bye, while young couples walked in the +street, and the glare of the never-extinguished natural-gas lamps +coloured the leaves of the trees a stage green. + +It was a woman, speaking out of the shadow, who said, what we all felt, +'You see, we just love our town,' + +'So do we,' I said, and it slid behind us. + + + + +MOUNTAINS AND THE PACIFIC + + +The Prairie proper ends at Calgary, among the cattle-ranches, mills, +breweries, and three million acre irrigation works. The river that +floats timber to the town from the mountains does not slide nor rustle +like Prairie rivers, but brawls across bars of blue pebbles, and a +greenish tinge in its water hints of the snows. + +What I saw of Calgary was crowded into one lively half-hour (motors were +invented to run about new cities). What I heard I picked up, oddly +enough, weeks later, from a young Dane in the North Sea. He was +qualmish, but his Saga of triumph upheld him. + +'Three years ago I come to Canada by steerage--third class. _And_ I have +the language to learn. Look at me! I have now my own dairy business, in +Calgary, and--look at me!--my own half section, that is, three hundred +and twenty acres. All my land which is mine! And now I come home, first +class, for Christmas here in Denmark, and I shall take out back with me, +some friends of mine which are farmers, to farm on those irrigated lands +near by Calgary. Oh, I tell you there is nothing wrong with Canada for a +man which works.' + +'And will your friends go?' I inquired. + +'You bet they will. It is all arranged already. I bet they get ready to +go now already; and in three years they will come back for Christmas +here in Denmark, first class like me.' + +'Then you think Calgary is going ahead?' + +'You bet! We are only at the beginning of things. Look at me! Chickens? +I raise chickens also in Calgary,' etc., etc. + +After all this pageant of unrelieved material prosperity, it was a rest +to get to the stillness of the big foothills, though they, too, had been +in-spanned for the work of civilisation. The timber off their sides was +ducking and pitch-poling down their swift streams, to be sawn into +house-stuff for all the world. The woodwork of a purely English villa +may come from as many Imperial sources as its owner's income. + +The train crept, whistling to keep its heart up, through the winding +gateways of the hills, till it presented itself, very humbly, before the +true mountains, the not so Little Brothers to the Himalayas. Mountains +of the pine-cloaked, snow-capped breed are unchristian things. + +Men mine into the flanks of some of them, and trust to modern science to +pull them through. Not long ago, a mountain kneeled on a little mining +village as an angry elephant kneels; but it did not get up again, and +the half of that camp was no more seen on earth. The other half still +stands--uninhabited. The 'heathen in his blindness' would have made +arrangements with the Genius of the Place before he ever drove a pick +there. 'As a learned scholar of a little-known university once observed +to an engineer officer on the Himalaya-Tibet Road--'You white men gain +nothing by not noticing what you cannot see. You fall off the road, or +the road falls on you, and you die, and you think it all an accident. +How much wiser it was when we were allowed to sacrifice a man +officially, sir, before making bridges or other public works. Then the +local gods were officially recognised, sir, and did not give any more +trouble, and the local workmen, sir, were much pleased with these +precautions.' + +There are many local gods on the road through the Rockies: old bald +mountains that have parted with every shred of verdure and stand wrapped +in sheets of wrinkled silver rock, over which the sight travels slowly +as in delirium; mad, horned mountains, wreathed with dancing mists; +low-browed and bent-shouldered faquirs of the wayside, sitting in +meditation beneath a burden of glacier-ice that thickens every year; and +mountains of fair aspect on one side, but on the other seamed with +hollow sunless clefts, where last year's snow is blackened with this +year's dirt and smoke of forest-fires. The drip from it seeps away +through slopes of unstable gravel and dirt, till, at the appointed +season, the whole half-mile of undermined talus slips and roars into the +horrified valley. + +The railway winds in and out among them with little inexplicable +deviations and side-twists, much as a buck walks through a forest-glade, +sidling and crossing uneasily in what appears to be a plain way. Only +when the track has rounded another shoulder or two, a backward and +upward glance at some menacing slope shows why the train did not take +the easier-looking road on the other side of the gorge. + +From time to time the mountains lean apart, and nurse between them some +golden valley of slow streams, fat pastures, and park-like uplands, with +a little town, and cow bells tinkling among berry bushes; and children +who have never seen the sun rise or set, shouting at the trains; and +real gardens round the houses. + +At Calgary it was a frost, and the dahlias were dead. A day later +nasturtiums bloomed untouched beside the station platforms, and the air +was heavy and liquid with the breath of the Pacific. One felt the spirit +of the land change with the changing outline of the hills till, on the +lower levels by the Fraser, it seemed that even the Sussex Downs must be +nearer at heart to the Prairie than British Columbia. The Prairie people +notice the difference, and the Hill people, unwisely, I think, insist on +it. Perhaps the magic may lie in the scent of strange evergreens and +mosses not known outside the ranges: or it may strike from wall to wall +of timeless rifts and gorges, but it seemed to me to draw out of the +great sea that washes further Asia--the Asia of allied mountains, mines, +and forests. + +We rested one day high up in the Rockies, to visit a lake carved out of +pure jade, whose property is to colour every reflection on its bosom to +its own tint. A belt of brown dead timber on a gravel scar, showed, +upside down, like sombre cypresses rising from green turf and the +reflected snows were pale green. In summer many tourists go there, but +we saw nothing except the wonderworking lake lying mute in its circle of +forest, where red and orange lichens grew among grey and blue moss, and +we heard nothing except the noise of its outfall hurrying through a jam +of bone-white logs. The thing might have belonged to Tibet or some +unexplored valley behind Kin-chinjunga. It had no concern with the West. + +As we drove along the narrow hill-road a piebald pack-pony with a +china-blue eye came round a bend, followed by two women, black-haired, +bare-headed, wearing beadwork squaw-jackets, and riding straddle. A +string of pack-ponies trotted through the pines behind them. + +'Indians on the move?' said I. 'How characteristic!' + +As the women jolted by, one of them very slightly turned her eyes, and +they were, past any doubt, the comprehending equal eyes of the civilised +white woman which moved in that berry-brown face. + +'Yes,' said our driver, when the cavalcade had navigated the next +curve,' that'll be Mrs. So-and-So and Miss So-and-So. They mostly camp +hereabout for three months every year. I reckon they're coming in to the +railroad before the snow falls.' + +'And whereabout do they go?' I asked. + +'Oh, all about anywheres. If you mean where they come from just +now--that's the trail yonder.' + +He pointed to a hair-crack across the face of a mountain, and I took +his word for it that it was a safe pony-trail. The same evening, at an +hotel of all the luxuries, a slight woman in a very pretty evening frock +was turning over photographs, and the eyes beneath the strictly-arranged +hair were the eyes of the woman in the beadwork jacket who had quirted +the piebald pack-pony past our buggy. + +Praised be Allah for the diversity of His creatures! But do you know any +other country where two women could go out for a three months' trek and +shoot in perfect comfort and safety? + +These mountains are only ten days from London, and people more and more +use them for pleasure-grounds. Other and most unthought-of persons buy +little fruit-farms in British Columbia as an excuse for a yearly visit +to the beautiful land, and they tempt yet more people from England. This +is apart from the regular tide of emigration, and serves to make the +land known. If you asked a State-owned railway to gamble on the chance +of drawing tourists, the Commissioner of Railways would prove to you +that the experiment could never succeed, and that it was wrong to risk +the taxpayers' money in erecting first-class hotels. Yet South Africa +could, even now, be made a tourists' place--if only the railroads and +steamship lines had faith. + +On thinking things over I suspect I was not intended to appreciate the +merits of British Columbia too highly. Maybe I misjudged; maybe she was +purposely misrepresented; but I seemed to hear more about 'problems' +and 'crises' and 'situations' in her borders than anywhere else. So far +as eye or ear could gather, the one urgent problem was to find enough +men and women to do the work in hand. + +Lumber, coal, minerals, fisheries, fit soil for fruit, dairy, and +poultry farms are all there in a superb climate. The natural beauty of +earth and sky match these lavish gifts; to which are added thousands of +miles of safe and sheltered waterways for coastal trade; deep harbours +that need no dredge; the ground-works of immense and ice-free ports--all +the title-deeds to half the trade of Asia. For the people's pleasure and +good disport salmon, trout, quail, and pheasant play in front of and +through the suburbs of her capitals. A little axe-work and +road-metalling gives a city one of the loveliest water-girt parks that +we have outside the tropics. Another town is presented with a hundred +islands, knolls, wooded coves, stretches of beach, and dingles, laid +down as expressly for camp-life, picnics, and boating parties, beneath +skies never too hot and rarely too cold. If they care to lift up their +eyes from their almost subtropical gardens they can behold snowy peaks +across blue bays, which must be good for the soul. Though they face a +sea out of which any portent may arise, they are not forced to protect +or even to police its waters. They are as ignorant of drouth, murrain, +pestilence locusts, and blight, as they are of the true meaning of want +and fear. + +Such a land is good for an energetic man. It is also not so bad for the +loafer. I was, as I have told you, instructed on its, drawbacks. I was +to understand that there was no certainty in any employment; and that a +man who earned immense wages for six months of the year would have to be +kept by the community if he fell out of work for the other six. I was +not to be deceived by golden pictures set before me by interested +parties (that is to say, by almost every one I met), and I was to give +due weight to the difficulties and discouragements that beset the +intending immigrant. Were I an intending immigrant I would risk a good +deal of discomfort to get on to the land in British Columbia; and were I +rich, with no attachments outside England, I would swiftly buy me a farm +or a house in that country for the mere joy of it. + +I forgot those doleful and unhumorous conspirators among people who +fervently believed in the place; but afterwards the memory left a bad +taste in my mouth. Cities, like women, cannot be too careful what sort +of men they allow to talk about them. + +Time had changed Vancouver literally out of all knowledge. From the +station to the suburbs, and back to the wharves, every step was strange, +and where I remembered open spaces and still untouched timber, the +tramcars were fleeting people out to a lacrosse game. Vancouver is an +aged city, for only a few days previous to my arrival the Vancouver +Baby--_i.e._ the first child born in Vancouver--had been married. + +A steamer--once familiar in Table Bay--had landed a few hundred Sikhs +and Punjabi Jats--to each man his bundle--and the little groups walked +uneasy alone, keeping, for many of them had been soldiers, to the +military step. Yes, they said they had come to this country to get work. +News had reached their villages that work at great wages was to be had +in this country. Their brethren who had gone before had sent them the +news. Yes, and sometimes the money for the passage out. The money would +be paid back from the so-great wages to come. With interest? Assuredly +with interest.. Did men lend money for nothing in _any_ country? They +were waiting for their brethren to come and show them where to eat, and +later, how to work. Meanwhile this was a new country. How could they say +anything about it? No, it was not like Gurgaon or Shahpur or Jullundur. +The Sickness (plague) had come to all these places. It had come into the +Punjab by every road, and many--many--many had died. The crops, too, had +failed in some districts. Hearing the news about these so-great wages +they had taken ship for the belly's sake--for the money's sake--for the +children's sake. + +'Would they go back again?' + +They grinned as they nudged each other. The Sahib had not quite +understood. They had come over for the sake of the money--the rupees, +no, the dollars. The Punjab was their home where their villages lay, +where their people were waiting. Without doubt--without doubt--they +would go back. Then came the brethren already working in the +mills--cosmopolitans dressed in ready-made clothes, and smoking +cigarettes. + +'This way, O you people,' they cried. The bundles were reshouldered and +the turbaned knots melted away. The last words I caught were true Sikh +talk: 'But what about the money, O my brother?' + +Some Punjabis have found out that money can be too dearly bought. + +There was a Sikh in a sawmill, had been driver in a mountain battery at +home. Himself he was from Amritsar. (Oh, pleasant as cold water in a +thirsty land is the sound of a familiar name in a fair country!) + +'But you had your pension. Why did you come here?' + +'Heaven-born, because my sense was little. And there was also the +Sickness at Amritsar.' + +(The historian a hundred years hence will be able to write a book on +economic changes brought about by pestilence. There is a very +interesting study somewhere of the social and commercial effects of the +Black Death in England.) + +On a wharf, waiting for a steamer, some thirty Sikhs, many of them +wearing their old uniforms (which should not be allowed) were talking at +the tops of their voices, so that the shed rang like an Indian railway +station. A suggestion that if they spoke lower life would be easier was +instantly adopted. Then a senior officer with a British India medal +asked hopefully: 'Has the Sahib any orders where we are to go?' + +Alas he had none--nothing but goodwill and greetings for the sons of +the Khalsa, and they tramped off in fours. + +It is said that when the little riot broke out in Vancouver these +'heathen' were invited by other Asiatics to join in defending themselves +against the white man. They refused on the ground that they were +subjects of the King. I wonder what tales they sent back to their +villages, and where, and how fully, every detail of the affair was +talked over. White men forget that no part of the Empire can live or die +to itself. + +Here is a rather comic illustration of this on the material side. The +wonderful waters between Vancouver and Victoria are full of whales, +leaping and rejoicing in the strong blue all about the steamer. There +is, therefore, a whalery on an island near by, and I had the luck to +travel with one of the shareholders. + +'Whales are beautiful beasts,' he said affectionately. 'We've a contract +with a Scotch firm for every barrel of oil we can deliver for years +ahead. It's reckoned the best for harness-dressing.' + +He went on to tell me how a swift ship goes hunting whales with a +bomb-gun and explodes shells into their insides so that they perish at +once. + +'All the old harpoon and boat business would take till the cows come +home. We kill 'em right off.' + +'And how d'you strip 'em?' + +It seemed that the expeditious ship carried also a large air-pump, and +pumped up the carcass to float roundly till she could attend to it. At +the end of her day's kill she would return, towing sometimes as many as +four inflated whales to the whalery, which is a factory full of modern +appliances. The whales are hauled up inclined planes like logs to a +sawmill, and as much of them as will not make oil for the Scotch +leather-dresser, or cannot be dried for the Japanese market, is +converted into potent manure. + +'No manure can touch ours,' said the shareholder. 'It's so rich in bone, +d'you see. The only thing that has beat us up to date is their hides; +but we've fixed up a patent process now for turning 'em into floorcloth. +Yes, they're beautiful beasts. That fellow,' he pointed to a black hump +in a wreath of spray, 'would cut up a miracle.' + +'If you go on like this you won't have any whales left,' I said. + +'That is so. But the concern pays thirty per cent, and--a few years +back, no one believed in it.' + +I forgave him everything for the last sentence. + + + + +A CONCLUSION + + +Canada possesses two pillars of Strength and Beauty in Quebec and +Victoria. The former ranks by herself among those Mother-cities of whom +none can say 'This reminds me.' To realise Victoria you must take all +that the eye admires most in Bournemouth, Torquay, the Isle of Wight, +the Happy Valley at Hong-Kong, the Doon, Sorrento, and Camps Bay; add +reminiscences of the Thousand Islands, and arrange the whole round the +Bay of Naples, with some Himalayas for the background. + +Real estate agents recommend it as a little piece of England--the island +on which it stands is about the size of Great Britain--but no England is +set in any such seas or so fully charged with the mystery of the larger +ocean beyond. The high, still twilights along the beaches are out of the +old East just under the curve of the world, and even in October the sun +rises warm from the first. Earth, sky, and water wait outside every +man's door to drag him out to play if he looks up from his work; and, +though some other cities in the Dominion do not quite understand this +immoral mood of Nature, men who have made their money in them go off to +Victoria, and with the zeal of converts preach and preserve its +beauties. + +We went to look at a marine junk-store which had once been Esquimalt, a +station of the British Navy. It was reached through winding roads, +lovelier than English lanes, along watersides and parkways any one of +which would have made the fortune of a town. + +'Most cities,' a man said, suddenly, 'lay out their roads at right +angles. We do in the business quarters. What d'you think?' + +'I fancy some of those big cities will have to spend millions on curved +roads some day for the sake of a change,' I said. 'You've got what no +money can buy.' + +'That's what the men tell us who come to live in Victoria. And they've +had experience.' + +It is pleasant to think of the Western millionaire, hot from some +gridiron of rectangular civilisation, confirming good Victorians in the +policy of changing vistas and restful curves. + +There is a view, when the morning mists peel off the harbour where the +steamers tie up, or the Houses of Parliament on one hand, and a huge +hotel on the other, which as an example of cunningly-fitted-in +water-fronts and facades is worth a very long journey. The hotel was +just being finished. The ladies' drawing-room, perhaps a hundred feet by +forty, carried an arched and superbly enriched plaster ceiling of knops +and arabesques and interlacings, which somehow seemed familiar. + +'We saw a photo of it in _Country Life_,' the contractor explained. 'It +seemed just what the room needed, so one of our plasterers, a +Frenchman--that's him--took and copied it. It comes in all right, +doesn't it?' + +About the time the noble original was put up in England Drake might have +been sailing somewhere off this very coast. So, you see, Victoria +lawfully holds the copyright. + +I tried honestly to render something of the colour, the gaiety, and the +graciousness of the town and the island, but only found myself piling up +unbelievable adjectives, and so let it go with a hundred other wonders +and repented that I had wasted my time and yours on the anxious-eyed +gentlemen who talked of 'drawbacks.' A verse cut out of a newspaper +seems to sum up their attitude: + + As the Land of Little Leisure + Is the place where things are done, + So the Land of Scanty Pleasure + Is the place for lots of fun. + In the Land of Plenty Trouble + People laugh as people should, + But there's some one always kicking + In the Land of Heap Too Good! + +At every step of my journey people assured me that I had seen nothing of +Canada. Silent mining men from the North; fruit-farmers from the +Okanagan Valley; foremen of railway gangs, not so long from English +public schools; the oldest inhabitant of the town of Villeneuve, aged +twenty-eight; certain English who lived on the prairie and contrived to +get fun and good fellowship as well as money; the single-minded +wheat-growers and cattle-men; election agents; police troopers +expansive in the dusk of wayside halts; officials dependent on the +popular will, who talked as delicately as they walked; and queer souls +who did not speak English, and said so loudly in the dining-car--each, +in his or her own way, gave me to understand this. My excursion bore the +same relation to their country as a 'bus-ride down the Strand bears to +London, so I knew how they felt. + +The excuse is that our own flesh and blood are more interesting than +anybody else, and I held by birth the same right in them and their lives +as they held in any other part of the Empire. Because they had become a +people within the Empire my right was admitted and no word spoken; which +would not have been the case a few years ago. One may mistake many signs +on the road, but there is no mistaking the spirit of sane and realised +nationality, which fills the land from end to end precisely as the +joyous hum of a big dynamo well settled to its load makes a background +to all the other shop noises. For many reasons that Spirit came late, +but since it has come after the day of little things, doubts, and open +or veiled contempts, there is less danger that it will go astray among +the boundless wealth and luxury that await it. The people, the schools, +the churches, the Press in its degree, and, above all, the women, +understand without manifestoes that their land must now as always abide +under the Law in deed and in word and in thought. This is their +caste-mark, the ark of their covenant, their reason for being what they +are. In the big cities, with their village-like lists of police court +offences; in the wide-open little Western towns where the present is as +free as the lives and the future as safe as the property of their +inhabitants; in the coast cities galled and humiliated at their one +night's riot ('It's not our habit, Sir! It's not our habit!'); up among +the mountains where the officers of the law track and carefully bring +into justice the astounded malefactor; and behind the orderly prairies +to the barren grounds, as far as a single white man can walk, the +relentless spirit of the breed follows up, and oversees, and controls. +It does not much express itself in words, but sometimes, in intimate +discussion, one is privileged to catch a glimpse of the inner fires. +They burn hotly. + +'_We_ do not mean to be de-civilised,' said the first man with whom I +talked about it. + +That was the answer throughout--the keynote and the explanation. + +Otherwise the Canadians are as human as the rest of us to evade or deny +a plain issue. The duty of developing their country is always present, +but when it comes to taking thought, better thought, for her defence, +they refuge behind loose words and childish anticipations of +miracles--quite in the best Imperial manner. All admit that Canada is +wealthy; few that she is weak; still fewer that, unsupported, she would +very soon cease to exist as a nation. The anxious inquirer is told that +she does her duty towards England by developing her resources; that +wages are so high a paid army is out of the question; that she is +really maturing splendid defence schemes, but must not be hurried or +dictated to; that a little wise diplomacy is all that will ever be +needed in this so civilised era; that when the evil day comes something +will happen (it certainly will), the whole concluding, very often, with +a fervent essay on the immorality of war, all about as much to the point +as carrying a dove through the streets to allay pestilence. + +The question before Canada is not what she thinks or pays, but what an +enemy may think it necessary to make her pay. If she continues wealthy +and remains weak she will surely be attacked under one pretext or +another. Then she will go under, and her spirit will return to the dust +with her flag as it slides down the halliards. + +'That is absurd,' is always the quick answer. 'In her own interests +England could never permit it. What you speak of presupposes the fall of +England.' + +Not necessarily. Nothing worse than a stumble by the way; but when +England stumbles the Empire shakes. Canada's weakness is lack of men. +England's weakness is an excess of voters who propose to live at the +expense of the State. These loudly resent that any money should be +diverted from themselves; and since money is spent on fleets and armies +to protect the Empire while it is consolidating, they argue that if the +Empire ceased to exist armaments would cease too, and the money so saved +could be spent on their creature comforts. They pride themselves on +being an avowed and organised enemy of the Empire which, as others see +it, waits only to give them health, prosperity, and power beyond +anything their votes could win them in England. But their leaders need +their votes in England, as they need their outcries and discomforts to +help them in their municipal and Parliamentary careers. No engineer +lowers steam in his own boilers. + +So they are told little except evil of the great heritage outside, and +are kept compounded in cities under promise of free rations and +amusements. If the Empire were threatened they would not, in their own +interests, urge England to spend men and money on it. Consequently it +might be well if the nations within the Empire were strong enough to +endure a little battering unaided at the first outset--till such time, +that is, as England were permitted to move to their help. + +For this end an influx of good men is needed more urgently every year +during which peace holds--men loyal, clean, and experienced in +citizenship, with women not ignorant of sacrifice. + +Here the gentlemen who propose to be kept by their neighbours are our +helpful allies. They have succeeded in making uneasy the class +immediately above them, which is the English working class, as yet +undebauched by the temptation of State-aided idleness or +State-guaranteed irresponsibility. England has millions of such silent +careful folk accustomed, even yet, to provide for their own offspring, +to bring them up in a resolute fear of God, and to desire no more than +the reward of their own labours. A few years ago this class would not +have cared to shift; now they feel the general disquiet. They live close +to it. Tea-and-sugar borrowing friends have told them jocularly, or with +threats, of a good time coming when things will go hard with the +uncheerful giver. The prospect appeals neither to their reason nor to +their Savings Bank books. They hear--they do not need to read--the +speeches delivered in their streets on a Sunday morning. It is one of +their pre-occupations to send their children to Sunday School by +roundabout roads, lest they should pick up abominable blasphemies. When +the tills of the little shops are raided, or when the family +ne'er-do-well levies on his women with more than usual brutality, they +know, because they suffer, what principles are being put into practice. +If these people could quietly be shown a quiet way out of it all, very +many of them would call in their savings (they are richer than they +look), and slip quietly away. In the English country, as well as in the +towns, there is a feeling--not yet panic, but the dull edge of it--that +the future will be none too rosy for such as are working, or are in the +habit of working. This is all to our advantage. + +Canada can best serve her own interests and those of the Empire by +systematically exploiting this new recruiting-ground. Now that South +Africa, with the exception of Rhodesia, has been paralysed, and +Australia has not yet learned the things which belong to her peace, +Canada has the chance of the century to attract good men and capital +into the Dominion. But the men are much more important than the money. +They may not at first be as clever with the hoe as the Bessarabian or +the Bokhariot, or whatever the fashionable breed is, but they have +qualities of pluck, good humour, and a certain well-wearing virtue which +are not altogether bad. They will not hold aloof from the life of the +land, nor pray in unknown tongues to Byzantine saints; while the very +tenacity and caution which made them cleave to England this long, help +them to root deeply elsewhere. They are more likely to bring their women +than other classes, and those women will make sacred and individual +homes. A little-regarded Crown Colony has a proverb that no district can +be called settled till there are pots of musk in the house-windows--sure +sign that an English family has come to stay. It is not certain how much +of the present steamer-dumped foreign population has any such idea. We +have seen a financial panic in one country send whole army corps of +aliens kiting back to the lands whose allegiance they forswore. What +would they or their likes do in time of real stress, since no instinct +in their bodies or their souls would call them to stand by till the +storm were over? + +Surely the conclusion of the whole matter throughout the whole Empire +must be men and women of our own stock, habits, language, and hopes +brought in by every possible means under a well-settled policy? Time +will not be allowed us to multiply to unquestionable peace, but by +drawing upon England we can swiftly transfuse what we need of her +strength into her veins, and by that operation bleed her into health and +sanity Meantime, the only serious enemy to the Empire, within or +without, is that very Democracy which depends on the Empire for its +proper comforts, and in whose behalf these things are urged. + + +EGYPT OF THE MAGICIANS + +1913 + +SEA TRAVEL. +A RETURN TO THE EAST. +A SERPENT OF OLD NILE. +UP THE RIVER. +DEAD KINGS. +THE FACE OF THE DESERT. +THE RIDDLE OF EMPIRE. + +_And the magicians of Egypt did so with their enchantments_.--EXODUS +vii. 22. + + + + +I + + +SEA TRAVEL + +I had left Europe for no reason except to discover the Sun, and there +were rumours that he was to be found in Egypt. + +But I had not realised what more I should find there. + +A P. & O. boat carried us out of Marseilles. A serang of lascars, with +whistle, chain, shawl, and fluttering blue clothes, was at work on the +baggage-hatch. Somebody bungled at the winch. The serang called him a +name unlovely in itself but awakening delightful memories in the hearer. + +'O Serang, is that man a fool?' + +'Very foolish, sahib. He comes from Surat. He only comes for his food's +sake.' + +The serang grinned; the Surtee man grinned; the winch began again, and +the voices that called: 'Lower away! Stop her!' were as familiar as the +friendly whiff from the lascars' galley or the slap of bare feet along +the deck. But for the passage of a few impertinent years, I should have +gone without hesitation to share their rice. Serangs used to be very +kind to little white children below the age of caste. Most familiar of +all was the ship itself. It had slipped my memory, nor was there +anything in the rates charged to remind me, that single-screws still +lingered in the gilt-edged passenger trade. + +Some North Atlantic passengers accustomed to real ships made the +discovery, and were as pleased about it as American tourists at +Stratford-on-Avon. + +'Oh, come and see!' they cried. 'She has _one_ screw--only one screw! +Hear her thump! And _have_ you seen their old barn of a saloon? _And_ +the officers' library? It's open for two half-hours a day week-days and +one on Sundays. You pay a dollar and a quarter deposit on each book. We +wouldn't have missed this trip for anything. It's like sailing with +Columbus.' + +They wandered about--voluble, amazed, and happy, for they were getting +off at Port Said. + +I explored, too. From the rough-ironed table-linen, the thick +tooth-glasses for the drinks, the slummocky set-out of victuals at +meals, to the unaccommodating regulations in the curtainless cabin, +where they had not yet arrived at bunk-edge trays for morning tea, time +and progress had stood still with the P. & O. To be just, there were +electric-fan fittings in the cabins, but the fans were charged extra; +and there was a rumour, unverified, that one could eat on deck or in +one's cabin without a medical certificate from the doctor. All the rest +was under the old motto: '_Quis separabit_'--'This is quite separate +from other lines.' + +'After all,' said an Anglo-Indian, whom I was telling about civilised +ocean travel, 'they don't want you Egyptian trippers. They're sure of +_us_, because----' and he gave me many strong reasons connected with +leave, finance, the absence of competition, and the ownership of the +Bombay foreshore. + +'But it's absurd,' I insisted. 'The whole concern is out of date. +There's a notice on my deck forbidding smoking and the use of naked +lights, and there's a lascar messing about the hold-hatch outside my +cabin with a candle in a lantern.' + +Meantime, our one-screw tub thumped gingerly toward Port Said, because +we had no mails aboard, and the Mediterranean, exhausted after severe +February hysterics, lay out like oil. + +I had some talk with a Scotch quartermaster who complained that lascars +are not what they used to be, owing to their habit (but it has existed +since the beginning) of signing on as a clan or family--all sorts +together. + +The serang said that, for _his_ part, he had noticed no difference in +twenty years. 'Men are always of many kinds, sahib. And that is because +God makes men this and that. Not all one pattern--not by any means all +one pattern.' He told me, too, that wages were rising, but the price of +ghee, rice, and curry-stuffs was up, too, which was bad for wives and +families at Porbandar. 'And that also is thus, and no talk makes it +otherwise.' After Suez he would have blossomed into thin clothes and +long talks, but the bitter spring chill nipped him, as the thought of +partings just accomplished and work just ahead chilled the Anglo-Indian +contingent. Little by little one came at the outlines of the old +stories--a sick wife left behind here, a boy there, a daughter at +school, a very small daughter trusted to friends or hirelings, certain +separation for so many years and no great hope or delight in the future. +It was not a nice India that the tales hinted at. Here is one that +explains a great deal: + +There was a Pathan, a Mohammedan, in a Hindu village, employed by the +village moneylender as a debt-collector, which is not a popular trade. +He lived alone among Hindus, and--so ran the charge in the lower +court--he wilfully broke the caste of a Hindu villager by forcing on him +forbidden Mussulman food, and when that pious villager would have taken +him before the headman to make reparation, the godless one drew his +Afghan knife and killed the headman, besides wounding a few others. The +evidence ran without flaw, as smoothly as well-arranged cases should, +and the Pathan was condemned to death for wilful murder. He appealed +and, by some arrangement or other, got leave to state his case +personally to the Court of Revision. 'Said, I believe, that he did not +much trust lawyers, but that if the sahibs would give him a hearing, as +man to man, he might have a run for his money. + +Out of the jail, then, he came, and, Pathan-like, not content with his +own good facts, must needs begin by some fairy-tale that he was a secret +agent of the government sent down to spy on that village. Then he warmed +to it. Yes, he _was_ that money-lender's agent--a persuader of the +reluctant, if you like--working for a Hindu employer. Naturally, many +men owed him grudges. A lot of the evidence against him was quite true, +but the prosecution had twisted it abominably. About that knife, for +instance. True, he had a knife in his hand exactly as they had alleged. +But why? Because with that very knife he was cutting up and distributing +a roast sheep which he had given as a feast to the villagers. At that +feast, he sitting in amity with all his world, the village rose up at +the word of command, laid hands on him, and dragged him off to the +headman's house. How could he have broken _any_ man's caste when they +were all eating his sheep? And in the courtyard of the headman's house +they surrounded him with heavy sticks and worked themselves into anger +against him, each man exciting his neighbour. He was a Pathan. He knew +what that sort of talk meant. A man cannot collect debts without making +enemies. So he warned them. Again and again he warned them, saying: +'Leave me alone. Do not lay hands on me.' But the trouble grew worse, +and he saw it was intended that he should be clubbed to death like a +jackal in a drain. Then he said, 'If blows are struck, I strike, and _I_ +strike to kill, because I am a Pathan,' But the blows were struck, heavy +ones. Therefore, with the very Afghan knife that had cut up the mutton, +he struck the headman. 'Had you meant to kill the headman?' 'Assuredly! +I am a Pathan. When I strike, I strike to kill. I had warned them again +and again. I think I got him in the liver. He died. And that is all +there is to it, sahibs. It was my life or theirs. They would have taken +mine over my freely given meats. _Now_, what'll you do with me?' + +In the long run, he got several years for culpable homicide. + +'But,' said I, when the tale had been told, 'whatever made the lower +court accept all that village evidence? It was too good on the face of +it,' + +'The lower court said it could not believe it possible that so many +respectable native gentle could have banded themselves together to tell +a lie.' + +'Oh! Had the lower court been long in the country?' + +'It was a native judge,' was the reply. + +If you think this over in all its bearings, you will see that the lower +court was absolutely sincere. Was not the lower court itself a product +of Western civilisation, and, as such, bound to play up--to pretend to +think along Western lines--translating each grade of Indian village +society into its English equivalent, and ruling as an English judge +would have ruled? Pathans and, incidentally, English officials must look +after themselves. + +There is a fell disease of this century called 'snobbery of the soul.' +Its germ has been virulently developed in modern cultures from the +uncomplex bacillus isolated sixty years ago by the late William +Makepeace Thackeray. Precisely as Major Ponto, with his plated dishes +and stable-boy masquerading as footman, lied to himself and his guests +so--but the _Book of Snobs_ can only be brought up to date by him who +wrote it. + +Then, a man struck in from the Sudan--far and far to the south--with a +story of a discomposed judge and a much too collected prisoner. + +To the great bazaars of Omdurman, where all things are sold, came a +young man from the uttermost deserts of somewhere or other and heard a +gramophone. Life was of no value to him till he had bought the creature. +He took it back to his village, and at twilight set it going among his +ravished friends. His father, sheik of the village, came also, listened +to the loud shoutings without breath, the strong music lacking +musicians, and said, justly enough: 'This thing is a devil. You must not +bring devils into my village. Lock it up.' + +They waited until he had gone away and then began another tune. A second +time the sheik came, repeated the command, and added that if the singing +box was heard again, he would slay the buyer. But their curiosity and +joy defied even this, and for the third time (late at night) they +slipped in pin and record and let the djinn rave. So the sheik, with his +rifle, shot his son as he had promised, and the English judge before +whom he eventually came had all the trouble in the world to save that +earnest gray head from the gallows. Thus: + +'Now, old man, you must say guilty or not guilty.' + +'But I shot him. That is why I am here. I----' + +'Hush! It is a form of words which the law asks. _(Sotte voce_. Write +down that the old idiot doesn't understand.) Be still now.' + +'But I shot him. What else could I have done? He bought a devil in a +box, and----' + +'Quiet! That comes later. Leave talking.' + +'But I am sheik of the village. One must not bring devils into a +village. I _said_ I would shoot him.' + +'This matter is in the hands of the law. _I_ judge.' + +'What need? I shot him. Suppose that _your_ son had brought a devil in a +box to _your_ village----' + +They explained to him, at last, that under British rule fathers must +hand over devil-dealing children to be shot by the white men (the first +step, you see, on the downward path of State aid), and that he must go +to prison for several months for interfering with a government shoot. + +We are a great race. There was a pious young judge in Nigeria once, +who kept a condemned prisoner waiting very many minutes while he +hunted through the Hausa dictionary, word by word, for, +'May--God--have--mercy--on--your--soul.' + +And I heard another tale--about the Suez Canal this time--a hint of what +may happen some day at Panama. There was a tramp steamer, loaded with +high explosives, on her way to the East, and at the far end of the Canal +one of the sailors very naturally upset a lamp in the fo'c'sle. After a +heated interval the crew took to the desert alongside, while the captain +and the mate opened all cocks and sank her, not in the fairway but up +against a bank, just leaving room for a steamer to squeeze past. Then +the Canal authorities wired to her charterers to know exactly what there +might be in her; and it is said that the reply kept them awake of +nights, for it was their business to blow her up. + +Meantime, traffic had to go through, and a P. & O. steamer came along. +There was the Canal; there was the sunken wreck, marked by one elderly +Arab in a little boat with a red flag, and there was about five foot +clearance on each side for the P. & O. She went through a-tiptoe, +because even fifty tons of dynamite will jar a boat, perceptibly, and +the tramp held more--very much more, not to mention detonators. By some +absurd chance, almost the only passenger who knew about the thing at the +time was an old lady rather proud of the secret. + +'Ah,' she said, in the middle of that agonised glide, 'you may depend +upon it that if everybody knew what, I know, they'd all be on the other +side of the ship.' + +Later on, the authorities blew up the tramp with infinite precautions +from some two miles off, for which reason she neither destroyed the Suez +Canal nor dislocated the Sweet Water Canal alongside, but merely dug out +a hole a hundred feet or a hundred yards deep, and so vanished from +Lloyd's register. + +But no stories could divert one long from the peculiarities of that +amazing line which exists strictly for itself. There was a bathroom +(occupied) at the windy end of an open alleyway. In due time the bather +came out. + +Said the steward, as he swabbed out the tub for his successor: 'That was +the Chief Engineer. 'E's been some time. Must 'ave 'ad a mucky job +below, this mornin'.' + +I have a great admiration for Chief Engineers. They are men in +authority, needing all the comforts and aids that can possibly be given +them--such as bathrooms of their own close to their own cabins, where +they can clean off at leisure. + +It is not fair to mix them up with the ruck of passengers, nor is it +done on real ships. Nor, when a passenger wants a bath in the evening, +do the stewards of real ships roll their eyes like vergers in a +cathedral and say, 'We'll see if it can be managed.' They double down +the alleyway and shout, 'Matcham' or 'Ponting' or 'Guttman,' and in +fifteen seconds one of those swift three has the taps going and the +towels out. Real ships are not annexes of Westminster Abbey or Borstal +Reformatory. They supply decent accommodation in return for good money, +and I imagine that their directors instruct their staffs to look pleased +while at work. + +Some generations back there must have been an idea that the P. & O. was +vastly superior to all lines afloat--a sort of semipontifical show not +to be criticised. How much of the notion was due to its own excellence +and how much to its passenger-traffic monopoly does not matter. To-day, +it neither feeds nor tends its passengers, nor keeps its ships well +enough to put on any airs at all. + +For which reason, human nature being what it is, it surrounds itself +with an ungracious atmosphere of absurd ritual to cover grudged and +inadequate performance. + +What it really needs is to be dropped into a March North Atlantic, +without any lascars, and made to swim for its life between a C.P.R. boat +and a North German Lloyd--till it learns to smile. + + + + +II + +A RETURN TO THE EAST + +The East is a much larger slice of the world than Europeans care to +admit. Some say it begins at St. Gothard, where the smells of two +continents meet and fight all through that terrible restaurant-car +dinner in the tunnel. Others have found it at Venice on warm April +mornings. But the East is wherever one sees the lateen sail--that +shark's fin of a rig which for hundreds of years has dogged all white +bathers round the Mediterranean. There is still a suggestion of menace, +a hint of piracy, in the blood whenever the lateen goes by, fishing or +fruiting or coasting. + +'This is _not_ my ancestral trade,' she whispers to the accomplice sea. +'If everybody had their rights I should be doing something quite +different; for my father, he was the Junk, and my mother, she was the +Dhow, and between the two of 'em they made Asia.' Then she tacks, +disorderly but deadly quick, and shuffles past the unimaginative +steam-packet with her hat over one eye and a knife, as it were, up her +baggy sleeves. + +Even the stone-boats at Port Said, busied on jetty extensions, show +their untamed descent beneath their loaded clumsiness. They are all +children of the camel-nosed dhow, who is the mother of mischief; but it +was very good to meet them again in raw sunshine, unchanged in any rope +and patch. + +Old Port Said had disappeared beneath acres of new buildings where one +could walk at leisure without being turned back by soldiers. + +Two or three landmarks remained; two or three were reported as still in +existence, and one Face showed itself after many years--ravaged but +respectable--rigidly respectable. + +'Yes,' said the Face, 'I have been here all the time. But I have made +money, and when I die I am going home to be buried.' + +'Why not go home before you are buried, O Face?' + +'Because I have lived here _so_ long. Home is only good to be buried +in.' + +'And what do you do, nowadays?' + +'Nothing now. I live on my _rentes_--my income.' + +Think of it! To live icily in a perpetual cinematograph show of excited, +uneasy travellers; to watch huge steamers, sliding in and out all day +and all night like railway trucks, unknowing and unsought by a single +soul aboard; to talk five or six tongues indifferently, but to have no +country--no interest in any earth except one reservation in a +Continental cemetery. + +It was a cold evening after heavy rain and the half-flooded streets +reeked. But we undefeated tourists ran about in droves and saw all that +could be seen before train-time. We missed, most of us, the Canal +Company's garden, which happens to mark a certain dreadful and exact +division between East and West. + +Up to that point--it is a fringe of palms, stiff against the sky--the +impetus of home memories and the echo of home interests carry the young +man along very comfortably on his first journey. But at Suez one must +face things. People, generally the most sympathetic, leave the boat +there; the older men who are going on have discovered each other and +begun to talk shop; no newspapers come aboard, only clipped Reuter +telegrams; the world seems cruelly large and self-absorbed. One goes for +a walk and finds this little bit of kept ground, with comfortable +garden-gated houses on either side of the path. Then one begins to +wonder--in the twilight, for choice--when one will see those palms again +from the other side. Then the black hour of homesickness, vain regrets, +foolish promises, and weak despair shuts down with the smell of strange +earth and the cadence of strange tongues. + +Cross-roads and halting-places in the desert are always favoured by +djinns and afrits. The young man will find them waiting for him in the +Canal Company's garden at Port Said. + +On the other hand, if he is fortunate enough to have won the East by +inheritance, as there are families who served her for five or six +generations, he will meet no ghouls in that garden, but a free and a +friendly and an ample welcome from good spirits of the East that awaits +him. The voices of the gardeners and the watchmen will be as the +greetings of his father's servants in his father's house; the evening +smells and the sight of the hibiscus and poinsettia will unlock his +tongue in words and sentences that he thought he had clean forgotten, +and he will go back to the ship (I have seen) as a prince entering on +his kingdom. + +There was a man in our company--a young Englishman--who had just been +granted his heart's desire in the shape of some raw district south of +everything southerly in the Sudan, where, on two-thirds of a member of +Parliament's wage, under conditions of life that would horrify a +self-respecting operative, he will see perhaps some dozen white men in a +year, and will certainly pick up two sorts of fever. He had been moved +to work very hard for this billet by the representations of a friend in +the same service, who said that it was a 'rather decent sort of +service,' and he was all of a heat to reach Khartum, report for duty, +and fall to. If he is lucky, he may get a district where the people are +so virtuous that they do not know how to wear any clothes at all, and so +ignorant that they have never yet come across strong drink. + +The train that took us to Cairo was own sister in looks and fittings to +any South African train--for which I loved her--but she was a trial to +some citizens of the United States, who, being used to the Pullman, did +not understand the side-corridored, solid-compartment idea. The trouble +with a standardised democracy seems to be that, once they break loose +from their standards, they have no props. People are _not_ left behind +and luggage is rarely mislaid on the railroads of the older world. There +is an ordained ritual for the handling of all things, to which if a man +will only conform and keep quiet, he and his will be attended to with +the rest. The people that I watched would not believe this. They charged +about futilely and wasted themselves in trying to get ahead of their +neighbours. + +Here is a fragment from the restaurant-car: 'Look at here! Me and some +friends of mine are going to dine at this table. We don't want to be +separated and--' + +'You 'ave your number for the service, sar?' 'Number? What number? We +want to dine _here_, I tell you.' + +'You shall get your number, sar, for the first service?' + +'Haow's that? Where in thunder do we _get_ the numbers, anyway?' + +'I will give you the number, sar, at the time--for places at the first +service.' + +'Yes, but we want to dine together here--right _now._' + +'The service is not yet ready, sar.' + +And so on--and so on; with marchings and counter-marchings, and every +word nervously italicised. In the end they dined precisely where there +was room for them in that new world which they had strayed into. + +On one side our windows looked out on darkness of the waste; on the +other at the black Canal, all spaced with monstrous headlights of the +night-running steamers. Then came towns, lighted with electricity, +governed by mixed commissions, and dealing in cotton. Such a town, for +instance, as Zagazig, last seen by a very small boy who was lifted out +of a railway-carriage and set down beneath a whitewashed wall under +naked stars in an illimitable emptiness because, they told him, the +train was on fire. Childlike, this did not worry him. What stuck in his +sleepy mind was the absurd name of the place and his father's prophecy +that when he grew up he would 'come that way in a big steamer.' + +So all his life, the word 'Zagazig' carried memories of a brick shed, +the flicker of an oil-lamp's floating wick, a sky full of eyes, and an +engine coughing in a desert at the world's end; which memories returned +in a restaurant-car jolting through what seemed to be miles of +brilliantly lighted streets and factories. No one at the table had even +turned his head for the battlefields of Kassassin and Tel-el-Kebir. +After all, why should they? That work is done, and children are getting +ready to be born who will say: '_I_ can remember Gondokoro (or El-Obeid +or some undreamed of Clapham Junction, Abyssinia-way) before a single +factory was started--before the overhead traffic began. Yes, when there +was a fever--actually fever--in the city itself!' + +The gap is no greater than that between to-day's and t'other day's +Zagazig--between the horsed vans of the Overland Route in Lieutenant +Waghorn's time and the shining motor that flashed us to our Cairo hotel +through what looked like the suburbs of Marseilles or Rome. + +Always keep a new city till morning, 'In the daytime,' as it is written +in the Perspicuous Book,[6] 'thou hast long occupation,' Our window gave +on to the river, but before one moved toward it one heard the thrilling +squeal of the kites--those same thievish Companions of the Road who, at +that hour, were watching every Englishman's breakfast in every compound +and camp from Cairo to Calcutta. + +[Footnote 6: The Koran.] + +Voices rose from below--unintelligible words in maddeningly familiar +accents. A black boy in one blue garment climbed, using his toes as +fingers, the tipped mainyard of a Nile boat and framed himself in the +window. Then, because he felt happy, he sang, all among the wheeling +kites. And beneath our balcony rolled very Nile Himself, golden in +sunshine, wrinkled under strong breezes, with a crowd of creaking +cargo-boats waiting for a bridge to be opened. + +On the cut-stone quay above, a line of cab drivers--a _ticca-gharri_ +stand, nothing less--lolled and chaffed and tinkered with their +harnesses in every beautiful attitude of the ungirt East. All the ground +about was spotted with chewed sugarcane--first sign of the hot weather +all the world over. + +Troops with startlingly pink faces (one would not have noticed this +yesterday) rolled over the girder bridge between churning motors and +bubbling camels, and the whole long-coated loose-sleeved Moslem world +was awake and about its business, as befits sensible people who pray at +dawn. + +I made haste to cross the bridge and to hear the palms in the wind on +the far side. They sang as nobly as though they had been true coconuts, +and the thrust of the north wind behind them was almost as open-handed +as the thrust of the Trades. Then came a funeral--the sheeted corpse on +the shallow cot, the brisk-pacing bearers (if he was good, the sooner he +is buried the sooner in heaven; if bad, bury him swiftly for the sake of +the household--either way, as the Prophet says, do not let the mourners +go too long weeping and hungry)--the women behind, tossing their arms +and lamenting, and men and boys chanting low and high. + +They might have come forth from the Taksali Gate in the city of Lahore +on just such a cold weather morning as this, on their way to the +Mohammedan burial-grounds by the river. And the veiled countrywomen, +shuffling side by side, elbow pressed to hip, and eloquent right hand +pivoting round, palm uppermost, to give value to each shrill phrase, +might have been the wives of so many Punjabi cultivators but that they +wore another type of bangle and slipper. A knotty-kneed youth sitting +high on a donkey, both amuleted against the evil eye, chewed three +purplish-feet of sugar-cane, which made one envious as well as +voluptuously homesick, though the sugar-cane of Egypt is not to be +compared with that of Bombay. + +Hans Breitmann writes somewhere: + + Oh, if you live in Leyden town + You'll meet, if troot be told, + Der forms of all der freunds dot tied + When du werst six years old. + +And they were all there under the chanting palms--saices, orderlies, +pedlars, water-carriers, street-cleaners, chicken-sellers and the +slate-coloured buffalo with the china-blue eyes being talked to by a +little girl with the big stick. Behind the hedges of well-kept gardens +squatted the brown gardener, making trenches indifferently with a hoe or +a toe, and under the municipal lamp-post lounged the bronze policeman--a +touch of Arab about mouth and lean nostril--quite unconcerned with a +ferocious row between two donkey-men. They were fighting across the body +of a Nubian who had chosen to sleep in that place. Presently, one of +them stepped back on the sleeper's stomach. The Nubian grunted, elbowed +himself up, rolled his eyes, and pronounced a few utterly dispassionate +words. The warriors stopped, settled their headgear, and went away as +quickly as the Nubian went to sleep again. This was life, the real, +unpolluted stuff--worth a desert-full of mummies. And right through the +middle of it--hooting and kicking up the Nile--passed a Cook's steamer +all ready to take tourists to Assuan. From the Nubian's point of view +she, and not himself, was the wonder--as great as the Swiss-controlled, +Swiss-staffed hotel behind her, whose lift, maybe, the Nubian helped to +run. Marids, and afrits, guardians of hidden gold, who choke or crush +the rash seeker; encounters with the long-buried dead in a Cairo +back-alley; undreamed-of promotions, and suddenly lit loves are the +stuff of any respectable person's daily life; but the white man from +across the water, arriving in hundreds with his unveiled womenfolk, who +builds himself flying-rooms and talks along wires, who flees up and down +the river, mad to sit upon camels and asses, constrained to throw down +silver from both hands--at once a child and a warlock--this thing must +come to the Nubian sheer out of the _Thousand and One Nights_. At any +rate, the Nubian was perfectly sane. Having eaten, he slept in God's own +sunlight, and I left him, to visit the fortunate and guarded and +desirable city of Cairo, to whose people, male and female, Allah has +given subtlety in abundance. Their jesters are known to have surpassed +in refinement the jesters of Damascus, as did their twelve police +captains the hardiest and most corrupt of Bagdad in the tolerant days of +Harun-al-Raschid; while their old women, not to mention their young +wives, could deceive the Father of Lies himself. Delhi is a great +place--most bazaar storytellers in India make their villain hail from +there; but when the agony and intrigue are piled highest and the tale +halts till the very last breathless sprinkle of cowries has ceased to +fall on his mat, why then, with wagging head and hooked forefinger, the +storyteller goes on: + +'_But_ there was a man from Cairo, an Egyptian of the Egyptians, +who'--and all the crowd knows that a bit of real metropolitan devilry is +coming. + + + + +III + + +A SERPENT OF OLD NILE + +Modern Cairo is an unkempt place. The streets are dirty and +ill-constructed, the pavements unswept and often broken, the tramways +thrown, rather than laid, down, the gutters neglected. One expects +better than this in a city where the tourist spends so much every +season. Granted that the tourist is a dog, he comes at least with a bone +in his mouth, and a bone that many people pick. He should have a cleaner +kennel. The official answer is that the tourist-traffic is a flea-bite +compared with the cotton industry. Even so, land in Cairo city must be +too valuable to be used for cotton growing. It might just as well be +paved or swept. There is some sort of authority supposed to be in charge +of municipal matters, but its work is crippled by what is called 'The +Capitulations.' It was told to me that every one in Cairo except the +English, who appear to be the mean whites of these parts, has the +privilege of appealing to his consul on every conceivable subject from +the disposal of a garbage-can to that of a corpse. As almost every one +with claims to respectability, and certainly every one without any, +keeps a consul, it follows that there is one consul per superficial +meter, arshin, or cubit of Ezekiel within the city. And since every +consul is zealous for the honour of his country and not at all above +annoying the English on general principles, municipal progress is slow. + +Cairo strikes one as unventilated and unsterilised, even when the sun +and wind are scouring it together. The tourist talks a good deal, as you +may see here, but the permanent European resident does not open his +mouth more than is necessary--sound travels so far across flat water. +Besides, the whole position of things, politically and administratively, +is essentially false. + +Here is a country which is not a country but a longish strip of +market-garden, nominally in charge of a government which is not a +government but the disconnected satrapy of a half-dead empire, +controlled pecksniffingly by a Power which is not a Power but an Agency, +which Agency has been tied up by years, custom, and blackmail into all +sorts of intimate relations with six or seven European Powers, all with +rights and perquisites, none of whose subjects seem directly amenable to +any Power which at first, second, or third hand is supposed to be +responsible. That is the barest outline. To fill in the details (if any +living man knows them) would be as easy as to explain baseball to an +Englishman or the Eton Wall game to a citizen of the United States. But +it is a fascinating play. There are Frenchmen in it, whose logical mind +it offends, and they revenge themselves by printing the finance-reports +and the catalogue of the Bulak Museum in pure French. There are Germans +in it, whose demands must be carefully weighed--not that they can by any +means be satisfied, but they serve to block other people's. There are +Russians in it, who do not very much matter at present but will be heard +from later. There are Italians and Greeks in it (both rather pleased +with themselves just now), full of the higher finance and the finer +emotions. There are Egyptian pashas in it, who come back from Paris at +intervals and ask plaintively to whom they are supposed to belong. There +is His Highness, the Khedive, in it, and _he_ must be considered not a +little, and there are women in it, up to their eyes. And there are great +English cotton and sugar interests, and angry English importers +clamouring to know why they cannot do business on rational lines or get +into the Sudan, which they hold is ripe for development if the +administration there would only see reason. Among these conflicting +interests and amusements sits and perspires the English official, whose +job is irrigating or draining or reclaiming land on behalf of a trifle +of ten million people, and he finds himself tripped up by skeins of +intrigue and bafflement which may ramify through half a dozen harems and +four consulates. All this makes for suavity, toleration, and the blessed +habit of not being surprised at anything whatever. + +Or, so it seemed to me, watching a big dance at one of the hotels. Every +European race and breed, and half of the United States were +represented, but I fancied I could make out three distinct groupings. +The tourists with the steamer-trunk creases still across their dear, +excited backs; the military and the officials sure of their partners +beforehand, and saying clearly what ought to be said; and a third +contingent, lower-voiced, softer-footed, and keener-eyed than the other +two, at ease, as gipsies are on their own ground, flinging half-words in +local _argot_ over shoulders at their friends, understanding on the nod +and moved by springs common to their clan only. For example, a woman was +talking flawless English to her partner, an English officer. Just before +the next dance began, another woman beckoned to her, Eastern fashion, +all four fingers flicking downward. The first woman crossed to a potted +palm; the second moved toward it also, till the two drew, up, not +looking at each other, the plant between them. Then she who had beckoned +spoke in a strange tongue _at_ the palm. The first woman, still looking +away, answered in the same fashion with a rush of words that rattled +like buckshot through the stiff fronds. Her tone had nothing to do with +that in which she greeted her new partner, who came up as the music +began. The one was a delicious drawl; the other had been the guttural +rasp and click of the kitchen and the bazaar. So she moved off, and, in +a little, the second woman disappeared into the crowd. Most likely it +was no more than some question of the programme or dress, but the +prompt, feline stealth and coolness of it, the lightning-quick return to +and from world-apart civilisations stuck in my memory. + +So did the bloodless face of a very old Turk, fresh from some horror of +assassination in Constantinople in which he, too, had been nearly +pistolled, but, they said, he had argued quietly over the body of a late +colleague, as one to whom death was of no moment, until the hysterical +Young Turks were abashed and let him get away--to the lights and music +of this elegantly appointed hotel. + +These modern 'Arabian Nights' are too hectic for quiet folk. I declined +upon a more rational Cairo--the Arab city where everything is as it was +when Maruf the Cobbler fled from Fatima-el-Orra and met the djinn in the +Adelia Musjid. The craftsmen and merchants sat on their shop-boards, a +rich mystery of darkness behind them, and the narrow gullies were +polished to shoulder-height by the mere flux of people. Shod white men, +unless they are agriculturists, touch lightly, with their hands at most, +in passing. Easterns lean and loll and squat and sidle against things as +they daunder along. When the feet are bare, the whole body thinks. +Moreover, it is unseemly to buy or to do aught and be done with it. Only +people with tight-fitting clothes that need no attention have time for +that. So we of the loose skirt and flowing trousers and slack slipper +make full and ample salutations to our friends, and redouble them toward +our ill-wishers, and if it be a question of purchase, the stuff must be +fingered and appraised with a proverb or so, and if it be a +fool-tourist who thinks that he cannot be cheated, O true believers! +draw near and witness how we shall loot him. + +But I bought nothing. The city thrust more treasure upon me than I could +carry away. It came out of dark alleyways on tawny camels loaded with +pots; on pattering asses half buried under nets of cut clover; in the +exquisitely modelled hands of little children scurrying home from the +cookshop with the evening meal, chin pressed against the platter's edge +and eyes round with responsibility above the pile; in the broken lights +from jutting rooms overhead, where the women lie, chin between palms, +looking out of windows not a foot from the floor; in every glimpse into +every courtyard, where the men smoke by the tank; in the heaps of +rubbish and rotten bricks that flanked newly painted houses, waiting to +be built, some day, into houses once more; in the slap and slide or the +heelless red-and-yellow slippers all around, and, above all, in the +mixed delicious smells of frying butter, Mohammedan bread, kababs, +leather, cooking-smoke, assafetida, peppers, and turmeric. Devils cannot +abide the smell of burning turmeric, but the right-minded man loves it. +It stands for evening that brings all home, the evening meal, the +dipping of friendly hands in the dish, the one face, the dropped veil, +and the big, guttering pipe afterward. + +Praised be Allah for the diversity of His creatures and for the Five +Advantages of Travel and for the glories of the Cities of the Earth! +Harun-al-Raschid, in roaring Bagdad of old, never delighted himself to +the limits of such a delight as was mine, that afternoon. It is true +that the call to prayer, the cadence of some of the street-cries, and +the cut of some of the garments differed a little from what I had been +brought up to; but for the rest, the shadow on the dial had turned back +twenty degrees for me, and I found myself saying, as perhaps the dead +say when they have recovered their wits, 'This is my real world again,' + +Some men are Mohammedan by birth, some by training, and some by fate, +but I have never met an Englishman yet who hated Islam and its people as +I have met Englishmen who hated some other faiths. _Musalmani awadani_, +as the saying goes--where there are Mohammedans, there is a +comprehensible civilisation. + +Then we came upon a deserted mosque of pitted brick colonnades round a +vast courtyard open to the pale sky. It was utterly empty except for its +own proper spirit, and that caught one by the throat as one entered. +Christian churches may compromise with images and side-chapels where the +unworthy or abashed can traffic with accessible saints. Islam has but +one pulpit and one stark affirmation--living or dying, one only--and +where men have repeated that in red-hot belief through centuries, the +air still shakes to it. + +Some say now that Islam is dying and that nobody cares; others that, if +she withers in Europe and Asia, she will renew herself in Africa and +will return--terrible--after certain years, at the head of all the nine +sons of Ham; others dream that the English understand Islam as no one +else does, and, in years to be, Islam will admit this and the world will +be changed. If you go to the mosque Al Azhar--the thousand-year-old +University of Cairo--you will be able to decide for yourself. There is +nothing to see except many courts, cool in hot weather, surrounded by +cliff-like brick walls. Men come and go through dark doorways, giving on +to yet darker cloisters, as freely as though the place was a bazaar. +There are no aggressive educational appliances. The students sit on the +ground, and their teachers instruct them, mostly by word of mouth, in +grammar, syntax, logic; _al-hisab_, which is arithmetic; _al-jab'r w'al +muqabalah_, which is algebra; _at-tafsir,_ commentaries on the Koran, +and last and most troublesome, _al-ahadis,_ traditions, and yet more +commentaries on the law of Islam, which leads back, like everything, to +the Koran once again. (For it is written, 'Truly the Quran is none other +than a revelation.') It is a very comprehensive curriculum. No man can +master it entirely, but any can stay there as long as he pleases. The +university provides commons--twenty-five thousand loaves a day, I +believe,--and there is always a place to lie down in for such as do not +desire a shut room and a bed. Nothing could be more simple or, given +certain conditions, more effective. Close upon six hundred professors, +who represent officially or unofficially every school or thought, teach +ten or twelve thousand students, who draw from every Mohammedan +community, west and east between Manila and Morocco, north and south +between Kamchatka and the Malay mosque at Cape Town. These drift off to +become teachers of little schools, preachers at mosques, students of the +Law known to millions (but rarely to Europeans), dreamers, devotees, or +miracle-workers in all the ends of the earth. The man who interested me +most was a red-bearded, sunk-eyed mullah from the Indian frontier, not +likely to be last at any distribution of food, who stood up like a lean +wolfhound among collies in a little assembly at a doorway. + +And there was another mosque, sumptuously carpeted and lighted (which +the Prophet does not approve of), where men prayed in the dull mutter +that, at times, mounts and increases under the domes like the boom of +drums or the surge of a hot hive before the swarm flings out. And round +the corner of it, one almost ran into Our inconspicuous and wholly +detached Private of Infantry, his tunic open, his cigarette alight, +leaning against some railings and considering the city below. Men in +forts and citadels and garrisons all the world over go up at twilight as +automatically as sheep at sundown, to have a last look round. They say +little and return as silently across the crunching gravel, detested by +bare feet, to their whitewashed rooms and regulated lives. One of the +men told me he thought well of Cairo. It was interesting. 'Take it from +me,' he said, 'there's a lot in seeing places, because you can remember +'em afterward.' + +He was very right. The purple and lemon-coloured hazes of dusk and +reflected day spread over the throbbing, twinkling streets, masked the +great outline of the citadel and the desert hills, and conspired to +confuse and suggest and evoke memories, till Cairo the Sorceress cast +her proper shape and danced before me in the heartbreaking likeness of +every city I had known and loved, a little farther up the road. + +It was a cruel double-magic. For in the very hour that my homesick soul +had surrendered itself to the dream of the shadow that had turned back +on the dial, I realised all the desolate days and homesickness of all +the men penned in far-off places among strange sounds and smells. + + + + +IV + + +UP THE RIVER + +Once upon a time there was a murderer who got off with a life-sentence. +What impressed him most, when he had time to think, was the frank +boredom of all who took part in the ritual. + +'It was just like going to a doctor or a dentist,' he explained. '_You_ +come to 'em very full of your affairs, and then you discover that it's +only part of their daily work to _them_. I expect,' he added, 'I should +have found it the same if--er--I'd gone on to the finish.' + +He would have. Break into any new Hell or Heaven and you will be met at +its well-worn threshold by the bored experts in attendance. + +For three weeks we sat on copiously chaired and carpeted decks, +carefully isolated from everything that had anything to do with Egypt, +under chaperonage of a properly orientalised dragoman. Twice or thrice +daily, our steamer drew up at a mud-bank covered with donkeys. Saddles +were hauled out of a hatch in our bows; the donkeys were dressed, dealt +round like cards: we rode off through crops or desert, as the case might +be, were introduced in ringing tones to a temple, and were then duly +returned to our bridge and our Baedekers. For sheer comfort, not to say +padded sloth, the life was unequalled, and since the bulk of our +passengers were citizens of the United States--Egypt in winter ought to +be admitted into the Union as a temporary territory--there was no lack +of interest. They were overwhelmingly women, with here and there a +placid nose-led husband or father, visibly suffering from congestion of +information about his native city. I had the joy of seeing two such men +meet. They turned their backs resolutely on the River, bit and lit +cigars, and for one hour and a quarter ceased not to emit statistics of +the industries, commerce, manufacture, transport, and journalism of +their towns;--Los Angeles, let us say, and Rochester, N.Y. It sounded +like a duel between two cash-registers. + +One forgot, of course, that all the dreary figures were alive to them, +and as Los Angeles spoke Rochester visualised. Next day I met an +Englishman from the Soudan end of things, very full of a little-known +railway which had been laid down in what had looked like raw desert, and +therefore had turned out to be full of paying freight. He was in the +full-tide of it when Los Angeles ranged alongside and cast anchor, +fascinated by the mere roll of numbers. + +'Haow's that?' he cut in sharply at a pause. + +He was told how, and went on to drain my friend dry concerning that +railroad, out of sheer fraternal interest, as he explained, in 'any +darn' thing that's being made anywheres,' + +'So you see,' my friend went on, 'we shall be bringing Abyssinian cattle +into Cairo.' + +'On the hoof?' One quick glance at the Desert ranges. + +'No, no! By rail and River. And after _that_ we're going to grow cotton +between the Blue and the White Nile and knock spots out of the States.' + +'Ha-ow's that?' + +'This way.' The speaker spread his first and second fingers fanwise +under the big, interested beak. 'That's the Blue Nile. And that's the +White. There's a difference of so many feet between 'em, an' in that +fork here, 'tween my fingers, we shall--' + +'_I_ see. Irrigate on the strength of the little difference in the +levels. How many acres?' + +Again Los Angeles was told. He expanded like a frog in a shower. 'An' I +thought,' he murmured, 'Egypt was all mummies and the Bible! _I_ used to +know something about cotton. Now we'll talk.' + +All that day the two paced the deck with the absorbed insolente of +lovers; and, lover-like, each would steal away and tell me what a +splendid soul was his companion. + +That was one type; but there were others--professional men who did not +make or sell things--and these the hand of an all-exacting Democracy +seemed to have run into one mould. They 'were not reticent, but no +matter whence they hailed, their talk was as standardised as the +fittings of a Pullman. + +I hinted something of this to a woman aboard who was learned in their +sermons of either language. + +'I think,' she began, 'that the staleness you complain of--' + +'I never said "staleness,"' I protested. + +'But you thought it. The staleness you noticed is due to our men being +so largely educated by old women--old maids. Practically till he goes to +College, and not always then, a boy can't get away from them.' + +'Then what happens?' + +'The natural result. A man's instinct is to teach a boy to think for +himself. If a woman can't make a boy think _as_ she thinks, she sits +down and cries. A man hasn't any standards. He makes 'em. A woman's the +most standardised being in the world. She has to be. _Now_ d'you see?' + +'Not yet.' + +'Well, our trouble in America is that we're being school-marmed to +death. You can see it in any paper you pick up. What were those men +talking about just now?' + +'Food adulteration, police-reform, and beautifying waste-lots in towns,' +I replied promptly. + +She threw up her hands. 'I knew it!' she cried. 'Our great National +Policy of co-educational housekeeping! Ham-frills and pillow-shams. Did +you ever know a man get a woman's respect by parading around creation +with a dish-clout pinned to his coat-tails?' + +'But if his woman ord----told him to do it?' I suggested. + +'Then she'd despise him the more for doing it. _You_ needn't laugh. +'You're coming to the same sort of thing in England.' + +I returned to the little gathering. A woman was talking to them as one +accustomed to talk from birth. They listened with the rigid attention of +men early trained to listen to, but not to talk with, women. She was, to +put it mildly, the mother of all she-bores, but when she moved on, no +man ventured to say as much. + +'That's what I mean by being school-manned to death,' said my +acquaintance wickedly. 'Why, she bored 'em stiff; but they are so well +brought up, they didn't even know they were bored. Some day the American +Man is going to revolt.' + +'And what'll the American Woman do?' + +'She'll sit and cry--and it'll do her good.' + +Later on, I met a woman from a certain Western State seeing God's great, +happy, inattentive world for the first time, and rather distressed that +it was not like hers. She had always understood that the English were +brutal to their wives--the papers of her State said so. (If you only +knew the papers of her State I) But she had not noticed any scandalous +treatment so far, and Englishwomen, whom she admitted she would never +understand, seemed to enjoy a certain specious liberty and equality; +while Englishmen were distinctly kind to girls in difficulties over +their baggage and tickets on strange railways. Quite a nice people, she +concluded, but without much sense of humour. One day, she showed me +what looked like a fashion-paper print of a dress-stuff--a pretty oval +medallion of stars on a striped grenadine background that somehow seemed +familiar. + +'How nice! What is it?' I asked. + +'Our National Flag,' she replied. + +'Indeed. But it doesn't look quite----' + +'No. This is a new design for arranging the stars so that they shall be +easier to count and more decorative in effect. We're going to take a +vote on it in our State, where _we_ have the franchise. I shall cast my +vote when I get home.' + +'Really! And how will you vote?' + +'I'm just thinking that out.' She spread the picture on her knee and +considered it, head to one side, as though it were indeed dress +material. + +All this while the land of Egypt marched solemnly beside us on either +hand. The river being low, we saw it from the boat as one long plinth, +twelve to twenty feet high of brownish, purplish mud, visibly upheld +every hundred yards or so by glistening copper caryatides in the shape +of naked men baling water up to the crops above. Behind that bright +emerald line ran the fawn-or tiger-coloured background of desert, and a +pale blue sky closed all. There was Egypt even as the Pharaohs, their +engineers and architects, had seen it--land to cultivate, folk and +cattle for the work, and outside that work no distraction nor allurement +of any kind whatever, save when the dead were taken to their place +beyond the limits of cultivation. When the banks grew lower, one looked +across as much as two miles of green-stuff packed like a toy Noah's-ark +with people, camels, sheep, goats, oxen, buffaloes, and an occasional +horse. The beasts stood as still, too, as the toys, because they were +tethered or hobbled each to his own half-circle of clover, and moved +forward when that was eaten. Only the very little kids were loose, and +these played on the flat mud roofs like kittens. + +No wonder 'every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians.' The +dusty, naked-footed field-tracks are cut down to the last centimetre of +grudged width; the main roads are lifted high on the flanks of the +canals, unless the permanent-way of some light railroad can be pressed +to do duty for them. The wheat, the pale ripened tufted sugar-cane, the +millet, the barley, the onions, the fringed castor-oil bushes jostle +each other for foothold, since the Desert will not give them room; and +men chase the falling Nile inch by inch, each dawn, with new furrowed +melon-beds on the still dripping mud-banks. + +Administratively, such a land ought to be a joy. The people do not +emigrate; all their resources are in plain sight; they are as accustomed +as their cattle to being led about. All they desire, and it has been +given them, is freedom from murder and mutilation, rape and robbery. The +rest they can attend to in their silent palm-shaded villages where the +pigeons coo and the little children play in the dust. + +But Western civilisation is a devastating and a selfish game. Like the +young woman from 'our State,' it says in effect: 'I am rich. I've +nothing to do. I _must_ do something. I shall take up social reform.' + +Just now there is a little social reform in Egypt which is rather +amusing. The Egyptian cultivator borrows money; as all farmers must. +This land without hedge or wild-flower is his passion by age-long +inheritance and suffering, by, in and for which he lives. He borrows to +develop it and to buy more at from £30 to £200 per acre, the profit on +which, when all is paid, works out at between £5 to £10 per acre. +Formerly, he borrowed from the local money-lenders, mostly Greeks, at 30 +per cent per annum and over. This rate is not excessive, so long as +public opinion allows the borrower from time to time to slay the lender; +but modern administration calls that riot and murder. Some years ago, +therefore, there was established a State-guaranteed Bank which lent to +the cultivators at eight per cent, and the cultivator zealously availed +himself of that privilege. He did not default more than in reason, but +being a farmer, he naturally did not pay up till threatened with being +sold up. So he prospered and bought more land, which was his heart's +desire. This year--1913--the administration issued sudden orders that no +man owning less than five acres could borrow on security of his land. +The matter interested me directly, because I held five hundred pounds +worth of shares in that State-guaranteed Bank, and more than half our +clients were small men of less than five acres. So I made inquiries in +quarters that seemed to possess information, and was told that the new +law was precisely on all-fours with the Homestead Act or the United +States and France, and the intentions of Divine Providence--or words to +that effect. + +'But,' I asked, 'won't this limitation of credit prevent the men with +less than five acres from borrowing more to buy more land and getting on +in the world?' + +'Yes,' was the answer, 'of course it will. That's just what we want to +prevent. Half these fellows ruin themselves trying to buy more land. +We've got to protect them against themselves.' + +That, alas! is the one enemy against which no law can protect any son of +Adam; since the real reasons that make or break a man are too absurd or +too obscene to be reached from outside. Then I cast about in other +quarters to discover what the cultivator was going to do about it. + +'Oh, him?' said one of my many informants. '_He's_ all right. There are +about six ways of evading the Act that, _I_ know of. The fellah probably +knows another six. He has been trained to look after himself since the +days of Rameses. He can forge land-transfers for one thing; borrow land +enough to make his holding more than five acres for as long as it takes +to register a loan; get money from his own women (yes, that's one result +of modern progress in this land!) or go back to his old friend the Greek +at 30 per cent.' + +'Then the Greek will sell him up, and that will be against the law, +won't it?' I said. + +'Don't you worry about the Greek. He can get through any law ever made +if there's five piastres on the other side of it.' + +'Maybe; but _was_ the Agricultural Bank selling the cultivators up too +much?' + +'Not in the least. The number of small holdings is on the increase, if +anything. Most cultivators won't pay a loan until you point a +judgment-summons at their head. They think that shows they're men of +consequence. This swells the number of judgment-summonses issued, but it +doesn't mean a land-sale for each summons. Another fact is that in real +life some men don't get on as well as others. Either they don't farm +well enough, or they take to hashish, or go crazy about a girl and +borrow money for her, or--er--something of that kind, and they are sold +up. You may have noticed that.' + +'I have. And meantime, what is the fellah doing?' + +'Meantime, the fellah has misread the Act--as usual. He thinks it's +retrospective, and that he needn't pay past debts. They may make +trouble, but I fancy your Bank will keep quiet.' + +'Keep quiet! With the bottom knocked out of two-thirds of its business +and--and my five hundred pounds involved!' + +'Is that your trouble? I don't think your shares will rise in a hurry; +but if you want some fun, go and talk to the French about it,' + +This seemed as good a way as any of getting a little interest. The +Frenchman that I went to spoke with a certain knowledge of finance and +politics and the natural malice of a logical race against an illogical +horde. + +'Yes,' he said. 'The idea of limiting credit under these circumstances +is absurd. But that is not all. People are not frightened, business is +not upset by one absurd idea, but by the possibilities of more,' + +'Are there any more ideas, then, that are going to be tried on this +country?' + +'Two or three,' he replied placidly. 'They are all generous; but they +are all ridiculous. Egypt is not a place where one should promulgate +ridiculous ideas.' + +'But my shares--my shares!' I cried. 'They have already dropped several +points.' + +'It is possible. They will drop more. Then they will rise.' + +'Thank you. But why?' + +'Because the idea is fundamentally absurd. That will never be admitted +by your people, but there will be arrangements, accommodations, +adjustments, till it is all the same as it used to be. It will be the +concern of the Permanent Official--poor devil!--to pull it straight. It +is always his concern. Meantime, prices will rise for all things.' + +'Why?' + +'Because the land is the chief security in Egypt. If a man cannot borrow +on that security, the rates of interest will increase on whatever other +security he offers. That will affect all work and wages and Government +contracts.' + +He put it so convincingly and with so many historical illustrations +that I saw whole perspectives of the old energetic Pharaohs, masters of +life and death along the River, checked in mid-career by cold-blooded +accountants chanting that not even the Gods themselves can make two plus +two more than four. And the vision ran down through the ages to one +little earnest head on a Cook's steamer, bent sideways over the vital +problem of rearranging 'our National Flag' so that it should be 'easier +to count the stars.' + +For the thousandth time: Praised be Allah for the diversity of His +creatures! + + + + +V + + +DEAD KINGS + +The Swiss are the only people who have taken the trouble to master the +art of hotel-keeping. Consequently, in the things that really +matter--beds, baths, and victuals--they control Egypt; and since every +land always throws back to its aboriginal life (which is why the United +States delight in telling aged stories), any ancient Egyptian would at +once understand and join in with the life that roars through the +nickel-plumbed tourist-barracks on the river, where all the world +frolics in the sunshine. At first sight, the show lends itself to cheap +moralising, till one recalls that one only sees busy folk when they are +idle, and rich folk when they have made their money. A citizen of the +United States--his first trip abroad--pointed out a middle-aged +Anglo-Saxon who was relaxing after the manner of several school-boys. + +'There's a sample!' said the Son of Hustle scornfully. 'Tell me, _he_ +ever did anything in his life?' Unluckily he had pitched upon one who, +when he is in collar, reckons thirteen and a half hours a fairish day's +work. + +Among this assembly were men and women burned to an even blue-black +tint--civilised people with bleached hair and sparkling eyes. They +explained themselves as 'diggers'--just diggers--and opened me a new +world. Granted that all Egypt is one big undertaker's emporium, what +could be more fascinating than to get Government leave to rummage in a +corner of it, to form a little company and spend the cold weather trying +to pay dividends in the shape of amethyst necklaces, lapis-lazuli +scarabs, pots of pure gold, and priceless bits of statuary? Or, if one +is rich, what better fun than to grub-stake an expedition on the +supposed site of a dead city and see what turns up? There was a big-game +hunter who had used most of the Continent, quite carried away by this +sport. + +'I'm going to take shares in a city next year, and watch the digging +myself,' he said. 'It beats elephants to pieces. In _this_ game you're +digging up dead things and making them alive. Aren't you going to have a +flutter?' + +He showed me a seductive little prospectus. Myself, I would sooner not +lay hands on a dead man's kit or equipment, especially when he has gone +to his grave in the belief that the trinkets guarantee salvation. Of +course, there is the other argument, put forward by sceptics, that the +Egyptian was a blatant self-advertiser, and that nothing would please +him more than the thought that he was being looked at and admired after +all these years. Still, one might rob some shrinking soul who didn't see +it in that light. + +At the end of spring the diggers flock back out of the Desert and +exchange chaff and flews in the gorgeous verandahs. For example, A's +company has made a find of priceless stuff, Heaven knows how old, and +is--not too meek about it. Company B, less fortunate, hints that if only +A knew to what extent their native diggers had been stealing and +disposing of the thefts, under their very archaeological noses, they +would not be so happy. + +'Nonsense,' says Company A. 'Our diggers are above suspicion. Besides, +we watched 'em.' + +'_Are_ they?' is the reply. 'Well, next time you are in Berlin, go to +the Museum and you'll see what the Germans have got hold of. It must +have come out of your ground. The Dynasty proves it.' So A's cup is +poisoned--till next year. + +No collector or curator of a museum should have any moral scruples +whatever; and I have never met one who had; though I have been informed +by deeply-shocked informants of four nationalities that the Germans are +the most flagrant pirates of all. + +The business of exploration is about as romantic as earth-work on Indian +railways. There are the same narrow-gauge trams and donkeys, the same +shining gangs in the borrow-pits and the same skirling dark-blue crowds +of women and children with the little earth-baskets. But the hoes are +not driven in, nor the clods jerked aside at random, and when the work +fringes along the base of some mighty wall, men use their hands +carefully. A white man--or he was white at breakfast-time--patrols +through the continually renewed dust-haze. Weeks may pass without a +single bead, but anything may turn up at any moment, and it is his to +answer the shout of discovery. + +We had the good fortune to stay a while at the Headquarters of the +Metropolitan Museum (New York) in a valley riddled like a rabbit-warren +with tombs. Their stables, store-houses, and servants' quarters are old +tombs; their talk is of tombs, and their dream (the diggers' dream +always) is to discover a virgin tomb where the untouched dead lie with +their jewels upon them. Four miles away are the wide-winged, rampant +hotels. Here is nothing whatever but the rubbish of death that died +thousands of years ago, on whose grave no green thing has ever grown. +Villages, expert in two hundred generations of grave-robbing, cower +among the mounds of wastage, and whoop at the daily tourist. Paths made +by bare feet run from one half-tomb, half-mud-heap to the next, not much +more distinct than snail smears, but they have been used since.... + +Time is a dangerous thing to play with. That morning the concierge had +toiled for us among steamer-sailings to see if we could save three days. +That evening we sat with folk for whom Time had stood still since the +Ptolemies. I wondered, at first, how it concerned them or any man if +such and such a Pharaoh had used to his own glory the plinths and +columns of such another Pharaoh before or after Melchizedek. Their +whole background was too inconceivably remote for the mind to work on. +But the next morning we were taken to the painted tomb of a noble--a +Minister of Agriculture--who died four or five thousand years ago. He +said to me, in so many words: 'Observe I was very like your friend, the +late Mr. Samuel Pepys, of your Admiralty. I took an enormous interest in +life, which I most thoroughly enjoyed, on its human and on its spiritual +side. I do not think you will find many departments of State better +managed than mine, or a better-kept house, or a nicer set of young +people ... My daughters! The eldest, as you can see, takes after her +mother. The youngest, my favourite, is supposed to favour me. Now I will +show you all the things that I did, and delighted in, till it was time +for me to present my accounts elsewhere.' And he showed me, detail by +detail, in colour and in drawing, his cattle, his horses, his crops, his +tours in the district, his accountants presenting the revenue returns, +and he himself, busiest of the busy, in the good day. + +But when we left that broad, gay ante-room and came to the narrower +passage where once his body had lain and where all his doom was +portrayed, I could not follow him so well. I did not see how he, so +experienced in life, could be cowed by friezes of brute-headed +apparitions or satisfied by files of repeated figures. He explained, +something to this effect: + +'We live on the River--a line without breadth or thickness. Behind us +is the Desert, which nothing can affect; wither no man goes till he is +dead, (One does not use good agricultural ground for cemeteries.) +Practically, then, we only move in two dimensions--up stream or down. +Take away the Desert, which we don't consider any more than a healthy +man considers death, and you will see that we have no background +whatever. Our world is all one straight bar of brown or green earth, +and, for some months, mere sky-reflecting water that wipes out +everything You have only to look at the Colossi to realise how +enormously and extravagantly man and his works must scale in such a +country. Remember too, that our crops are sure, and our life is very, +very easy. Above all, we have no neighbours That is to say, we must give +out, for we cannot take in. Now, I put it to you, what is left for a +priest with imagination, except to develop ritual and multiply gods on +friezes? Unlimited leisure, limited space of two dimensions, divided by +the hypnotising line of the River, and bounded by visible, unalterable +death--must, _ipso facto_----' + +'Even so,' I interrupted. 'I do not comprehend your Gods--your direct +worship of beasts, for instance?' + +'You prefer the indirect? The worship of Humanity with a capital H? My +Gods, or what I saw in them, contented me.' + +'What did you see in your Gods as affecting belief and conduct?' + +'You know the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx?' + +'No,' I murmured. 'What is it?' + +'"All sensible men are of the same religion, but no sensible man ever +tells,"' he replied. With that I had to be content, for the passage +ended in solid rock. + +There were other tombs in the valley, but the owners were dumb, except +one Pharaoh, who from the highest motives had broken with the creeds and +instincts of his country, and so had all but wrecked it. One of his +discoveries was an artist, who saw men not on one plane but modelled +full or three-quarter face, with limbs suited to their loads and +postures. His vividly realised stuff leaped to the eye out of the +acreage of low-relief in the old convention, and I applauded as a +properly brought-up tourist should. + +'Mine was a fatal mistake,' Pharaoh Ahkenaton sighed in my ear,' I +mistook the conventions of life for the realities.' + +'Ah, those soul-crippling conventions!' I cried. + +'You mistake _me_,' he answered more stiffly. 'I was so sure of their +reality that I thought that they were really lies, whereas they were +only invented to cover the raw facts of life.' + +'Ah, those raw facts of life!' I cried, still louder; for it is not +often that one has a chance of impressing a Pharaoh.' We must face them +with open eyes and an open mind! Did _you_?' + +'I had no opportunity of avoiding them,' he replied. 'I broke every +convention in my land.' + +'Oh, noble! And what happened?' + +'What happens when you strip the cover off a hornet's nest? The raw +fact of life is that mankind is just a little lower than the angels, and +the conventions are based on that fact in order that men may become +angels. But if you begin, as I did, by the convention that men are +angels they will assuredly become bigger beasts than ever.' + +'That,' I said firmly, 'is altogether out-of-date. You should have +brought a larger mentality, a more vital uplift, and--er--all that sort +of thing, to bear on--all that sort of thing, you know.' + +'I did,' said Ahkenaton gloomily. 'It broke me!' And he, too, went dumb +among the ruins. + +There is a valley of rocks and stones in every shade of red and brown, +called the Valley of the Kings, where a little oil-engine coughs behind +its hand all day long, grinding electricity to light the faces of dead +Pharaohs a hundred feet underground. All down the valley, during the +tourist season, stand char-a-bancs and donkeys and sand-carts, with here +and there exhausted couples who have dropped out of the processions and +glisten and fan themselves in some scrap of shade. Along the sides of +the valley are the tombs of the kings neatly numbered, as it might be +mining adits with concrete steps leading up to them, and iron grilles +that lock of nights, and doorkeepers of the Department of Antiquities +demanding the proper tickets. One enters, and from deeps below deeps +hears the voices of dragomans booming through the names and titles of +the illustrious and thrice-puissant dead. Rock-cut steps go down into +hot, still darkness, passages-twist and are led over blind pits which, +men say, the wise builders childishly hoped would be taken for the real +tombs by thieves to come. Up and down these alley-ways clatter all the +races of Europe with a solid backing of the United States. Their +footsteps are suddenly blunted on the floor of a hall paved with +immemorial dust that will never dance in any wind. They peer up at the +blazoned ceilings, stoop down to the minutely decorated walls, crane and +follow the sombre splendours of a cornice, draw in their breaths and +climb up again to the fierce sunshine to re-dive into the next adit on +their programme. What they think proper to say, they say aloud--and some +of it is very interesting. What they feel you can guess from a certain +haste in their movements--something between the shrinking modesty of a +man under fire and the Hadn't-we-better-be-getting-on attitude of +visitors to a mine. After all, it is not natural for man to go +underground except for business or for the last time. He is conscious of +the weight of mother-earth overhead, and when to her expectant bulk is +added the whole beaked, horned, winged, and crowned hierarchy of a lost +faith flaming at every turn of his eye, he naturally wishes to move +away. Even the sight of a very great king indeed, sarcophagused under +electric light in a hall full of most fortifying pictures, does not hold +him too long. + +Some men assert that the crypt of St. Peter's, with only nineteen +centuries bearing down on the groining, and the tombs of early popes and +kings all about, is more impressive than the Valley of the Kings +because it explains how and out of what an existing creed grew. But the +Valley of the Kings explains nothing except that most terrible line in +_Macbeth_: + + To the last syllable of recorded time. + +Earth opens her dry lips and says it. + +In one of the tombs there is a little chamber whose ceiling, probably +because of a fault in the rock, could not be smoothed off like the +others. So the decorator, very cunningly, covered it with a closely +designed cloth-pattern--just such a chintz-like piece of stuff as, in +real life, one would use to underhang a rough roof with. He did it +perfectly, down there in the dark, and went his way. Thousands of years +later, there was born a man of my acquaintance who, for good and +sufficient reason, had an almost insane horror of anything in the nature +of a ceiling-cloth. He used to make excuses for not going into the dry +goods shops at Christmas, when hastily enlarged annexes are hidden, roof +and sides, with embroideries. Perhaps a snake or a lizard had dropped on +his mother from the roof before he was born; perhaps it was the memory +of some hideous fever-bout in a tent. At any rate, that man's idea of +The Torment was a hot, crowded underground room, underhung with +patterned cloths. Once in his life at a city in the far north, where he +had to make a speech, he met that perfect combination. They led him up +and down narrow, crowded, steam-heated passages, till they planted him +at last in a room without visible windows (by which he knew +he was, underground), and directly beneath a warm-patterned +ceiling-cloth--rather like a tent-lining. And there he had to say his +say, while panic terror sat in his throat. The second time was in the +Valley of the Kings, where very similar passages, crowded with people, +led him into a room cut of rock, fathoms underground, with what looked +like a sagging chintz cloth not three feet above his head. The man I'd +like to catch,' he said when he came outside again, 'is that +decorator-man. D'you suppose he meant to produce that effect?' + +Every man has his private terrors, other than those of his own +conscience. From what I saw in the Valley of the Kings, the Egyptians +seem to have known this some time ago. They certainly have impressed it +on most unexpected people. I heard two voices down a passage talking +together as follows: + +_She_. I guess we weren't ever meant to see these old tombs from inside, +anyway. + +_He_. How so? + +_She_. For one thing, they believe so hard in being dead. Of course, +their outlook on spiritual things wasn't as broad as ours. + +_He_. Well, there's no danger of _our_ being led away by it. Did you buy +that alleged scarab off the dragoman this morning? + + + + +VI + + +THE FACE OF THE DESERT + +Going up the Nile is like running the gauntlet before Eternity. Till one +has seen it, one does not realise the amazing thinness of that little +damp trickle of life that steals along undefeated through the jaws of +established death. A rifle-shot would cover the widest limits of +cultivation, a bow-shot would reach the narrower. Once beyond them a man +may carry his next drink with him till he reaches Cape Blanco on the +west (where he may signal for one from a passing Union Castle boat) or +the Karachi Club on the east. Say four thousand dry miles to the left +hand and three thousand to the right. + +The weight of the Desert is on one, every day and every hour. At +morning, when the cavalcade tramps along in the rear of the tulip-like +dragoman, She says: 'I am here----just beyond that ridge of pink sand +that you are admiring. Come along, pretty gentleman, and I'll tell you +your fortune.' But the dragoman says very clearly: 'Please, sar, do not +separate yourself at _all_ from the main body,' which, the Desert knows +well, you had no thought of doing. At noon, when the stewards rummage +out lunch-drinks from the dewy ice-chest, the Desert whines louder than +the well-wheels on the bank: 'I am here, only a quarter of a mile away. +For mercy's sake, pretty gentleman, spare a mouthful of that prickly +whisky-and-soda you are lifting to your lips. There's a white man a few +hundred miles off, dying on my lap of thirst--thirst that you cure with +a rag dipped in lukewarm water while you hold him down with the one +hand, and he thinks he is cursing you aloud, but he isn't, because his +tongue is outside his mouth and he can't get it back. Thank _you_, my +noble captain!' For naturally one tips half the drink over the rail with +the ancient prayer: 'May it reach him who needs it,' and turns one's +back on the pulsing ridges and fluid horizons that are beginning their +mid-day mirage-dance. + +At evening the Desert obtrudes again--tricked out as a Nautch girl in +veils of purple, saffron, gold-tinsel, and grass-green. She postures +shamelessly before the delighted tourists with woven skeins of +homeward-flying pelicans, fringes of wild duck, black spotted on +crimson, and cheap jewellery of opal clouds. 'Notice Me!' She cries, +like any other worthless woman. 'Admire the play of My mobile +features--the revelations of My multi-coloured soul! Observe My +allurements and potentialities. Thrill while I stir you!' So She floats +through all Her changes and retires upstage into the arms of the dusk. +But at midnight She drops all pretence and bears down in Her natural +shape, which depends upon the conscience of the beholder and his +distance from the next white man. + +You will observe in the _Benedicite Omnia Opera_ that the Desert is the +sole thing not enjoined to 'bless the Lord, praise Him and magnify Him +for ever.' This is because when our illustrious father, the Lord Adam, +and his august consort, the Lady Eve, were expelled from Eden, Eblis the +Accursed, fearful lest mankind should return ultimately to the favour of +Allah, set himself to burn and lay waste all the lands east and west of +Eden. + +Oddly enough, the Garden of Eden is almost the exact centre of all the +world's deserts, counting from Gobi to Timbuctoo; and all that land +_qua_ land is 'dismissed from the mercy of God.' Those who use it do so +at their own risk. Consequently the Desert produces her own type of man +exactly as the sea does. I was fortunate enough to meet one sample, aged +perhaps twenty-five. His work took him along the edge of the Red Sea, +where men on swift camels come to smuggle hashish, and sometimes guns, +from dhows that put in to any convenient beach. These smugglers must be +chased on still swifter camels, and since the wells are few and known, +the game is to get ahead of them and occupy their drinking-places. + +But they may skip a well or so, and do several days' march in one. Then +their pursuer must take e'en greater risks and make crueller marches +that the Law may be upheld. The one thing in the Law's favour is that +_hashish_ smells abominably--worse than a heated camel--so, when they +range alongside, no time is lost in listening to lies. It was not told +to me how they navigate themselves across the broken wastes, or by what +arts they keep alive in the dust-storms and heat. That was taken for +granted, and the man who took it so considered himself the most +commonplace of mortals. He was deeply moved by the account of a new +aerial route which the French are laying out somewhere in the Sahara +over a waterless stretch of four hundred miles, where if the aeroplane +is disabled between stations the pilot will most likely die and dry up +beside it. To do the Desert justice, she rarely bothers to wipe out +evidence of a kill. There are places in the Desert, men say, where even +now you come across the dead of old battles, all as light as last year's +wasps' nests, laid down in swaths or strung out in flight, with, here +and there, the little sparkling lines of the emptied cartridge-cases +that dropped them. + +There are valleys and ravines that the craziest smugglers do not care to +refuge in at certain times of the year; as there are rest-houses where +one's native servants will not stay because they are challenged on their +way to the kitchen by sentries of old Soudanese regiments which have +long gone over to Paradise. And of voices and warnings and outcries +behind rocks there is no end. These last arise from the fact that men +very rarely live in a spot so utterly still that they can hear the +murmuring race of the blood over their own ear-drums. Neither ship, +prairie, nor forest gives that silence. I went out to find it once, when +our steamer tied up and the rest of them had gone to see a sight, but I +never dared venture more than a mile from our funnel-smoke. At that +point I came upon a hill honey-combed with graves that held a multitude +of paper-white skulls, all grinning cheerfully like ambassadors of the +Desert. But I did not accept their invitation. They had told me that all +the little devils learn to draw in the Desert, which explains the +elaborate and purposeless detail that fills it. None but devils could +think of etching every rock outcrop with wind-lines, or skinning it down +to its glistening nerves with sand-blasts; of arranging hills in the +likeness of pyramids and sphinxes and wrecked town-suburbs; of covering +the space of half an English county with sepia studies of interlacing +and recrossing ravines, dongas, and nullahs, each an exposition of much +too clever perspective; and of wiping out the half-finished work with a +wash of sand in three tints, only to pick it up again in silver-point on +the horizon's edge. This they do in order to make lost travellers think +they can recognise landmarks and run about identifying them till the +madness comes. The Desert is all devil-device--as you might say 'blasted +cleverness'--crammed with futile works, always promising something fresh +round the next corner, always leading out through heaped decoration and +over-insistent design into equal barrenness. + +There was a morning of mornings when we lay opposite the rock-hewn +Temple of Abu Simbel, where four great figures, each sixty feet high, +sit with their hands on their knees waiting for Judgment Day. At their +feet is a little breadth of blue-green crop; they seem to hold back all +the weight of the Desert behind them, which, none the less, lips over at +one side in a cataract of vividest orange sand. The tourist is +recommended to see the sunrise here, either from within the temple where +it falls on a certain altar erected by Rameses in his own honour, or +from without where another Power takes charge. + +The stars had paled when we began our watch; the river birds were just +whispering over their toilettes in the uncertain purplish light. Then +the river dimmered up like pewter; the line of the ridge behind the +Temple showed itself against a milkiness in the sky; one felt rather +than saw that there were four figures in the pit of gloom below it. +These blocked themselves out, huge enough, but without any special +terror, while the glorious ritual of the Eastern dawn went forward. Some +reed of the bank revealed itself by reflection, black on silver; arched +wings flapped and jarred the still water to splintered glass; the desert +ridge turned to topaz, and the four figures stood clear, yet without +shadowing, from their background. The stronger light flooded them red +from head to foot, and they became alive--as horridly and tensely yet +blindly alive as pinioned men in the death-chair before the current is +switched on. One felt that if by any miracle the dawn could be delayed a +second longer, they would tear themselves free, and leap forth to +heaven knows what sort of vengeance. But that instant the full sun +pinned them in their places--nothing more than statues slashed with +light and shadow--and another day got to work. + +A few yards to the left of the great images, close to the statue of an +Egyptian princess, whose face was the very face of 'She,' there was a +marble slab over the grave of an English officer killed in a fight +against dervishes nearly a generation ago. + +From Abu Simbel to Wady Halfa the river, escaped from the domination of +the Pharaohs, begins to talk about dead white men. Thirty years ago, +young English officers in India lied and intrigued furiously that they +might be attached to expeditions whose bases were sometimes at Suakim, +sometimes quite in the desert air, but all of whose deeds are now quite +forgotten. Occasionally the dragoman, waving a smooth hand east or +south-easterly, will speak of some fight. Then every one murmurs: 'Oh +yes. That was Gordon, of course,' or 'Was that before or after +Omdurman?' But the river is much more precise. As the boat quarters +the falling stream like a puzzled hound, all the old names spurt +up again under the paddle-wheels--'Hicks' army--Val Baker--El +Teb--Tokar--Tamai--Tamanieb and Osman Digna!' Her head swings round +for another slant: '_We cannot land English or Indian troops: if +consulted, recommend abandonment of the Soudan within certain limits._' +That was my Lord Granville chirruping to the advisers of His Highness +the Khedive, and the sentence comes back as crisp as when it first +shocked one in '84. Next--here is a long reach between flooded palm +trees--next, of course, comes Gordon--and a delightfully mad Irish +war correspondent who was locked up with him in Khartoum. +Gordon--Eighty-four--Eighty-five--the Suakim-Berber Railway really begun +and quite as really abandoned. Korti--Abu Klea--the Desert Column--a +steamer called the _Safieh_ not the _Condor_, which rescued two other +steamers wrecked on their way back from a Khartoum in the red hands of +the Mahdi of those days. Then--the smooth glide over deep water +continues--another Suakim expedition with a great deal of Osman Digna +and renewed attempts to build the Suakim-Berber Railway. 'Hashin,' say +the paddle-wheels, slowing all of a sudden--'MacNeill's Zareba--the 15th +Sikhs and another native regiment--Osman Digna in great pride and power, +and Wady Halfa a frontier town. Tamai, once more; another siege of +Suakim: Gemaiza; Handub; Trinkitat, and Tokar--1887.' + +The river recalls the names; the mind at once brings up the face and +every trick of speech of some youth met for a few hours, maybe, in a +train on the way to Egypt of the old days. Both name and face had +utterly vanished from one's memory till then. + +It was another generation that picked up the ball ten years later and +touched down in Khartoum. Several people aboard the Cook boat had been +to that city. They all agreed that the hotel charges were very high, but +that you could buy the most delightful curiosities in the native +bazaar. But I do not like bazaars of the Egyptian kind, since a +discovery I made at Assouan. There was an old man--a Mussulman--who +pressed me to buy some truck or other, but not with the villainous +camaraderie that generations of low-caste tourists have taught the +people, nor yet with the cosmopolitan light-handedness of appeal which +the town-bred Egyptian picks up much too quickly; but with a certain +desperate zeal, foreign to his whole creed and nature. He fingered, he +implored, he fawned with an unsteady eye, and while I wondered I saw +behind him the puffy pink face of a fezzed Jew, watching him as a stoat +watches a rabbit. When he moved the Jew followed and took position at a +commanding angle. The old man glanced from me to him and renewed his +solicitations. So one could imagine an elderly hare thumping wildly on a +tambourine with the stoat behind him. They told me afterwards that Jews +own most of the stalls in Assouan bazaar, the Mussulmans working for +them, since tourists need Oriental colour. Never having seen or imagined +a Jew coercing a Mussulman, this colour was new and displeasing to me. + + + + +VII + + +THE RIDDLE OF EMPIRE + +At Halfa one feels the first breath of a frontier. Here the Egyptian +Government retires into the background, and even the Cook steamer does not +draw up in the exact centre of the postcard. At the telegraph-office, too, +there are traces, diluted but quite recognisable, of military +administration. Nor does the town, in any way or place whatever, +smell--which is proof that it is not looked after on popular lines. There +is nothing to see in it any more than there is in Hulk C. 60, late of her +Majesty's troopship _Himalaya_, now a coal-hulk in the Hamoaze at +Plymouth. A river front, a narrow terraced river-walk of semi-oriental +houses, barracks, a mosque, and half-a-dozen streets at right angles, the +Desert racing up to the end of each, make all the town. A mile or so up +stream under palm trees are bungalows of what must have been cantonments, +some machinery repair-shops, and odds and ends of railway track. It is all +as paltry a collection of whitewashed houses, pitiful gardens, dead walls, +and trodden waste spaces as one would wish to find anywhere; and every bit +of it quivers with the remembered life of armies and river-fleets, as the +finger-bowl rings when the rubbing finger is lifted. The most unlikely men +have done time there; stores by the thousand ton have been rolled and +pushed and hauled up the banks by tens of thousands of scattered hands; +hospitals have pitched themselves there, expanded enormously, shrivelled +up and drifted away with the drifting regiments; railway sidings by the +mile have been laid down and ripped up again, as need changed, and utterly +wiped out by the sands. + +Halfa has been the rail-head, Army Headquarters, and hub of the +universe--the one place where a man could make sure of buying tobacco +and sardines, or could hope for letters for himself and medical +attendance for his friend. Now she is a little shrunken shell of a town +without a proper hotel, where tourists hurry up from the river to buy +complete sets of Soudan stamps at the Post Office. + +I went for a purposeless walk from one end of the place to the other, +and found a crowd of native boys playing football on what might have +been a parade-ground of old days. + +'And what school is that?' I asked in English of a small, eager youth. + +'Madrissah,' said he most intelligently, which being translated means +just 'school.' + +'Yes, but _what_ school?' + +'Yes, Madrissah, school, sir,' and he tagged after to see what else the +imbecile wanted. + +A line of railway track, that must have fed big workshops in its time, +led me between big-roomed houses and offices labelled departmentally, +with here and there a clerk at work. I was directed and re-directed by +polite Egyptian officials (I wished to get at a white officer if +possible, but there wasn't one about); was turned out of a garden which +belonged to an Authority; hung round the gate of a bungalow with an +old-established compound and two white men sitting in chairs on a +verandah; wandered down towards the river under the palm trees, where +the last red light came through; lost myself among rusty boilers and +balks of timber; and at last loafed back in the twilight escorted by the +small boy and an entire brigade of ghosts, not one of whom I had ever +met before, but all of whom I knew most intimately. They said it was the +evenings that used to depress _them_ most, too; so they all came back +after dinner and bore me company, while I went to meet a friend arriving +by the night train from Khartoum. + +She was an hour late, and we spent it, the ghosts and I, in a +brick-walled, tin-roofed shed, warm with the day's heat; a crowd of +natives laughing and talking somewhere behind in the darkness. We knew +each other so well by that time, that we had finished discussing every +conceivable topic of conversation--the whereabouts of the Mahdi's head, +for instance--work, reward, despair, acknowledgment, flat failure, all +the real motives that had driven us to do anything, and all our other +longings. So we sat still and let the stars move, as men must do when +they meet this kind of train. + +Presently I asked: 'What is the name of the next station out from +here?' + +'Station Number One,' said a ghost. + +'And the next?' + +'Station Number Two, and so on to Eight, I think.' + +'And wasn't it worth while to name even _one_ of these stations from +some man, living or dead, who had something to do with making the line?' + +'Well, they didn't, anyhow,' said another ghost. 'I suppose they didn't +think it worth while. Why? What do _you_ think?' + +'I think, I replied, 'it is the sort of snobbery that nations go to +Hades for.' + +Her headlight showed at last, an immense distance off; the economic +electrics were turned up, the ghosts vanished, the dragomans of the +various steamers flowed forward in beautiful garments to meet their +passengers who had booked passages in the Cook boats, and the Khartoum +train decanted a joyous collection of folk, all decorated with horns, +hoofs, skins, hides, knives, and assegais, which they had been buying at +Omdurman. And when the porters laid hold upon their bristling bundles, +it was like MacNeill's Zareba without the camels. + +Two young men in tarboushes were the only people who had no part in the +riot. Said one of them to the other: + +'Hullo?' + +Said the other: 'Hullo!' + +They grunted together for a while. Then one pleasantly: + +'Oh, I'm sorry for _that_! I thought I was going to have you under me +for a bit. Then you'll use the rest-house there?' + +'I suppose so,' said the other. 'Do you happen to know if the roof's +on?' + +Here a woman wailed aloud for her dervish spear which had gone adrift, +and I shall never know, except from the back pages of the Soudan +Almanack, what state that rest-house there is in. + +The Soudan Administration, by the little I heard, is a queer service. It +extends itself in silence from the edges of Abyssinia to the swamps of +the Equator at an average pressure of one white man to several thousand +square miles. It legislates according to the custom of the tribe where +possible, and on the common sense of the moment when there is no +precedent. It is recruited almost wholly from the army, armed chiefly +with binoculars, and enjoys a death-rate a little lower than its own +reputation. It is said to be the only service in which a man taking +leave is explicitly recommended to get out of the country and rest +himself that he may return the more fit to his job. A high standard of +intelligence is required, and lapses are not overlooked. For instance, +one man on leave in London took the wrong train from Boulogne, and +instead of going to Paris, which, of course, he had intended, found +himself at a station called Kirk Kilissie or Adrianople West, where he +stayed for some weeks. It was a mistake that might have happened to any +one on a dark night after a stormy passage, but the authorities would +not believe it, and when I left Egypt were busily engaged in boiling +him in hot oil. They are grossly respectable in the Soudan now. + +Long and long ago, before even the Philippines were taken, a friend of +mine was reprimanded by a British Member of Parliament, first for the +sin of blood-guiltiness because he was by trade a soldier, next for +murder because he had fought in great battles, and lastly, and most +important, because he and his fellow-braves had saddled the British +taxpayer with the expense of the Soudan. My friend explained that all +the Soudan had ever cost the British taxpayer was the price of about one +dozen of regulation Union Jacks--one for each province. 'That,' said the +M.P. triumphantly, 'is all it will ever be worth.' He went on to justify +himself, and the Soudan went on also. To-day it has taken its place as +one of those accepted miracles which are worked without heat or +headlines by men who do the job nearest their hand and seldom fuss about +their reputations. + +But less than sixteen years ago the length and breadth of it was one +crazy hell of murder, torture, and lust, where every man who had a sword +used it till he met a stronger and became a slave. It was--men say who +remember it--a hysteria of blood and fanaticism; and precisely as an +hysterical woman is called to her senses by a dash of cold water, so at +the battle of Omdurman the land was reduced to sanity by applied death +on such a scale as the murderers and the torturers at their most +unbridled could scarcely have dreamed. In a day and a night all who had +power and authority were wiped out and put under till, as the old song +says, no chief remained to ask after any follower. They had all charged +into Paradise. The people who were left looked for renewed massacres of +the sort they had been accustomed to, and when these did not come, they +said helplessly: 'We have nothing. We are nothing. Will you sell us into +slavery among the Egyptians?' The men who remember the old days of the +Reconstruction--which deserves an epic of its own--say that there was +nothing left to build on, not even wreckage. Knowledge, decency, +kinship, property, tide, sense of possession had all gone. The people +were told they were to sit still and obey orders; and they stared and +fumbled like dazed crowds after an explosion. Bit by bit, however, they +were fed and watered and marshalled into some sort of order; set to +tasks they never dreamed to see the end of; and, almost by physical +force, pushed and hauled along the ways of mere life. They came to +understand presently that they might reap what they had sown, and that +man, even a woman, might walk for a day's journey with two goats and a +native bedstead and live undespoiled. But they had to be taught +kindergarten-fashion. + +And little by little, as they realised that the new order was sure and +that their ancient oppressors were quite dead, there returned not only +cultivators, craftsmen, and artisans, but outlandish men of war, scarred +with old wounds and the generous dimples that the Martini-Henry bullet +used to deal--fighting men on the lookout for new employ. They would +hang about, first on one leg, then on the other, proud or uneasily +friendly, till some white officer circulated near by. And at his fourth +or fifth passing, brown and white having approved each other by eye, the +talk--so men say--would run something like this: + +OFFICER (_with air of sudden discovery_). Oh, you by the hut, there, +what is your business? + +WARRIOR (_at 'attention' complicated by attempt to salute_). I am +So-and-So, son of So-and-So, from such and such a place. + +OFFICER. I hear. And ...? + +WARRIOR (_repeating salute_). And a fighting man also. + +OFFICER (_impersonally to horizon_). But they _all_ say that nowadays. + +WARRIOR (_very loudly_). But there is a man in one of your battalions +who can testify to it. He is the grandson of my father's uncle. + +OFFICER (_confidentially to his boots_). Hell is _quite_ full of such +grandsons of just such father's uncles; and how do I know if Private +So-and-So speaks the truth about his family? (_Makes to go._) + +WARRIOR (_swiftly removing necessary garments_). Perhaps. But _these_ +don't lie. Look! I got this ten, twelve years ago when I was quite a +lad, close to the old Border, Yes, Halfa. It was a true Snider bullet. +Feel it! This little one on the leg I got at the big fight that finished +it all last year. But I am not lame (_violent leg-exercise_), not in +the least lame. See! I run. I jump. I kick. Praised be Allah! + +OFFICER. Praised be Allah! And then? + +WARRIOR (_coquettishly_). Then, I shoot. I am not a common spear-man. +(_Lapse into English._) Yeh, dam goo' shot! (_pumps lever of imaginary +Martini_). + +OFFICER (_unmoved_). I see. And then? + +WARRIOR (_indignantly_). _I_ am come here--after many days' marching. +(_Change to childlike wheedle_.) Are _all_ the regiments full? + +At this point the relative, in uniform, generally discovered himself, +and if the officer liked the cut of his jib, another 'old Mahdi's man' +would be added to the machine that made itself as it rolled along. They +dealt with situations in those days by the unclouded light of reason and +a certain high and holy audacity. + +There is a tale of two Sheikhs shortly after the Reconstruction began. +One of them, Abdullah of the River, prudent and the son of a +slave-woman, professed loyalty to the English very early in the day, and +used that loyalty as a cloak to lift camels from another Sheikh, Farid +of the Desert, still at war with the English, but a perfect gentleman, +which Abdullah was not. Naturally, Farid raided back on Abdullah's kine, +Abdullah complained to the authorities, and the Border fermented. To +Farid in his desert camp with a clutch of Abdullah's cattle round him, +entered, alone and unarmed, the officer responsible for the peace of +those parts. After compliments, for they had had dealings with each +other before: 'You've been driving Abdullah's stock again,' said the +Englishman. + +'I should think I had!' was the hot answer. 'He lifts my camels and +scuttles back into your territory, where he knows I can't follow him for +the life; and when I try to get a bit of my own back, he whines to you. +He's a cad--an utter cad.' + +'At any rate, he is loyal. If you'd only come in and be loyal too, you'd +both be on the same footing, and then if he stole from you, he'd catch +it!' + +'He'd never dare to steal except under your protection. Give him what +he'd have got in the Mahdi's time--a first-class flogging. _You_ know he +deserves it!' + +'I'm afraid that isn't allowed. You have to let me shift all those +bullocks of his back again.' + +'And if I don't?' + +'Then, I shall have to ride back and collect all my men and begin war +against you.' + +'But what prevents my cutting your throat where you sit? + +'For one thing, you aren't Abdullah, and----' + +'There! You confess he's a cad!' + +'And for another, the Government would only send another officer who +didn't understand your ways, and then there _would_ be war, and no one +would score except Abdullah. He'd steal your camels and get credit for +it.' + +'So he would, the scoundrel! This is a hard world for honest men. Now, +you admit Abdullah is a cad. Listen to me, and I'll tell you a few more +things about him. He was, etc., etc. He is, etc., etc.' + +'You're perfectly right, Sheikh, but don't you see I can't tell him what +I think of him so long as he's loyal and you're out against us? Now, if +_you_ come in I promise you that I'll give Abdullah a telling-off--yes, +in your presence--that will do you good to listen to.' + +'No! I won't come in! But--I tell you what I will do. I'll accompany you +to-morrow as your guest, understand, to your camp. Then you send for +Abdullah, and _if_ I judge that his fat face has been sufficiently +blackened in my presence, I'll think about coming in later.' + +So it was arranged, and they slept out the rest of the night, side by +side, and in the morning they gathered up and returned all Abdullah's +cattle, and in the evening, in Farid's presence, Abdullah got the +tongue-lashing of his wicked old life, and Farid of the Desert laughed +and came in; and they all lived happy ever afterwards. + +Somewhere or other in the nearer provinces the old heady game must be +going on still, but the Soudan proper has settled to civilisation of the +brick-bungalow and bougainvillea sort, and there is a huge technical +college where the young men are trained to become fitters, surveyors, +draftsmen, and telegraph employees at fabulous wages. In due time, they +will forget how warily their fathers had to walk in the Mahdi's time to +secure even half a bellyful; then, as has happened elsewhere. They will +honestly believe that they themselves originally created and since then +have upheld the easy life into which they were bought at so heavy a +price. Then the demand will go up for 'extension of local government,' +'Soudan for the Soudanese,' and so on till the whole cycle has to be +retrodden. It is a hard law but an old one--Rome died learning it, as +our western civilisation may die--that if you give any man anything that +he has not painfully earned for himself, you infallibly make him or his +descendants your devoted enemies. + + + +THE END + + + + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Letters of Travel (1892-1913), by Rudyard Kipling + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12089 *** diff --git a/12089-h/12089-h.htm b/12089-h/12089-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..efa28ba --- /dev/null +++ b/12089-h/12089-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6858 @@ +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?> +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> +<head> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Letters Of Travel, by Rudyard Kipling. + </title> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> +<style type="text/css"> +body { font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; + background-color: #ffffff; + color: #000000; + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10% +} +a:link {color: #000000} +a:visited {color: #000000} +a:hover {color: #000000} +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {color: #666666; text-align: center} + +</style> +</head> +<!-- Converted to HTML for the Gutenberg Project by Sjaani --> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12089 ***</div> + +<h1>LETTERS OF TRAVEL</h1> +<h3>THE DOMINIONS EDITION</h3> +<h3>LETTERS OF TRAVEL</h3> +<h3>(1892-1913)</h3> +<h2>BY RUDYARD KIPLING</h2> +<h4>MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED<br /> +ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON<br /> +1920</h4> +<h4>The Letters entitled 'FROM TIDEWAY TO TIDEWAY'<br /> +were published originally in <i>The Times</i> ; those<br /> +entitled 'LETTERS TO THE FAMILY' in <i>The Morning<br /> +Post</i> ; and those entitled 'EGYPT OF THE MAGICIANS'<br /> +in <i>Nash's Magazine</i> . </h4> +<h4>COPYRIGHT</h4> +<h4><i>This Edition is intended for circulation only in India<br /> +and the British Dominions over the Seas</i> </h4> + + + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> +<p><strong><a href="#part1">FROM TIDEWAY TO TIDEWAY</a> (1892)—</strong> +<br /> +<a href="#chap1">In Sight of Monadnock</a><br /> +<a href="#chap2">Across a Continent</a><br /> +<a href="#chap3">The Edge of the East</a><br /> +<a href="#chap4">Our Overseas Men</a><br /> +<a href="#chap5">Some Earthquakes</a><br /> +<a href="#chap6">Half-a-Dozen Pictures</a><br /> +<a href="#chap7">'Captains Courageous'</a><br /> +<a href="#chap8">On One Side Only</a><br /> +<a href="#chap9">Leaves from a Winter Note-Book</a> +</p> +<br /> +<p><strong><a href="#part2">LETTERS TO THE FAMILY</a> (1907)—</strong> +<br /> +<a href="#chap10">The Road to Quebec</a><br /> +<a href="#chap11">A People at Home</a><br /> +<a href="#chap12">Cities and Spaces</a><br /> +<a href="#chap13">Newspapers and Democracy</a><br /> +<a href="#chap14">Labour</a><br /> +<a href="#chap15">The Fortunate Towns</a><br /> +<a href="#chap16">Mountains and the Pacific</a><br /> +<a href="#chap17">A Conclusion</a> +</p> +<br /> +<p><strong><a href="#part3">EGYPT OF THE MAGICIANS</a> (1913)—</strong> +<br /> +<a href="#chap18">Sea Travel</a><br /> +<a href="#chap19">A Return to the East</a><br /> +<a href="#chap20">A Serpent of Old Nile</a><br /> +<a href="#chap21">Up the River</a><br /> +<a href="#chap22">Dead Kings</a><br /> +<a href="#chap23">The Face of the Desert</a><br /> +<a href="#chap24">The Riddle of Empire</a> +</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<a name="part1" id="part1"></a> +<h2>FROM TIDEWAY TO TIDEWAY</h2> +<h3>1892-95</h3> + +<p> +<a href="#chap1">IN SIGHT OF MONADNOCK.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap2">ACROSS A CONTINENT.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap3">THE EDGE OF THE EAST.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap4">OUR OVERSEAS MEN.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap5">SOME EARTHQUAKES.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap6">HALF-A-DOZEN PICTURES.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap7">'CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS.'</a><br /> +<a href="#chap8">ON ONE SIDE ONLY.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap9">LEAVES FROM A WINTER NOTE-BOOK.</a></p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<a name="chap1" id="chap1"></a> +<h2>IN SIGHT OF MONADNOCK</h2> + +<p>After the gloom of gray Atlantic weather, our ship came to America in a +flood of winter sunshine that made unaccustomed eyelids blink, and the +New Yorker, who is nothing if not modest, said, 'This isn't a sample of +our really fine days. Wait until such and such times come, or go to such +and a such a quarter of the city.' We were content, and more than +content, to drift aimlessly up and down the brilliant streets, wondering +a little why the finest light should be wasted on the worst pavements in +the world; to walk round and round Madison Square, because that was full +of beautifully dressed babies playing counting-out games, or to gaze +reverently at the broad-shouldered, pug-nosed Irish New York policemen. +Wherever we went there was the sun, lavish and unstinted, working nine +hours a day, with the colour and the clean-cut lines of perspective that +he makes. That any one should dare to call this climate muggy, yea, even +'subtropical,' was a shock. There came such a man, and he said, 'Go +north if you want weather—weather that <i>is</i> weather. Go to New +England.' So New York passed away upon a sunny afternoon, with her roar +and rattle, her complex smells, her triply over-heated rooms, and much +too energetic inhabitants, while the train went north to the lands where +the snow lay. It came in one sweep—almost, it seemed, in one turn of +the wheels—covering the winter-killed grass and turning the frozen +ponds that looked so white under the shadow of lean trees into pools of +ink.</p> + +<p>As the light closed in, a little wooden town, white, cloaked, and dumb, +slid past the windows, and the strong light of the car lamps fell upon a +sleigh (the driver furred and muffled to his nose) turning the corner of +a street. Now the sleigh of a picture-book, however well one knows it, +is altogether different from the thing in real life, a means of +conveyance at a journey's end; but it is well not to be over-curious in +the matter, for the same American who has been telling you at length how +he once followed a kilted Scots soldier from Chelsea to the Tower, out +of pure wonder and curiosity at his bare knees and sporran, will laugh +at your interest in 'just a cutter.'</p> + +<p>The staff of the train—surely the great American nation would be lost +if deprived of the ennobling society of brakeman, conductor, Pullman-car +conductor, negro porter, and newsboy—told pleasant tales, as they +spread themselves at ease in the smoking compartments, of snowings up +the line to Montreal, of desperate attacks—four engines together and a +snow-plough in front—on drifts thirty feet high, and the pleasures of +walking along the tops of goods wagons to brake a train, with the +thermometer thirty below freezing. 'It comes cheaper to kill men that +way than to put air-brakes on freight-cars,' said the brakeman.</p> + +<p>Thirty below freezing! It was inconceivable till one stepped out into it +at midnight, and the first shock of that clear, still air took away the +breath as does a plunge into sea-water. A walrus sitting on a woolpack +was our host in his sleigh, and he wrapped us in hairy goatskin coats, +caps that came down over the ears, buffalo robes and blankets, and yet +more buffalo-robes till we, too, looked like walruses and moved almost +as gracefully. The night was as keen as the edge of a newly-ground +sword; breath froze on the coat-lapels in snow; the nose became without +sensation, and the eyes wept bitterly because the horses were in a hurry +to get home; and whirling through air at zero brings tears. But for the +jingle of the sleigh-bells the ride might have taken place in a dream, +for there was no sound of hoofs upon the snow, the runners sighed a +little now and again as they glided over an inequality, and all the +sheeted hills round about were as dumb as death. Only the Connecticut +River kept up its heart and a lane of black water through the packed +ice; we could hear the stream worrying round the heels of its small +bergs. Elsewhere there was nothing but snow under the moon—snow drifted +to the level of the stone fences or curling over their tops in a lip of +frosted silver; snow banked high on either side of the road, or lying +heavy on the pines and the hemlocks in the woods, where the air seemed, +by comparison, as warm as a conservatory. It was beautiful beyond +expression, Nature's boldest sketch in black and white, done with a +Japanese disregard of perspective, and daringly altered from time to +time by the restless pencils of the moon.</p> + +<p>In the morning the other side of the picture was revealed in the colours +of the sunlight. There was never a cloud in the sky that rested on the +snow-line of the horizon as a sapphire on white velvet. Hills of pure +white, or speckled and furred with woods, rose up above the solid white +levels of the fields, and the sun rioted over their embroideries till +the eyes ached. Here and there on the exposed slopes the day's +warmth—the thermometer was nearly forty degrees—and the night's cold +had made a bald and shining crust upon the snow; but the most part was +soft powdered stuff, ready to catch the light on a thousand crystals and +multiply it sevenfold. Through this magnificence, and thinking nothing +of it, a wood-sledge drawn by two shaggy red steers, the unbarked logs +diamond-dusted with snow, shouldered down the road in a cloud of frosty +breath. It is the mark of inexperience in this section of the country to +confound a sleigh which you use for riding with the sledge that is +devoted to heavy work; and it is, I believe, a still greater sign of +worthlessness to think that oxen are driven, as they are in most places, +by scientific twisting of the tail. The driver with red mittens on his +hands, felt overstockings that come up to his knees, and, perhaps, a +silvery-gray coon-skin coat on his back, walks beside, crying, 'Gee, +haw!' even as is written in American stories. And the speech of the +driver explains many things in regard to the dialect story, which at its +best is an infliction to many. Now that I have heard the long, unhurried +drawl of Vermont, my wonder is, not that the New England tales should be +printed in what, for the sake of argument, we will call English and its +type, but rather that they should not have appeared in Swedish or +Russian. Our alphabet is too limited. This part of the country belongs +by laws unknown to the United States, but which obtain all the world +over, to the New England story and the ladies who write it. You feel +this in the air as soon as you see the white-painted wooden houses left +out in the snow, the austere schoolhouse, and the people—the men of the +farms, the women who work as hard as they with, it may be, less +enjoyment of life—the other houses, well painted and quaintly roofed, +that belong to Judge This, Lawyer That, and Banker Such an one; all +powers in the metropolis of six thousand folk over by the railway +station. More acutely still, do you realise the atmosphere when you read +in the local paper announcements of 'chicken suppers' and 'church +sociables' to be given by such and such a denomination, sandwiched +between paragraphs of genial and friendly interest, showing that the +countryside live (and without slaying each other) on terms of terrifying +intimacy.</p> + +<p>The folk of the old rock, the dwellers in the older houses, born and +raised hereabouts, would not live out of the town for any consideration, +and there are insane people from the South—men and women from Boston +and the like—who actually build houses out in the open country, two, +and even three miles from Main Street which is nearly 400 yards long, +and the centre of life and population. With the strangers, more +particularly if they do not buy their groceries 'in the street,' which +means, and is, the town, the town has little to do; but it knows +everything, and much more also, that goes on among them. Their dresses, +their cattle, their views, the manners of their children, their manner +towards their servants, and every other conceivable thing, is reported, +digested, discussed, and rediscussed up and down Main Street. Now, the +wisdom of Vermont, not being at all times equal to grasping all the +problems of everybody else's life with delicacy, sometimes makes +pathetic mistakes, and the town is set by the ears. You will see, +therefore, that towns of a certain size do not differ materially all the +world over. The talk of the men of the farms is of their +farms—purchase, mortgage, and sale, recorded rights, boundary lines, +and road tax. It was in the middle of New Zealand, on the edge of the +Wild horse plains, that I heard this talk last, when a man and his wife, +twenty miles from the nearest neighbour, sat up half the night +discussing just the same things that the men talked of in Main Street, +Vermont, U.S.A.</p> + +<p>There is one man in the State who is much exercised over this place. He +is a farm-hand, raised in a hamlet fifteen or twenty miles from the +nearest railway, and, greatly daring, he has wandered here. The bustle +and turmoil of Main Street, the new glare of the electric lights and the +five-storeyed brick business block, frighten and distress him much. He +has taken service on a farm well away from these delirious delights, +and, says he, 'I've been offered $25 a month to work in a bakery at New +York. But you don't get me to no New York, I've seen this place an' it +just scares me,' His strength is in the drawing of hay and the feeding +of cattle. Winter life on a farm does not mean the comparative idleness +that is so much written of. Each hour seems to have its sixty minutes of +work; for the cattle are housed and eat eternally; the colts must be +turned out for their drink, and the ice broken for them if necessary; +then ice must be stored for the summer use, and then the real work of +hauling logs for firewood begins. New England depends for its fuel on +the woods. The trees are 'blazed' in the autumn just before the fall of +the leaf, felled later, cut into four-foot lengths, and, as soon as the +friendly snow makes sledging possible, drawn down to the woodhouse. +Afterwards the needs of the farm can be attended to, and a farm, like an +arch, is never at rest. A little later will come maple-sugar time, when +the stately maples are tapped as the sap begins to stir, and be-ringed +with absurd little buckets (a cow being milked into a thimble gives some +idea of the disproportion), which are emptied into cauldrons. +Afterwards (this is the time of the 'sugaring-off parties') you pour the +boiled syrup into tins full of fresh snow, where it hardens, and you +pretend to help and become very sticky and make love, boys and girls +together. Even the introduction of patent sugar evaporators has not +spoiled the love-making.</p> + +<p>There is a certain scarcity of men to make love with; not so much in +towns which have their own manufactories and lie within a lover's +Sabbath-day journey of New York, but in the farms and villages. The men +have gone away—the young men are fighting fortune further West, and the +women remain—remain for ever as women must. On the farms, when the +children depart, the old man and the old woman strive to hold things +together without help, and the woman's portion is work and monotony. +Sometimes she goes mad to an extent which appreciably affects statistics +and is put down in census reports. More often, let us hope, she dies. In +the villages where the necessity for heavy work is not so urgent the +women find consolation in the formation of literary clubs and circles, +and so gather to themselves a great deal of wisdom in their own way. +That way is not altogether lovely. They desire facts and the knowledge +that they are at a certain page in a German or an Italian book before a +certain time, or that they have read the proper books in a proper way. +At any rate, they have something to do that seems as if they were doing +something. It has been said that the New England stories are cramped +and narrow. Even a far-off view of the iron-bound life whence they are +drawn justifies the author. You can carve a nut in a thousand different +ways by reason of the hardness of the shell.</p> + +<p>Twenty or thirty miles across the hills, on the way to the Green +Mountains, lie some finished chapters of pitiful stories—a few score +abandoned farms, started in a lean land, held fiercely so long as there +was any one to work them, and then left on the hill-sides. Beyond this +desolation are woods where the bear and the deer still find peace, and +sometimes even the beaver forgets that he is persecuted and dares to +build his lodge. These things were told me by a man who loved the woods +for their own sake and not for the sake of slaughter—a quiet, +slow-spoken man of the West, who came across the drifts on show-shoes +and refrained from laughing when I borrowed his foot-gear and tried to +walk. The gigantic lawn-tennis bats strung with hide are not easy to +manoeuvre. If you forget to keep the long heels down and trailing in the +snow you turn over and become as a man who fails into deep water with a +life-belt tied to his ankles. If you lose your balance, do not attempt +to recover it, but drop, half-sitting and half-kneeling, over as large +an area as possible. When you have mastered the wolf-step, can slide one +shoe above the other deftly, that is to say, the sensation of paddling +over a ten-foot-deep drift and taking short cuts by buried fences is +worth the ankle-ache. The man from the West interpreted to me the signs +on the snow, showed how a fox (this section of the country is full of +foxes, and men shoot them because riding is impossible) leaves one kind +of spoor, walking with circumspection as becomes a thief, and a dog, who +has nothing to be ashamed of, but widens his four legs and plunges, +another; how coons go to sleep for the winter and squirrels too, and how +the deer on the Canada border trample down deep paths that are called +yards and are caught there by inquisitive men with cameras, who hold +them by their tails when the deer have blundered into deep snow, and so +photograph their frightened dignity. He told me of people also—the +manners and customs of New Englanders here, and how they blossom and +develop in the Far West on the newer railway lines, when matters come +very nearly to civil war between rival companies racing for the same +cañon; how there is a country not very far away called Caledonia, +populated by the Scotch, who can give points to a New Englander in a +bargain, and how these same Scotch-Americans by birth, name their +townships still after the cities of their thrifty race. It was all as +new and delightful as the steady 'scrunch' of the snow-shoes and the +dazzling silence of the hills.</p> + +<p>Beyond the very furthest range, where the pines turn to a faint blue +haze against the one solitary peak—a real mountain and not a +hill—showed like a gigantic thumbnail pointing heavenward.</p> + +<p>'And that's Monadnock,' said the man from the West; 'all the hills have +Indian names. You left Wantastiquet on your right coming out of town,'</p> + +<p>You know how it often happens that a word shuttles in and out of many +years, waking all sorts of incongruous associations. I had met Monadnock +on paper in a shameless parody of Emerson's style, before ever style or +verse had interest for me. But the word stuck because of a rhyme, in +which one was</p> + +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">... crowned coeval With Monadnock's crest, And my wings extended</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Touch the East and West.</span><br /> + +<p>Later the same word, pursued on the same principle as that blessed one +Mesopotamia, led me to and through Emerson, up to his poem on the peak +itself—the wise old giant 'busy with his sky affairs,' who makes us +sane and sober and free from little things if we trust him. So Monadnock +came to mean everything that was helpful, healing, and full of quiet, +and when I saw him half across New Hampshire he did not fail. In that +utter stillness a hemlock bough, overweighted with snow, came down a +foot or two with a tired little sigh; the snow slid off and the little +branch flew nodding back to its fellows.</p> + +<p>For the honour of Monadnock there was made that afternoon an image of +snow of Gautama Buddha, something too squat and not altogether equal on +both sides, but with an imperial and reposeful waist. He faced towards +the mountain, and presently some men in a wood-sledge came up the road +and faced him. Now, the amazed comments of two Vermont farmers on the +nature and properties of a swag-bellied god are worth hearing. They were +not troubled about his race, for he was aggressively white; but rounded +waists seem to be out of fashion in Vermont. At least, they said so, +with rare and curious oaths.</p> + +<p>Next day all the idleness and trifling were drowned in a snowstorm that +filled the hollows of the hills with whirling blue mist, bowed the +branches of the woods till you ducked, but were powdered all the same +when you drove through, and wiped out the sleighing tracks. Mother +Nature is beautifully tidy if you leave her alone. She rounded off every +angle, broke down every scarp, and tucked the white bedclothes, till not +a wrinkle remained, up to the chine of the spruces and the hemlocks that +would not go to sleep.</p> + +<p>'Now,' said the man of the West, as we were driving to the station, and +alas! to New York, 'all my snow-tracks are gone; but when that snow +melts, a week hence or a month hence, they'll all come up again and show +where I've been.'</p> + +<p>Curious idea, is it not? Imagine a murder committed in the lonely woods, +a snowstorm that covers the tracks of the flying man before the avenger +of blood has buried the body, and then, a week later, the withdrawal of +the traitorous snow, revealing step by step the path Cain took—the +six-inch dee-trail of his snow-shoes—each step a dark disk on the +white till the very end.</p> + +<p>There is so much, so very much to write, if it were worth while, about +that queer little town by the railway station, with its life running, to +all outward seeming, as smoothly as the hack-coupés on their sleigh +mounting, and within disturbed by the hatreds and troubles and +jealousies that vex the minds of all but the gods. For instance—no, it +is better to remember the lesson Monadnock, and Emerson has said, 'Zeus +hates busy-bodies and people who do too much.'</p> + +<p>That there are such folk, a long nasal drawl across Main Street attests. +A farmer is unhitching his horses from a post opposite a store. He +stands with the tie-rope in his hand and gives his opinion to his +neighbour and the world generally—'But them there Andersons, they ain't +got no notion of etikwette!'</p> + + +<a name="chap2" id="chap2"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>ACROSS A CONTINENT</h2> + +<p>It is not easy to escape from a big city. An entire continent was +waiting to be traversed, and, for that reason, we lingered in New York +till the city felt so homelike that it seemed wrong to leave it. And +further, the more one studied it, the more grotesquely bad it grew—bad +in its paving, bad in its streets, bad in its street-police, and but for +the kindness of the tides would be worse than bad in its sanitary +arrangements. No one as yet has approached the management of New York in +a proper spirit; that is to say, regarding it as the shiftless outcome +of squalid barbarism and reckless extravagance. No one is likely to do +so, because reflections on the long, narrow pig-trough are construed as +malevolent attacks against the spirit and majesty of the great American +people, and lead to angry comparisons. Yet, if all the streets of London +were permanently up and all the lamps permanently down, this would not +prevent the New York streets taken in a lump from being first cousins to +a Zanzibar foreshore, or kin to the approaches of a Zulu kraal. Gullies, +holes, ruts, cobbles-stones awry, kerbstones rising from two to six +inches above the level of the slatternly pavement; tram-lines from two +to three inches above street level; building materials scattered half +across the street; lime, boards, cut stone, and ash-barrels generally +and generously everywhere; wheeled traffic taking its chances, dray +<i>versus</i> brougham, at cross roads; sway-backed poles whittled and +unpainted; drunken lamp-posts with twisted irons; and, lastly, a +generous scatter of filth and more mixed stinks than the winter wind can +carry away, are matters which can be considered quite apart from the +'Spirit of Democracy' or 'the future of this great and growing country.' +In any other land, they would be held to represent slovenliness, +sordidness, and want of capacity. Here it is explained, not once but +many times, that they show the speed at which the city has grown and the +enviable indifference of her citizens to matters of detail. One of these +days, you are told, everything will be taken in hand and put straight. +The unvirtuous rulers of the city will be swept away by a cyclone, or a +tornado, or something big and booming, of popular indignation; everybody +will unanimously elect the right men, who will justly earn the enormous +salaries that are at present being paid to inadequate aliens for road +sweepings, and all will be well. At the same time the lawlessness +ingrained by governors among the governed during the last thirty, forty, +or it may be fifty years; the brutal levity of the public conscience in +regard to public duty; the toughening and suppling of public morals, and +the reckless disregard for human life, bred by impotent laws and +fostered by familiarity with needless accidents and criminal neglect, +will miraculously disappear. If the laws of cause and effect that +control even the freest people in the world say otherwise, so much the +worse for the laws. America makes her own. Behind her stands the ghost +of the most bloody war of the century caused in a peaceful land by long +temporising with lawlessness, by letting things slide, by shiftlessness +and blind disregard for all save the material need of the hour, till the +hour long conceived and let alone stood up full-armed, and men said, +'Here is an unforeseen crisis,' and killed each other in the name of God +for four years.</p> + +<p>In a heathen land the three things that are supposed to be the pillars +of moderately decent government are regard for human life, justice, +criminal and civil, as far as it lies in man to do justice, and good +roads. In this Christian city they think lightly of the first—their own +papers, their own speech, and their own actions prove it; buy and sell +the second at a price openly and without shame; and are, apparently, +content to do without the third. One would almost expect racial sense of +humour would stay them from expecting only praise—slab, lavish, and +slavish—from the stranger within their gates. But they do not. If he +holds his peace, they forge tributes to their own excellence which they +put into his mouth, thereby treating their own land which they profess +to honour as a quack treats his pills. If he speaks—but you shall see +for yourselves what happens then. And they cannot see that by untruth +and invective it is themselves alone that they injure.</p> + +<p>The blame of their city evils is not altogether with the gentlemen, +chiefly of foreign extraction, who control the city. These find a people +made to their hand—a lawless breed ready to wink at one evasion of the +law if they themselves may profit by another, and in their rare leisure +hours content to smile over the details of a clever fraud. Then, says +the cultured American, 'Give us time. Give us time, and we shall +arrive.' The otherwise American, who is aggressive, straightway proceeds +to thrust a piece of half-hanged municipal botch-work under the nose of +the alien as a sample of perfected effort. There is nothing more +delightful than to sit for a strictly limited time with a child who +tells you what he means to do when he is a man; but when that same +child, loud-voiced, insistent, unblushingly eager for praise, but +thin-skinned as the most morbid of hobbledehoys, stands about all your +ways telling you the same story in the same voice, you begin to yearn +for something made and finished—say Egypt and a completely dead mummy. +It is neither seemly nor safe to hint that the government of the largest +city in the States is a despotism of the alien by the alien for the +alien, tempered with occasional insurrections of the decent folk. Only +the Chinaman washes the dirty linen of other lands.</p> + +<p>St. Paul, Minnesota.</p> + +<p>Yes, it is very good to get away once more and pick up the old and ever +fresh business of the vagrant, loafing through new towns, learned in +the manners of dogs, babies, and perambulators half the world over, and +tracking the seasons by the up-growth of flowers in stranger-people's +gardens. St. Paul, standing at the barn-door of the Dakota and Minnesota +granaries, is all things to all men except to Minneapolis, eleven miles +away, whom she hates and by whom she is patronised. She calls herself +the capital of the North-West, the new North-West, and her citizens +wear, not only the tall silk hat of trade, but the soft slouch of the +West. She talks in another tongue than the New Yorker, and—sure sign +that we are far across the continent—her papers argue with the San +Francisco ones over rate wars and the competition of railway companies. +St. Paul has been established many years, and if one were reckless +enough to go down to the business quarters one would hear all about her +and more also. But the residential parts of the town are the crown of +it. In common with scores of other cities, broad-crowned suburbs—using +the word in the English sense—that make the stranger jealous. You get +here what you do not get in the city—well-paved or asphalted roads, +planted with trees, and trim side-walks, studded with houses of +individuality, not boorishly fenced off from each other, but standing +each on its plot of well-kept turf running down to the pavement. It is +always Sunday in these streets of a morning. The cable-car has taken the +men down town to business, the children are at school, and the big dogs, +three and a third to each absent child, lie nosing the winter-killed +grass and wondering when the shoots will make it possible for a +gentleman to take his spring medicine. In the afternoon, the children on +tricycles stagger up and down the asphalt with due proportion of big +dogs at each wheel; the cable-cars coming up hill begin to drop the men +each at his own door—the door of the house that he builded for himself +(though the architect incited him to that vile little attic tower and +useless loggia), and, naturally enough, twilight brings the lovers +walking two by two along the very quiet ways. You can tell from the +houses almost the exact period at which they were built, whether in the +jig-saw days, when if behoved respectability to use unlovely turned +rails and pierced gable-ends, or during the Colonial craze, which means +white paint and fluted pillars, or in the latest domestic era, a most +pleasant mixture, that is, of stained shingles, hooded dormer-windows, +cunning verandas, and recessed doors. Seeing these things, one begins to +understand why the Americans visiting England are impressed with the old +and not with the new. He is not much more than a hundred years ahead of +the English in design, comfort, and economy, and (this is most +important) labour-saving appliances in his house. From Newport to San +Diego you will find the same thing to-day.</p> + +<p>Last tribute of respect and admiration. One little brown house at the +end of an avenue is shuttered down, and a doctor's buggy stands before +it. On the door a large blue and white label says—' Scarlet Fever.' Oh, +most excellent municipality of St. Paul. It is because of these little +things, and not by rowdying and racketing in public places, that a +nation becomes great and free and honoured. In the cars to-night they +will be talking wheat, girding at Minneapolis, and sneering at Duluth's +demand for twenty feet of water from Duluth to the Atlantic—matters of +no great moment compared with those streets and that label.</p> +<br /> + +<p><i> +A day later</i> .</p> + +<p>'Five days ago there wasn't a foot of earth to see. It was just +naturally covered with snow,' says the conductor standing in the rear +car of the Great Northern train. He speaks as though the snow had hidden +something priceless. Here is the view: One railway track and a line of +staggering telegraph poles ending in a dot and a blur on the horizon. To +the left and right, a sweep as it were of the sea, one huge plain of +corn land waiting for the spring, dotted at rare intervals with wooden +farmhouses, patent self-reapers and binders almost as big as the houses, +ricks left over from last year's abundant harvest, and mottled here and +there with black patches to show that the early ploughing had begun. The +snow lies in a last few streaks and whirls by the track; from sky-line +to sky-line is black loam and prairie grass so dead that it seems as +though no one year's sun would waken it. This is the granary of the land +where the farmer who bears the burdens of the State—and who, therefore, +ascribes last year's bumper crop to the direct action of the McKinley +Bill—has, also, to bear the ghastly monotony of earth and sky. He keeps +his head, having many things to attend to, but his wife sometimes goes +mad as the women do in Vermont. There is little variety in Nature's big +wheat-field. They say that when the corn is in the ear, the wind, +chasing shadows across it for miles on miles, breeds as it were a +vertigo in those who must look and cannot turn their eyes away. And they +tell a nightmare story of a woman who lived with her husband for +fourteen years at an Army post in just such a land as this. Then they +were transferred to West Point, among the hills over the Hudson, and she +came to New York, but the terror of the tall houses grew upon her and +grew till she went down with brain fever, and the dread of her delirium +was that the terrible things would topple down and crush her. That is a +true story.</p> + +<p>They work for harvest with steam-ploughs here. How could mere horses +face the endless furrows? And they attack the earth with toothed, +cogged, and spiked engines that would be monstrous in the shops, but +here are only speckles on the yellow grass. Even the locomotive is +cowed. A train of freight cars is passing along a line that comes out of +the blue and goes on till it meets the blue again. Elsewhere the train +would move off with a joyous, vibrant roar. Here it steals away down the +vista of the telegraph poles with an awed whisper—steals away and sinks +into the soil.</p> + +<p>Then comes a town deep in black mud—a straggly, inch-thick plank town, +with dull red grain elevators. The open country refuses to be subdued +even for a few score rods. Each street ends in the illimitable open, and +it is as though the whole houseless, outside earth were racing through +it. Towards evening, under a gray sky, flies by an unframed picture of +desolation. In the foreground a farm wagon almost axle deep in mud, the +mire dripping from the slow-turning wheels as the man flogs the horses. +Behind him on a knoll of sodden soggy grass, fenced off by raw rails +from the landscape at large, are a knot of utterly uninterested citizens +who have flogged horses and raised wheat in their time, but to-day lie +under chipped and weather-worn wooden headstones. Surely burial here +must be more awful to the newly-made ghost than burial at sea.</p> + +<p>There is more snow as we go north, and Nature is hard at work breaking +up the ground for the spring. The thaw has filled every depression with +a sullen gray-black spate, and out on the levels the water lies six +inches deep, in stretch upon stretch, as far as the eye can reach. Every +culvert is full, and the broken ice clicks against the wooden +pier-guards of the bridges. Somewhere in this flatness there is a +refreshing jingle of spurs along the cars, and a man of the Canadian +Mounted Police swaggers through with his black fur cap and the yellow +tab aside, his well-fitting overalls and his better set-up back. One +wants to shake hands with him because he is clean and does not slouch +nor spit, trims his hair, and walks as a man should. Then a +custom-house officer wants to know too much about cigars, whisky, and +Florida water. Her Majesty the Queen of England and Empress of India has +us in her keeping. Nothing has happened to the landscape, and Winnipeg, +which is, as it were, a centre of distribution for emigrants, stands up +to her knees in the water of the thaw. The year has turned in earnest, +and somebody is talking about the 'first ice-shove' at Montreal, 1300 or +1400 miles east.</p> + +<p>They will not run trains on Sunday at Montreal, and this is Wednesday. +Therefore, the Canadian Pacific makes up a train for Vancouver at +Winnipeg. This is worth remembering, because few people travel in that +train, and you escape any rush of tourists running westward to catch the +Yokohama boat. The car is your own, and with it the service of the +porter. Our porter, seeing things were slack, beguiled himself with a +guitar, which gave a triumphal and festive touch to the journey, +ridiculously out of keeping with the view. For eight-and-twenty long +hours did the bored locomotive trail us through a flat and hairy land, +powdered, ribbed, and speckled with snow, small snow that drives like +dust-shot in the wind—the land of Assiniboia. Now and again, for no +obvious reason to the outside mind, there was a town. Then the towns +gave place to 'section so and so'; then there were trails of the +buffalo, where he once walked in his pride; then there was a mound of +white bones, supposed to belong to the said buffalo, and then the +wilderness took up the tale. Some of it was good ground, but most of it +seemed to have fallen by the wayside, and the tedium of it was eternal.</p> + +<p>At twilight—an unearthly sort of twilight—there came another curious +picture. Thus—a wooden town shut in among low, treeless, rolling +ground, a calling river that ran unseen between scarped banks; barracks +of a detachment of mounted police, a little cemetery where ex-troopers +rested, a painfully formal public garden with pebble paths and foot-high +fir trees, a few lines of railway buildings, white women walking up and +down in the bitter cold with their bonnets off, some Indians in red +blanketing with buffalo horns for sale trailing along the platform, and, +not ten yards from the track, a cinnamon bear and a young grizzly +standing up with extended arms in their pens and begging for food. It +was strange beyond anything that this bald telling can suggest—opening +a door into a new world. The only commonplace thing about the spot was +its name—Medicine Hat, which struck me instantly as the only possible +name such a town could carry. This is that place which later became a +town; but I had seen it three years before when it was even smaller and +was reached by me in a freight-car, ticket unpaid for.</p> + +<p>That next morning brought us the Canadian Pacific Railway as one reads +about it. No pen of man could do justice to the scenery there. The +guide-books struggle desperately with descriptions, adapted for summer +reading, of rushing cascades, lichened rocks, waving pines, and +snow-capped mountains; but in April these things are not there. The +place is locked up—dead as a frozen corpse. The mountain torrent is a +boss of palest emerald ice against the dazzle of the snow; the +pine-stumps are capped and hooded with gigantic mushrooms of snow; the +rocks are overlaid five feet deep; the rocks, the fallen trees, and the +lichens together, and the dumb white lips curl up to the track cut in +the side of the mountain, and grin there fanged with gigantic icicles. +You may listen in vain when the train stops for the least sign of breath +or power among the hills. The snow has smothered the rivers, and the +great looping trestles run over what might be a lather of suds in a huge +wash-tub. The old snow near by is blackened and smirched with the smoke +of locomotives, and its dulness is grateful to aching eyes. But the men +who live upon the line have no consideration for these things. At a +halting-place in a gigantic gorge walled in by the snows, one of them +reels from a tiny saloon into the middle of the track where half-a-dozen +dogs are chasing a pig off the metals. He is beautifully and eloquently +drunk. He sings, waves his hands, and collapses behind a shunting +engine, while four of the loveliest peaks that the Almighty ever moulded +look down upon him. The landslide that should have wiped that saloon +into kindlings has missed its mark and has struck a few miles down the +line. One of the hillsides moved a little in dreaming of the spring and +caught a passing freight train. Our cars grind cautiously by, for the +wrecking engine has only just come through. The deceased engine is +standing on its head in soft earth thirty or forty feet down the slide, +and two long cars loaded with shingles are dropped carelessly atop of +it. It looks so marvellously like a toy train flung aside by a child, +that one cannot realise what it means till a voice cries, 'Any one +killed?' The answer comes back, 'No; all jumped'; and you perceive with +a sense of personal insult that this slovenliness of the mountain is an +affair which may touch your own sacred self. In which case.... But the +train is out on a trestle, into a tunnel, and out on a trestle again. It +was here that every one began to despair of the line when it was under +construction, because there seemed to be no outlet. But a man came, as a +man always will, and put a descent thus and a curve in this manner, and +a trestle so; and behold, the line went on. It is in this place that we +heard the story of the Canadian Pacific Railway told as men tell a +many-times-repeated tale, with exaggerations and omissions, but an +imposing tale, none the less. In the beginning, when they would federate +the Dominion of Canada, it was British Columbia who saw objections to +coming in, and the Prime Minister of those days promised it for a bribe, +an iron band between tidewater and tidewater that should not break. Then +everybody laughed, which seems necessary to the health of most big +enterprises, and while they were laughing, things were being done. The +Canadian Pacific Railway was given a bit of a line here and a bit of a +line there and almost as much land as it wanted, and the laughter was +still going on when the last spike was driven between east and west, at +the very place where the drunken man sprawled behind the engine, and the +iron band ran from tideway to tideway as the Premier said, and people in +England said 'How interesting,' and proceeded to talk about the 'bloated +Army estimates.' Incidentally, the man who told us—he had nothing to do +with the Canadian Pacific Railway—explained how it paid the line to +encourage immigration, and told of the arrival at Winnipeg of a +train-load of Scotch crofters on a Sunday. They wanted to stop then and +there for the Sabbath—they and all the little stock they had brought +with them. It was the Winnipeg agent who had to go among them arguing +(he was Scotch too, and they could not quite understand it) on the +impropriety of dislocating the company's traffic. So their own minister +held a service in the station, and the agent gave them a good dinner, +cheering them in Gaelic, at which they wept, and they went on to settle +at Moosomin, where they lived happily ever afterwards. Of the manager, +the head of the line from Montreal to Vancouver, our companion spoke +with reverence that was almost awe. That manager lived in a palace at +Montreal, but from time to time he would sally forth in his special car +and whirl over his 3000 miles at 50 miles an hour. The regulation pace +is twenty-two, but he sells his neck with his head. Few drivers cared +for the honour of taking him over the road. A mysterious man he was, who +'carried the profile of the line in his head,' and, more than that, knew +intimately the possibilities of back country which he had never seen nor +travelled over. There is always one such man on every line. You can hear +similar tales from drivers on the Great Western in England or Eurasian +stationmasters on the big North-Western in India. Then a +fellow-traveller spoke, as many others had done, on the possibilities of +Canadian union with the United States; and his language was not the +language of Mr. Goldwin Smith. It was brutal in places. Summarised it +came to a pronounced objection to having anything to do with a land +rotten before it was ripe, a land with seven million negroes as yet +unwelded into the population, their race-type unevolved, and rather more +than crude notions on murder, marriage, and honesty. 'We've picked up +their ways of politics,' he said mournfully. 'That comes of living next +door to them; but I don't think we're anxious to mix up with their other +messes. They say they don't want us. They keep on saying it. There's a +nigger on the fence somewhere, or they wouldn't lie about it.'</p> + +<p>'But does it follow that they are lying?'</p> + +<p>'Sure. I've lived among 'em. They can't go straight. There's some dam' +fraud at the back of it.'</p> + +<p>From this belief he would not be shaken. He had lived among +them—perhaps had been bested in trade. Let them keep themselves and +their manners and customs to their own side of the line, he said.</p> + +<p>This is very sad and chilling. It seemed quite otherwise in New York, +where Canada was represented as a ripe plum ready to fell into Uncle +Sam's mouth when he should open it. The Canadian has no special love for +England—the Mother of Colonies has a wonderful gift for alienating the +affections of her own household by neglect—but, perhaps, he loves his +own country. We ran out of the snow through mile upon mile of +snow-sheds, braced with twelve-inch beams, and planked with two-inch +planking. In one place a snow slide had caught just the edge of a shed +and scooped it away as a knife scoops cheese. High up the hills men had +built diverting barriers to turn the drifts, but the drifts had swept +over everything, and lay five deep on the top of the sheds. When we woke +it was on the banks of the muddy Fraser River and the spring was +hurrying to meet us. The snow had gone; the pink blossoms of the wild +currant were open, the budding alders stood misty green against the blue +black of the pines, the brambles on the burnt stumps were in tenderest +leaf, and every moss on every stone was this year's work, fresh from the +hand of the Maker. The land opened into clearings of soft black earth. +At one station a hen had laid an egg and was telling the world about it. +The world answered with a breath of real spring—spring that flooded the +stuffy car and drove us out on the platform to snuff and sing and +rejoice and pluck squashy green marsh-flags and throw them at the +colts, and shout at the wild duck that rose from a jewel-green lakelet. +God be thanked that in travel one can follow the year! This, my spring, +I lost last November in New Zealand. Now I shall hold her fast through +Japan and the summer into New Zealand again.</p> + +<p>Here are the waters of the Pacific, and Vancouver (completely destitute +of any decent defences) grown out of all knowledge in the last three +years. At the railway wharf, with never a gun to protect her, lies the +<i>Empress of India</i> —the Japan boat—and what more auspicious name could +you wish to find at the end of one of the strong chains of empire?</p> + + +<a name="chap3" id="chap3"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>THE EDGE OF THE EAST</h2> + +<p>The mist was clearing off Yokohama harbour and a hundred junks had their +sails hoisted for the morning breeze, so the veiled horizon was +stippled with square blurs of silver. An English man-of-war showed +blue-white on the haze, so new was the daylight, and all the water lay +out as smooth as the inside of an oyster shell. Two children in blue and +white, their tanned limbs pink in the fresh air, sculled a marvellous +boat of lemon-hued wood, and that was our fairy craft to the shore +across the stillness and the mother o' pearl levels.</p> + +<p>There are ways and ways of entering Japan. The best is to descend upon +it from America and the Pacific—from the barbarians and the deep sea. +Coming from the East, the blaze of India and the insolent tropical +vegetation of Singapore dull the eye to half-colours and little tones. +It is at Bombay that the smell of All Asia boards the ship miles off +shore, and holds the passenger's nose till he is clear of Asia again. +That is a violent, and aggressive smell, apt to prejudice the stranger, +but kin none the less to the gentle and insinuating flavour that stole +across the light airs of the daybreak when the fairy boat went to +shore—a smell of very clean new wood; split bamboo, wood-smoke, damp +earth, and the things that people who are not white people eat—a +homelike and comforting smell. Then followed on shore the sound of an +Eastern tongue, that is beautiful or not as you happen to know it. The +Western races have many languages, but a crowd of Europeans heard +through closed doors talk with the Western pitch and cadence. So it is +with the East. A line of jinrickshaw coolies sat in the sun discoursing +to each other, and it was as though they were welcoming a return in +speech that the listener must know as well as English. They talked and +they talked, but the ghosts of familiar words would not grow any clearer +till presently the Smell came down the open streets again, saying that +this was the East where nothing matters, and trifles old as the Tower of +Babel mattered less than nothing, and that there were old acquaintances +waiting at every corner beyond the township. Great is the Smell of the +East! Railways, telegraphs, docks, and gunboats cannot banish it, and it +will endure till the railways are dead. He who has not smelt that smell +has never lived.</p> + +<p>Three years ago Yokohama was sufficiently Europeanised in its shops to +suit the worst and wickedest taste. To-day it is still worse if you keep +to the town limits. Ten steps beyond into the fields all the +civilisation stops exactly as it does in another land a few thousand +miles further West. The globe-trotting, millionaires anxious to spend +money, with a nose on whatever caught their libertine fancies, had +explained to us aboard-ship that they came to Japan in haste, advised by +their guide-books to do so, lest the land should be suddenly civilised +between steamer-sailing and steamer-sailing. When they touched land they +ran away to the curio shops to buy things which are prepared for +them—mauve and magenta and blue-vitriol things. By this time they have +a 'Murray' under one arm and an electric-blue eagle with a copperas beak +and a yellow '<i>E pluribus unum</i> ' embroidered on apple-green silk, under +the other.</p> + +<p>We, being wise, sit in a garden that is not ours, but belongs to a +gentleman in slate-coloured silk, who, solely for the sake of the +picture, condescends to work as a gardener, in which employ he is +sweeping delicately a welt of fallen cherry blossoms from under an +azalea aching to burst into bloom. Steep stone steps, of the colour that +nature ripens through long winters, lead up to this garden by way of +clumps of bamboo grass. You see the Smell was right when it talked of +meeting old friends. Half-a-dozen blue-black pines are standing akimbo +against a real sky—not a fog-blur nor a cloud-bank, nor a gray +dish-clout wrapped round the sun—but a blue sky. A cherry tree on a +slope below them throws up a wave of blossom that breaks all creamy +white against their feet, and a clump of willows trail their palest +green shoots in front of all. The sun sends for an ambassador through +the azalea bushes a lordly swallow-tailed butterfly, and his squire +very like the flitting 'chalk-blue' of the English downs. The warmth of +the East, that goes through, not over, the lazy body, is added to the +light of the East—the splendid lavish light that clears but does not +bewilder the eye. Then the new leaves of the spring wink like fat +emeralds and the loaded branches of cherry-bloom grow transparent and +glow as a hand glows held up against flame. Little, warm sighs come up +from the moist, warm earth, and the fallen petals stir on the ground, +turn over, and go to sleep again. Outside, beyond the foliage, where the +sunlight lies on the slate-coloured roofs, the ridged rice-fields beyond +the roofs, and the hills beyond the rice-fields, is all Japan—only all +Japan; and this that they call the old French Legation is the Garden of +Eden that most naturally dropped down here after the Fall. For some +small hint of the beauties to be shown later there is the roof of a +temple, ridged and fluted with dark tiles, flung out casually beyond the +corner of the bluff on which the garden stands. Any other curve of the +eaves would not have consorted with the sweep of the pine branches; +therefore, this curve was made, and being made, was perfect. The +congregation of the globe-trotters are in the hotel, scuffling for +guides, in order that they may be shown the sights of Japan, which is +all one sight. They must go to Tokio, they must go to Nikko; they must +surely see all that is to be seen and then write home to their barbarian +families that they are getting used to the sight of bare, brown legs. +Before this day is ended, they will all, thank goodness, have splitting +headaches and burnt-out eyes. It is better to lie still and hear the +grass grow—to soak in the heat and the smell and the sounds and the +sights that come unasked.</p> + +<p>Our garden overhangs the harbour, and by pushing aside one branch we +look down upon a heavy-sterned fishing-boat, the straw-gold mats of the +deck-house pushed back to show the perfect order and propriety of the +housekeeping that is going forward. The father-fisher, sitting +frog-fashion, is poking at a tiny box full of charcoal, and the light, +white ash is blown back into the face of a largish Japanese doll, price +two shillings and threepence in Bayswater. The doll wakes, turns into a +Japanese baby something more valuable than money could buy—a baby with +a shaven head and aimless legs. It crawls to the thing in the polished +brown box, is picked up just as it is ready to eat live coals, and is +set down behind a thwart, where it drums upon a bucket, addressing the +firebox from afar. Half-a-dozen cherry blossoms slide off a bough, and +waver down to the water close to the Japanese doll, who in another +minute will be overside in pursuit of these miracles. The father-fisher +has it by the pink hind leg, and this time it is tucked away, all but +the top-knot, out of sight among umber nets and sepia cordage. Being an +Oriental it makes no protest, and the boat scuds out to join the little +fleet in the offing.</p> + +<p>Then two sailors of a man-of-war come along the sea face, lean over the +canal below the garden, spit, and roll away. The sailor in port is the +only superior man. To him all matters rare and curious are either 'them +things' or 'them other things.' He does not hurry himself, he does not +seek Adjectives other than those which custom puts into his mouth for +all occasions; but the beauty of life penetrates his being insensibly +till he gets drunk, falls foul of the local policeman, smites him into +the nearest canal, and disposes of the question of treaty revision with +a hiccup. All the same, Jack says that he has a grievance against the +policeman, who is paid a dollar for every strayed seaman he brings up to +the Consular Courts for overstaying his leave, and so forth. Jack says +that the little fellows deliberately hinder him from getting back to his +ship, and then with devilish art and craft of wrestling tricks—'there +are about a hundred of 'em, and they can throw you with every qualified +one'—carry him to justice. Now when Jack is softened with drink he does +not tell lies. This is his grievance, and he says that them blanketed +consuls ought to know. 'They plays into each other's hands, and stops +you at the Hatoba'—the policemen do. The visitor who is neither a +seaman nor drunk, cannot swear to the truth of this, or indeed anything +else. He moves not only among fascinating scenes and a lovely people +but, as he is sure to find out before he has been a day ashore, between +stormy questions. Three years ago there were no questions that were not +going to be settled off-hand in a blaze of paper lanterns. The +Constitution was new. It has a gray, pale cover with a chrysanthemum at +the back, and a Japanese told me then, 'Now we have Constitution same as +other countries, and <i> +so</i> it is all right. Now we are quite civilised +because of Constitution.'</p> + +<p>[A perfectly irrelevant story comes to mind here. Do you know that in +Madeira once they had a revolution which lasted just long enough for the +national poet to compose a national anthem, and then was put down? All +that is left of the revolt now is the song that you hear on the +twangling <i> +nachettes</i> , the baby-banjoes, of a moonlight night under the +banana fronds at the back of Funchal. And the high-pitched nasal refrain +of it is 'Consti-tuci-<i> +oun</i> !']</p> + +<p>Since that auspicious date it seems that the questions have +impertinently come up, and the first and the last of them is that of +Treaty Revision. Says the Japanese Government, 'Only obey our laws, our +new laws that we have carefully compiled from all the wisdom of the +West, and you shall go up country as you please and trade where you +will, instead of living cooped up in concessions and being judged by +consuls. Treat us as you would treat France or Germany, and we will +treat you as our own subjects.'</p> + +<p>Here, as you know, the matter rests between the two thousand foreigners +and the forty million Japanese—a God-send to all editors of Tokio and +Yokohama, and the despair of the newly arrived in whose nose, remember, +is the smell of the East, One and Indivisible, Immemorial, Eternal, and, +above all, Instructive.</p> + +<p>Indeed, it is only by walking out at least half a mile that you escape +from the aggressive evidences of civilisation, and come out into the +rice-fields at the back of the town. Here men with twists of blue and +white cloth round their heads are working knee deep in the thick black +mud. The largest field may be something less than two tablecloths, while +the smallest is, say, a speck of undercliff, on to which it were hard to +back a 'rickshaw, wrested from the beach and growing its clump of barley +within spray-shot of the waves. The field paths are the trodden tops of +the irrigating cuts, and the main roads as wide as two perambulators +abreast. From the uplands—the beautiful uplands planted in exactly the +proper places with pine and maple—the ground comes down in terraced +pocket on pocket of rich earth to the levels again, and it would seem +that every heavily-thatched farmhouse was chosen with special regard to +the view. If you look closely when the people go to work you will see +that a household spreads itself over plots, maybe, a quarter of a mile +apart. A revenue map of a village shows that this scatteration is +apparently designed, but the reason is not given. One thing at least is +certain. The assessment of these patches can be no light piece of +work—just the thing, in fact, that would give employment to a large +number of small and variegated Government officials, any one of whom, +assuming that he was of an Oriental cast of mind, might make the +cultivator's life interesting. I remember now—a second-time-seen place +brings back things that were altogether buried—seeing three years ago +the pile of Government papers required in the case of one farm. They +were many and systematic, but the interesting thing about them was the +amount of work that they must have furnished to those who were neither +cultivators nor Treasury officials.</p> + +<p>If one knew Japanese, one could collogue with that gentleman in the +straw-hat and the blue loincloth who is chopping within a sixteenth of +an inch of his naked toes with the father and mother of all weed-spuds. +His version of local taxation might be inaccurate, but it would sure to +be picturesque. Failing his evidence, be pleased to accept two or three +things that may or may not be facts of general application. They differ +in a measure from statements in the books. The present land-tax is +nominally 2-1/2 per cent, payable in cash on a three, or as some say a +five, yearly settlement. But, according to certain officials, there has +been no settlement since 1875. Land lying fallow for a season pays the +same tax as land in cultivation, unless it is unproductive through flood +or calamity (read earthquake here). The Government tax is calculated on +the capital value of the land, taking a measure of about 11,000 square +feet or a quarter of an acre as the unit.</p> + +<p>Now, one of the ways of getting at the capital value of the land is to +see what the railways have paid for it. The very best rice land, taking +the Japanese dollar at three shillings, is about £65:10s per acre. +Unirrigated land for vegetable growing is something over £9:12s., and +forest £2:11s. As these are railway rates, they may be fairly held to +cover large areas. In private sales the prices may reasonably be higher.</p> + +<p>It is to be remembered that some of the very best rice land will bear +two crops of rice in the year. Most soil will bear two crops, the first +being millet, rape, vegetables, and so on, sown on dry soil and ripening +at the end of May. Then the ground is at once prepared for the wet crop, +to be harvested in October or thereabouts. Land-tax is payable in two +instalments. Rice land pays between the 1st November and the middle of +December and the 1st January and the last of February. Other land pays +between July and August and September and December. Let us see what the +average yield is. The gentleman in the sun-hat and the loin-cloth would +shriek at the figures, but they are approximately accurate. Rice +naturally fluctuates a good deal, but it may be taken in the rough at +five Japanese dollars (fifteen shillings) per <i> +koku</i> of 330 lbs. Wheat +and maize of the first spring crop is worth about eleven shillings per +<i> +koku</i> . The first crop gives nearly 1-3/4 <i> +koku</i> per <i> +tau</i> (the quarter +acre unit of measurement aforesaid), or eighteen shillings per quarter +acre, or £3:12s. per acre. The rice crop at two <i> +koku</i> or £1:10s. the +quarter acre gives £6 an acre. Total £9:12s. This is not altogether bad +if you reflect that the land in question is not the very best rice land, +but ordinary No. 1, at £25:16s. per acre, capital value.</p> + +<p>A son has the right to inherit his father's land on the father's +assessment, so long as its term runs, or, when the term has expired, has +a prior claim as against any one else. Part of the taxes, it is said, +lies by in the local prefecture's office as a reserve fund against +inundations. Yet, and this seems a little confusing, there are between +five and seven other local, provincial, and municipal taxes which can +reasonably be applied to the same ends. No one of these taxes exceeds a +half of the land-tax, unless it be the local prefecture tax of 2-1/2 per +cent.</p> + +<p>In the old days the people were taxed, or perhaps squeezed would be the +better word, to about one-half of the produce of the land. There are +those who may say that the present system is not so advantageous as it +looks. Beforetime, the farmers, it is true, paid heavily, but only, on +their nominal holdings. They could, and often did, hold more land than +they were assessed on. Today a rigid bureaucracy surveys every foot of +their farms, and upon every foot they have to pay. Somewhat similar +complaints are made still by the simple peasantry of India, for if there +is one thing that the Oriental detests more than another, it is the +damnable Western vice of accuracy. That leads to doing things by rule. +Still, by the look of those terraced fields, where the water is led so +cunningly from level to level, the Japanese cultivator must enjoy at +least one excitement. If the villages up the valley tamper with the +water supply, there must surely be excitement down the valley—argument, +protest, and the breaking of heads.</p> + +<p>The days of romance, therefore, are not all dead.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + + +<p>This that follows happened on the coast twenty miles through the fields +from Yokohama, at Kamakura, that is to say, where the great bronze +Buddha sits facing the sea to hear the centuries go by. He has been +described again and again—his majesty, his aloofness, and every one of +his dimensions, the smoky little shrine within him, and the plumed hill +that makes the background to his throne. For that reason he remains, as +he remained from the beginning, beyond all hope of description—as it +might be, a visible god sitting in the garden of a world made new. They +sell photographs of him with tourists standing on his thumb nail, and, +apparently, any brute of any gender can scrawl his or its ignoble name +over the inside of the massive bronze plates that build him up. Think +for a moment of the indignity and the insult! Imagine the ancient, +orderly gardens with their clipped trees, shorn turf, and silent ponds +smoking in the mist that the hot sun soaks up after rain, and the +green-bronze image of the Teacher of the Law wavering there as it half +seems through incense clouds. The earth is all one censer, and myriads +of frogs are making the haze ring. It is too warm to do more than to sit +on a stone and watch the eyes that, having seen all things, see no +more—the down-dropped eyes, the forward droop of the head, and the +colossal simplicity of the folds of the robe over arm and knee. Thus, +and in no other fashion, did Buddha sit in the-old days when Ananda +asked questions and the dreamer began to dream of the lives that lay +behind him ere the lips moved, and as the Chronicles say: 'He told a +tale.' This would be the way he began, for dreamers in the East tell +something the same sort of tales to-day: 'Long ago when Devadatta was +King of Benares, there lived a virtuous elephant, a reprobate ox, and a +King without understanding.' And the tale would end, after the moral had +been drawn for Ananda's benefit: 'Now, the reprobate ox was such an one, +and the King was such another, but the virtuous elephant was I, myself, +Ananda.' Thus, then, he told the tales in the bamboo grove, and the +bamboo grove is there to-day. Little blue and gray and slate robed +figures pass under its shadow, buy two or three joss-sticks, disappear +into the shrine, that is, the body of the god, come out smiling, and +drift away through the shrubberies. A fat carp in a pond sucks at a +fallen leaf with just the sound of a wicked little worldly kiss. Then +the earth steams, and steams in silence, and a gorgeous butterfly, full +six inches from wing to wing, cuts through the steam in a zigzag of +colour and flickers up to the forehead of the god. And Buddha said that +a man must look on everything as illusion—even light and colour—the +time-worn bronze of metal against blue-green of pine and pale emerald of +bamboo—the lemon sash of the girl in the cinnamon dress, with coral +pins in her hair, leaning against a block of weather-bleached +stone—and, last, the spray of blood-red azalea that stands on the pale +gold mats of the tea-house beneath the honey-coloured thatch. To overcome +desire and covetousness of mere gold, which is often very vilely designed, +that is conceivable; but why must a man give up the delight of the eye, +colour that rejoices, light that cheers, and line that satisfies the +innermost deeps of the heart? Ah, if the Bodhisat had only seen his own +image!</p> + + +<a name="chap4" id="chap4"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>OUR OVERSEAS MEN</h2> + +<p>All things considered, there are only two kinds of men in the +world—those that stay at home and those that do not. The second are the +most interesting. Some day a man will bethink himself and write a book +about the breed in a book called 'The Book of the Overseas Club,' for it +is at the clubhouses all the way from Aden to Yokohama that the life of +the Outside Men is best seen and their talk is best heard. A strong +family likeness runs through both buildings and members, and a large and +careless hospitality is the note. There is always the same open-doored, +high-ceiled house, with matting on the floors; the same come and go of +dark-skinned servants, and the same assembly of men talking horse or +business, in raiment that would fatally scandalise a London committee, +among files of newspapers from a fortnight to five weeks old. The life +of the Outside Men includes plenty of sunshine, and as much air as may +be stirring. At the Cape, where the Dutch housewives distil and sell the +very potent Vanderhum, and the absurd home-made hansom cabs waddle up +and down the yellow dust of Adderley Street, are the members of the big +import and export firms, the shipping and insurance offices, inventors +of mines, and exploiters of new territories with now and then an officer +strayed from India to buy mules for the Government, a Government House +aide-de-camp, a sprinkling of the officers of the garrison, tanned +skippers of the Union and Castle Lines, and naval men from the squadron +at Simon's Town. Here they talk of the sins of Cecil Rhodes, the +insolence of Natal, the beauties or otherwise of the solid Boer vote, +and the dates of the steamers. The <i> +argot</i> is Dutch and Kaffir, and +every one can hum the national anthem that begins 'Pack your kit and +trek, Johnny Bowlegs.' In the stately Hongkong Clubhouse, which is to +the further what the Bengal Club is to the nearer East, you meet much +the same gathering, <i> +minus</i> the mining speculators and <i> +plus</i> men whose +talk is of tea, silk, shortings, and Shanghai ponies. The speech of the +Outside Men at this point becomes fearfully mixed with pidgin-English +and local Chinese terms, rounded with corrupt Portuguese. At Melbourne, +in a long verandah giving on a grass plot, where laughing-jackasses +laugh very horribly, sit wool-kings, premiers, and breeders of horses +after their kind. The older men talk of the days of the Eureka Stockade +and the younger of 'shearing wars' in North Queensland, while the +traveller moves timidly among them wondering what under the world every +third word means. At Wellington, overlooking the harbour (all +right-minded clubs should command the sea), another, and yet a like, +sort of men speak of sheep, the rabbits, the land-courts, and the +ancient heresies of Sir Julius Vogel; and their more expressive +sentences borrow from the Maori. And elsewhere, and elsewhere, and +elsewhere among the Outside Men it is the same—the same mixture of +every trade, calling, and profession under the sun; the same clash of +conflicting interests touching the uttermost parts of the earth; the +same intimate, and sometimes appalling knowledge of your neighbour's +business and shortcomings; the same large-palmed hospitality, and the +same interest on the part of the younger men in the legs of a horse. +Decidedly, it is at the Overseas Club all the world over that you get to +know some little of the life of the community. London is egoistical, and +the world for her ends with the four-mile cab radius. There is no +provincialism like the provincialism of London. That big slack-water +coated with the drift and rubbish of a thousand men's thoughts esteems +itself the open sea because the waves of all the oceans break on her +borders. To those in her midst she is terribly imposing, but they forget +that there is more than one kind of imposition. Look back upon her from +ten thousand miles, when the mail is just in at the Overseas Club, and +she is wondrous tiny. Nine-tenths of her news—so vital, so epoch-making +over there—loses its significance, and the rest is as the scuffling of +ghosts in a back-attic.</p> + +<p>Here in Yokohama the Overseas Club has two mails and four sets of +papers—English, French, German, and American, as suits the variety of +its constitution—and the verandah by the sea, where the big telescope +stands, is a perpetual feast of the Pentecost. The population of the +club changes with each steamer in harbour, for the sea-captains swing +in, are met with 'Hello! where did you come from?' and mix at the bar +and billiard-tables for their appointed time and go to sea again. The +white-painted warships supply their contingent of members also, and +there are wonderful men, mines of most fascinating adventure, who have +an interest in sealing-brigs that go to the Kurile Islands, and somehow +get into trouble with the Russian authorities. Consuls and judges of the +Consular Courts meet men over on leave from the China ports, or it may +be Manila, and they all talk tea, silk, banking, and exchange with its +fixed residents. Everything is always as bad as it can possibly be, and +everybody is on the verge of ruin. That is why, when they have decided +that life is no longer worth living, they go down to the +skittle-alley—to commit suicide. From the outside, when a cool wind +blows among the papers and there is a sound of smashing ice in an inner +apartment, and every third man is talking about the approaching races, +the life seems to be a desirable one. 'What more could a man need to +make him happy?' says the passer-by. A perfect climate, a lovely +country, plenty of pleasant society, and the politest people on earth to +deal with. The resident smiles and invites the passer-by to stay through +July and August. Further, he presses him to do business with the +politest people on earth, and to continue so doing for a term of years. +Thus the traveller perceives beyond doubt that the resident is +prejudiced by the very fact of his residence, and gives it as his +matured opinion that Japan is a faultless land, marred only by the +presence of the foreign community. And yet, let us consider. It is the +foreign community that has made it possible for the traveller to come +and go from hotel to hotel, to get his passport for inland travel, to +telegraph his safe arrival to anxious friends, and generally enjoy +himself much more than he would have been able to do in his own country. +Government and gunboats may open a land, but it is the men of the +Overseas Club that keep it open. Their reward (not alone in Japan) is +the bland patronage or the scarcely-veiled contempt of those who profit +by their labours. It is hopeless to explain to a traveller who has been +'ohayoed' into half-a-dozen shops and 'sayonaraed' out of half-a-dozen +more and politely cheated in each one, that the Japanese is an Oriental, +and, therefore, embarrassingly economical of the truth. 'That's his +politeness,' says the traveller. 'He does not wish to hurt your +feelings. Love him and treat him like a brother, and he'll change.' To +treat one of the most secretive of races on a brotherly basis is not +very easy, and the natural politeness that enters into a signed and +sealed contract and undulates out of it so soon as it does not +sufficiently pay is more than embarrassing. It is almost annoying. The +want of fixity or commercial honour may be due to some natural infirmity +of the artistic temperament, or to the manner in which the climate has +affected, and his ruler has ruled, the man himself for untold centuries.</p> + +<p>Those who know the East know, where the system of 'squeeze,' which is +commission, runs through every transaction of life, from the sale of a +groom's place upward, where the woman walks behind the man in the +streets, and where the peasant gives you for the distance to the next +town as many or as few miles as he thinks you will like, that these +things must be so. Those who do not know will not be persuaded till they +have lived there. The Overseas Club puts up its collective nose +scornfully when it hears of the New and Regenerate Japan sprung to life +since the 'seventies. It grins, with shame be it written, at an Imperial +Diet modelled on the German plan and a Code Napoléon à la Japonaise. It +is so far behind the New Era as to doubt that an Oriental country, +ridden by etiquette of the sternest, and social distinctions almost as +hard as those of caste, can be turned out to Western gauge in the +compass of a very young man's life. And it <i> +must</i> be prejudiced, because +it is daily and hourly in contact with the Japanese, except when it can +do business with the Chinaman whom it prefers. Was there ever so +disgraceful a club!</p> + +<p>Just at present, a crisis, full blown as a chrysanthemum, has developed +in the Imperial Diet. Both Houses accuse the Government of improper +interference—this Japanese for 'plenty stick and some bank-note'—at +the recent elections. They then did what was equivalent to passing a +vote of censure on the Ministry and refusing to vote government +measures. So far the wildest advocate of representative government could +have desired nothing better. Afterwards, things took a distinctly +Oriental turn. The Ministry refused to resign, and the Mikado prorogued +the Diet for a week to think things over. The Japanese papers are now at +issue over the event. Some say that representative government implies +party government, and others swear at large. The Overseas Club says for +the most part—'Skittles!'</p> + +<p>It is a picturesque situation—one that suggests romances and +extravaganzas. Thus, imagine a dreaming Court intrenched behind a triple +line of moats where the lotus blooms in summer—a Court whose outer +fringe is aggressively European, but whose heart is Japan of long ago, +where a dreaming King sits among some wives or other things, amused from +time to time with magic-lantern shows and performing fleas—a holy King +whose sanctity is used to conjure with, and who twice a year gives +garden-parties where every one must come in top-hat and frock coat. +Round this Court, wavering between the splendours of the sleeping and +the variety shows of the Crystal Palace, place in furious but +carefully-veiled antagonism the fragments of newly shattered castes, +their natural Oriental eccentricities overlaid with borrowed Western +notions. Imagine now, a large and hungry bureaucracy, French in its +fretful insistence on detail where detail is of no earthly moment, +Oriental in its stress on etiquette and punctillo, recruited from a +military caste accustomed for ages past to despise alike farmer and +trader. This caste, we will suppose, is more or less imperfectly +controlled by a syndicate of three clans, which supply their own +nominees to the Ministry. These are adroit, versatile, and unscrupulous +men, hampered by no western prejudice in favour of carrying any plan to +completion. Through and at the bidding of these men, the holy Monarch +acts; and the acts are wonderful. To criticise these acts exists a +wild-cat Press, liable to suppression at any moment, as morbidly +sensitive to outside criticism as the American, and almost as childishly +untruthful, fungoid in the swiftness of its growth, and pitiable in its +unseasoned rashness. Backers of this press in its wilder moments, +lawless, ignorant, sensitive and vain, are the student class, educated +in the main at Government expense, and a thorn in the side of the State. +Judges without training handle laws without precedents, and new measures +are passed and abandoned with almost inconceivable levity. Out of the +welter of classes and interests that are not those of the common folk is +evolved the thing called Japanese policy that has the proportion and the +perspective of a Japanese picture.</p> + +<p>Finality and stability are absent from its councils. To-day, for reasons +none can explain, it is pro-foreign to the verge of servility. +To-morrow, for reasons equally obscure, the pendulum swings back, +and—the students are heaving mud at the foreigners in the streets. +Vexatious, irresponsible, incoherent, and, above all, cheaply +mysterious, is the rule of the land—stultified by intrigue and +counter-intrigue, chequered with futile reforms begun on European lines +and light-heartedly thrown aside; studded, as a bower-bird's run is +studded with shells and shining pebbles, with plagiarisms from half the +world—an operetta of administration, wherein the shadow of the King +among his wives, Samurai policemen, doctors who have studied under +Pasteur, kid-gloved cavalry officers from St. Cyr, judges with +University degrees, harlots with fiddles, newspaper correspondents, +masters of the ancient ceremonies of the land, paid members of the Diet, +secret societies that borrow the knife and the dynamite of the Irish, +sons of dispossessed Daimios returned from Europe and waiting for what +may turn up, with ministers of the syndicate who have wrenched Japan +from her repose of twenty years ago, circle, flicker, shift, and reform, +in bewildering rings, round the foreign resident. Is the extravaganza +complete?</p> + +<p>Somewhere in the background of the stage are the people of the land—of +whom a very limited proportion enjoy the privileges of representative +government. Whether in the past few years they have learned what the +thing means, or, learning, have the least intention of making any use of +it, is not clear. Meantime, the game of government goes forward as +merrily as a game of puss-in-the-corner, with the additional joy that +not more than half-a-dozen men know who is controlling it or what in +the wide world it intends to do. In Tokio live the steadily-diminishing +staff of Europeans employed by the Emperor as engineers, railway +experts, professors in the colleges and so forth. Before many years they +will all be dispensed with, and the country will set forth among the +nations alone and on its own responsibility.</p> + +<p>In fifty years then, from the time that the intrusive American first +broke her peace, Japan will experience her new birth and, reorganised +from sandal to top-knot, play the <i> +samisen</i> in the march of modern +progress. This is the great advantage of being born into the New Era, +when individual and community alike can get something for nothing—pay +without work, education without effort, religion without thought, and +free government without slow and bitter toil.</p> + +<p>The Overseas Club, as has been said, is behind the spirit of the age. It +has to work for what it gets, and it does not always get what it works +for. Nor can its members take ship and go home when they please. Imagine +for a little, the contented frame of mind that is bred in a man by the +perpetual contemplation of a harbour full of steamers as a Piccadilly +cab-rank of hansoms. The weather is hot, we will suppose; something has +gone wrong with his work that day, or his children are not looking so +well as might be. Pretty tiled bungalows, bowered in roses and wistaria, +do not console him, and the voices of the politest people on earth jar +sorely. He knows every soul in the club, has thoroughly talked out +every subject of interest, and would give half a year's—oh, five +years'—pay for one lung-filling breath of air that has life in it, one +sniff of the haying grass, or half a mile of muddy London street where +the muffin bell tinkles in the four o'clock fog. Then the big liner +moves out across the staring blue of the bay. So-and-so and such-an-one, +both friends, are going home in her, and some one else goes next week by +the French mail. He, and he alone, it seems to him, must stay on; and it +is so maddeningly easy to go—for every one save himself. The boat's +smoke dies out along the horizon, and he is left alone with the warm +wind and the white dust of the Bund. Now Japan is a good place, a place +that men swear by and live in for thirty years at a stretch. There are +China ports a week's sail to the westward where life is really hard, and +where the sight of the restless shipping hurts very much indeed. +Tourists and you who travel the world over, be very gentle to the men of +the Overseas Clubs. Remember that, unlike yourselves, they have not come +here for the good of their health, and that the return ticket in your +wallet may possibly colour your views of their land. Perhaps it would +not be altogether wise on the strength of much kindness from Japanese +officials to recommend that these your countrymen be handed over lock, +stock, and barrel to a people that are beginning to experiment with +fresh-drafted half-grafted codes which do not include juries, to a +system that does not contemplate a free Press, to a suspicious +absolutism from which there is no appeal. Truly, it might be +interesting, but as surely it would begin in farce and end in tragedy, +that would leave the politest people on earth in no case to play at +civilised government for a long time to come. In his concession, where +he is an apologetic and much sat-upon importation, the foreign resident +does no harm. He does not always sue for money due to him on the part of +a Japanese. Once outside those limits, free to move into the heart of +the country, it would only be a question of time as to where and when +the trouble would begin. And in the long run it would not be the foreign +resident that would suffer. The imaginative eye can see the most +unpleasant possibilities, from a general overrunning of Japan by the +Chinaman, who is far the most important foreign resident, to the +shelling of Tokio by a joyous and bounding Democracy, anxious to +vindicate her national honour and to learn how her newly-made navy +works.</p> + +<p>But there are scores of arguments that would confute and overwhelm this +somewhat gloomy view. The statistics of Japan, for instance, are as +beautiful and fit as neatly as the woodwork of her houses. By these it +would be possible to prove anything.</p> + + +<a name="chap5" id="chap5"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>SOME EARTHQUAKES</h2> + +<p>A Radical Member of Parliament at Tokio has just got into trouble with +his constituents, and they have sent him a priceless letter of reproof. +Among other things they point out that a politician should not be 'a +waterweed which wobbles hither and thither according to the motion of +the stream.' Nor should he 'like a ghost without legs drift along before +the wind.' 'Your conduct,' they say, 'has been both of a waterweed and a +ghost, and we purpose in a little time to give you proof of our true +Japanese spirit.' That member will very likely be mobbed in his +'rickshaw and prodded to inconvenience with sword-sticks; for the +constituencies are most enlightened. But how in the world can a man +under these skies behave except as a waterweed and a ghost? It is in the +air—the wobble and the legless drift An energetic tourist would have +gone to Hakodate, seen Ainos at Sapporo, ridden across the northern +island under the gigantic thistles, caught salmon, looked in at +Vladivostock, and done half a hundred things in the time that one lazy +loafer has wasted watching the barley turn from green to gold, the +azaleas blossom and burn out, and the spring give way to the warm rains +of summer. Now the iris has taken up the blazonry of the year, and the +tide of the tourists ebbs westward.</p> + +<p>The permanent residents are beginning to talk of hill places to go to +for the hot weather, and all the available houses in the resort are let. +In a little while the men from China will be coming over for their +holidays, but just at present we are in the thick of the tea season, and +there is no time to waste on frivolities. 'Packing' is a valid excuse +for anything, from forgetting a dinner to declining a tennis party, and +the tempers of husbands are judged leniently. All along the sea face is +an inspiring smell of the finest new-mown hay, and canals are full of +boats loaded up with the boxes jostling down to the harbour. At the club +men say rude things about the arrivals of the mail. There never was a +post-office yet that did not rejoice in knocking a man's Sabbath into +flinders. A fair office day's work may begin at eight and end at six, +or, if the mail comes in, at midnight. There is no overtime or +eight-hours' baby-talk in tea. Yonder are the ships; here is the stuff, +and behind all is the American market. The rest is your own affair.</p> + +<p>The narrow streets are blocked with the wains bringing down, in boxes of +every shape and size, the up-country rough leaf. Some one must take +delivery of these things, find room for them in the packed warehouse, +and sample them before they are blended and go to the firing.</p> + +<p>More than half the elaborate processes are 'lost work' so far as the +quality of the stuff goes; but the markets insist on a good-looking +leaf, with polish, face and curl to it, and in this, as in other +businesses, the call of the markets is the law. The factory floors are +made slippery with the tread of bare-footed coolies, who shout as the +tea whirls through its transformations. The over-note to the clamour—an +uncanny thing too—is the soft rustle-down of the tea itself—stacked in +heaps, carried in baskets, dumped through chutes, rising and falling in +the long troughs where it is polished, and disappearing at last into the +heart of the firing-machine—always this insistent whisper of moving +dead leaves. Steam-sieves sift it into grades, with jarrings and +thumpings that make the floor quiver, and the thunder of steam-gear is +always at its heels; but it continues to mutter unabashed till it is +riddled down into the big, foil-lined boxes and lies at peace.</p> + +<p>A few days ago the industry suffered a check which, lasting not more +than two minutes, lost several hundred pounds of hand-fired tea. It was +something after this way. Into the stillness of a hot, stuffy morning +came an unpleasant noise as of batteries of artillery charging up all +the roads together, and at least one bewildered sleeper waking saw his +empty boots where they 'sat and played toccatas stately at the +clavicord.' It was the washstand really but the effect was awful. Then a +clock fell and a wall cracked, and heavy hands caught the house by the +roof-pole and shook it furiously. To preserve an equal mind when things +are hard is good, but he who has not fumbled desperately at bolted +jalousies that will not open while a whole room is being tossed in a +blanket does not know how hard it is to find any sort of mind at all. +The end of the terror was inadequate—a rush into the still, heavy +outside air, only to find the servants in the garden giggling (the +Japanese would giggle through the Day of Judgment) and to learn that the +earthquake was over. Then came the news, swift borne from the business +quarters below the hill, that the coolies of certain factories had fled +shrieking at the first shock, and that all the tea in the pans was +burned to a crisp. That, certainly, was some consolation for undignified +panic; and there remained the hope that a few tall chimneys up the line +at Tokio would have collapsed. They stood firm, however, and the local +papers, used to this kind of thing, merely spoke of the shock as +'severe.' Earthquakes are demoralising; but they bring out all the +weaknesses of human nature. First is downright dread; the stage +of—'only let me get into the open and I'll reform,' then the impulse to +send news of the most terrible shock of modern times flying east and +west among the cables. (Did not your own hair stand straight on end, +and, therefore, must not everybody else's have done likewise?) Last, as +fallen humanity picks itself together, comes the cry of the mean little +soul: 'What! Was <i> +that</i> all? I wasn't frightened from the beginning.'</p> + +<p>It is wholesome and tonic to realise the powerlessness of man in the +face of these little accidents. The heir of all the ages, the +annihilator of time and space, who politely doubts the existence of his +Maker, hears the roof-beams crack and strain above him, and scuttles +about like a rabbit in a stoppered warren. If the shock endures for +twenty minutes, the annihilator of time and space must camp out under +the blue and hunt for his dead among the rubbish. Given a violent +convulsion (only just such a slipping of strata as carelessly piled +volumes will accomplish in a book-case) and behold, the heir of all the +ages is stark, raving mad—a brute among the dishevelled hills. Set a +hundred of the world's greatest spirits, men of fixed principles, high +aims, resolute endeavour, enormous experience, and the modesty that +these attributes bring—set them to live through such a catastrophe as +that which wiped out Nagoya last October, and at the end of three days +there would remain few whose souls might be called their own.</p> + +<p>So much for yesterday's shock. To-day there has come another; and a most +comprehensive affair it is. It has broken nothing, unless maybe an old +heart or two cracks later on; and the wise people in the settlement are +saying that they predicted it from the first. None the less as an +earthquake it deserves recording.</p> + +<p>It was a very rainy afternoon; all the streets were full of gruelly mud, +and all the business men were at work in their offices when it began. A +knot of Chinamen were studying a closed door from whose further side +came a most unpleasant sound of bolting and locking up. The notice on +the door was interesting. With deep regret did the manager of the New +Oriental Banking Corporation, Limited (most decidedly limited), announce +that on telegraphic orders from home he had suspended payment. Said one +Chinaman to another in pidgin-Japanese: 'It is shut,' and went away. The +noise of barring up continued, the rain fell, and the notice stared down +the wet street. That was all. There must have been two or three men +passing by to whom the announcement meant the loss of every penny of +their savings—comforting knowledge to digest after tiffin. In London, +of course, the failure would not mean so much; there are many banks in +the City, and people would have had warning. Here banks are few, people +are dependent on them, and this news came out of the sea unheralded, an +evil born with all its teeth.</p> + +<p>After the crash of a bursting shell every one who can picks himself up, +brushes the dirt off his uniform, and tries to make a joke of it. Then +some one whips a handkerchief round his hand—a splinter has torn +it—and another finds warm streaks running down his forehead. Then a +man, overlooked till now and past help, groans to the death. Everybody +perceives with a start that this is no time for laughter, and the dead +and wounded are attended to.</p> + +<p>Even so at the Overseas Club when the men got out of office. The brokers +had told them the news. In filed the English, and Americans, and +Germans, and French, and 'Here's a pretty mess!' they said one and all. +Many of them were hit, but, like good men, they did not say how +severely.</p> + +<p>'Ah!' said a little P. and O. official, wagging his head sagaciously (he +had lost a thousand dollars since noon), 'it's all right <i> +now</i> . They're +trying to make the best of it. In three or four days we shall hear more +about it. I meant to draw my money just before I went down coast, +but——' Curiously enough, it was the same story throughout the Club. +Everybody had intended to withdraw, and nearly everybody had—not done +so. The manager of a bank which had <i> +not</i> failed was explaining how, in +his opinion, the crash had come about. This was also very human. It +helped none. Entered a lean American, throwing back his waterproof all +dripping with the rain; his face was calm and peaceful. 'Boy, whisky and +soda,' he said.</p> + +<p>'How much haf you losd?' said a Teuton bluntly. 'Eight-fifty,' replied +the son of George Washington sweetly. 'Don't see how that prevents me +having a drink. My glass, sirr.' He continued an interrupted whistling +of 'I owe ten dollars to O'Grady' (which he very probably did), and his +countenance departed not from its serenity. If there is anything that +one loves an American for it is the way he stands certain kinds of +punishment. An Englishman and a heavy loser was being chaffed by a +Scotchman whose account at the Japan end of the line had been a trifle +overdrawn. True, he would lose in England, but the thought of the few +dollars saved here cheered him.</p> + +<p>More men entered, sat down by tables, stood in groups, or remained +apart by themselves, thinking with knit brows. One must think quickly +when one's bills are falling due. The murmur of voices thickened, and +there was no rumbling in the skittle alley to interrupt it. Everybody +knows everybody else at the Overseas Club, and everybody sympathises. A +man passed stiffly and some one of a group turned to ask lightly, 'Hit, +old man?' 'Like hell,' he said, and went on biting his unlit cigar. +Another man was telling, slowly and somewhat bitterly, how he had +expected one of his children to join him out here, and how the passage +had been paid with a draft on the O.B.C. But now ... <i> +There</i> , ladies and +gentlemen, is where it hurts, this little suspension out here. It +destroys plans, pretty ones hoped for and prayed over, maybe for years; +it knocks pleasant domestic arrangements galleywest over and above all +the mere ruin that it causes. The curious thing in the talk was that +there was no abuse of the bank. The men were in the Eastern trade +themselves and they knew. It was the Yokohama manager and the clerks +thrown out of employment (connection with a broken bank, by the way, +goes far to ruin a young man's prospects) for whom they were sorry. +'We're doing ourselves well this year,' said a wit grimly. 'One +free-shooting case, one thundering libel case, and a bank smash. Showing +off pretty before the globe-trotters, aren't we?'</p> + +<p>'Gad, think of the chaps at sea with letters of credit. Eh? They'll land +and get the best rooms at the hotels and find they're penniless,' said +another.</p> + +<p>'Never mind the globe-trotters,' said a third. 'Look nearer home. This +does for so-and-so, and so-and-so, and so-and-so, all old men; and every +penny of theirs goes.' Poor devils!'</p> + +<p>'That reminds me of some one else,' said yet another voice, '<i> +His</i> wife's at home, too. Whew!' and he whistled drearily. So did the tide of +voices run on till men got to talking over the chances of a dividend, +'They went to the Bank of England,' drawled an American, 'and the Bank +of England let them down; said their securities weren't good enough.'</p> + +<p>'Great Scott!'—a hand came down on a table to emphasise the remark—'I +sailed half way up the Mediterranean once with a Bank of England +director; wish I'd tipped him over the rail and lowered him a boat on +his own security—if it was good enough.'</p> + +<p>'Baring's goes. The O.B.C. don't,' replied the American, blowing smoke +through his nose. 'This business looks de-ci-ded-ly prob-le-mat-i-cal. +What-at?'</p> + +<p>'Oh, they'll pay the depositors in full. Don't you fret,' said a man who +had lost nothing and was anxious to console.</p> + +<p>'I'm a shareholder,' said the American, and smoked on.</p> + +<p>The rain continued to fall, and the umbrellas dripped in the racks, and +the wet men came and went, circling round the central fact that it was a +bad business, till the day, as was most fit, shut down in drizzling +darkness. There was a refreshing sense of brotherhood in misfortunes in +the little community that had just been electrocuted and did not want +any more shocks. All the pain that in England would be taken home to be +borne in silence and alone was here bulked, as it were, and faced in +line of company. Surely the Christians of old must have fought much +better when they met the lions by fifties at a time.</p> + +<p>At last the men departed; the bachelors to cast up accounts by +themselves (there should be some good ponies for sale shortly) and the +married men to take counsel. May heaven help him whose wife does not +stand by him now! But the women of the Overseas settlements are as +thorough as the men. There will be tears for plans forgone, the changing +of the little ones' schools and elder children's careers, unpleasant +letters to be written home, and more unpleasant ones to be received from +relatives who 'told you so from the first.' There will be pinchings too, +and straits of which the outside world will know nothing, but the women +will pull it through smiling.</p> + +<p>Beautiful indeed are the operations of modern finance—especially when +anything goes wrong with the machine. To-night there will be trouble in +India among the Ceylon planters, the Calcutta jute and the Bombay +cotton-brokers, besides the little households of small banked savings. +In Hongkong, Singapore, and Shanghai there will be trouble too, and +goodness only knows what wreck at Cheltenham, Bath, St. Leonards, +Torquay, and the other camps of the retired Army officers. They are +lucky in England who know what happens when it happens, but here the +people are at the wrong end of the cables, and the situation is not +good. Only one thing seems certain. There is a notice on a shut door, in +the wet, and by virtue of that notice all the money that was theirs +yesterday is gone away, and it may never come back again. So all the +work that won the money must be done over again; but some of the people +are old, and more are tired, and all are disheartened. It is a very +sorrowful little community that goes to bed to-night, and there must be +as sad ones the world over. Let it be written, however, that of the +sections under fire here (and some are cruelly hit) no man whined, or +whimpered, or broke down. There was no chance of fighting. It was bitter +defeat, but they took it standing.</p> + + +<a name="chap6" id="chap6"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>HALF-A-DOZEN PICTURES</h2> + +<p>'Some men when they grow rich, store pictures in a gallery,' Living, +their friends envy them, and after death the genuineness of the +collection is disputed under the dispersing hammer.</p> + +<p>A better way is to spread your picture over all earth; visiting them as +Fate allows. Then none can steal or deface, nor any reverse of fortune +force a sale; sunshine and tempest warm and ventilate the gallery for +nothing, and—in spite of all that has been said of her +crudeness—Nature is not altogether a bad frame-maker. The knowledge +that you may never live to see an especial treasure twice teaches the +eyes to see quickly while the light lasts; and the possession of such a +gallery breeds a very fine contempt for painted shows and the smeary +things that are called pictures.</p> + +<p>In the North Pacific, to the right hand as you go westward, hangs a +small study of no particular value as compared with some others. The +mist is down on an oily stretch of washed-out sea; through the mist the +bats-wings of a sealing schooner are just indicated. In the foreground, +all but leaping out of the frame, an open rowboat, painted the rawest +blue and white, rides up over the shoulder of a swell. A man in +blood-red jersey and long boots, all shining with moisture, stands at +the bows holding up the carcase of a silver-bellied sea-otter from whose +pelt the wet drips in moonstones. Now the artist who could paint the +silver wash of the mist, the wriggling treacly reflection of the boat, +and the raw red wrists of the man would be something of a workman.</p> + +<p>But my gallery is in no danger of being copied at present. Three years +since, I met an artist in the stony bed of a brook, between a line of +300 graven, lichened godlings and a flaming bank of azaleas, swearing +horribly. He had been trying to paint one of my pictures—nothing more +than a big water-worn rock tufted with flowers and a snow-capped hill +for background. Most naturally he failed, because there happened to be +absolutely no perspective in the thing, and he was pulling the lines +about to make some for home consumption. No man can put the contents of +a gallon jar into a pint mug. The protests of all uncomfortably-crowded +mugs since the world began have settled that long ago, and have given us +the working theories, devised by imperfect instruments for imperfect +instruments, which are called Rules of Art.</p> + +<p>Luckily, those who painted my gallery were born before man. Therefore, +my pictures, instead of being boxed up by lumbering bars of gold, are +disposed generously between latitudes, equinoxes, monsoons, and the +like, and, making all allowance for an owner's partiality, they are +really not so bad.</p> + +<p>'Down in the South where the ships never go'—between the heel of New +Zealand and the South Pole, there is a sea-piece showing a steamer +trying to come round in the trough of a big beam sea. The wet light of +the day's end comes more from the water than the sky, and the waves are +colourless through the haze of the rain, all but two or three blind +sea-horses swinging out of the mist on the ship's dripping weather side. +A lamp is lighted in the wheel-house; so one patch of yellow light falls +on the green-painted pistons of the steering gear as they snatch up the +rudder-chains. A big sea has got home. Her stern flies up in the lather +of a freed screw, and her deck from poop to the break of the foc's'le +goes under in gray-green water level as a mill-race except where it +spouts up above the donkey-engine and the stored derrick-booms. Forward +there is nothing but this glare; aft, the interrupted wake drives far to +leeward, a cut kite-string dropped across the seas. The sole thing that +has any rest in the turmoil is the jewelled, unwinking eye of an +albatross, who is beating across wind leisurely and unconcerned, almost +within hand's touch. It is the monstrous egotism of that eye that makes +the picture. By all the rules of art there should be a lighthouse or a +harbour pier in the background to show that everything will end happily. +But there is not, and the red eye does not care whether the thing +beneath its still wings stays or staves.</p> + +<p>The sister-panel hangs in the Indian Ocean and tells a story, but is +none the worse for that. Here you have hot tropical sunlight and a +foreshore clothed in stately palms running out into a still and steamy +sea burnished steel blue. Along the foreshore, questing as a wounded +beast quests for lair, hurries a loaded steamer never built for speed. +Consequently, she tears and threshes the water to pieces, and piles it +under her nose and cannot put it under her cleanly. Coir-coloured cargo +bales are stacked round both masts, and her decks are crammed and +double-crammed with dark-skinned passengers—from the foc's'le where +they interfere with the crew to the stern where they hamper the wheel.</p> + +<p>The funnel is painted blue on yellow, giving her a holiday air, a little +out of keeping with the yellow and black cholera flag at her main. She +dare not stop; she must not communicate with any one. There are leprous +streaks of lime-wash trickling down her plates for a sign of this. So +she threshes on down the glorious coast, she and her swarming +passengers, with the sickness that destroyeth in the noonday eating out +her heart.</p> + +<p>Yet another, the pick of all the East rooms, before we have done with +blue water. Most of the nations of the earth are at issue under a +stretch of white awning above a crowded deck. The cause of the dispute, +a deep copper bowl full of rice and fried onions, is upset in the +foreground. Malays, Lascars, Hindus, Chinese, Japanese, Burmans—the +whole gamut of racetints, from saffron to tar-black—are twisting and +writhing round it, while their vermilion, cobalt, amber, and emerald +turbans and head-cloths are lying underfoot. Pressed against the yellow +ochre of the iron bulwarks to left and right are frightened women and +children in turquoise and isabella-coloured clothes. They are half +protected by mounds of upset bedding, straw mats, red lacquer boxes, and +plaited bamboo trunks, mixed up with tin plates, brass and copper +<i> +hukas</i> , silver opium pipes, Chinese playing cards, and properties +enough to drive half-a-dozen artists wild. In the centre of the crowd of +furious half-naked men, the fat bare back of a Burman, tattooed from +collar-bone to waist-cloth with writhing patterns of red and blue +devils, holds the eye first. It is a wicked back. Beyond it is the +flicker of a Malay <i> +kris</i> . A blue, red, and yellow macaw chained to a +stanchion spreads his wings against the sun in an ecstasy of terror. +Half-a-dozen red-gold pines and bananas have been knocked down from +their ripening-places, and are lying between the feet of the fighters. +One pine has rolled against the long brown fur of a muzzled bear. His +owner, a bushy-bearded Hindu, kneels over the animal, his body-cloth +thrown clear of a hard brown arm, his fingers ready to loose the +muzzle-strap. The ship's cook, in blood-stained white, watches from the +butcher's shop, and a black Zanzibari stoker grins through the bars of +the engine-room-hatch, one ray of sun shining straight into his pink +mouth. The officer of the watch, a red-whiskered man, is kneeling down +on the bridge to peer through the railings, and is shifting a long, thin +black revolver from his left hand to his right. The faithful sunlight +that puts everything into place, gives his whiskers and the hair on the +back of his tanned wrist just the colour of the copper pot, the bear's +fur and the trampled pines. For the rest, there is the blue sea beyond +the awnings.</p> + +<p>Three years' hard work, beside the special knowledge of a lifetime, +would be needed to copy—even to copy—this picture. Mr. So-and-so, +R.A., could undoubtedly draw the bird; Mr. Such-another (equally R.A.) +the bear; and scores of gentlemen the still life; but who would be the +man to pull the whole thing together and make it the riotous, tossing +cataract of colour and life that it is? And when it was done, some +middle-aged person from the provinces, who had never seen a pineapple +out of a plate, or a <i> +kris</i> out of the South Kensington, would say that +it did not remind him of something that it ought to remind him of, and +therefore that it was bad. If the gallery could be bequeathed to the +nation, something might, perhaps, be gained, but the nation would +complain of the draughts and the absence of chairs. But no matter. In +another world we shall see certain gentlemen set to tickle the backs of +Circe's swine through all eternity. Also, they will have to tickle with +their bare hands.</p> + +<p>The Japanese rooms, visited and set in order for the second time, hold +more pictures than could be described in a month; but most of them are +small and, excepting always the light, within human compass. One, +however, might be difficult. It was an unexpected gift, picked up in a +Tokio bye-street after dark. Half the town was out for a walk, and all +the people's clothes were indigo, and so were the shadows, and most of +the paper-lanterns were drops of blood red. By the light of smoking +oil-lamps people were selling flowers and shrubs—wicked little dwarf +pines, stunted peach and plum trees, wisteria bushes clipped and twisted +out of all likeness to wholesome plants, leaning and leering out of +green-glaze pots. In the flickering of the yellow flames, these forced +cripples and the yellow faces above them reeled to and fro fantastically +all together. As the light steadied they would return to the pretence of +being green things till a puff of the warm night wind among the flares +set the whole line off again in a crazy dance of dwergs, their shadows +capering on the house fronts behind them.</p> + +<p>At a corner of a street, some rich men had got together and left +unguarded all the gold, diamonds, and rubies of the East; but when you +came near you saw that this treasure was only a gathering of goldfish in +glass globes—yellow, white, and red fish, with from three to five +forked tails apiece and eyes that bulged far beyond their heads. There +were wooden pans full of tiny ruby fish, and little children with nets +dabbled and shrieked in chase of some special beauty, and the frightened +fish kicked up showers of little pearls with their tails. The children +carried lanterns in the shape of small red paper fish bobbing at the end +of slivers of bamboo, and these drifted through the crowd like a strayed +constellation of baby stars. When the children stood at the edge of a +canal and called down to unseen friends in boats the pink lights were +all reflected orderly below. The light of the thousand small lights in +the street went straight up into the darkness among the interlacing +telegraph wires, and just at the edge of the shining haze, on a sort of +pigeon-trap, forty feet above ground, sat a Japanese fireman, wrapped up +in his cloak, keeping watch against fires. He looked unpleasantly like a +Bulgarian atrocity or a Burmese 'deviation from the laws of humanity,' +being very still and all huddled up in his roost. That was a superb +picture and it arranged itself to admiration. Now, disregarding these +things and others—wonders and miracles all—men are content to sit in +studios and, by light that is not light, to fake subjects from pots and +pans and rags and bricks that are called 'pieces of colour.' Their +collection of rubbish costs in the end quite as much as a ticket, a +first-class one, to new worlds where the 'props' are given away with the +sunshine. To do anything because it is, or may not be, new on the market +is wickedness that carries its own punishment; but surely there must be +things in this world paintable other and beyond those that lie between +the North Cape, say, and Algiers. For the sake of the pictures, putting +aside the dear delight of the gamble, it might be worth while to +venture out a little beyond the regular circle of subjects and—see what +happens. If a man can draw one thing, it has been said, he can draw +anything. At the most he can but fail, and there are several matters in +the world worse than failure. Betting on a certainty, for instance, or +playing with nicked cards is immoral, and secures expulsion from clubs. +Keeping deliberately to one set line of work because you know you can do +it and are certain to get money by so doing is, on the other hand, +counted a virtue, and secures admission to clubs. There must be a middle +way somewhere, as there must be somewhere an unmarried man with no +position, reputation, or other vanity to lose, who most keenly wants to +find out what his palette is set for in this life. He will pack his +steamer-trunk and get into the open to wrestle with effects that he can +never reproduce. All the same his will be a superb failure,</p> + + +<a name="chap7" id="chap7"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>'CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS'</h2> + +<p>From Yokohama to Montreal is a long day's journey, and the forepart is +uninviting. In three voyages out of five, the North Pacific, too big to +lie altogether idle, too idle to get hands about the business of a +storm, sulks and smokes like a chimney; the passengers fresh from Japan +heat wither in the chill, and a clammy dew distils from the rigging. +That gray monotony of sea is not at all homelike, being as yet new and +not used to the procession of keels. It holds a very few pictures and +the best of its stories—those relating to seal-poaching among the +Kuriles and the Russian rookeries—are not exactly fit for publication. +There is a man in Yokohama who in a previous life burned galleons with +Drake. He is a gentleman adventurer of the largest and most +resourceful—by instinct a carver of kingdoms, a ruler of men on the +high seas, and an inveterate gambler against Death. Because he supplies +nothing more than sealskins to the wholesale dealers at home, the fame +of his deeds, his brilliant fights, his more brilliant escapes, and his +most brilliant strategy will be lost among sixty-ton schooners, or told +only in the mouths of drunken seamen whom none believe. Now there sits +a great spirit under the palm trees of the Navigator Group, a thousand +leagues to the south, and he, crowned with roses and laurels, strings +together the pearls of those parts. When he has done with this down +there perhaps he will turn to the Smoky Seas and the Wonderful +Adventures of Captain—. Then there will be a tale to listen to.</p> + +<p>But the first touch of dry land makes the sea and all upon it unreal. +Five minutes after the traveller is on the C.P.R, train at Vancouver +there is no romance of blue water, but another kind—the life of the +train into which he comes to grow as into life aboard ship. A week on +wheels turns a man into a part of the machine. He knows when the train +will stop to water, wait for news of the trestle ahead, drop the +dining-car, slip into a siding to let the West-bound mail go by, or yell +through the thick night for an engine to help push up the bank. The +snort, the snap and whine of the air-brakes have a meaning for him, and +he learns to distinguish between noises—between the rattle of a +loose lamp and the ugly rattle of small stones on a scarped +embankment—between the 'Hoot! toot!' that scares wandering cows from +the line, and the dry roar of the engine at the distance-signal. In +England the railway came late into a settled country fenced round with +the terrors of the law, and it has remained ever since just a little +outside daily life—a thing to be respected. Here it strolls along, with +its hands in its pockets and a straw in its mouth, on the heels of the +rough-hewn trail or log road—a platformless, regulationless necessity; +and it is treated even by sick persons and young children with a +familiarity that sometimes affects the death-rate. There was a small +maiden aged seven, who honoured our smoking compartment with her +presence when other excitements failed, and it was she that said to the +conductor, 'When do we change crews? I want to pick water-lilies—yellow +ones.' A mere halt she knew would not suffice for her needs; but the +regular fifteen-minute stop, when the red-painted tool-chest was taken +off the rear car and a new gang came aboard. The big man bent down to +little Impudence—'Want to pick lilies, eh? What would you do if the +cars went on and took mama away, Sis?' 'Take the, next train,' she +replied, 'and tell the conductor to send me to Brooklyn. I live there.' +'But s'pose he wouldn't?' 'He'd have to,' said Young America. 'I'd be a +lost child.'</p> + +<p>Now, from the province of Alberta to Brooklyn, U.S.A., may be three +thousand miles. A great stretch of that distance is as new as the day +before yesterday, and strewn with townships in every stage of growth +from the city of one round house, two log huts, and a Chinese camp +somewhere in the foot-hills of the Selkirks, to Winnipeg with her +league-long main street and her warring newspapers. Just at present +there is an epidemic of politics in Manitoba, and brass bands and +notices of committee meetings are splashed about the towns. By reason +of their closeness to the Stages they have caught the contagion of +foul-mouthedness, and accusations of bribery, corruption, and +evil-living are many. It is sweet to find a little baby-city, with only +three men in it who can handle type, cursing and swearing across the +illimitable levels for all the world as though it were a grown-up +Christian centre.</p> + +<p>All the new towns have their own wants to consider, and the first of +these is a railway. If the town is on a line already, then a new line to +tap the back country; but at all costs a line. For this it will sell its +corrupted soul, and then be very indignant because the railway before +which it has grovelled rides rough-shod over the place.</p> + +<p>Each new town believes itself to be a possible Winnipeg until the +glamour of the thing is a little worn off, and the local paper, sliding +down the pole of Pride with the hind legs of despair, says defiantly: +'At least, a veterinary surgeon and a drug store would meet with +encouragement in our midst, and it is a fact that five new buildings +have been erected in our midst since the spring.' From a distance +nothing is easier than to smile at this sort of thing, but he must have +a cool head who can keep his pulse level when just such a wildcat +town—ten houses, two churches, and a line of rails—gets 'on the boom,' +The reader at home says, 'Yes, but it's all a lie.' It may be, but—did +men lie about Denver, Leadville, Ballarat, Broken Hill, Portland, or +Winnipeg twenty years ago—or Adelaide when town lots went begging +within the memory of middle-aged men? Did they lie about Vancouver six +years since, or Creede not twenty months gone? Hardly; and it is just +this knowledge that leads the passer-by to give ear to the wildest +statements of the wildest towns. Anything is possible, especially among +the Rockies where the minerals lie over and above the mining towns, the +centres of ranching country, and the supply towns to the farming +districts. There are literally scores upon scores of lakelets in the +hills, buried in woods now, that before twenty years are run will be +crowded summer resorts. You in England have no idea of what 'summering' +means in the States, and less of the amount of money that is spent on +the yearly holiday. People have no more than just begun to discover the +place called the Banff Hot Springs, two days west of Winnipeg.<a name="FNanchor1"></a><a href="#Footnote1">[1]</a> In a +little time they will know half-a-dozen spots not a day's ride from +Montreal, and it is along that line that money will be made. In those +days, too, wheat will be grown for the English market four hundred miles +north of the present fields on the west side; and British Columbia, +perhaps the loveliest land in the world next to New Zealand, will have +her own line of six thousand ton steamers to Australia, and the British +investor will no longer throw away his money on hellicat South American +republics, or give it as a hostage to the States. He will keep it in the +family as a wise man should. Then the towns that are to-day the only +names in the wilderness, yes, and some of those places marked on the map +as Hudson Bay Ports, will be cities, because—but it is hopeless to make +people understand that actually and indeed, we <i> +do</i> possess an Empire of +which Canada is only one portion—an Empire which is not bounded by +election-returns on the North and Eastbourne riots on the South—an +Empire that has not yet been scratched.</p> + +<a name="Footnote1"></a><a href="#FNanchor1">[1]</a> See pp. <a href="#p187">187</a>-<a href="#p188">188</a>. + +<p>Let us return to the new towns. Three times within one year did fortune +come knocking to the door of a man I know. Once at Seattle, when that +town was a gray blur after a fire; once at Tacoma, in the days when the +steam-tram ran off the rails twice a week; and once at Spokane Falls. +But in the roar of the land-boom he did not hear her, and she went away +leaving him only a tenderness akin to weakness for all new towns, and a +desire, mercifully limited by lack of money, to gamble in every one of +them. Of all the excitements that life offers there are few to be +compared with the whirl of a red-hot boom; also it is strictly moral, +because you <i> +do</i> fairly earn your 'unearned increment' by labour and +perspiration and sitting up far into the night—by working like a fiend, +as all pioneers must do. And consider all that is in it! The headlong +stampede to the new place; the money dashed down like counters for +merest daily bread; the arrival of the piled cars whence the raw +material of a city—men, lumber, and shingle—are shot on to the not yet +nailed platform; the slashing out and pegging down of roads across the +blank face of the wilderness; the heaving up amid shouts and yells of +the city's one electric light—a raw sizzling arc atop of an unbarked +pine pole; the sweating, jostling mob at the sale of town-lots; the roar +of 'Let the woman have it!' that stops all bidding when the one other +woman in the place puts her price on a plot; the packed real-estate +offices; the real-estate agents themselves, lost novelists of prodigious +imagination; the gorgeous pink and blue map of the town, hung up in the +bar-room, with every railroad from Portland to Portland meeting in its +heart; the misspelled curse against 'this dam hole in the ground' +scrawled on the flank of a strayed freight-car by some man who had lost +his money and gone away; the conferences at street corners of syndicates +six hours established by men not twenty-five years old; the outspoken +contempt for the next town, also 'on the boom,' and, therefore, utterly +vile; the unceasing tramp of heavy feet on the board pavement, where +stranger sometimes turns on stranger in an agony of conviction, and, +shaking him by the shoulder, shouts in his ear, 'By G—d! Isn't it +grand? Isn't it glorious? 'and last, the sleep of utterly worn-out men, +three in each room of the shanty hotel: 'All meals two dollars. All +drinks thirty-five cents. No washing done here. The manager not +responsible for anything.' Does the bald catalogue of these recitals +leave you cold? It is possible; but it is also possible after three days +in a new town to set the full half of a truck-load of archbishops +fighting for corner lots as they never fought for mitre or crozier. +There is a contagion in a boom as irresistible as that of a panic in a +theatre.</p> + +<p>After a while things settle down, and then the carpenter, who is also an +architect, can lay his bare arms across the bar and sell them to the +highest bidder, for the houses are coming up like toadstools after rain. +The men who do not build cheer those who do, in that building means +backing your belief in your town—yours to you and peculiarly. Confound +all other towns whatsoever. Behind the crowd of business men the weekly +town paper plays as a stockwhip plays on a mob of cattle. There is +honour, heaped, extravagant, imperial for the good—the employer of +labour, the builder of stores, the spender of money; there is abuse, +savage and outrageous, for the bad, the man who 'buys out of the town,' +the man who intends to go, the sitter on the fence; with persuasion and +invitation in prose, verse, and zincograph for all that outside world +which prefers to live in cities other than Ours.</p> + +<p>Now the editor, as often as not, begins as a mercenary and ends as a +patriot. This, too, is all of a piece with human nature. A few years +later, if Providence is good, comes the return for judicious investment. +Perhaps the town has stood the test of boom, and that which was +clapboard is now Milwaukee brick or dressed stone, vile in design but +permanent. The shanty hotel is the Something House, with accommodation +for two hundred guests. The manager who served you in his shirt-sleeves +as his own hotel clerk, is gorgeous in broadcloth, and needs to be +reminded of the first meeting. Suburban villas more or less adorn the +flats, from which the liveliest fancy (and fancy was free in the early +days) hung back. Horse-cars jingle where the prairie schooner used to +stick fast in the mud-hole, scooped to that end, opposite the saloon; +and there is a Belt Electric Service paying fabulous dividends. Then, do +you, feeling older than Methuselah and twice as important, go forth and +patronise things in general, while the manager tells you exactly what +sort of millionaire you would have been if you had 'stayed by the town.'</p> + +<p>Or else—the bottom has tumbled out of the boom, and the town new made +is dead—dead as a young man's corpse laid out in the morning. Success +was not justified by success. Of ten thousand not three hundred remain, +and these live in huts on the outskirts of the brick streets. The hotel, +with its suites of musty rooms, is a big tomb; the factory chimneys are +cold; the villas have no glass in them, and the fire-weed glows in the +centre of the driveways, mocking the arrogant advertisements in the +empty shops. There is nothing to do except to catch trout in the stream +that was to have been defiled by the city sewage. A two-pounder lies +fanning himself just in the cool of the main culvert, where the alders +have crept up to the city wall. You pay your money and, more or less, +you take your choice.</p> + +<p>By the time that man has seen these things and a few others that go +with a boom he may say that he has lived, and talk with his enemies in +the gate. He has heard the Arabian Nights retold and knows the inward +kernel of that romance, which some? little folk say is vanished. Here +they lie in their false teeth, for Cortes is not dead, nor Drake, and +Sir Philip Sidney dies every few months if you know where to look. The +adventurers and captains courageous of old have only changed their dress +a little and altered their employment to suit the world in which they +move. Clive came down from Lobengula's country a few months ago +protesting that there was an empire there, and finding very few that +believed. Hastings studied a map of South Africa in a corrugated iron +hut at Johannesburg ten years ago. Since then he has altered the map +considerably to the advantage of the Empire, but the heart of the Empire +is set on ballot-boxes and small lies. The illustrious Don Quixote +to-day lives on the north coast of Australia where he has found the +treasure of a sunken Spanish galleon. Now and again he destroys black +fellows who hide under his bed to spear him. Young Hawkins, with a still +younger Boscawen for his second, was till last year chasing slave-dhows +round Tajurrah; they have sent him now to the Zanzibar coast to be +grilled into an admiral; and the valorous Sandoval has been holding the +'Republic' of Mexico by the throat any time these fourteen years gone. +The others, big men all and not very much afraid of responsibility, are +selling horses, breaking trails, drinking sangaree, running railways +beyond the timberline, swimming rivers, blowing up tree-stumps, and +making cities where no cities were, in all the five quarters of the +world. Only people will not believe this when you tell them. They are +too near things and a great deal too well fed. So they say of the most +cold-blooded realism: 'This is romance. How interesting!' And of +over-handled, thumb-marked realism: 'This is indeed romance!' It is the +next century that, looking over its own, will see the heroes of our time +clearly.</p> + +<p>Meantime this earth of ours—we hold a fair slice of it so far—is full +of wonders and miracles and mysteries and marvels, and, in default, it +is good to go up and down seeing and hearing tell of them all.</p> + + +<a name="chap8" id="chap8"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>ON ONE SIDE ONLY</h2> + +<p>NEW OXFORD, U.S.A., <i> +June-July</i> 1892.</p> + +<p>'The truth is,' said the man in the train, 'that we live in a tropical +country for three months of the year, only we won't recognise. Look at +this.' He handed over a long list of deaths from heat that enlivened the +newspapers. All the cities where men live at breaking-strain were +sending in their butcher-bills, and the papers of the cities, themselves +apostles of the Gospel of Rush, were beseeching their readers to keep +cool and not to overwork themselves while the hot wave was upon them. +The rivers were patched and barred with sun-dried pebbles; the logs and +loggers were drought-bound somewhere up the Connecticut; and the grass +at the side of the track was burned in a hundred places by the sparks +from locomotives. Men—hatless, coatless, and gasping—lay in the shade +of that station where only a few months ago the glass stood at 30 below +zero. Now the readings were 98 degrees in the shade. Main Street—do you +remember Main Street of a little village locked up in the snow this +spring?<a name="FNanchor2"></a><a href="#Footnote2">[2]</a>—had given up the business of life, and an American flag +with some politician's name printed across the bottom hung down across +the street as stiff as a board. There were men with fans and alpaca +coats curled up in splint chairs in the verandah of the one hotel—among +them an ex-President of the United States. He completed the impression +that the furniture of the entire country had been turned out of doors +for summer cleaning in the absence of all the inhabitants. Nothing looks +so hopelessly 'ex' as a President 'returned to stores,' The stars and +stripes signified that the Presidential Campaign had opened in Main +Street—opened and shut up again. Politics evaporate at summer heat when +all hands are busy with the last of the hay, and, as the formers put it, +'Vermont's bound to go Republican.' The custom of the land is to drag +the scuffle and dust of an election over several months—to the +improvement of business and manners; but the noise of that war comes +faintly up the valley of the Connecticut and is lost among the fiddling +of the locusts. Their music puts, as it were, a knife edge upon the heat +of the day. In truth, it is a tropical country for the time being. +Thunder-storms prowl and growl round the belted hills, spit themselves +away in a few drops of rain, and leave the air more dead than before. In +the woods, where even the faithful springs are beginning to run low, the +pines and balsams have thrown out all their fragrance upon the heat and +wait for the wind to bring news of the rain. The clematis, wild carrot, +and all the gipsy-flowers camped by sufferance between fence line and +road net are masked in white dust, and the golden-rod of the pastures +that are burned to flax-colour burns too like burnished brass. A pillar +of dust on the long hog-back of the road across the hills shows where a +team is lathering between farms, and the roofs of the wooden houses +flicker in the haze of their own heat. Overhead the chicken-hawk is the +only creature at work, and his shrill kite-like call sends the gaping +chickens from the dust-bath in haste to their mothers. The red squirrel +as usual feigns business of importance among the butternuts, but this is +pure priggishness. When the passer-by is gone he ceases chattering and +climbs back to where the little breezes can stir his tail-plumes. From +somewhere under the lazy fold of a meadow comes the drone of a +mowing-machine among the hay—its <i>whurr-oo</i> and the grunt of the tired +horses.</p> + +<a name="Footnote2"></a><a href="#FNanchor2">[2]</a> See 'In Sight of <a href="#chap1">Monadnock.</a>' + +<p>Houses are only meant to eat and sleep in. The rest of life is lived at +full length in the verandah. When traffic is brisk three whole teams +will pass that verandah in one day, and it is necessary to exchange news +about the weather and the prospects for oats. When oats are in there +will be slack time on the farm, and the farmers will seriously think of +doing the hundred things that they have let slide during the summer. +They will undertake this and that, 'when they get around to it.' The +phrase translated is the exact equivalent to the <i>mañana</i> of the +Spaniard, the <i>kul hojaiga</i> of Upper India, the <i>yuroshii</i> of the +Japanese, and the long drawled <i>taihod</i> of the Maori. The only person +who 'gets around' in this weather is the summer boarder—the refugee +from the burning cities of the Plain, and she is generally a woman. She +walks, and botanizes, and kodaks, and strips the bark off the white +birch to make blue-ribboned waste-paper baskets, and the farmer regards +her with wonder. More does he wonder still at the city clerk in a +blazer, who has two weeks' holiday in the year and, apparently, +unlimited money, which he earns in the easiest possible way by 'sitting +at a desk and writing,' The farmer's wife sees the fashions of the +summer boarder, and between them man and woman get a notion of the +beauties of city life for which their children may live to blame them. +The blazer and the town-made gown are innocent recruiting sergeants for +the city brigades; and since one man's profession is ever a mystery to +his fellow, blazer and gown believe that the farmer must be happy and +content. A summer resort is one of the thousand windows whence to watch +the thousand aspects of life in the Atlantic States. Remember that +between June and September it is the desire of all who can to get away +from the big cities—not on account of wantonness, as people leave +London—but because of actual heat. So they get away in their millions +with their millions—the wives of the rich men for five clear months, +the others for as long as they can; and, like drawing like, they make +communities set by set, breed by breed, division by division, over the +length and breadth of the land—from Maine and the upper reaches of the +Saguenay, through the mountains and hot springs of half-a-dozen +interior States, out and away to Sitka in steamers. Then they spend +money on hotel bills, among ten thousand farms, on private companies who +lease and stock land for sporting purposes, on yachts and canoes, +bicycles, rods, châlets, cottages, reading circles, camps, tents, and +all the luxuries they know. But the luxury of rest most of them do not +know; and the telephone and telegraph are faithfully dragged after them, +lest their men-folk should for a moment forget the ball and chain at +foot.</p> + +<p>For sadness with laughter at bottom there are few things to compare with +the sight of a coat-less, muddy-booted, millionaire, his hat adorned +with trout-flies, and a string of small fish in his hand, clawing wildly +at the telephone of some back-of-beyond 'health resort.' Thus:</p> + +<p>'Hello! Hello! Yes. Who's there? Oh, all right. Go ahead. Yes, it's me! +Hey, what? Repeat. Sold for <i>how</i> much? Forty-four and a half? Repeat. +No! I <i>told</i> you to hold on. What? What? <i>Who</i> bought at that? Say, hold +a minute. Cable the other side. No. Hold on. I'll come down. (<i>Business +with watch</i> .) Tell Schaefer I'll see him to-morrow.' (<i>Over his shoulder +to his wife, who wears half-hoop diamond rings at</i> 10 A.M.) 'Lizzie, +where's my grip? I've got to go down.'</p> + +<p>And he goes down to eat in a hotel and sleep in his shut-up house. Men +are as scarce at most of the summer places as they are in Indian +hill-stations in late April. The women tell you that they can't get +away, and if they did they would only be miserable to get back. Now +whether this wholesale abandonment of husbands by wives is wholesome let +those who know the beauties of the Anglo-Indian system settle for +themselves.</p> + +<p>That both men and women need rest very badly a glance at the crowded +hotel tables makes plain—so plain, indeed, that the foreigner who has +not been taught that fuss and worry are in themselves honourable wishes +sometimes he could put the whole unrestful crowd to sleep for seventeen +hours a day. I have inquired of not less than five hundred men and women +in various parts of the States why they broke down and looked so gash. +And the men said: 'If you don't keep up with the procession in America +you are left'; and the women smiled an evil smile and answered that no +outsider yet had discovered the real cause of their worry and strain, or +why their lives were arranged to work with the largest amount of +friction in the shortest given time. Now, the men can be left to their +own folly, but the cause of the women's trouble has been revealed to me. +It is the thing called 'Help' which is no help. In the multitude of +presents that the American man has given to the American woman (for +details see daily papers) he has forgotten or is unable to give her good +servants, and that sordid trouble runs equally through the household of +the millionaire or the flat of the small city man. 'Yes, it's easy +enough to laugh,' said one woman passionately, 'we are worn out, and our +children are worn out too, and we're always worrying, I know it. What +can we do? If you stay here you'll know that this is the land of all +the luxuries and none of the necessities. You'll know and then you won't +laugh. You'll know why women are said to take their husbands to +boarding-houses and never have homes. You'll know what an Irish Catholic +means. The men won't get up and attend to these things, but <i>we</i> would. +If <i>we</i> had female suffrage, we'd shut the door to <i>all</i> the Irish and +throw it open to <i>all</i> the Chinese, and let the women have a little +protection.' It was the cry of a soul worn thin with exasperation, but +it was truth. To-day I do not laugh any more at the race that depends on +inefficient helot races for its inefficient service. When next you, +housekeeping in England, differ with the respectable, amiable, +industrious sixteen-pound maid, who wears a cap and says 'Ma'am,' +remember the pauper labour of America—the wives of the sixty million +kings who have no subjects. No man could get a thorough knowledge of the +problem in one lifetime, but he could guess at the size and the import +of it after he has descended into the arena and wrestled with the Swede +and the Dane and the German and the unspeakable Celt. Then he perceives +how good for the breed it must be that a man should thresh himself to +pieces in naked competition with his neighbour while his wife struggles +unceasingly over primitive savagery in the kitchen. In India sometimes +when a famine is at hand the life of the land starts up before your eyes +in all its bareness and bitter stress. Here, in spite of the trimmings +and the frillings, it refuses to be subdued and the clamour and the +clatter of it are loud above all other sounds—as sometimes the thunder +of disorganised engines stops conversations along the decks of a liner, +and in the inquiring eyes of the passengers you read the question—'This +thing is made and paid to bear us to port quietly. Why does it not do +so?' Only here, the rattle of the badly-put-together machine is always +in the ears, though men and women run about with labour-saving +appliances and gospels of 'power through repose,' tinkering and oiling +and making more noise. The machine is new. Some day it is going to be +the finest machine in the world. To the ranks of the amateur artificers, +therefore, are added men with notebooks tapping at every nut and +bolthead, fiddling with the glands, registering revolutions, and crying +out from time to time that this or that is or is not 'distinctively +American.' Meantime, men and women die unnecessarily in the wheels, and +they are said to have fallen 'in the battle of life.'</p> + +<p>The God Who sees us all die knows that there is far too much of that +battle, but we do not, and so continue worshipping the knife that cuts +and the wheel that breaks us, as blindly as the outcast sweeper worships +Lal-Beg the Glorified Broom that is the incarnation of his craft. But +the sweeper has sense enough not to kill himself, and to be proud of it, +with sweeping.</p> + +<p>A foreigner can do little good by talking of these things; for the same +lean dry blood that breeds the fever of unrest breeds also the savage +parochial pride that squeals under a steady stare or a pointed finger. +Among themselves the people of the Eastern cities admit that they and +their womenfolk overwork grievously and go to pieces very readily, and +that the consequences for the young stock are unpleasant indeed; but +before the stranger they prefer to talk about the future of their mighty +continent (which has nothing to do with the case) and to call aloud on +Baal of the Dollars—to catalogue their lines, mines, telephones, banks, +and cities, and all the other shells, buttons, and counters that they +have made their Gods over them. Now a nation does not progress upon its +brain-pan, as some books would have us believe, but upon its belly as +did the Serpent of old; and in the very long run the work of the brain +comes to be gathered in by a slow-footed breed that have unimaginative +stomachs and the nerves that know their place.</p> + +<p>All this is very consoling from the alien's point of view. He perceives, +with great comfort, that out of strain is bred impatience in the shape +of a young bundle of nerves, who is about as undisciplined an imp as the +earth can show. Out of impatience, grown up, habituated to violent and +ugly talk, and the impatience and recklessness of his neighbours, is +begotten lawlessness, encouraged by laziness and suppressed by violence +when it becomes insupportable. Out of lawlessness is bred rebellion (and +that fruit has been tasted once already), and out of rebellion comes +profit to those who wait. He hears of the power of the People who, +through rank slovenliness, neglect to see that their laws are soberly +enforced from the beginning; and these People, not once or twice in a +year, but many times within a month, go out in the open streets and, with +a maximum waste of power and shouting, strangle other people with ropes. +They are, he is told, law-abiding citizens who have executed 'the will +of the people'; which is as though a man should leave his papers +unsorted for a year and then smash his desk with an axe, crying, 'Am I +not orderly?' He hears lawyers, otherwise sane and matured, defend this +pig-jobbing murder on the grounds that 'the People stand behind the +Law'—the law that they never administered. He sees a right, at present +only half—but still half—conceded to anticipate the law in one's own +interests; and nervous impatience (always nerves) forejudging the +suspect in gaol, the prisoner in the dock, and the award between nation +and nation ere it is declared. He knows that the maxim in London, +Yokohama, and Hongkong in doing business with the pure-bred American is +to keep him waiting, for the reason that forced inaction frets the man +to a lather, as standing in harness frets a half-broken horse. He comes +across a thousand little peculiarities of speech, manner, and +thought—matters of nerve and stomach developed by everlasting +friction—and they are all just the least little bit in the world +lawless. No more so than the restless clicking together of horns in a +herd of restless cattle, but certainly no less. They are all good—good +for those who wait.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, to consider the matter more humanly, there are +thousands of delightful men and women going to pieces for the pitiful +reason that if they do not keep up with the procession, 'they are left.' +And they are left—in clothes that have no back to them, among mounds of +smilax. And young men—chance-met in the streets, talk to you about +their nerves which are things no young man should know anything about; +and the friends of your friends go down with nervous prostration, and +the people overheard in the trains talk about their nerves and the +nerves of their relatives; and the little children must needs have their +nerves attended to ere their milk-teeth are shed, and the middle-aged +women and the middle-aged men have got them too, and the old men lose +the dignity of their age in an indecent restlessness, and the +advertisements in the papers go to show that this sweeping list is no +lie. Atop of the fret and the stampede, the tingling self-consciousness +of a new people makes them take a sort of perverted pride in the futile +racket that sends up the death-rate—a child's delight in the blaze and +the dust of the March of Progress. Is it not 'distinctively American'? +It is, and it is not. If the cities were all America, as they pretend, +fifty years would see the March of Progress brought to a standstill, as +a locomotive is stopped by heated bearings....</p> + +<p>Down in the meadow the mowing-machine has checked, and the horses are +shaking themselves. The last of the sunlight leaves the top of +Monadnock, and four miles away Main Street lights her electric lamps. It +is band-night in Main Street, and the folks from Putney, from +Marlboro', from Guildford, and even New Fane will drive in their +well-filled waggons to hear music and look at the Ex-President. Over the +shoulder of the meadow two men come up very slowly, their hats off and +their arms swinging loosely at their sides. They do not hurry, they have +not hurried, and they never will hurry, for they are of country—bankers +of the flesh and blood of the ever bankrupt cities. Their children may +yet be pale summer boarders; as the boarders, city-bred weeds, may take +over their farms. From the plough to the pavement goes man, but to the +plough he returns at last.</p> + +<p>'Going to supper?'</p> + +<p>'Ye-ep,' very slowly across the wash of the uncut grass.</p> + +<p>'Say, that corncrib wants painting.'</p> + +<p>''Do that when we get around to it.'</p> + +<p>They go off through the dusk, without farewell or salutation steadily as +their own steers. And there are a few millions of them—unhandy men to +cross in their ways, set, silent, indirect in speech, and as +impenetrable as that other Eastern fanner who is the bedrock of another +land. They do not appear in the city papers, they are not much heard in +the streets, and they tell very little in the outsider's estimate of +America.</p> + +<p>And <i>they</i> are the American.</p> + + +<a name="chap9" id="chap9"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>LEAVES FROM A WINTER NOTE-BOOK</h2> +<h3>(1895)</h3> + +<p>We had walked abreast of the year from the very beginning, and that was +when the first blood-root came up between the patches of April snow, +while yet the big drift at the bottom of the meadow held fast. In the +shadow of the woods and under the blown pine-needles, clots of snow lay +till far into May, but neither the season nor the flowers took any note +of them, and, before we were well sure Winter had gone, the lackeys of +my Lord Baltimore in their new liveries came to tell us that Summer was +in the valley, and please might they nest at the bottom of the garden?</p> + +<p>Followed, Summer, angry, fidgety, and nervous, with the corn and tobacco +to ripen in five short months, the pastures to reclothe, and the fallen +leaves to hide away under new carpets. Suddenly, in the middle of her +work, on a stuffy-still July day, she called a wind out of the +Northwest, a wind blown under an arch of steel-bellied clouds, a wicked +bitter wind with a lacing of hail to it, a wind that came and was gone +in less than ten minutes, but blocked the roads with fallen trees, +toppled over a barn, and—blew potatoes out of the ground! When that was +done, a white cloud shaped like a dumb-bell whirled down the valley +across the evening blue, roaring and twisting and twisting and roaring +all alone by itself. A West Indian hurricane could not have been quicker +on its feet than our little cyclone, and when the house rose a-tiptoe, +like a cockerel in act to crow, and a sixty-foot elm went by the board, +and that which had been a dusty road became a roaring torrent all in +three minutes, we felt that the New England summer had creole blood in +her veins. She went away, red-faced and angry to the last, slamming all +the doors of the hills behind her, and Autumn, who is a lady, took +charge.</p> + +<p>No pen can describe the turning of the leaves—the insurrection of the +tree-people against the waning year. A little maple began it, flaming +blood-red of a sudden where he stood against the dark green of a +pine-belt. Next morning there was an answering signal from the swamp +where the sumacs grow. Three days later, the hill-sides as far as the +eye could range were afire, and the roads paved, with crimson and gold. +Then a wet wind blew, and ruined all the uniforms of that gorgeous army; +and the oaks, who had held themselves in reserve, buckled on their dull +and bronzed cuirasses and stood it out stiffly to the last blown leaf, +till nothing remained but pencil-shading of bare boughs, and one could +see into the most private heart of the woods.</p> + +<p>Frost may be looked for till the middle of May and after the middle of +September, so Summer has little time for enamel-work or leaf-embroidery. +Her sisters bring the gifts—Spring, wind-flowers, Solomon's-Seal, +Dutchman's-breeches, Quaker-ladies, and trailing arbutus, that smells as +divinely as the true May. Autumn has golden-rod and all the tribe of +asters, pink, lilac, and creamy white, by the double armful. When these +go the curtain comes down, and whatever Powers shift the scenery behind, +work without noise. In tropic lands you can hear the play of growth and +decay at the back of the night-silences. Even in England the tides of +the winter air have a set and a purpose; but here they are dumb +altogether. The very last piece of bench-work this season was the +trailed end of a blackberry-vine, most daringly conventionalised in +hammered iron, flung down on the frosty grass an instant before people +came to look. The blue bloom of the furnace was still dying along the +central rib, and the side-sprays were cherry red, even as they had been +lifted from the charcoal. It was a detail, evidently, of some invisible +gate in the woods; but we never found that workman, though he had left +the mark of his cloven foot as plainly as any strayed deer. In a week +the heavy frosts with scythes and hammers had slashed and knocked down +all the road-side growth and the kindly bushes that veil the drop off +the unfenced track.</p> + +<p>There the seasons stopped awhile. Autumn was gone, Winter was not. We +had Time dealt out to us—mere, clear, fresh Time—grace-days to enjoy. +The white wooden farm-houses were banked round two feet deep with dried +leaves or earth, and the choppers went out to get ready next year's +stores of wood. Now, chopping is an art, and the chopper in all respects +an artist. He makes his own axe-helve, and for each man there is but one +perfect piece of wood in all the world. This he never finds, but the +likest substitute is trimmed and balanced and poised to that ideal. One +man I know has evolved very nearly the weapon of Umslopogaas. It is +almost straight, lapped at the butt with leather, amazingly springy, and +carries a two-edged blade for splitting and chopping. If his Demon be +with him—and what artist can answer for all his moods?—he will cause a +tree to fall upon any stick or stone that you choose, uphill or down, to +the right or to the left. Artist-like, however, he explains that that is +nothing. Any fool can play with a tree in the open, but it needs the +craftsman to bring a tree down in thick timber and do no harm. To see an +eighty-foot maple, four feet in the butt, dropped, deftly as a fly is +cast, in the only place where it will not outrage the feelings and swipe +off the tops of fifty juniors, is a revelation. White pine, hemlock, and +spruce share this country with maples, black and white birches, and +beech. Maple seems to have few preferences, and the white birches +straggle and shiver on the outskirts of every camp; but the pines hold +together in solid regiments, sending out skirmishers to invade a +neglected pasture on the first opportunity. There is no overcoat warmer +than the pines in a gale when the woods for miles round are singing like +cathedral organs, and the first snow of the year powders the +rock-ledges.</p> + +<p>The mosses and lichens, green, sulphur, and amber, stud the copper floor +of needles, where the feathery ground-pine runs aimlessly to and fro +along the ground, spelling out broken words of half-forgotten charms. +There are checker-berries on the outskirts of the wood, where the +partridge (he is a ruffed grouse really) dines, and by the deserted +logging-roads toadstools of all colours sprout on the decayed stumps. +Wherever a green or blue rock lifts from the hillside, the needles have +been packed and matted round its base, till, when the sunshine catches +them, stone and setting together look no meaner than turquoise in dead +gold. The woods are full of colour, belts and blotches of it, the +colours of the savage—red, yellow, and blue. Yet in their lodges there +is very little life, for the wood-people do not readily go into the +shadows. The squirrels have their business among the beeches and +hickories by the road-side, where they can watch the traffic and talk. +We have no gray ones hereabouts (they are good to eat and suffer for +it), but five reds live in a hickory hard by, and no weather puts them +to sleep. The wood-chuck, a marmot and a strategist, makes his burrow in +the middle of a field, where he must see you ere you see him. Now and +again a dog manages to cut him off his base, and the battle is worth +crossing fields to watch. But the woodchuck turned in long ago, and will +not be out till April. The coon lives—well, no one seems to know +particularly where Brer Coon lives, but when the Hunter's Moon is large +and full he descends into the corn-lands, and men chase him with dogs +for his fur, which makes the finest kind of overcoat, and his flesh, +which tastes like chicken. He cries at night sorrowfully as though a +child were lost.</p> + +<p>They seem to kill, for one reason or other, everything that moves in +this land. Hawks, of course; eagles for their rarity; foxes for their +pelts; red-shouldered blackbirds and Baltimore orioles because they are +pretty, and the other small things for sport—French fashion. You can +get a rifle of a kind for twelve shillings, and if your neighbour be +fool enough to post notices forbidding 'hunting' and fishing, you +naturally seek his woods. So the country is very silent and unalive.</p> + +<p>There are, however, bears within a few miles, as you will see from this +notice, picked up at the local tobacconist's:</p> + +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">JOHNNY GET YOUR GUN! BEAR HUNT!</span><br /> + +<p>As bears are too numerous in the town of Peltyville Corners, Vt., the +hunters of the surrounding towns are invited to participate in a grand +hunt to be held on Blue Mountains in the town of Peltyville Corners, +Vt., Wednesday, Nov. 8th, if pleasant. If not, first fine day. Come one, +come all!</p> + +<p>They went, but it was the bear that would not participate. The notice +was printed at somebody's Electric Print Establishment. Queer mixture, +isn't it?</p> + +<p>The bear does not run large as a rule, but he has a weakness for swine +and calves which brings punishment. Twelve hours' rail and a little +marching take you up to the moose-country; and twenty-odd miles from +here as the crow flies you come to virgin timber, where trappers live, +and where there is a Lost Pond that many have found once but can never +find again.</p> + +<p>Men, who are of one blood with sheep, have followed their friends and +the railway along the river valleys where the towns are. Across the +hills the inhabitants are few, and, outside their State, little known. +They withdraw from society in November if they live on the uplands, +coming down in May as the snow gives leave. Not much more than a +generation ago these farms made their own clothes, soap, and candles, +and killed their own meat thrice a year, beef, veal, and pig, and sat +still between-times. Now they buy shop-made clothes, patent soaps, and +kerosene; and it is among their tents that the huge red and gilt +Biographies of Presidents, and the twenty-pound family Bibles, with +illuminated marriage-registers, mourning-cards, baptismal certificates, +and hundreds of genuine steel-engravings, sell best. Here, too, off the +main-travelled roads, the wandering quack—Patent Electric Pills, nerve +cures, etc.—divides the field with the seed and fruit man and the +seller of cattle-boluses. They dose themselves a good deal, I fancy, +for it is a poor family that does not know all about nervous +prostration. So the quack drives a pair of horses and a gaily-painted +waggon with a hood, and sometimes takes his wife with him. Once only +have I met a pedlar afoot. He was an old man, shaken with palsy, and he +pushed a thing exactly like a pauper's burial-cart, selling pins, tape, +scents, and flavourings. You helped yourself, for his hands had no +direction, and he told a long tale in which the deeding away of a farm +to one of his family was mixed up with pride at the distances he still +could cover daily. As much as six miles sometimes. He was no Lear, as +the gift of the farm might suggest, but sealed of the tribe of the +Wandering Jew—a tremulous old giddy-gaddy. There are many such rovers, +gelders of colts and the like, who work a long beat, south to Virginia +almost, and north to the frontier, paying with talk and gossip for their +entertainment.</p> + +<p>Yet tramps are few, and that is well, for the American article answers +almost exactly to the vagrant and criminal tribes of India, being a +predatory ruffian who knows too much to work. 'Bad place to beg in after +dark—on a farm—very—is Vermont. Gypsies pitch their camp by the river +in the spring, and cooper horses in the manner of their tribe. They have +the gypsy look and some of the old gypsy names, but say that they are +largely mixed with Gentile blood.</p> + +<p>Winter has chased all these really interesting people south, and in a +few weeks, if we have anything of a snow, the back farms will be +unvisited save by the doctor's hooded sleigh. It is no child's play to +hold a practice here through the winter months, when the drifts are +really formed, and a pair can drop in up to their saddle-pads. Four +horses a day some of them use, and use up—for they are good men.</p> + +<p>Now in the big silence of the snow is born, perhaps, not a little of +that New England conscience which her children write about. There is +much time to think, and thinking is a highly dangerous business. +Conscience, fear, undigested reading, and, it may be, not too well +cooked food, have full swing. A man, and more particularly a woman, can +easily hear strange voices—the Word of the Lord rolling between the +dead hills; may see visions and dream dreams; get revelations and an +outpouring of the spirit, and end (such things have been) lamentably +enough in those big houses by the Connecticut River which have been +tenderly christened The Retreat. Hate breeds as well as religion—the +deep, instriking hate between neighbours, that is born of a hundred +little things added up, brooded over, and hatched by the stove when two +or three talk together in the long evenings. It would be very +interesting to get the statistics of revivals and murders, and find how +many of them have been committed in the spring. But for undistracted +people winter is one long delight of the eye. In other lands one knows +the snow as a nuisance that comes and goes, and is sorely man-handled +and messed at the last. Here it lies longer on the ground than any +crop—from November to April sometimes—and for three months life goes +to the tune of sleigh-bells, which are not, as a Southern visitor once +hinted, ostentation, but safeguards. The man who drives without them is +not loved. The snow is a faithful barometer, foretelling good sleighing +or stark confinement to barracks. It is all the manure the stony +pastures receive; it cloaks the ground and prevents the frost bursting +pipes; it is the best—I had almost written the only—road-maker in the +States. On the other side it can rise up in the night and bid the people +sit still as the Egyptians. It can stop mails; wipe out all time-tables; +extinguish the lamps of twenty towns, and kill man within sight of his +own door-step or hearing of his cattle unfed. No one who has been +through even so modified a blizzard as New England can produce talks +lightly of the snow. Imagine eight-and-forty hours of roaring wind, the +thermometer well down towards zero, scooping and gouging across a +hundred miles of newly fallen snow. The air is full of stinging shot, +and at ten yards the trees are invisible. The foot slides on a reef, +polished and black as obsidian, where the wind has skinned an exposed +corner of road down to the dirt ice of early winter. The next step ends +hip-deep and over, for here an unseen wall is banking back the rush of +the singing drifts. A scarped slope rises sheer across the road. The +wind shifts a point or two, and all sinks down, like sand in the +hour-glass, leaving a pot-hole of whirling whiteness. There is a lull, +and you can see the surface of the fields settling furiously in one +direction—a tide that spurts from between the tree-boles. The hollows +of the pasture fill while you watch; empty, fill, and discharge anew. +The rock-ledges show the bare flank of a storm-chased liner for a +moment, and whitening, duck under. Irresponsible snow-devils dance by +the lee of a barn where three gusts meet, or stagger out into the open +till they are cut down by the main wind. At the worst of the storm there +is neither Heaven nor Earth, but only a swizzle into which a man may be +brewed. Distances grow to nightmare scale, and that which in the summer +was no more than a minute's bare-headed run, is half an hour's gasping +struggle, each foot won between the lulls. Then do the heavy-timbered +barns talk like ships in a cross-sea, beam working against beam. The +winter's hay is ribbed over with long lines of snow dust blown between +the boards, and far below in the byre the oxen clash their horns and +moan uneasily.</p> + +<p>The next day is blue, breathless, and most utterly still. The farmers +shovel a way to their beasts, bind with chains their large ploughshares +to their heaviest wood-sled and take of oxen as many as Allah has given +them. These they drive, and the dragging share makes a furrow in which a +horse can walk, and the oxen, by force of repeatedly going in up to +their bellies, presently find foothold. The finished road is a deep +double gutter between three-foot walls of snow, where, by custom, the +heavier vehicle has the right of way. The lighter man when he turns out +must drop waist-deep and haul his unwilling beast into the drift, +leaving Providence to steady the sleigh.</p> + +<p>In the towns, where they choke and sputter and gasp, the big snow turns +to horsepondine. With us it stays still: but wind, sun, and rain get to +work upon it, lest the texture and colour should not change daily. Rain +makes a granulated crust over all, in which white shagreen the trees are +faintly reflected. Heavy mists go up and down, and create a sort of +mirage, till they settle and pack round the iron-tipped hills, and then +you know how the moon must look to an inhabitant of it. At twilight, +again, the beaten-down ridges and laps and folds of the uplands take on +the likeness of wet sand—some huge and melancholy beach at the world's +end—and when day meets night it is all goblin country. To westward; the +last of the spent day—rust-red and pearl, illimitable levels of shore +waiting for the tide to turn again. To eastward, black night among the +valleys, and on the rounded hill slopes a hard glaze that is not so much +light as snail-slime from the moon. Once or twice perhaps in the winter +the Northern Lights come out between the moon and the sun, so that to +the two unearthly lights is added the leap and flare of the Aurora +Borealis.</p> + +<p>In January or February come the great ice-storms, when every branch, +blade, and trunk is coated with frozen rain, so that you can touch +nothing truly. The spikes of the pines are sunk into pear-shaped +crystals, and each fence-post is miraculously hilted with diamonds. If +you bend a twig, the icing cracks like varnish, and a half-inch branch +snaps off at the lightest tap. If wind and sun open the day together, +the eye cannot look steadily at the splendour of this jewelry. The woods +are full of the clatter of arms; the ringing of bucks' horns in flight; +the stampede of mailed feet up and down the glades; and a great dust of +battle is puffed out into the open, till the last of the ice is beaten +away and the cleared branches take up their regular chant.</p> + +<p>Again the mercury drops twenty and more below zero, and the very trees +swoon. The snow turns to French chalk, squeaking under the heel, and +their breath cloaks the oxen in rime. At night a tree's heart will break +in him with a groan. According to the books, the frost has split +something, but it is a fearful sound, this grunt as of a man stunned.</p> + +<p>Winter that is winter in earnest does not allow cattle and horses to +play about the fields, so everything comes home; and since no share can +break ground to any profit for some five months, there would seem to be +very little to do. As a matter of fact, country interests at all seasons +are extensive and peculiar, and the day is not long enough for them when +you take out that time which a self-respecting man needs to turn himself +round in. Consider! The solid undisturbed hours stand about one like +ramparts. At a certain time the sun will rise. At another hour, equally +certain, he will set. This much we know. Why, in the name of Reason, +therefore, should we vex ourselves with vain exertions? An occasional +visitor from the Cities of the Plains comes up panting to do things. He +is set down to listen to the normal beat of his own heart—a sound that +very few men have heard. In a few days, when the lather of impatience +has dried off, he ceases to talk of 'getting there' or 'being left.' He +does not desire to accomplish matters 'right away,' nor does he look at +his watch from force of habit, but keeps it where it should be—in his +stomach. At the last he goes back to his beleaguered city, unwillingly, +partially civilised, soon to be resavaged by the clash of a thousand +wars whose echo does not reach here.</p> + +<p>The air which kills germs dries out the very newspapers. They might be +of to-morrow or a hundred years ago. They have nothing to do with +to-day—the long, full, sunlit to-day. Our interests are not on the same +scale as theirs, perhaps, but much more complex. The movement of a +foreign power—an alien sleigh on this Pontic shore—must be explained +and accounted for, or this public's heart will burst with unsatisfied +curiosity. If it be Buck Davis, with the white mare that he traded his +colt for, and the practically new sleigh-robe that he bought at the +Sewell auction, <i>why</i> does Buck Davis, who lives on the river flats, +cross our hills, unless Murder Hollow be blockaded with snow, or unless +he has turkeys for sale? <i>But</i> Buck Davis with turkeys would surely +have stopped here, unless he were selling a large stock in town. A wail +from the sacking at the back of the sleigh tells the tale. It is a +winter calf, and Buck Davis is going to sell it for one dollar to the +Boston Market where it will be turned into potted chicken. This leaves +the mystery of his change of route unexplained. After two days' sitting +on tenter-hooks it is discovered, obliquely, that Buck went to pay a +door-yard call on Orson Butler, who lives on the saeter where the wind +and the bald granite scaurs fight it out together. Kirk Demming had +brought Orson news of a fox at the back of Black Mountain, and Orson's +eldest son, going to Murder Hollow with wood for the new barn floor that +the widow Amidon is laying down, told Buck that he might as well come +round to talk to his father about the pig. <i>But</i> old man Butler meant +fox-hunting from the first, and what he wanted to do was to borrow +Buck's dog, who had been duly brought over with the calf, and left on +the mountain. No old man Butler did <i>not</i> go hunting alone, but waited +till Buck came back from town. Buck sold the calf for a dollar and a +quarter and not for seventy-five cents as was falsely asserted by +interested parties. <i>Then</i> the two went after the fox together. This +much learned, everybody breathes freely, if life has not been +complicated in the meantime by more strange counter-marchings.</p> + +<p>Five or six sleighs a day we can understand, if we know why they are +abroad; but any metropolitan rush of traffic disturbs and excites.</p> + + +<a name="part2" id="part2"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>LETTERS TO THE FAMILY</h2> +<h3>1908</h3> + +<p>These letters appeared in newspapers during the spring of 1908, after a +trip to Canada undertaken in the autumn of 1907. They are now reprinted +without alteration.</p> + +<p> +<a href="#chap10">THE ROAD TO QUEBEC.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap11">A PEOPLE AT HOME.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap12">CITIES AND SPACES.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap13">NEWSPAPERS AND DEMOCRACY.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap14">LABOUR.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap15">THE FORTUNATE TOWNS.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap16">MOUNTAINS AND THE PACIFIC.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap17">A CONCLUSION.</a></p> + +<a name="chap10" id="chap10"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>THE ROAD TO QUEBEC</h2> +<h3>(1907)</h3> + +<p>It must be hard for those who do not live there to realise the cross +between canker and blight that has settled on England for the last +couple of years. The effects of it are felt throughout the Empire, but +at headquarters we taste the stuff in the very air, just as one tastes +iodoform in the cups and bread-and-butter of a hospital-tea. So far as +one can come at things in the present fog, every form of unfitness, +general or specialised, born or created, during the last generation has +combined in one big trust—a majority of all the minorities—to play the +game of Government. Now that the game ceases to amuse, nine-tenths of +the English who set these folk in power are crying, 'If we had only +known what they were going to do we should never have voted for them!'</p> + +<p>Yet, as the rest of the Empire perceived at the time, these men were +always perfectly explicit as to their emotions and intentions. They said +first, and drove it home by large pictures, that no possible advantage +to the Empire outweighed the cruelty and injustice of charging the +British working man twopence halfpenny a week on some of his provisions. +Incidentally they explained, so that all Earth except England heard it, +that the Army was wicked; much of the Navy unnecessary; that half the +population of one of the Colonies practised slavery, with torture, for +the sake of private gain, and that the mere name of Empire wearied and +sickened them. On these grounds they stood to save England; on these +grounds they were elected, with what seemed like clear orders to destroy +the blood-stained fetish of Empire as soon as possible. The present +mellow condition of Ireland, Egypt, India, and South Africa is proof of +their honesty and obedience. Over and above this, their mere presence in +office produced all along our lines the same moral effect as the +presence of an incompetent master in a classroom. Paper pellets, books, +and ink began to fly; desks were thumped; dirty pens were jabbed into +those trying to work; rats and mice were set free amid squeals of +exaggerated fear; and, as usual, the least desirable characters in the +forms were loudest to profess noble sentiments, and most eloquent grief +at being misjudged. Still, the English are not happy, and the unrest and +slackness increase.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, which is to our advantage, the isolation of the unfit +in one political party has thrown up the extremists in what the Babu +called 'all their naked <i>cui bono</i> .' These last are after satisfying the +two chief desires of primitive man by the very latest gadgets in +scientific legislation. But how to get free food, and free—shall we +say—love? within the four corners of an Act of Parliament without +giving the game away too grossly, worries them a little. It is easy +enough to laugh at this, but we are all so knit together nowadays that a +rot at what is called 'headquarters' may spread like bubonic, with every +steamer. I went across to Canada the other day, for a few weeks, mainly +to escape the Blight, and also to see what our Eldest Sister was doing. +Have you ever noticed that Canada has to deal in the lump with most of +the problems that afflict us others severally? For example, she has the +Double-Language, Double-Law, Double-Politics drawback in a worse form +than South Africa, because, unlike our Dutch, her French cannot well +marry outside their religion, and they take their orders from +Italy—less central, sometimes, than Pretoria or Stellenbosch. She has, +too, something of Australia's labour fuss, minus Australia's isolation, +but plus the open and secret influence of 'Labour' entrenched, with +arms, and high explosives on neighbouring soil. To complete the +parallel, she keeps, tucked away behind mountains, a trifle of land +called British Columbia, which resembles New Zealand; and New Zealanders +who do not find much scope for young enterprise in their own country are +drifting up to British Columbia already.</p> + +<p>Canada has in her time known calamity more serious than floods, frost, +drought, and fire—and has macadamized some stretches of her road toward +nationhood with the broken hearts of two generations. That is why one +can discuss with Canadians of the old stock matters which an Australian +or New Zealander could no more understand than a wealthy child +understands death. Truly we are an odd Family! Australia and New Zealand +(the Maori War not counted) got everything for nothing. South Africa +gave everything and got less than nothing. Canada has given and taken +all along the line for nigh on three hundred years, and in some respects +is the wisest, as she should be the happiest, of us all. She seems to be +curiously unconscious of her position in the Empire, perhaps because she +has lately been talked at, or down to, by her neighbours. You know how +at any gathering of our men from all quarters it is tacitly conceded +that Canada takes the lead in the Imperial game. To put it roughly, she +saw the goal more than ten years ago, and has been working the ball +toward it ever since. That is why her inaction at the last Imperial +Conference made people who were interested in the play wonder why she, +of all of us, chose to brigade herself with General Botha and to block +the forward rush. I, too, asked that question of many. The answer was +something like this: 'We saw that England wasn't taking anything just +then. Why should we have laid ourselves open to be snubbed worse than we +were? We sat still.' Quite reasonable—almost too convincing. There was +really no need that Canada should have done other than she did—except +that she was the Eldest Sister, and more was expected of her. She is a +little too modest.</p> + +<p>We discussed this, first of all, under the lee of a wet deck-house in +mid-Atlantic; man after man cutting in and out of the talk as he sucked +at his damp tobacco. The passengers were nearly all unmixed Canadian, +mostly born in the Maritime Provinces, where their fathers speak of +'Canada' as Sussex speaks of 'England,' but scattered about their +businesses throughout the wide Dominion. They were at ease, too, among +themselves, with that pleasant intimacy that stamps every branch of Our +Family and every boat that it uses on its homeward way. A Cape liner is +all the sub-Continent from the Equator to Simon's Town; an Orient boat +is Australasian throughout, and a C.P.R. steamer cannot be confused with +anything except Canada. It is a pity one may not be born in four places +at once, and then one would understand the half-tones and asides, and +the allusions of all our Family life without waste of precious time. +These big men, smoking in the drizzle, had hope in their eyes, belief in +their tongues, and strength in their hearts. I used to think miserably +of other boats at the South end of this ocean—a quarter full of people +deprived of these things. A young man kindly explained to me how Canada +had suffered through what he called 'the Imperial connection'; how she +had been diversely bedevilled by English statesmen for political +reasons. He did not know his luck, nor would he believe me when I tried +to point it out; but a nice man in a plaid (who knew South Africa) +lurched round the corner and fell on him with facts and imagery which +astonished the patriotic young mind. The plaid finished his outburst +with the uncontradicted statement that the English were mad. All our +talks ended on that note.</p> + +<p>It was an experience to move in the midst of a new contempt. One +understands and accepts the bitter scorn of the Dutch, the hopeless +anger of one's own race in South Africa is also part of the burden; but +the Canadian's profound, sometimes humorous, often bewildered, always +polite contempt of the England of to-day cuts a little. You see, that +late unfashionable war<a name="FNanchor3"></a><a href="#Footnote3">[3]</a> was very real to Canada. She sent several men +to it, and a thinly-populated country is apt to miss her dead more than +a crowded one. When, from her point of view, they have died for no +conceivable advantage, moral or material, her business instincts, or it +may be mere animal love of her children, cause her to remember and +resent quite a long time after the thing should be decently forgotten. I +was shocked at the vehemence with which some men (and women) spoke of +the affair. Some of them went so far as to discuss—on the ship and +elsewhere—whether England would stay in the Family or whether, as some +eminent statesman was said to have asserted in private talk, she would +cut the painter to save expense. One man argued, without any heat, that +she would not so much break out of the Empire in one flurry, as +politically vend her children one by one to the nearest Power that +threatened her comfort; the sale of each case to be preceded by a +steady blast of abuse of the chosen victim. He quoted—really these +people have viciously long memories!—the five-year campaign of abuse +against South Africans as a precedent and a warning.</p> + +<a name="Footnote3"></a><a href="#FNanchor3">[3]</a> Boer 'war' of 1899-1902. + +<p>Our Tobacco Parliament next set itself to consider by what means, if +this happened, Canada could keep her identity unsubmerged; and that led +to one of the most curious talks I have ever heard. It seemed to be +decided that she might—just might—pull through by the skin of her +teeth as a nation—if (but this was doubtful) England did not help +others to hammer her. Now, twenty years ago one would not have heard any +of this sort of thing. If it sounds a little mad, remember that the +Mother Country was throughout considered as a lady in violent hysterics.</p> + +<p>Just at the end of the talk one of our twelve or thirteen hundred +steerage-passengers leaped overboard, ulstered and booted, into a +confused and bitter cold sea. Every horror in the world has its fitting +ritual. For the fifth time—and four times in just such weather—I heard +the screw stop; saw our wake curve like a whiplash as the great township +wrenched herself round; the lifeboat's crew hurry to the boat-deck; the +bare-headed officer race up the shrouds and look for any sign of the +poor head that had valued itself so lightly. A boat amid waves can see +nothing. There was nothing to see from the first. We waited and +quartered the ground back and forth for a long hour, while the rain fell +and the seas slapped along our sides, and the steam fluttered drearily +through the escapes. Then we went ahead.</p> + +<p>The St. Lawrence on the last day of the voyage played up nobly. The +maples along its banks had turned—blood red and splendid as the banners +of lost youth. Even the oak is not more of a national tree than the +maple, and the sight of its welcome made the folks aboard still more +happy. A dry wind brought along all the clean smell of their +Continent-mixed odours of sawn lumber, virgin earth, and wood-smoke; and +they snuffed it, and their eyes softened as they, identified point after +point along their own beloved River—places where they played and fished +and amused themselves in holiday time. It must be pleasant to have a +country of one's very own to show off. Understand, they did not in any +way boast, shout, squeak, or exclaim, these even-voiced returned men and +women. They were simply and unfeignedly glad to see home again, and they +said: 'Isn't it lovely? Don't you think it's beautiful? We love it.'</p> + +<p>At Quebec there is a sort of place, much infested by locomotives, like a +coal-chute, whence rise the heights that Wolfe's men scaled on their way +to the Plains of Abraham. Perhaps of all the tide-marks in all our lands +the affair of Quebec touches the heart and the eye more nearly than any +other. Everything meets there; France, the jealous partner of England's +glory by land and sea for eight hundred years; England, bewildered as +usual, but for a wonder not openly opposing Pitt, who knew; those other +people, destined to break from England as soon as the French peril was +removed; Montcalm himself, doomed and resolute; Wolfe, the inevitable +trained workman appointed for the finish; and somewhere in the +background one James Cook, master of H.M.S. <i>Mercury</i> , making beautiful +and delicate charts of the St. Lawrence River.</p> + +<p>For these reasons the Plains of Abraham are crowned with all sorts of +beautiful things—including a jail and a factory. Montcalm's left wing +is marked by the jail, and Wolfe's right by the factory. There is, +happily, now a movement on foot to abolish these adornments and turn the +battle-field and its surroundings into a park, which by nature and +association would be one of the most beautiful in our world.</p> + +<p>Yet, in spite of jails on the one side and convents on the other and the +thin black wreck of the Quebec Railway Bridge, lying like a dumped +car-load of tin cans in the river, the Eastern Gate to Canada is noble +with a dignity beyond words. We saw it very early, when the under sides +of the clouds turned chilly pink over a high-piled, brooding, +dusky-purple city. Just at the point of dawn, what looked like the +Sultan Harun-al-Raschid's own private shallop, all spangled with +coloured lights, stole across the iron-grey water, and disappeared into +the darkness of a slip. She came out again in three minutes, but the +full day had come too; so she snapped off her masthead, steering and +cabin electrics, and turned into a dingy white ferryboat, full of cold +passengers. I spoke to a Canadian about her. 'Why, she's the old +So-and-So, to Port Levis,' he answered, wondering as the Cockney wonders +when a stranger stares at an Inner Circle train. This was <i>his</i> Inner +Circle—the Zion where he was all at ease. He drew my attention to +stately city and stately river with the same tranquil pride that we each +feel when the visitor steps across our own threshold, whether that be +Southampton Water on a grey, wavy morning; Sydney Harbour with a regatta +in full swing; or Table Mountain, radiant and new-washed after the +Christmas rains. He had, quite rightly, felt personally responsible for +the weather, and every flaming stretch of maple since we had entered the +river. (The North-wester in these parts is equivalent to the +South-easter elsewhere, and may impress a guest unfavourably.)</p> + +<p>Then the autumn sun rose, and the man smiled. Personally and politically +he said he loathed the city—but it was his.</p> + +<p>'Well,' he asked at last, 'what do you think? Not so bad?'</p> + +<p>'Oh no. Not at all so bad,' I answered; and it wasn't till much later +that I realised that we had exchanged the countersign which runs clear +round the Empire.</p> + + +<a name="chap11" id="chap11"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>A PEOPLE AT HOME</h2> + +<p>An up-country proverb says, 'She was bidden to the wedding and set down +to grind corn.' The same fate, reversed, overtook me on my little +excursion. There is a crafty network of organisations of business men +called Canadian Clubs. They catch people who look interesting, assemble +their members during the mid-day lunch-hour, and, tying the victim to a +steak, bid him discourse on anything that he thinks he knows. The idea +might be copied elsewhere, since it takes men out of themselves to +listen to matters not otherwise coming under their notice and, at the +same time, does not hamper their work. It is safely short, too. The +whole affair cannot exceed an hour, of which the lunch fills half. The +Clubs print their speeches annually, and one gets cross-sections of many +interesting questions—from practical forestry to State mints—all set +out by experts.</p> + +<p>Not being an expert, the experience, to me, was very like hard work. +Till then I had thought speech-making was a sort of conversational +whist, that any one could cut in at it. I perceive now that it is an Art +of conventions remote from anything that comes out of an inkpot, and of +colours hard to control. The Canadians seem to like listening to +speeches, and, though this is by no means a national vice, they make +good oratory on occasion. You know the old belief that the white man on +brown, red, or black lands, will throw back in manner and instinct to +the type originally bred there? Thus, a speech in the taal should carry +the deep roll, the direct belly-appeal, the reiterated, cunning +arguments, and the few simple metaphors of the prince of commercial +orators, the Bantu. A New Zealander is said to speak from his diaphragm, +hands clenched at the sides, as the old Maoris used. What we know of +first-class Australian oratory shows us the same alertness, swift +flight, and clean delivery as a thrown boomerang. I had half expected in +Canadian speeches some survival of the Redskin's elaborate appeal to +Suns, Moons, and Mountains—touches of grandiosity and ceremonial +invocations. But nothing that I heard was referable to any primitive +stock. There was a dignity, a restraint, and, above all, a weight in it, +rather curious when one thinks of the influences to which the land lies +open. Red it was not; French it was not; but a thing as much by itself +as the speakers.</p> + +<p>So with the Canadian's few gestures and the bearing of his body. During +the (Boer) war one watched the contingents from every point of view, +and, most likely, drew wrong inferences. It struck me then that the +Canadian, even when tired, slacked off less than the men from the hot +countries, and while resting did not lie on his back or his belly, but +rather on his side, a leg doubled under him, ready to rise in one surge.</p> + +<p>This time while I watched assemblies seated, men in hotels and +passers-by, I fancied that he kept this habit of semi-tenseness at home +among his own; that it was the complement of the man's still +countenance, and his even, lowered voice. Looking at their footmarks on +the ground they seem to throw an almost straight track, neither splayed +nor in-toed, and to set their feet down with a gentle forward pressure, +rather like the Australian's stealthy footfall. Talking among +themselves, or waiting for friends, they did not drum with their +fingers, fiddle with their feet, or feel the hair on their faces. These +things seem trivial enough, but when breeds are in the making everything +is worth while. A man told me once—but I never tried the +experiment—that each of our Four Races light and handle fire in their +own way.</p> + +<p>Small wonder we differ! Here is a people with no people at their backs, +driving the great world-plough which wins the world's bread up and up +over the shoulder of the world—a spectacle, as it might be, out of some +tremendous Norse legend. North of them lies Niflheim's enduring cold, +with the flick and crackle of the Aurora for Bifrost Bridge that Odin +and the Aesir visited. These people also go north year by year, and drag +audacious railways with them. Sometimes they burst into good wheat or +timber land, sometimes into mines of treasure, and all the North is +foil of voices—as South Africa was once—telling discoveries and making +prophecies.</p> + +<p>When their winter comes, over the greater part of this country outside +the cities they must sit still, and eat and drink as the Aesir did. In +summer they cram twelve months' work into six, because between such and +such dates certain far rivers will shut, and, later, certain others, +till, at last, even the Great Eastern Gate at Quebec locks, and men must +go in and out by the side-doors at Halifax and St. John. These are +conditions that make for extreme boldness, but not for extravagant +boastings.</p> + +<p>The maples tell when it is time to finish, and all work in hand is +regulated by their warning signal. Some jobs can be put through before +winter; others must be laid aside ready to jump forward without a lost +minute in spring. Thus, from Quebec to Calgary a note of drive—not +hustle, but drive and finish-up—hummed like the steam-threshers on the +still, autumn air.</p> + +<p>Hunters and sportsmen were coming in from the North; prospectors with +them, their faces foil of mystery, their pockets full of samples, like +prospectors the world over. They had already been wearing wolf and coon +skin coats. In the great cities which work the year round, +carriage—shops exhibited one or two seductive nickel-plated sledges, as +a hint; for the sleigh is 'the chariot at hand here of Love.' In the +country the farmhouses were stacking up their wood-piles within reach of +the kitchen door, and taking down the fly-screens, (One leaves these +on, as a rule, till the double windows are brought up from the cellar, +and one has to hunt all over the house for missing screws.) Sometimes +one saw a few flashing lengths of new stovepipe in a backyard, and +pitied the owner. There is no humour in the old, bitter-true stovepipe +jests of the comic papers.</p> + +<p>But the railways—the wonderful railways—told the winter's tale most +emphatically. The thirty-ton coal cars were moving over three thousand +miles of track. They grunted and lurched against each other in the +switch-yards, or thumped past statelily at midnight on their way to +provident housekeepers of the prairie towns. It was not a clear way +either; for the bacon, the lard, the apples, the butter, and the cheese, +in beautiful whitewood barrels, were rolling eastwards toward the +steamers before the wheat should descend on them. That is the fifth act +of the great Year-Play for which the stage must be cleared. On scores of +congested sidings lay huge girders, rolled beams, limbs, and boxes of +rivets, once intended for the late Quebec Bridge—now so much mere +obstruction—and the victuals had to pick their way through 'em; and +behind the victuals was the lumber—clean wood out of the +mountains—logs, planks, clapboards, and laths, for which we pay such +sinful prices in England—all seeking the sea. There was housing, food, +and fuel for millions, on wheels together, and never a grain yet shifted +of the real staple which men for five hundred miles were threshing out +in heaps as high as fifty-pound villas.</p> + +<p>Add to this, that the railways were concerned for their own new +developments—double-trackings, loops, cutoffs, taps, and feeder lines, +and great swoops out into untouched lands soon to be filled with men. So +the construction, ballast, and material trains, the grading machines, +the wrecking cars with their camel-like sneering cranes—the whole plant +of a new civilisation—had to find room somewhere in the general rally +before Nature cried, 'Lay off!'</p> + +<p>Does any one remember that joyful strong confidence after the war, when +it seemed that, at last, South Africa was to be developed—when men laid +out railways, and gave orders for engines, and fresh rolling-stock, and +labour, and believed gloriously in the future? It is true the hope was +murdered afterward, but—multiply that good hour by a thousand, and you +will have some idea of how it feels to be in Canada—a place which even +an 'Imperial' Government cannot kill. I had the luck to be shown some +things from the inside—to listen to the details of works projected; the +record of works done. Above all, I saw what had actually been achieved +in the fifteen years since I had last come that way. One advantage of a +new land is that it makes you feel older than Time. I met cities where +there had been nothing—literally, absolutely nothing, except, as the +fairy tales say, 'the birds crying, and the grass waving in the wind.' +Villages and hamlets had grown to great towns, and the great towns +themselves had trebled and quadrupled. And the railways rubbed their +hands and cried, like the Afrites of old, 'Shall we make a city where +no city is; or render flourishing a city that is dasolate?' They do it +too, while, across the water, gentlemen, never forced to suffer one +day's physical discomfort in all their lives, pipe up and say, 'How +grossly materialistic!'</p> + +<p>I wonder sometimes whether any eminent novelist, philosopher, dramatist, +or divine of to-day has to exercise half the pure imagination, not to +mention insight, endurance, and self-restraint, which is accepted +without comment in what is called 'the material exploitation' of a new +country. Take only the question of creating a new city at the junction +of two lines—all three in the air. The mere drama of it, the play of +the human virtues, would fill a book. And when the work is finished, +when the city is, when the new lines embrace a new belt of farms, and +the tide of the Wheat has rolled North another unexpected degree, the +men who did it break off, without compliments, to repeat the joke +elsewhere.</p> + +<p>I had some talk with a youngish man whose business it was to train +avalanches to jump clear of his section of the track. Thor went to +Jotunheim only once or twice, and he had his useful hammer Miolnr with +him. This Thor lived in Jotunheim among the green-ice-crowned peaks of +the Selkirks—where if you disturb the giants at certain seasons of the +year, by making noises, they will sit upon you and all your fine +emotions. So Thor watches them glaring under the May sun, or dull and +doubly dangerous beneath the spring rains. He wards off their strokes +with enormous brattices of wood, wing-walls of logs bolted together, and +such other contraptions as experience teaches. He bears the giants no +malice; they do their work, he his. What bothers him a little is that +the wind of their blows sometimes rips pines out of the opposite +hill-sides—explodes, as it were, a whole valley. He thinks, however, he +can fix things so as to split large avalanches into little ones.</p> + +<p>Another man, to whom I did not talk, sticks in my memory. He had for +years and years inspected trains at the head of a heavyish grade in the +mountains—though not half so steep as the Hex<a name="FNanchor4"></a><a href="#Footnote4">[4]</a>—where all brakes are +jammed home, and the cars slither warily for ten miles. Tire-troubles +there would be inconvenient, so he, as the best man, is given the +heaviest job—monotony and responsibility combined. He did me the honour +of wanting to speak to me, but first he inspected his train—on all +fours with a hammer. By the time he was satisfied of the integrity of +the underpinnings it was time for us to go; and all that I got was a +friendly wave of the hand—a master craftsman's sign, you might call it.</p> + +<a name="Footnote4"></a><a href="#FNanchor4">[4]</a> Hex River, South Africa. + +<p>Canada seems full of this class of materialist.</p> + +<p>Which reminds me that the other day I saw the Lady herself in the shape +of a tall woman of twenty-five or six, waiting for her tram on a street +corner. She wore her almost flaxen-gold hair waved, and parted low on +the forehead, beneath a black astrachan toque, with a red enamel +maple-leaf hatpin in one side of it. This was the one touch of colour +except the flicker of a buckle on the shoe. The dark, tailor-made dress +had no trinkets or attachments, but fitted perfectly. She stood for +perhaps a minute without any movement, both hands—right bare, left +gloved—hanging naturally at her sides, the very fingers still, the +weight of the superb body carried evenly on both feet, and the profile, +which was that of Gudrun or Aslauga, thrown out against a dark stone +column. What struck me most, next to the grave, tranquil eyes, was her +slow, unhurried breathing in the hurry about her. She was evidently a +regular fare, for when her tram stopped she smiled at the lucky +conductor; and the last I saw of her was a flash of the sun on the red +maple-leaf, the full face still lighted by that smile, and her hair very +pale gold against the dead black fur. But the power of the mouth, the +wisdom of the brow, the human comprehension of the eyes, and the +outstriking vitality of the creature remained. That is how <i>I</i> would +have my country drawn, were I a Canadian—and hung in Ottawa Parliament +House, for the discouragement of prevaricators.</p> + + +<a name="chap12" id="chap12"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>CITIES AND SPACES</h2> + +<p>What would you do with a magic carpet if one were lent you? I ask +because for a month we had a private car of our very own—a trifling +affair less than seventy foot long and thirty ton weight. 'You may find +her useful,' said the donor casually, 'to knock about the country. Hitch +on to any train you choose and stop off where you choose.'</p> + +<p>So she bore us over the C.P.R. from the Atlantic to the Pacific and +back, and when we had no more need of her, vanished like the mango tree +after the trick.</p> + +<p>A private car, though many books have been written in it, is hardly the +best place from which to study a country, unless it happen that you have +kept house and seen the seasons round under normal conditions on the +same continent. Then you know how the cars look from the houses; which +is not in the least as the houses look from the cars. Then, the very +porter's brush in its nickel clip, the long cathedral-like aisle between +the well-known green seats, the toll of the bell and the deep organ-like +note of the engine wake up memories; and every sight, smell, and sound +outside are like old friends remembering old days together. A piano-top +buggy on a muddy, board-sidewalked street, all cut up by the narrow +tires; the shingling at the corner of a veranda on a new-built house; a +broken snake-fence girdling an old pasture of mulleins and skull-headed +boulders; a wisp of Virginia creeper dying splendidly on the edge of a +patch of corn; half a dozen panels of snow-fence above a cutting, or +even a shameless patent-medicine advertisement, yellow on the black of a +tobacco-barn, can make the heart thump and the eyes fill if the beholder +have only touched the life of which they are part. What must they mean +to the native-born? There was a prairie-bred girl on the train, coming +back after a year on the Continent, for whom the pine-belted hills, with +real mountains behind, the solemn loops of the river, and the intimate +friendly farm had nothing to tell.</p> + +<p>'You can do these landscapes better in Italy,' she explained, and, with +the indescribable gesture of plains folk stifled in broken ground, 'I +want to push these hills away and get into the open again! I'm +Winnipeg.'</p> + +<p>She would have understood that Hanover Road schoolmistress, back from a +visit to Cape Town, whom I once saw drive off into thirty miles of +mirage almost shouting, 'Thank God, here's something like home at last.'</p> + +<p>Other people ricochetted from side to side of the car, reviving this, +rediscovering that, anticipating t'other thing, which, sure enough, slid +round the next curve to meet them, caring nothing if all the world knew +they were home again; and the newly arrived Englishman with his large +wooden packing-cases marked 'Settlers' Effects' had no more part in the +show than a new boy his first day at school. But two years in Canada and +one run home will make him free of the Brotherhood in Canada as it does +anywhere else. He may grumble at certain aspects of the life, lament +certain richnesses only to be found in England, but as surely as he +grumbles so surely he returns to the big skies, and the big chances. The +failures are those who complain that the land 'does not know a gentleman +when it sees him.' They are quite right. The land suspends all judgment +on all men till it has seen them work. Thereafter as may be; but work +they must because there is a very great deal to be done.</p> + +<p>Unluckily the railroads which made the country are bringing in persons +who are particular as to the nature and amenities of their work, and if +so be they do not find precisely what they are looking for, they +complain in print which makes all men seem equal.</p> + +<p>The special joy of our trip lay in having travelled the line when it was +new and, like the Canada of those days, not much believed in, when all +the high and important officials, whose little fingers unhooked cars, +were also small and disregarded. To-day, things, men, and cities were +different, and the story of the line mixed itself up with the story of +the country, the while the car-wheels clicked out, 'John Kino—John +Kino! Nagasaki, Yokohama, Hakodate, Heh!' for we were following in the +wake of the Imperial Limited, all full of Hongkong and Treaty Ports men. +There were old, known, and wonderfully grown cities to be looked at +before we could get away to the new work out west, and, 'What d'you +think of this building and that suburb?' they said, imperiously. 'Come +out and see what has been done in this generation.'</p> + +<p>The impact of a Continent is rather overwhelming till you remind +yourself that it is no more than your own joy and love and pride in your +own patch of garden written a little large over a few more acres. Again, +as always, it was the dignity of the cities that impressed—an austere +Northern dignity of outline, grouping, and perspective, aloof from the +rush of traffic in the streets. Montreal, of the black-frocked priests +and the French notices, had it; and Ottawa, of the grey stone palaces +and the St. Petersburg-like shining water-frontages; and Toronto, +consumingly commercial, carried the same power in the same repose. Men +are always building better than they know, and perhaps this steadfast +architecture is waiting for the race when their first flurry of +newly-realised expansion shall have spent itself, and the present +hurrah's-nest of telephone poles in the streets shall have been +abolished. There are strong objections to any non-fusible, bi-lingual +community within a nation, but however much the French are made to hang +back in the work of development, their withdrawn and unconcerned +cathedrals, schools, and convents, and one aspect of the spirit that +breathes from them, make for good. Says young Canada: 'There are +millions of dollars' worth of church property in the cities which aren't +allowed to be taxed.' On the other hand, the Catholic schools and +universities, though they are reported to keep up the old medieval +mistrust of Greek, teach the classics as lovingly, tenderly, and +intimately as the old Church has always taught them. After all, it must +be worth something to say your prayers in a dialect of the tongue that +Virgil handled; and a certain touch of insolence, more magnificent and +more ancient than the insolence of present materialism, makes a good +blend in a new land.</p> + +<p>I had the good fortune to see the cities through the eyes of an +Englishman out for the first time. 'Have you been to the Bank?' he +cried. 'I've never seen anything like it!' 'What's the matter with the +Bank?' I asked: for the financial situation across the Border was at +that moment more than usual picturesque. 'It's wonderful!' said he; +'marble pillars—acres of mosaic—steel grilles—'might be a cathedral. +No one ever told me.' 'I shouldn't worry over a Bank that pays its +depositors,' I replied soothingly. 'There are several like it in Ottawa +and Toronto.' Next he ran across some pictures in some palaces, and was +downright angry because no one had told him that there were five +priceless private galleries in one city. 'Look here!' he explained. +'I've been seeing Corots, and Greuzes, and Gainsboroughs, and a +Holbein, and—and hundreds of really splendid pictures!' 'Why shouldn't +you?' I said. 'They've given up painting their lodges with vermilion +hereabouts.' 'Yes, but what I mean is, have you seen the equipment of +their schools and colleges—desks, libraries, and lavatories? It's miles +ahead of anything we have and—no one ever told me.' 'What was the good +of telling? You wouldn't have believed. There's a building in one of the +cities, on the lines of the Sheldonian, but better, and if you go as far +as Winnipeg, you'll see the finest hotel in all the world.'</p> + +<p>'Nonsense!' he said. 'You're pulling my leg! Winnipeg's a prairie-town.'</p> + +<p>I left him still lamenting—about a Club and a Gymnasium this time—that +no one had ever told him about; and still doubting all that he had heard +of Wonders to come.</p> + +<p>If we could only manacle four hundred Members of Parliament, like the +Chinese in the election cartoons, and walk them round the Empire, what +an all-comprehending little Empire we should be when the survivors got +home!</p> + +<p>Certainly the Cities have good right to be proud, and I waited for them +to boast; but they were so busy explaining they were only at the +beginning of things that, for the honour of the Family, I had to do the +boasting. In this praiseworthy game I credited Melbourne (rightly, I +hope, but the pace was too good to inquire) with acres of municipal +buildings and leagues of art galleries; enlarged the borders of Sydney +harbour to meet a statement about Toronto's, wharfage; and recommended +folk to see Cape Town Cathedral when it should be finished. But Truth +will out even on a visit. Our Eldest Sister has more of beauty and +strength inside her three cities alone than the rest of Us put together. +Yet it would do her no harm to send a commission through the ten great +cities of the Empire to see what is being done there in the way of +street cleaning, water-supply, and traffic-regulation.</p> + +<p>Here and there the people are infected with the unworthy superstition of +'hustle,' which means half-doing your appointed job and applauding your +own slapdasherie for as long a time as would enable you to finish off +two clean pieces of work. Little congestions of traffic, that an English +rural policeman, in a country town, disentangles automatically, are +allowed to develop into ten-minute blocks, where wagons and men bang, +and back, and blaspheme, for no purpose except to waste time.</p> + +<p>The assembly and dispersal of crowds, purchase of tickets, and a good +deal of the small machinery of life is clogged and hampered by this +unstable, southern spirit which is own brother to Panic. 'Hustle' does +not sit well on the national character any more than falsetto or +fidgeting becomes grown men. 'Drive,' a laudable and necessary quality, +is quite different, and one meets it up the Western Road where the new +country is being made.</p> + +<p>We got clean away from the Three Cities and the close-tilled farming +and orchard districts, into the Land of Little Lakes—a country of +rushing streams, clear-eyed ponds, and boulders among berry-bushes; all +crying 'Trout' and 'Bear.'</p> + +<p>Not so very long ago only a few wise people kept holiday in that part of +the world, and they did not give away their discoveries. Now it has +become a summer playground where people hunt and camp at large. The +names of its further rivers are known in England, and men, otherwise +sane, slip away from London into the birches, and come out again bearded +and smoke-stained, when the ice is thick enough to cut a canoe. +Sometimes they go to look for game; sometimes for minerals—perhaps, +even, oil. No one can prophesy. 'We are only at the beginning of +things.'</p> + +<p>Said an Afrite of the Railway as we passed in our magic carpet: 'You've +no notion of the size of our tourist-traffic. It has all grown up since +the early 'Nineties. The trolley car teaches people in the towns to go +for little picnics. When they get more money they go for long ones. All +this Continent will want playgrounds soon. We're getting them ready.'</p> + +<p>The girl from Winnipeg saw the morning frost lie white on the long grass +at the lake edges, and watched the haze of mellow golden birch leaves as +they dropped. 'Now that's the way trees ought to turn,' she said. 'Don't +you think our Eastern maple is a little violent in colour?' Then we +passed through a country where for many hours the talk in the cars was +of mines and the treatment of ores. Men told one tales—prospectors' +yarns of the sort one used to hear vaguely before Klondike or Nome were +public property. They did not care whether one believed or doubted. +They, too, were only at the beginning of things—silver perhaps, gold +perhaps, nickel perhaps. If a great city did not arise at such a +place—the very name was new since my day—it would assuredly be born +within a few miles of it. The silent men boarded the cars, and dropped +off, and disappeared beyond thickets and hills precisely as the first +widely spaced line of skirmishers fans out and vanishes along the front +of the day's battle.</p> + +<p>One old man sat before me like avenging Time itself, and talked of +prophecies of evil, that had been falsified. '<i>They</i> said there wasn't +nothing here excep' rocks an' snow. <i>They</i> said there never <i>wouldn't</i> be nothing here excep' the railroad. There's them that can't see <i>yit</i> ,' +and he gimleted me with a fierce eye. 'An' all the while, fortunes is +made—piles is made—right under our noses.'</p> + +<p>'Have you made your pile?' I asked.</p> + +<p>He smiled as the artist smiles—all true prospectors have that lofty +smile—'Me? No. I've been a prospector most o' my time, but I haven't +lost anything. I've had my fun out of the game. By God, I've had my fun +out of it!</p> + +<p>I told him how I had once come through when land and timber grants +could have been picked up for half less than nothing.</p> + +<p>'Yes,' he said placidly. 'I reckon if you'd had any kind of an education +you could ha' made a quarter of a million dollars easy in those days. +And it's to be made now if you could see where. How? Can you tell me +what the capital of the Hudson Bay district's goin' to be? You can't. +Nor I. Nor yet where the six next new cities is going to arise, I get +off here, but if I have my health I'll be out next summer +again—prospectin' North.'</p> + +<p>Imagine a country where men prospect till they are seventy, with no fear +of fever, fly, horse-sickness, or trouble from the natives—a country +where food and water always taste good! He told me curious things about +some fabled gold—the Eternal Mother-lode—out in the North, which is +to humble the pride of Nome. And yet, so vast is the Empire, he had +never heard the name of Johannesburg!</p> + +<p>As the train swung round the shores of Lake Superior the talk swung over +to Wheat. Oh yes, men said, there were mines in the country—they were +only at the beginning of mines—but that part of the world existed to +clean and grade and handle and deliver the Wheat by rail and steamer. +The track was being duplicated by a few hundred miles to keep abreast of +the floods of it. By and by it might be a four-track road. They were +only at the beginning. Meantime here was the Wheat sprouting, tender +green, a foot high, among a hundred sidings where it had spilled from +the cars; there were the high-shouldered, tea-caddy grain-elevators to +clean, and the hospitals to doctor the Wheat; here was new, gaily +painted machinery going forward to reap and bind and thresh the Wheat, +and all those car-loads of workmen had been slapping down more sidings +against the year's delivery of the Wheat.</p> + +<p>Two towns stand on the shores of the lake less than a mile apart. What +Lloyd's is to shipping, or the College of Surgeons to medicine, that +they are to the Wheat. Its honour and integrity are in their hands; and +they hate each other with the pure, poisonous, passionate hatred which +makes towns grow. If Providence wiped out one of them, the survivor +would pine away and die—a mateless hate-bird. Some day they must unite, +and the question of the composite name they shall then carry already +vexes them. A man there told me that Lake Superior was 'a useful piece +of water,' in that it lay so handy to the C.P.R. tracks. There is a +quiet horror about the Great Lakes which grows as one revisits them. +Fresh water has no right or call to dip over the horizon, pulling down +and pushing up the hulls of big steamers; no right to tread the slow, +deep-sea dance-step between wrinkled cliffs; nor to roar in on weed and +sand beaches between vast headlands that run out for leagues into haze +and sea-fog. Lake Superior is all the same stuff as what towns pay taxes +for, but it engulfs and wrecks and drives ashore, like a fully +accredited ocean—a hideous thing to find in the heart of a continent. +Some people go sailing on it for pleasure, and it has produced a breed +of sailors who bear the same relation to the salt-water variety as a +snake-charmer does to a lion-tamer.</p> + +<p>Yet it is undoubtedly a useful piece of water.</p> + + +<a name="chap13" id="chap13"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>NEWSPAPERS AND DEMOCRACY</h2> + +<p>Let it be granted that, as the loud-voiced herald hired by the Eolithic +tribe to cry the news of the coming day along the caves, preceded the +chosen Tribal Bard who sang the more picturesque history of the tribe, +so is Journalism senior to Literature, in that Journalism meets the +first tribal need after warmth, food, and women.</p> + +<p>In new countries it shows clear trace of its descent from the Tribal +Herald. A tribe thinly occupying large spaces feels lonely. It desires +to hear the roll-call of its members cried often and loudly; to comfort +itself with the knowledge that there are companions just below the +horizon. It employs, therefore, heralds to name and describe all who +pass. That is why newspapers of new countries seem often so outrageously +personal. The tribe, moreover, needs quick and sure knowledge of +everything that touches on its daily life in the big spaces—earth, air, +and water news which the Older Peoples have put behind them. That is why +its newspapers so often seem so laboriously trivial.</p> + +<p>For example, a red-nosed member of the tribe, Pete O'Halloran, comes in +thirty miles to have his horse shod, and incidentally smashes the +king-bolt of his buckboard at a bad place in the road. The Tribal +Herald—a thin weekly, with a patent inside—connects the red nose and +the breakdown with an innuendo which, to the outsider, is clumsy libel. +But the Tribal Herald understands that two-and-seventy families of the +tribe may use that road weekly. It concerns them to discover whether the +accident was due to Pete being drunk or, as Pete protests, to the +neglected state of the road. Fifteen men happen to know that Pete's nose +is an affliction, not an indication. One of them loafs across and +explains to the Tribal Herald, who, next week, cries aloud that the road +ought to be mended. Meantime Pete, warmed to the marrow at having +focussed the attention of his tribe for a few moments, retires thirty +miles up-stage, pursued by advertisements of buckboards guaranteed not +to break their king-bolts, and later (which is what the tribe were after +all the time) some tribal authority or other mends the road.</p> + +<p>This is only a big-scale diagram, but with a little attention you can +see the tribal instinct of self-preservation quite logically +underrunning all sorts of queer modern developments.</p> + +<p>As the tribe grows, and men do not behold the horizon from edge to +unbroken edge, their desire to know all about the next man weakens a +little—but not much. Outside the cities are still the long distances, +the 'vast, unoccupied areas' of the advertisements; and the men who come +and go yearn to keep touch with and report themselves as of old to +their lodges. A man stepping out of the dark into the circle of the +fires naturally, if he be a true man, holds up his hands and says, 'I, +So-and-So, am here.' You can watch the ritual in full swing at any hotel +when the reporter (<i>pro</i> Tribal Herald) runs his eyes down the list of +arrivals, and before he can turn from the register is met by the +newcomer, who, without special desire for notoriety, explains his +business and intentions. Observe, it is always at evening that the +reporter concerns himself with strangers. By day he follows the +activities of his own city and the doings of nearby chiefs; but when it +is time to close the stockade, to laager the wagons, to draw the +thorn-bush back into the gap, then in all lands he reverts to the Tribal +Herald, who is also the tribal Outer Guard.</p> + +<p>There are countries where a man is indecently pawed over by chattering +heralds who bob their foul torches in his face till he is singed and +smoked at once. In Canada the necessary 'Stand and deliver your +sentiments' goes through with the large decency that stamps all the +Dominion. A stranger's words are passed on to the tribe quite +accurately; no dirt is put into his mouth, and where the heralds judge +that it would be better not to translate certain remarks they +courteously explain why.</p> + +<p>It was always delightful to meet the reporters, for they were men +interested in their land, with the keen, unselfish interest that one +finds in young house-surgeons or civilians. Thanks to the (Boer) war, +many of them had reached out to the ends of our earth, and spoke of the +sister nations as it did one good to hear. Consequently the +interviews—which are as dreary for the reporter as the reported—often +turned into pleasant and unpublished talks. One felt at every turn of +the quick sentences to be dealing with made and trained players of the +game—balanced men who believed in decencies not to be disregarded, +confidences not to be violated, and honour not to be mocked. (This may +explain what men and women have told me—that there is very little of +the brutal domestic terrorism of the Press in Canada, and not much +blackmailing.) They neither spat nor wriggled; they interpolated no +juicy anecdotes of murder or theft among their acquaintance; and not +once between either ocean did they or any other fellow-subjects +volunteer that their country was 'law-abiding.'</p> + +<p>You know the First Sign-post on the Great Main Road? 'When a Woman +advertises that she is virtuous, a Man that he is a gentleman, a +Community that it is loyal, or a Country that it is law-abiding—go the +other way!'</p> + +<p>Yet, while the men's talk was so good and new, their written word seemed +to be cast in conventional, not to say old-fashioned, moulds. A quarter +of a century ago a sub-editor, opening his mail, could identify the +Melbourne <i>Argus</i> , the Sydney <i>Morning Herald</i> , or the Cape <i>Times</i> as +far as he could see them. Even unheaded clippings from them declared +their origin as a piece of hide betrays the beast that wore it. But he +noticed then that Canadian journals left neither spoor nor scent—might +have blown in from anywhere between thirty degrees of latitude—and had +to be carefully identified by hand. To-day, the spacing, the headlines, +the advertising of Canadian papers, the chessboard-like look of the open +page which should be a daily beautiful study in black and white, the +brittle pulp-paper, the machine-set type, are all as standardised as the +railway cars of the Continent. Indeed, looking through a mass of +Canadian journals is like trying to find one's own sleeper in a corridor +train. Newspaper offices are among the most conservative organisations +in the world; but surely after twenty-five years some changes might be +permitted to creep in; some original convention of expression or +assembly might be developed.</p> + +<p>I drew up to this idea cautiously among a knot of fellow-craftsmen. 'You +mean,' said one straight-eyed youth, 'that we are a back-number copying +back-numbers?'</p> + +<p>It was precisely what I did mean, so I made haste to deny it. 'We know +that,' he said cheerfully. 'Remember we haven't the sea all round +us—and the postal rates to England have only just been lowered. It will +all come right.'</p> + +<p>Surely it will; but meantime one hates to think of these splendid people +using second-class words to express first-class emotions.</p> + +<p>And so naturally from Journalism to Democracy. Every country is entitled +to her reservations, and pretences, but the more 'democratic' a land +is, the more make-believes must the stranger respect. Some of the Tribal +Heralds were very good to me in this matter, and, as it were, nudged me +when it was time to duck in the House of Rimmon. During their office +hours they professed an unflinching belief in the blessed word +'Democracy,' which means any crowd on the move—that is to say, the +helpless thing which breaks through floors and falls into cellars; +overturns pleasure-boats by rushing from port to starboard; stamps men +into pulp because it thinks it has lost sixpence, and jams and grills in +the doorways of blazing theatres. Out of office, like every one else, +they relaxed. Many winked, a few were flippant, but they all agreed that +the only drawback to Democracy was Demos—a jealous God of primitive +tastes and despotic tendencies. I received a faithful portrait of him +from a politician who had worshipped him all his life. It was +practically the Epistle of Jeremy—the sixth chapter of Baruch—done +into unquotable English.</p> + +<p>But Canada is not yet an ideal Democracy. For one thing she has had to +work hard among rough-edged surroundings which carry inevitable +consequences. For another, the law in Canada exists and is administered, +not as a surprise, a joke, a favour, a bribe, or a Wrestling Turk +exhibition, but as an integral part of the national character—no more +to be forgotten or talked about than one's trousers. If you kill, you +hang. If you steal, you go to jail. This has worked toward peace, +self-respect, and, I think, the innate dignity of the people. On the +other hand—which is where the trouble will begin—railways and steamers +make it possible nowadays to bring in persons who need never lose touch +of hot and cold water-taps, spread tables, and crockery till they are +turned out, much surprised, into the wilderness. They clean miss the +long weeks of salt-water and the slow passage across the plains which +pickled and tanned the early emigrants. They arrive with soft bodies and +unaired souls. I had this vividly brought home to me by a man on a train +among the Selkirks. He stood on the safely railed rear-platform, looked +at the gigantic pine-furred shoulder round which men at their lives' +risk had led every yard of the track, and chirruped: 'I say, why can't +all this be nationalised?' There was nothing under heaven except the +snows and the steep to prevent him from dropping off the cars and +hunting a mine for himself. Instead of which he went into the +dining-car. That is one type.</p> + +<p>A man told me the old tale of a crowd of Russian immigrants who at a big +fire in a city 'verted to the ancestral type, and blocked the streets +yelling, 'Down with the Czar!' That is another type. A few days later I +was shown a wire stating that a community of Doukhobors—Russians +again—had, not for the first time, undressed themselves, and were +fleeing up the track to meet the Messiah before the snow fell. Police +were pursuing them with warm underclothing, and trains would please +take care not to run over them.</p> + +<p>So there you have three sort of steam-borne unfitness—soft, savage, and +mad. There is a fourth brand, which may be either home-grown or +imported, but democracies do not recognise it, of downright bad +folk—grown, healthy men and women who honestly rejoice in doing evil. +These four classes acting together might conceivably produce a rather +pernicious democracy; alien hysteria, blood-craze, and the like, +reinforcing local ignorance, sloth, and arrogance. For example, I read a +letter in a paper sympathising with these same Doukhobors. The writer +knew a community of excellent people in England (you see where the rot +starts!) who lived barefoot, paid no taxes, ate nuts, and were above +marriage. They were a soulful folk, living pure lives. The Doukhobors +were also pure and soulful, entitled in a free country to live their own +lives, and not to be oppressed, etc. etc. (Imported soft, observe, +playing up to Imported mad.) Meantime, disgusted police were chasing the +Doukhobors into flannels that they might live to produce children fit to +consort with the sons of the man who wrote that letter and the daughters +of the crowd that lost their heads at the fire.</p> + +<p>'All of which,' men and women answered, 'we admit. But what can we do? +We want people.' And they showed vast and well-equipped schools, where +the children of Slav immigrants are taught English and the songs of +Canada. 'When they grow up,' people said, 'you can't tell them from +Canadians.' It was a wonderful work. The teacher holds up pens, reels, +and so forth, giving the name in English; the children repeating Chinese +fashion. Presently when they have enough words they can bridge back to +the knowledge they learned in their own country, so that a boy of +twelve, at, say, the end of a year, will produce a well-written English +account of his journey from Russia, how much his mother paid for food by +the way, and where his father got his first job. He will also lay his +hand on his heart, and say, 'I—am—a—Canadian.' This gratifies the +Canadian, who naturally purrs over an emigrant owing everything to the +land which adopted him and set him on his feet. The Lady Bountiful of an +English village takes the same interest in a child she has helped on in +the world. And the child repays by his gratitude and good behaviour?</p> + +<p>Personally, one cannot care much for those who have renounced their own +country. They may have had good reason, but they have broken the rules +of the game, and ought to be penalised instead of adding to their score. +Nor is it true, as men pretend, that a few full meals and fine clothes +obliterate all taint of alien instinct and reversion. A thousand years +cannot be as yesterday for mankind; and one has only to glance at the +races across the Border to realise how in outlook, manner, expression, +and morale the South and South-east profoundly and fatally affects the +North and North-west. That was why the sight of the beady-eyed, +muddy-skinned, aproned women, with handkerchiefs on their heads and +Oriental bundles in their hands, always distressed one.</p> + +<p>'But <i>why</i> must you get this stuff?' I asked. 'You know it is not your +equal, and it knows that it is not your equal; and that is bad for you +both. What is the matter with the English as immigrants?'</p> + +<p>The answers were explicit: 'Because the English do not work. Because we +are sick of Remittance-men and loafers sent out here. Because the +English are rotten with Socialism. Because the English don't fit with +our life. They kick at our way of doing things. They are always telling +us how things are done in England. They carry frills! Don't you know the +story of the Englishman who lost his way and was found half-dead of +thirst beside a river? When he was asked why he didn't drink, he said, +"How the deuce can I without a glass?"'</p> + +<p>'But,' I argued over three thousand miles of country, 'all these are +excellent reasons for bringing in the Englishman. It is true that in his +own country he is taught to shirk work, because kind, silly people fall +over each other to help and debauch and amuse him. Here, General January +will stiffen him up. Remittance-men are an affliction to every branch of +the Family, but your manners and morals can't be so tender as to suffer +from a few thousand of them among your six millions. As to the +Englishman's Socialism, he is, by nature, the most unsocial animal +alive. What you call Socialism is his intellectual equivalent for +Diabolo and Limerick competitions. As to his criticisms, you surely +wouldn't marry a woman who agreed with you in everything, and you ought +to choose your immigrants on the same lines. You admit that the Canadian +is too busy to kick at anything. The Englishman is a born kicker. ("Yes, +he is all that," they said.) He kicks on principle, and that is what +makes for civilisation. So did your Englishman's instinct about the +glass. Every new country needs—vitally needs—one-half of one per cent +of its population trained to die of thirst rather than drink out of +their hands. You are always talking of the second generation of your +Smyrniotes and Bessarabians. Think what the second generation of the +English are!'</p> + +<p>They thought—quite visibly—but they did not much seem to relish it. +There was a queer stringhalt in their talk—a conversational shy across +the road—when one touched on these subjects. After a while I went to a +Tribal Herald whom I could trust, and demanded of him point-blank where +the trouble really lay, and who was behind it.</p> + +<p>'It is Labour,' he said. 'You had better leave it alone.'</p> + + +<a name="chap14" id="chap14"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>LABOUR</h2> + +<p>One cannot leave a thing alone if it is thrust under the nose at every +turn. I had not quitted the Quebec steamer three minutes when I was +asked point-blank: 'What do you think of the question of Asiatic +Exclusion which is Agitating our Community?'</p> + +<p>The Second Sign-Post on the Great Main Road says: 'If a Community is +agitated by a Question—inquire politely after the health of the +Agitator,' This I did, without success; and had to temporise all across +the Continent till I could find some one to help me to acceptable +answers. The Question appears to be confined to British Columbia. There, +after a while, the men who had their own reasons for not wishing to talk +referred me to others who explained, and on the acutest understanding +that no names were to be published (it is sweet to see engineers afraid +of being hoist by their own petards) one got more or less at something +like facts.</p> + +<p>The Chinaman has always been in the habit of coming to British Columbia, +where he makes, as he does elsewhere, the finest servant in the world. +No one, I was assured on all hands, objects to the biddable Chinaman. +He takes work which no white man in a new country will handle, and when +kicked by the mean white will not grossly retaliate. He has always paid +for the privilege of making his fortune on this wonderful coast, but +with singular forethought and statesmanship, the popular Will, some few +years ago, decided to double the head-tax on his entry. Strange as it +may appear, the Chinaman now charges double for his services, and is +scarce at that. This is said to be one of the reasons why overworked +white women die or go off their heads; and why in new cities you can see +blocks of flats being built to minimise the inconveniences of +housekeeping without help. The birth-rate will fall later in exact +proportion to those flats.</p> + +<p>Since the Russo-Japanese War the Japanese have taken to coming over to +British Columbia. They also do work which no white man will; such as +hauling wet logs for lumber mills out of cold water at from eight to ten +shillings a day. They supply the service in hotels and dining-rooms and +keep small shops. The trouble with them is that they are just a little +too good, and when attacked defend themselves with asperity.</p> + +<p>A fair sprinkling of Punjabis—ex-soldiers, Sikhs, Muzbis, and Jats—are +coming in on the boats. The plague at home seems to have made them +restless, but I could not gather why so many of them come from Shahpur, +Phillour, and Jullundur way. These men do not, of course, offer for +house-service, but work in the lumber mills, and with the least little +care and attention could be made most valuable. Some one ought to tell +them not to bring their old men with them, and better arrangements +should be made for their remitting money home to their villages. They +are not understood, of course; but they are not hated.</p> + +<p>The objection is all against the Japanese. So far—except that they are +said to have captured the local fishing trade at Vancouver, precisely as +the Malays control the Cape Town fish business—they have not yet +competed with the whites; but I was earnestly assured by many men that +there was danger of their lowering the standard of life and wages. The +demand, therefore, in certain quarters is that they go—absolutely and +unconditionally. (You may have noticed that Democracies are strong on +the imperative mood.) An attempt was made to shift them shortly before I +came to Vancouver, but it was not very successful, because the Japanese +barricaded their quarters and flocked out, a broken bottle held by the +neck in either hand, which they jabbed in the faces of the +demonstrators. It is, perhaps, easier to haze and hammer bewildered +Hindus and Tamils, as is being done across the Border, than to stampede +the men of the Yalu and Liaoyang.<a name="FNanchor5"></a><a href="#Footnote5">[5]</a></p> + +<a name="Footnote5"></a><a href="#FNanchor5">[5]</a> Battles in the Russo-Japanese War. + +<p>But when one began to ask questions one got lost in a maze of hints, +reservations, and orations, mostly delivered with constraint, as though +the talkers were saying a piece learned by heart. Here are some +samples:—</p> + +<p>A man penned me in a corner with a single heavily capitalised sentence. +'There is a General Sentiment among Our People that the Japanese Must +Go,' said he.</p> + +<p>'Very good,' said I. 'How d'you propose to set about it?'</p> + +<p>'That is nothing to us. There is a General Sentiment,' etc.</p> + +<p>'Quite so. Sentiment is a beautiful thing, but what are you going to +do?' He did not condescend to particulars, but kept repeating the +sentiment, which, as I promised, I record.</p> + +<p>Another man was a little more explicit. 'We desire,' he said, 'to keep +the Chinaman. But the Japanese must go.'</p> + +<p>'Then who takes their place? Isn't this rather a new country to pitch +people out of?'</p> + +<p>'We must develop our Resources slowly, sir—with an Eye to the Interests +of our Children. We must preserve the Continent for Races which will +assimilate with Ours. We must not be swamped by Aliens.'</p> + +<p>'Then bring in your own races and bring 'em in quick,' I ventured.</p> + +<p>This is the one remark one must not make in certain quarters of the +West; and I lost caste heavily while he explained (exactly as the Dutch +did at the Cape years ago) how British Columbia was by no means so rich +as she appeared; that she was throttled by capitalists and monopolists +of all kinds; that white labour had to be laid off and fed and warmed +during the winter; that living expenses were enormously high; that they +were at the end of a period of prosperity, and were now entering on +lean years; and that whatever steps were necessary for bringing in more +white people should be taken with extreme caution. Then he added that +the railway rates to British Columbia were so high that emigrants were +debarred from coming on there.</p> + +<p>'But haven't the rates been reduced?' I asked.</p> + +<p>'Yes—yes, I believe they have, but immigrants are so much in demand +that they are snapped up before they have got so far West. You must +remember, too, that skilled labour is not like agricultural labour. It +is dependent on so many considerations. And the Japanese must go.'</p> + +<p>'So people have told me. But I heard stories of dairies and fruit-farms +in British Columbia being thrown up because there was no labour to milk +or pick the fruit. Is that true, d'you think?'</p> + +<p>'Well, you can't expect a man with all the chances that our country +offers him to milk cows in a pasture. A Chinaman can do that. We want +races that will assimilate with ours,' etc., etc.</p> + +<p>'But didn't the Salvation Army offer to bring in three or four thousand +English some short time ago? What came of that idea?'</p> + +<p>'It—er—fell through.'</p> + +<p>'Why?'</p> + +<p>'For political reasons, I believe. We do not want People who will lower +the Standard of Living. That is why the Japanese must go.'</p> + +<p>'Then why keep the Chinese?'</p> + +<p>'We can get on with the Chinese. We can't get on without the Chinese. +But we must have Emigration of a Type that will assimilate with Our +People. I hope I have made myself clear?'</p> + +<p>I hoped that he had, too.</p> + +<p>Now hear a wife, a mother, and a housekeeper.</p> + +<p>'We have to pay for this precious state of things with our health and +our children's. Do you know the saying that the Frontier is hard on +women and cattle? This isn't the frontier, but in some respects it's +worse, because we have all the luxuries and appearances—the pretty +glass and silver to put on the table. We have to dust, polish, and +arrange 'em after we've done our housework. I don't suppose that means +anything to you, but—try it for a month! We have no help. A Chinaman +costs fifty or sixty dollars a month now. Our husbands can't always +afford that. How old would you take me for? I'm not thirty. Well thank +God, I stopped my sister coming out West. Oh yes, it's a fine +country—for men.'</p> + +<p>'Can't you import servants from England?'</p> + +<p>'I can't pay a girl's passage in order to have her married in three +months. Besides, she wouldn't work. They won't when they see Chinamen +working.'</p> + +<p>'Do you object to the Japanese, too?'</p> + +<p>'Of course not. No one does. It's only politics. The wives of the men +who earn six and seven dollars a day—skilled labour they call it—have +Chinese and Jap servants. <i>We</i> can't afford it. <i>We</i> have to think of +saving for the future, but those other people live up to every cent they +earn. They know <i>they're</i> all right. They're Labour. They'll be looked +after, whatever happens. You can see how the State looks after me.'</p> + +<p>A little later I had occasion to go through a great and beautiful city +between six and seven of a crisp morning. Milk and fish, vegetables, +etc., were being delivered to the silent houses by Chinese and Japanese. +Not a single white man was visible on that chilly job.</p> + +<p>Later still a man came to see me, without too publicly giving his name. +He was in a small way of business, and told me (others had said much the +same thing) that if I gave him away his business would suffer. He talked +for half an hour on end.</p> + +<p>'Am I to understand, then,' I said, 'that what you call Labour +absolutely dominates this part of the world?'</p> + +<p>He nodded.</p> + +<p>'That it is difficult to get skilled labour into here?'</p> + +<p>'Difficult? My God, if I want to get an extra hand for my business—I +pay Union wages, of course—I have to arrange to get him here secretly. +I have to go out and meet him, accidental-like, down the line, and if +the Unions find out that he is coming, they, like as not, order him back +East, or turn him down across the Border.'</p> + +<p>'Even if he has his Union ticket? Why?'</p> + +<p>'They'll tell him that labour conditions are not good here. He knows +what that means. He'll turn back quick enough. I'm in a small way of +business, and I can't afford to take any chances fighting the Unions.'</p> + +<p>'What would happen if you did?'</p> + +<p>'D'you know what's happening across the Border? Men get blown up +there—with dynamite.'</p> + +<p>'But this isn't across the Border?'</p> + +<p>'It's a damn-sight too near to be pleasant. And witnesses get blown up, +too. You see, the Labour situation ain't run from our side the line. +It's worked from down under. You may have noticed men were rather +careful when they talked about it?'</p> + +<p>'Yes, I noticed all that.'</p> + +<p>'Well, it ain't a pleasant state of affairs. I don't say that the Unions +here would do anything <i>to</i> you—and please understand I'm all for the +rights of Labour myself. Labour has no better friend than me—I've been +a working man, though I've got a business of my own now. Don't run away +with any idea that I'm against Labour—will you?'</p> + +<p>'Not in the least. I can see that. You merely find that Labour's a +little bit—er—inconsiderate, sometimes?'</p> + +<p>'Look what happens across the Border! I suppose they've told you that +little fuss with the Japanese in Vancouver was worked from down under, +haven't they? I don't think our own people 'ud have done it by +themselves.'</p> + +<p>'I've heard that several times. Is it quite sporting, do you think, to +lay the blame on another country?'</p> + +<p>'<i>You</i> don't live here. But as I was saying—if we get rid of the Japs +to-day, we'll be told to get rid of some one else to-morrow. There's no +limit, sir, to what Labour wants. None!'</p> + +<p>'I thought they only want a fair day's wage for a fair day's work?'</p> + +<p>'That may do in the Old Country, but here they mean to boss the country. +They do.'</p> + +<p>'And how does the country like it?'</p> + +<p>'We're about sick of it. It don't matter much in flush +times—employers'll do most anything sooner than stop work—but when we +come to a pinch, you'll hear something. We're a rich land—in spite of +everything they make out—but we're held up at every turn by Labour. +Why, there's businesses on businesses which friends of mine—in a small +way like myself—want to start. Businesses in every direction—if they +was only allowed to start in. But they ain't.'</p> + +<p>'That's a pity. Now, what do you think about the Japanese question?'</p> + +<p>'I don't think. I know. Both political parties are playing up to the +Labour vote—if you understand what that means.'</p> + +<p>I tried to understand.</p> + +<p>'And neither side'll tell the truth—that if the Asiatic goes, this side +of the Continent'll drop out of sight, unless we get free white +immigration. And any party that proposed white immigration on a large +scale 'ud be snowed under next election. I'm telling you what +politicians think. Myself, I believe if a man stood up to Labour—not +that I've any feeling against Labour—and just talked sense, a lot of +people would follow him—quietly, of course. I believe he could even get +white immigration after a while. He'd lose the first election, of +course, but in the long run.... We're about sick of Labour. I wanted you +to know the truth.'</p> + +<p>'Thank you. And you don't think any attempt to bring in white +immigration would succeed?'</p> + +<p>'Not if it didn't suit Labour. You can try it if you like, and see what +happens.'</p> + +<p>On that hint I made an experiment in another city. There were three men +of position, and importance, and affluence, each keenly interested in +the development of their land, each asserting that what the land needed +was white immigrants. And we four talked for two hours on the matter—up +and down and in circles. The one point on which those three men were +unanimous was, that whatever steps were taken to bring people into +British Columbia from England, by private recruiting or otherwise, +should be taken secretly. Otherwise the business of the people concerned +in the scheme would suffer.</p> + +<p>At which point I dropped the Great Question of Asiatic Exclusion which +is Agitating all our Community; and I leave it to you, especially in +Australia and the Cape, to draw your own conclusions.</p> + +<p>Externally, British Columbia appears to be the richest and the loveliest +section of the Continent. Over and above her own resources she has a +fair chance to secure an immense Asiatic trade, which she urgently +desires. Her land, in many places over large areas, is peculiarly fitted +for the small former and fruit-grower, who can send his truck to the +cities. On every hand I heard a demand for labour of all kinds. At the +same time, in no other part of the Continent did I meet so many men who +insistently decried the value and possibilities of their country, or who +dwelt more fluently on the hardships and privations to be endured by the +white immigrant. I believe that one or two gentlemen have gone to +England to explain the drawbacks <i>viva voce</i> . It is possible that they +incur a great responsibility in the present, and even a terrible one for +the future.</p> + + +<a name="chap15" id="chap15"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>THE FORTUNATE TOWNS</h2> + +<p>After Politics, let us return to the Prairie which is the High Veldt, +plus Hope, Activity, and Reward. Winnipeg is the door to it—a great +city in a great plain, comparing herself, innocently enough, to other +cities of her acquaintance, but quite unlike any other city.</p> + +<p>When one meets, in her own house, a woman not seen since girlhood she is +all a stranger till some remembered tone or gesture links up to the +past, and one cries: 'It <i>is</i> you after all.' But, indeed, the child has +gone; the woman with her influences has taken her place. I tried vainly +to recover the gawky, graceless city I had known, so unformed and so +insistent on her shy self. I even ventured to remind a man of it. 'I +remember,' he said, smiling, 'but we were young then. This thing,' +indicating an immense perspective of asphalted avenue that dipped under +thirty railway tracks, 'only came up in the last ten years—practically +the last five. We've had to enlarge all those warehouses yonder by +adding two or three stories to 'em, and we've hardly begun to go ahead +yet. We're just beginning.'</p> + +<p>Warehouses, railway-sidings, and such are only counters in the White +Man's Game, which can be swept up and re-dealt as the play varies. It +was the spirit in the thin dancing air—the new spirit of the new +city—which rejoiced me. Winnipeg has Things in abundance, but has +learned to put them beneath her feet, not on top of her mind, and so is +older than many cities. None the less the Things had to be shown—for +what shopping is to the woman showing off his town is to the +right-minded man. First came the suburbs—miles on miles of the dainty, +clean-outlined, wooden-built houses, where one can be so happy and so +warm, each unjealously divided from its neighbour by the lightest of +boundaries. One could date them by their architecture, year after year, +back to the Early 'Nineties, which is when civilisation began; could +guess within a few score dollars at their cost and the incomes of their +owners, and could ask questions about the new domestic appliances of +to-day.</p> + +<p>'Asphalt streets and concrete sidewalks came up a few years ago,' said +our host as we trotted over miles of it. 'We found it the only way to +fight the prairie mud. Look!' Where the daring road ended, there lay +unsubdued, level with the pale asphalt, the tenacious prairie, over +which civilisation fought her hub-deep way to the West. And with asphalt +and concrete they fight the prairie back every building season. Next +came the show-houses, built by rich men with an eye to the honour and +glory of their city, which is the first obligation of wealth in a new +land.</p> + +<p>We twisted and turned among broad, clean, tree-lined, sunlit boulevards +and avenues, all sluiced down with an air that forbade any thought of +fatigue, and talked of city government and municipal taxation, till, in +a certain silence, we were shown a suburb of uncared-for houses, shops, +and banks, whose sides and corners were rubbed greasy by the shoulders +of loafers. Dirt and tin cans lay about the street. Yet it was not the +squalor of poverty so much as the lack of instinct to keep clean. One +race prefers to inhabit there.</p> + +<p>Next a glimpse of a cold, white cathedral, red-brick schools almost as +big (thank goodness!) as some convents; hospitals, institutions, a mile +or so of shops, and then a most familiar-feeling lunch at a Club which +would have amazed my Englishman at Montreal, where men, not yet old, +talked of Fort Garry as they remembered it, and tales of the founding of +the city, of early administrative shifts and accidents, mingled with the +younger men's prophecies and frivolities.</p> + +<p>There are a few places still left where men can handle big things with a +light touch, and take more for granted in five minutes than an +Englishman at home could puzzle out in a year. But one would not meet +many English at a lunch in a London club who took the contract for +building London Wall or helped bully King John into signing Magna +Charta.</p> + +<p>I had two views of the city—one on a gray day from the roof of a +monster building, whence it seemed to overflow and fill with noises the +whole vast cup of the horizon; and still, all round its edge, jets of +steam and the impatient cries of machinery showed it was eating out into +the Prairie like a smothered fire.</p> + +<p>The other picture was a silhouette of the city's flank, mysterious as a +line of unexplored cliffs, under a sky crimson—barred from the zenith +to the ground, where it lay, pale emerald behind the uneven ramparts. As +our train halted in the last of the dusk, and the rails glowed dull red, +I caught the deep surge of it, and seven miles across the purple levels +saw the low, restless aurora of its lights. It is rather an awesome +thing to listen to a vanguard of civilisation talking to itself in the +night in the same tone as a thousand-year-old city.</p> + +<p>All the country hereabouts is riddled with railways for business and +pleasure undreamed of fifteen years ago, and it was a long time before +we reached the clear prairie of air and space and open land. The air is +different from any air that ever blew; the space is ampler than most +spaces, because it runs back to the unhampered Pole, and the open land +keeps the secret of its magic as closely as the sea or the desert.</p> + +<p>People here do not stumble against each other around corners, but see +largely and tranquilly from a long way off what they desire, or wish to +avoid, and they shape their path accordingly across the waves, and +troughs, and tongues, and dips and fans of the land.</p> + +<p>When mere space and the stoop of the high sky begin to overwhelm, earth +provides little ponds and lakes, lying in soft-flanked hollows, where +people can step down out of the floods of air, and delight themselves +with small and known distances. Most of the women I saw about the houses +were down in the hollows, and most of the men were on the crests and the +flats. Once, while we halted a woman drove straight down at us from the +sky-line, along a golden path between black ploughed lands. When the +horse, who managed affairs, stopped at the cars, she nodded +mysteriously, and showed us a very small baby in the hollow of her arm. +Doubtless she was some exiled Queen flying North to found a dynasty and +establish a country. The Prairie makes everything wonderful.</p> + +<p>They were threshing the wheat on both sides or the track as far as the +eye could see. The smoke of the machines went up in orderly perspective +alongside the mounds of chaff—thus: a machine, a house, a mound of +chaff, a stretch of wheat in stocks—and then repeat the pattern over +the next few degrees of longitude. We ran through strings of nearly +touching little towns, where I remembered an occasional shack; and +through big towns once represented by a name-board, a siding, and two +troopers of the North-West Police. In those days men proved that Wheat +would not grow north of some fool's line, or other, or, if it did, that +no one would grow it. And now the Wheat was marching with us as far as +the eye could reach; the railways were out, two, three hundred miles +north, peopling a new wheat country; and north of that again the Grand +Trunk was laying down a suburban extension of a few thousand miles +across the Continent, with branches perhaps to Dawson City, certainly to +Hudson Bay.</p> + +<p>'Come north and look!' cried the Afrites of the Railway. 'You're only on +the fringe of it here.' I preferred to keep the old road, and to gape at +miracles accomplished since my day. The old, false-fronted, +hollow-stomached Western hotels were gone; their places filled by +five-storey brick or stone ones, with Post Offices to match. +Occasionally some overlooked fragment of the past still cleaved to a +town, and marked it for an old acquaintance, but often one had to get a +mile away and look back on a place—as one holds a palimpsest up against +the light—to identify the long overlaid lines of the beginnings. Each +town supplied the big farming country behind it, and each town school +carried the Union Jack on a flagstaff in its playground. So far as one +could understand, the scholars are taught neither to hate, nor despise, +nor beg from, their own country.</p> + +<p>I whispered to a man that I was a little tired of a three days' tyranny +of Wheat, besides being shocked at farmers who used clean bright straw +for fuel, and made bonfires of their chaff-hills. 'You're 'way behind +the times,' said he. 'There's fruit and dairying and any quantity of +mixed farming going forward all around—let alone irrigation further +West. Wheat's not our only king by a long sight. Wait till you strike +such and such a place.' It was there I met a prophet and a preacher in +the shape of a Commissioner of the Local Board of Trade (all towns have +them), who firmly showed me the vegetables which his district produced. +They <i>were</i> vegetables too—all neatly staged in a little kiosk near the +station.</p> + +<p>I think the pious Thomas Tusser would have loved that man. 'Providence,' +said he, shedding pamphlets at every gesture, 'did not intend +everlasting Wheat in this section. No, sir! Our business is to keep +ahead of Providence—to meet her with mixed farming. Are you interested +in mixed farming? Psha! Too bad you missed our fruit and vegetable show. +It draws people together, mixed farming does. I don't say Wheat is +narrowing to the outlook, but I claim there's more sociability and money +in mixed farming. We've been hypnotised by Wheat and Cattle. Now—the +cars won't start yet awhile—I'll just tell you my ideas.'</p> + +<p>For fifteen glorious minutes he gave me condensed essence of mixed +farming, with excursions into sugar-beet (did you know they are making +sugar in Alberta?), and he talked of farmyard muck, our dark mother of +all things, with proper devotion.</p> + +<p>'What we want now,' he cried in farewell, 'is men—more men. Yes, and +women.'</p> + +<p>They need women sorely for domestic help, to meet the mad rush of work +at harvest time—maids who will help in house, dairy, and chicken-run +till they are married.</p> + +<p>A steady tide sets that way already; one contented settler recruiting +others from England; but if a tenth of that energy wasted on 'social +reform' could be diverted to decently thought out and supervised +emigration work ('Labour' does not yet object to people working on the +land) we might do something worth talking about. The races which work +and do not form Committees are going into the country at least as fast +as ours. It makes one jealous and afraid to watch aliens taking, and +taking honestly, so much of this treasure of good fortune and sane +living.</p> + +<p>There was a town down the road which I had first heard discussed nigh +twenty years ago by a broken-down prospector in a box-car. 'Young +feller,' said he, after he had made a professional prophecy,' you'll +hear of that town if you live. She's born lucky.'</p> + +<p>I saw the town later—it was a siding by a trestle bridge where Indians +sold beadwork—and as years passed I gathered that the old tramp's +prophecy had come true, and that Luck of some kind had struck the little +town by the big river. So, this trip, I stopped to make sure. It was a +beautiful town of six thousand people, and a railway junction, beside a +high-girdered iron bridge; there was a public garden with trees at the +station. A company of joyous men and women, whom that air and that +light, and their own goodwill, made our brothers and sisters, came along +in motors, and gave us such a day as never was.</p> + +<p>'What about the Luck?' I asked.</p> + +<p>'Heavens!' said one. 'Haven't you heard about our natural gas—the +greatest natural gas in the world? Oh, come and see!'</p> + +<p>I was whirled off to a roundhouse full of engines and machinery-shops, +worked by natural gas which comes out of the earth, smelling slightly of +fried onions, at a pressure of six hundred pounds, and by valves and +taps is reduced to four pounds. There was Luck enough to make a +metropolis. Imagine a city's heating and light—to say nothing of +power—laid on at no greater expense than that of piping!</p> + +<p>'Are there any limits to the possibilities of it?' I demanded.</p> + +<p>'Who knows? We're only at the beginning. We'll show you a brick-making +plant, out on the prairie, run by gas. But just now we want to show you +one of our pet farms.'</p> + +<p>Away swooped the motors, like swallows, over roads any width you please, +and up on to what looked like the High Veldt itself. A Major of the +Mounted Police, who had done a year at the (Boer) war, told us how the +ostrich-farm fencing and the little meercats sitting up and racing about +South Africa had made him homesick for the sight of the gophers by the +wayside, and the endless panels of wire fencing along which we rushed. +(The Prairie has nothing to learn from the Veldt about fencing, or +tricky gates.)</p> + +<p>'After all,' said the Major, 'there's no country to touch this. I've had +thirty years of it—from one end to the other.'</p> + +<p>Then they pointed out all the quarters of the horizon—say, fifty miles +wherever you turned—and gave them names.</p> + +<p>The show farmer had taken his folk to church, but we friendly slipped +through his gates and reached the silent, spick-and-span house, with its +trim barn, and a vast mound of copper-coloured wheat, piled in the sun +between two mounds of golden chaff. Every one thumbed a sample of it and +passed judgment—it must have been worth a few hundred golden sovereigns +as it lay, out on the veldt—and we sat around, on the farm machinery, +and, in the hush that a shut-up house always imposes, we seemed to hear +the lavish earth getting ready for new harvests. There was no true wind, +but a push, as it were, of the whole crystal atmosphere.</p> + +<p>'Now for the brickfield!' they cried. It was many miles off. The road +fed by a never-to-be-forgotten drop, to a river broad as the Orange at +Norval's Pont, rustling between mud hills. An old Scotchman, in the very +likeness of Charon, with big hip boots, controlled a pontoon, which +sagged back and forth by current on a wire rope. The reckless motors +bumped on to this ferry through a foot of water, and Charon, who never +relaxed, bore us statelily across the dark, broad river to the further +bank, where we all turned to look at the lucky little town, and discuss +its possibilities.</p> + +<p>'I think you can see it best from here,' said one.</p> + +<p>'No, from here,' said another, and their voices softened on the very +name of it.</p> + +<p>Then for an hour we raced over true prairie, great yellow-green plains +crossed by old buffalo trails, which do not improve motor springs, till +a single chimney broke the horizon like a mast at sea; and thereby were +more light-hearted men and women, a shed and a tent or two for workmen, +the ribs and frames of the brick-making mechanism, a fifteen foot square +shaft sunk, sixty foot down to the clay, and, stark and black, the pipe +of a natural-gas well. The rest was Prairie—the mere curve of the +earth—with little grey birds calling.</p> + +<p>I thought it could not have been simpler, more audacious or more +impressive, till I saw some women in pretty frocks go up and peer at the +hissing gas-valves.</p> + +<p>'We fancied that it might amuse you,' said all those merry people, and +between laughter and digressions they talked over projects for building, +first their own, and next other cities, in brick of all sorts; giving +figures of output and expenses of plant that made one gasp. To the eye +the affair was no more than a novel or delicious picnic. What it +actually meant was a committee to change the material of civilisation +for a hundred miles around. I felt as though I were assisting at the +planning of Nineveh; and whatever of good comes to the little town that +was born lucky I shall always claim a share.</p> + +<p>But there is no space to tell how we fed, with a prairie appetite, in +the men's quarters, on a meal prepared by an artist; how we raced home +at speeds no child could ever hear of, and no grown-up should attempt; +how the motors squattered at the ford, and took pot-shots at the pontoon +till even Charon smiled; how great horses hauled the motors up the +gravelly bank into the town; how there we met people in their Sunday +best, walking and driving, and pulled ourselves together, and looked +virtuous; and how the merry company suddenly and quietly evanished +because they thought that their guests might be tired. I can give you no +notion of the pure, irresponsible frolic of it—of the almost +affectionate kindness, the gay and inventive hospitality that so +delicately controlled the whole affair—any more than I can describe a +certain quiet half-hour in the dusk just before we left, when the +company gathered to say good-bye, while young couples walked in the +street, and the glare of the never-extinguished natural-gas lamps +coloured the leaves of the trees a stage green.</p> + +<p>It was a woman, speaking out of the shadow, who said, what we all felt, +'You see, we just love our town,'</p> + +<p>'So do we,' I said, and it slid behind us.</p> + + +<a name="chap16" id="chap16"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>MOUNTAINS AND THE PACIFIC</h2> + +<p>The Prairie proper ends at Calgary, among the cattle-ranches, mills, +breweries, and three million acre irrigation works. The river that +floats timber to the town from the mountains does not slide nor rustle +like Prairie rivers, but brawls across bars of blue pebbles, and a +greenish tinge in its water hints of the snows.</p> + +<p>What I saw of Calgary was crowded into one lively half-hour (motors were +invented to run about new cities). What I heard I picked up, oddly +enough, weeks later, from a young Dane in the North Sea. He was +qualmish, but his Saga of triumph upheld him.</p> + +<p>'Three years ago I come to Canada by steerage—third class. <i>And</i> I have +the language to learn. Look at me! I have now my own dairy business, in +Calgary, and—look at me!—my own half section, that is, three hundred +and twenty acres. All my land which is mine! And now I come home, first +class, for Christmas here in Denmark, and I shall take out back with me, +some friends of mine which are farmers, to farm on those irrigated lands +near by Calgary. Oh, I tell you there is nothing wrong with Canada for a +man which works.'</p> + +<p>'And will your friends go?' I inquired.</p> + +<p>'You bet they will. It is all arranged already. I bet they get ready to +go now already; and in three years they will come back for Christmas +here in Denmark, first class like me.'</p> + +<p>'Then you think Calgary is going ahead?'</p> + +<p>'You bet! We are only at the beginning of things. Look at me! Chickens? +I raise chickens also in Calgary,' etc., etc.</p> + +<p>After all this pageant of unrelieved material prosperity, it was a rest +to get to the stillness of the big foothills, though they, too, had been +in-spanned for the work of civilisation. The timber off their sides was +ducking and pitch-poling down their swift streams, to be sawn into +house-stuff for all the world. The woodwork of a purely English villa +may come from as many Imperial sources as its owner's income.</p> + +<p>The train crept, whistling to keep its heart up, through the winding +gateways of the hills, till it presented itself, very humbly, before the +true mountains, the not so Little Brothers to the Himalayas. Mountains +of the pine-cloaked, snow-capped breed are unchristian things.</p> + +<p>Men mine into the flanks of some of them, and trust to modern science to +pull them through. Not long ago, a mountain kneeled on a little mining +village as an angry elephant kneels; but it did not get up again, and +the half of that camp was no more seen on earth. The other half still +stands—uninhabited. The 'heathen in his blindness' would have made +arrangements with the Genius of the Place before he ever drove a pick +there. 'As a learned scholar of a little-known university once observed +to an engineer officer on the Himalaya-Tibet Road—'You white men gain +nothing by not noticing what you cannot see. You fall off the road, or +the road falls on you, and you die, and you think it all an accident. +How much wiser it was when we were allowed to sacrifice a man +officially, sir, before making bridges or other public works. Then the +local gods were officially recognised, sir, and did not give any more +trouble, and the local workmen, sir, were much pleased with these +precautions.'</p> + +<p>There are many local gods on the road through the Rockies: old bald +mountains that have parted with every shred of verdure and stand wrapped +in sheets of wrinkled silver rock, over which the sight travels slowly +as in delirium; mad, horned mountains, wreathed with dancing mists; +low-browed and bent-shouldered faquirs of the wayside, sitting in +meditation beneath a burden of glacier-ice that thickens every year; and +mountains of fair aspect on one side, but on the other seamed with +hollow sunless clefts, where last year's snow is blackened with this +year's dirt and smoke of forest-fires. The drip from it seeps away +through slopes of unstable gravel and dirt, till, at the appointed +season, the whole half-mile of undermined talus slips and roars into the +horrified valley.</p> + + +<p>The railway winds in and out among them with little inexplicable +deviations and side-twists, much as a buck walks through a forest-glade, +sidling and crossing uneasily in what appears to be a<a name="p187"></a> plain way. Only +when the track has rounded another shoulder or two, a backward and +upward glance at some menacing slope shows why the train did not take +the easier-looking road on the other side of the gorge.</p> + +<p>From time to time the mountains lean apart, and nurse between them some +golden valley of slow streams, fat pastures, and park-like uplands, with +a little town, and cow bells tinkling among berry bushes; and children +who have never seen the sun rise or set, shouting at the trains; and +real gardens round the houses.</p> + +<p>At Calgary it was a frost, and the dahlias were dead. A day later +nasturtiums bloomed untouched beside the station platforms, and the air +was heavy and liquid with the breath of the Pacific. One felt the spirit +of the land change with the changing outline of the hills till, on the +lower levels by the Fraser, it seemed that even the Sussex Downs must be +nearer at heart to the Prairie than British Columbia. The Prairie people +notice the difference, and the Hill people, unwisely, I think, insist on +it. Perhaps the magic may lie in the scent of strange evergreens and +mosses not known outside the ranges: or it may strike from wall to wall +of timeless rifts and gorges, but it seemed to me to draw out of the +great sea that washes further Asia—the Asia of allied mountains, mines, +and forests.</p> + +<p>We rested one day high up in the Rockies, to visit a lake carved out of +pure jade, whose property is to colour every reflection on its bosom to +its own tint. A belt of brown dead timber on a<a name="p188"></a> gravel scar, showed, +upside down, like sombre cypresses rising from green turf and the +reflected snows were pale green. In summer many tourists go there, but +we saw nothing except the wonderworking lake lying mute in its circle of +forest, where red and orange lichens grew among grey and blue moss, and +we heard nothing except the noise of its outfall hurrying through a jam +of bone-white logs. The thing might have belonged to Tibet or some +unexplored valley behind Kin-chinjunga. It had no concern with the West.</p> + +<p>As we drove along the narrow hill-road a piebald pack-pony with a +china-blue eye came round a bend, followed by two women, black-haired, +bare-headed, wearing beadwork squaw-jackets, and riding straddle. A +string of pack-ponies trotted through the pines behind them.</p> + +<p>'Indians on the move?' said I. 'How characteristic!'</p> + +<p>As the women jolted by, one of them very slightly turned her eyes, and +they were, past any doubt, the comprehending equal eyes of the civilised +white woman which moved in that berry-brown face.</p> + +<p>'Yes,' said our driver, when the cavalcade had navigated the next +curve,' that'll be Mrs. So-and-So and Miss So-and-So. They mostly camp +hereabout for three months every year. I reckon they're coming in to the +railroad before the snow falls.'</p> + +<p>'And whereabout do they go?' I asked.</p> + +<p>'Oh, all about anywheres. If you mean where they come from just +now—that's the trail yonder.'</p> + +<p>He pointed to a hair-crack across the face of a mountain, and I took +his word for it that it was a safe pony-trail. The same evening, at an +hotel of all the luxuries, a slight woman in a very pretty evening frock +was turning over photographs, and the eyes beneath the strictly-arranged +hair were the eyes of the woman in the beadwork jacket who had quirted +the piebald pack-pony past our buggy.</p> + +<p>Praised be Allah for the diversity of His creatures! But do you know any +other country where two women could go out for a three months' trek and +shoot in perfect comfort and safety?</p> + +<p>These mountains are only ten days from London, and people more and more +use them for pleasure-grounds. Other and most unthought-of persons buy +little fruit-farms in British Columbia as an excuse for a yearly visit +to the beautiful land, and they tempt yet more people from England. This +is apart from the regular tide of emigration, and serves to make the +land known. If you asked a State-owned railway to gamble on the chance +of drawing tourists, the Commissioner of Railways would prove to you +that the experiment could never succeed, and that it was wrong to risk +the taxpayers' money in erecting first-class hotels. Yet South Africa +could, even now, be made a tourists' place—if only the railroads and +steamship lines had faith.</p> + +<p>On thinking things over I suspect I was not intended to appreciate the +merits of British Columbia too highly. Maybe I misjudged; maybe she was +purposely misrepresented; but I seemed to hear more about 'problems' +and 'crises' and 'situations' in her borders than anywhere else. So far +as eye or ear could gather, the one urgent problem was to find enough +men and women to do the work in hand.</p> + +<p>Lumber, coal, minerals, fisheries, fit soil for fruit, dairy, and +poultry farms are all there in a superb climate. The natural beauty of +earth and sky match these lavish gifts; to which are added thousands of +miles of safe and sheltered waterways for coastal trade; deep harbours +that need no dredge; the ground-works of immense and ice-free ports—all +the title-deeds to half the trade of Asia. For the people's pleasure and +good disport salmon, trout, quail, and pheasant play in front of and +through the suburbs of her capitals. A little axe-work and +road-metalling gives a city one of the loveliest water-girt parks that +we have outside the tropics. Another town is presented with a hundred +islands, knolls, wooded coves, stretches of beach, and dingles, laid +down as expressly for camp-life, picnics, and boating parties, beneath +skies never too hot and rarely too cold. If they care to lift up their +eyes from their almost subtropical gardens they can behold snowy peaks +across blue bays, which must be good for the soul. Though they face a +sea out of which any portent may arise, they are not forced to protect +or even to police its waters. They are as ignorant of drouth, murrain, +pestilence locusts, and blight, as they are of the true meaning of want +and fear.</p> + +<p>Such a land is good for an energetic man. It is also not so bad for the +loafer. I was, as I have told you, instructed on its, drawbacks. I was +to understand that there was no certainty in any employment; and that a +man who earned immense wages for six months of the year would have to be +kept by the community if he fell out of work for the other six. I was +not to be deceived by golden pictures set before me by interested +parties (that is to say, by almost every one I met), and I was to give +due weight to the difficulties and discouragements that beset the +intending immigrant. Were I an intending immigrant I would risk a good +deal of discomfort to get on to the land in British Columbia; and were I +rich, with no attachments outside England, I would swiftly buy me a farm +or a house in that country for the mere joy of it.</p> + +<p>I forgot those doleful and unhumorous conspirators among people who +fervently believed in the place; but afterwards the memory left a bad +taste in my mouth. Cities, like women, cannot be too careful what sort +of men they allow to talk about them.</p> + +<p>Time had changed Vancouver literally out of all knowledge. From the +station to the suburbs, and back to the wharves, every step was strange, +and where I remembered open spaces and still untouched timber, the +tramcars were fleeting people out to a lacrosse game. Vancouver is an +aged city, for only a few days previous to my arrival the Vancouver +Baby—<i>i.e.</i> the first child born in Vancouver—had been married.</p> + +<p>A steamer—once familiar in Table Bay—had landed a few hundred Sikhs +and Punjabi Jats—to each man his bundle—and the little groups walked +uneasy alone, keeping, for many of them had been soldiers, to the +military step. Yes, they said they had come to this country to get work. +News had reached their villages that work at great wages was to be had +in this country. Their brethren who had gone before had sent them the +news. Yes, and sometimes the money for the passage out. The money would +be paid back from the so-great wages to come. With interest? Assuredly +with interest.. Did men lend money for nothing in <i>any</i> country? They +were waiting for their brethren to come and show them where to eat, and +later, how to work. Meanwhile this was a new country. How could they say +anything about it? No, it was not like Gurgaon or Shahpur or Jullundur. +The Sickness (plague) had come to all these places. It had come into the +Punjab by every road, and many—many—many had died. The crops, too, had +failed in some districts. Hearing the news about these so-great wages +they had taken ship for the belly's sake—for the money's sake—for the +children's sake.</p> + +<p>'Would they go back again?'</p> + +<p>They grinned as they nudged each other. The Sahib had not quite +understood. They had come over for the sake of the money—the rupees, +no, the dollars. The Punjab was their home where their villages lay, +where their people were waiting. Without doubt—without doubt—they +would go back. Then came the brethren already working in the +mills—cosmopolitans dressed in ready-made clothes, and smoking +cigarettes.</p> + +<p>'This way, O you people,' they cried. The bundles were reshouldered and +the turbaned knots melted away. The last words I caught were true Sikh +talk: 'But what about the money, O my brother?'</p> + +<p>Some Punjabis have found out that money can be too dearly bought.</p> + +<p>There was a Sikh in a sawmill, had been driver in a mountain battery at +home. Himself he was from Amritsar. (Oh, pleasant as cold water in a +thirsty land is the sound of a familiar name in a fair country!)</p> + +<p>'But you had your pension. Why did you come here?'</p> + +<p>'Heaven-born, because my sense was little. And there was also the +Sickness at Amritsar.'</p> + +<p>(The historian a hundred years hence will be able to write a book on +economic changes brought about by pestilence. There is a very +interesting study somewhere of the social and commercial effects of the +Black Death in England.)</p> + +<p>On a wharf, waiting for a steamer, some thirty Sikhs, many of them +wearing their old uniforms (which should not be allowed) were talking at +the tops of their voices, so that the shed rang like an Indian railway +station. A suggestion that if they spoke lower life would be easier was +instantly adopted. Then a senior officer with a British India medal +asked hopefully: 'Has the Sahib any orders where we are to go?'</p> + +<p>Alas he had none—nothing but goodwill and greetings for the sons of +the Khalsa, and they tramped off in fours.</p> + +<p>It is said that when the little riot broke out in Vancouver these +'heathen' were invited by other Asiatics to join in defending themselves +against the white man. They refused on the ground that they were +subjects of the King. I wonder what tales they sent back to their +villages, and where, and how fully, every detail of the affair was +talked over. White men forget that no part of the Empire can live or die +to itself.</p> + +<p>Here is a rather comic illustration of this on the material side. The +wonderful waters between Vancouver and Victoria are full of whales, +leaping and rejoicing in the strong blue all about the steamer. There +is, therefore, a whalery on an island near by, and I had the luck to +travel with one of the shareholders.</p> + +<p>'Whales are beautiful beasts,' he said affectionately. 'We've a contract +with a Scotch firm for every barrel of oil we can deliver for years +ahead. It's reckoned the best for harness-dressing.'</p> + +<p>He went on to tell me how a swift ship goes hunting whales with a +bomb-gun and explodes shells into their insides so that they perish at +once.</p> + +<p>'All the old harpoon and boat business would take till the cows come +home. We kill 'em right off.'</p> + +<p>'And how d'you strip 'em?'</p> + +<p>It seemed that the expeditious ship carried also a large air-pump, and +pumped up the carcass to float roundly till she could attend to it. At +the end of her day's kill she would return, towing sometimes as many as +four inflated whales to the whalery, which is a factory full of modern +appliances. The whales are hauled up inclined planes like logs to a +sawmill, and as much of them as will not make oil for the Scotch +leather-dresser, or cannot be dried for the Japanese market, is +converted into potent manure.</p> + +<p>'No manure can touch ours,' said the shareholder. 'It's so rich in bone, +d'you see. The only thing that has beat us up to date is their hides; +but we've fixed up a patent process now for turning 'em into floorcloth. +Yes, they're beautiful beasts. That fellow,' he pointed to a black hump +in a wreath of spray, 'would cut up a miracle.'</p> + +<p>'If you go on like this you won't have any whales left,' I said.</p> + +<p>'That is so. But the concern pays thirty per cent, and—a few years +back, no one believed in it.'</p> + +<p>I forgave him everything for the last sentence.</p> + + +<a name="chap17" id="chap17"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>A CONCLUSION</h2> + +<p>Canada possesses two pillars of Strength and Beauty in Quebec and +Victoria. The former ranks by herself among those Mother-cities of whom +none can say 'This reminds me.' To realise Victoria you must take all +that the eye admires most in Bournemouth, Torquay, the Isle of Wight, +the Happy Valley at Hong-Kong, the Doon, Sorrento, and Camps Bay; add +reminiscences of the Thousand Islands, and arrange the whole round the +Bay of Naples, with some Himalayas for the background.</p> + +<p>Real estate agents recommend it as a little piece of England—the island +on which it stands is about the size of Great Britain—but no England is +set in any such seas or so fully charged with the mystery of the larger +ocean beyond. The high, still twilights along the beaches are out of the +old East just under the curve of the world, and even in October the sun +rises warm from the first. Earth, sky, and water wait outside every +man's door to drag him out to play if he looks up from his work; and, +though some other cities in the Dominion do not quite understand this +immoral mood of Nature, men who have made their money in them go off to +Victoria, and with the zeal of converts preach and preserve its +beauties.</p> + +<p>We went to look at a marine junk-store which had once been Esquimalt, a +station of the British Navy. It was reached through winding roads, +lovelier than English lanes, along watersides and parkways any one of +which would have made the fortune of a town.</p> + +<p>'Most cities,' a man said, suddenly, 'lay out their roads at right +angles. We do in the business quarters. What d'you think?'</p> + +<p>'I fancy some of those big cities will have to spend millions on curved +roads some day for the sake of a change,' I said. 'You've got what no +money can buy.'</p> + +<p>'That's what the men tell us who come to live in Victoria. And they've +had experience.'</p> + +<p>It is pleasant to think of the Western millionaire, hot from some +gridiron of rectangular civilisation, confirming good Victorians in the +policy of changing vistas and restful curves.</p> + +<p>There is a view, when the morning mists peel off the harbour where the +steamers tie up, or the Houses of Parliament on one hand, and a huge +hotel on the other, which as an example of cunningly-fitted-in +water-fronts and facades is worth a very long journey. The hotel was +just being finished. The ladies' drawing-room, perhaps a hundred feet by +forty, carried an arched and superbly enriched plaster ceiling of knops +and arabesques and interlacings, which somehow seemed familiar.</p> + +<p>'We saw a photo of it in <i>Country Life</i> ,' the contractor explained. 'It +seemed just what the room needed, so one of our plasterers, a +Frenchman—that's him—took and copied it. It comes in all right, +doesn't it?'</p> + +<p>About the time the noble original was put up in England Drake might have +been sailing somewhere off this very coast. So, you see, Victoria +lawfully holds the copyright.</p> + +<p>I tried honestly to render something of the colour, the gaiety, and the +graciousness of the town and the island, but only found myself piling up +unbelievable adjectives, and so let it go with a hundred other wonders +and repented that I had wasted my time and yours on the anxious-eyed +gentlemen who talked of 'drawbacks.' A verse cut out of a newspaper +seems to sum up their attitude:</p> + +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">As the Land of Little Leisure Is the place where things are done,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">So the Land of Scanty Pleasure Is the place for lots of fun. In the</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Land of Plenty Trouble People laugh as people should, But there's</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">some one always kicking In the Land of Heap Too Good!</span><br /> + +<p>At every step of my journey people assured me that I had seen nothing of +Canada. Silent mining men from the North; fruit-farmers from the +Okanagan Valley; foremen of railway gangs, not so long from English +public schools; the oldest inhabitant of the town of Villeneuve, aged +twenty-eight; certain English who lived on the prairie and contrived to +get fun and good fellowship as well as money; the single-minded +wheat-growers and cattle-men; election agents; police troopers +expansive in the dusk of wayside halts; officials dependent on the +popular will, who talked as delicately as they walked; and queer souls +who did not speak English, and said so loudly in the dining-car—each, +in his or her own way, gave me to understand this. My excursion bore the +same relation to their country as a 'bus-ride down the Strand bears to +London, so I knew how they felt.</p> + +<p>The excuse is that our own flesh and blood are more interesting than +anybody else, and I held by birth the same right in them and their lives +as they held in any other part of the Empire. Because they had become a +people within the Empire my right was admitted and no word spoken; which +would not have been the case a few years ago. One may mistake many signs +on the road, but there is no mistaking the spirit of sane and realised +nationality, which fills the land from end to end precisely as the +joyous hum of a big dynamo well settled to its load makes a background +to all the other shop noises. For many reasons that Spirit came late, +but since it has come after the day of little things, doubts, and open +or veiled contempts, there is less danger that it will go astray among +the boundless wealth and luxury that await it. The people, the schools, +the churches, the Press in its degree, and, above all, the women, +understand without manifestoes that their land must now as always abide +under the Law in deed and in word and in thought. This is their +caste-mark, the ark of their covenant, their reason for being what they +are. In the big cities, with their village-like lists of police court +offences; in the wide-open little Western towns where the present is as +free as the lives and the future as safe as the property of their +inhabitants; in the coast cities galled and humiliated at their one +night's riot ('It's not our habit, Sir! It's not our habit!'); up among +the mountains where the officers of the law track and carefully bring +into justice the astounded malefactor; and behind the orderly prairies +to the barren grounds, as far as a single white man can walk, the +relentless spirit of the breed follows up, and oversees, and controls. +It does not much express itself in words, but sometimes, in intimate +discussion, one is privileged to catch a glimpse of the inner fires. +They burn hotly.</p> + +<p>'<i>We</i> do not mean to be de-civilised,' said the first man with whom I +talked about it.</p> + +<p>That was the answer throughout—the keynote and the explanation.</p> + +<p>Otherwise the Canadians are as human as the rest of us to evade or deny +a plain issue. The duty of developing their country is always present, +but when it comes to taking thought, better thought, for her defence, +they refuge behind loose words and childish anticipations of +miracles—quite in the best Imperial manner. All admit that Canada is +wealthy; few that she is weak; still fewer that, unsupported, she would +very soon cease to exist as a nation. The anxious inquirer is told that +she does her duty towards England by developing her resources; that +wages are so high a paid army is out of the question; that she is +really maturing splendid defence schemes, but must not be hurried or +dictated to; that a little wise diplomacy is all that will ever be +needed in this so civilised era; that when the evil day comes something +will happen (it certainly will), the whole concluding, very often, with +a fervent essay on the immorality of war, all about as much to the point +as carrying a dove through the streets to allay pestilence.</p> + +<p>The question before Canada is not what she thinks or pays, but what an +enemy may think it necessary to make her pay. If she continues wealthy +and remains weak she will surely be attacked under one pretext or +another. Then she will go under, and her spirit will return to the dust +with her flag as it slides down the halliards.</p> + +<p>'That is absurd,' is always the quick answer. 'In her own interests +England could never permit it. What you speak of presupposes the fall of +England.'</p> + +<p>Not necessarily. Nothing worse than a stumble by the way; but when +England stumbles the Empire shakes. Canada's weakness is lack of men. +England's weakness is an excess of voters who propose to live at the +expense of the State. These loudly resent that any money should be +diverted from themselves; and since money is spent on fleets and armies +to protect the Empire while it is consolidating, they argue that if the +Empire ceased to exist armaments would cease too, and the money so saved +could be spent on their creature comforts. They pride themselves on +being an avowed and organised enemy of the Empire which, as others see +it, waits only to give them health, prosperity, and power beyond +anything their votes could win them in England. But their leaders need +their votes in England, as they need their outcries and discomforts to +help them in their municipal and Parliamentary careers. No engineer +lowers steam in his own boilers.</p> + +<p>So they are told little except evil of the great heritage outside, and +are kept compounded in cities under promise of free rations and +amusements. If the Empire were threatened they would not, in their own +interests, urge England to spend men and money on it. Consequently it +might be well if the nations within the Empire were strong enough to +endure a little battering unaided at the first outset—till such time, +that is, as England were permitted to move to their help.</p> + +<p>For this end an influx of good men is needed more urgently every year +during which peace holds—men loyal, clean, and experienced in +citizenship, with women not ignorant of sacrifice.</p> + +<p>Here the gentlemen who propose to be kept by their neighbours are our +helpful allies. They have succeeded in making uneasy the class +immediately above them, which is the English working class, as yet +undebauched by the temptation of State-aided idleness or +State-guaranteed irresponsibility. England has millions of such silent +careful folk accustomed, even yet, to provide for their own offspring, +to bring them up in a resolute fear of God, and to desire no more than +the reward of their own labours. A few years ago this class would not +have cared to shift; now they feel the general disquiet. They live close +to it. Tea-and-sugar borrowing friends have told them jocularly, or with +threats, of a good time coming when things will go hard with the +uncheerful giver. The prospect appeals neither to their reason nor to +their Savings Bank books. They hear—they do not need to read—the +speeches delivered in their streets on a Sunday morning. It is one of +their pre-occupations to send their children to Sunday School by +roundabout roads, lest they should pick up abominable blasphemies. When +the tills of the little shops are raided, or when the family +ne'er-do-well levies on his women with more than usual brutality, they +know, because they suffer, what principles are being put into practice. +If these people could quietly be shown a quiet way out of it all, very +many of them would call in their savings (they are richer than they +look), and slip quietly away. In the English country, as well as in the +towns, there is a feeling—not yet panic, but the dull edge of it—that +the future will be none too rosy for such as are working, or are in the +habit of working. This is all to our advantage.</p> + +<p>Canada can best serve her own interests and those of the Empire by +systematically exploiting this new recruiting-ground. Now that South +Africa, with the exception of Rhodesia, has been paralysed, and +Australia has not yet learned the things which belong to her peace, +Canada has the chance of the century to attract good men and capital +into the Dominion. But the men are much more important than the money. +They may not at first be as clever with the hoe as the Bessarabian or +the Bokhariot, or whatever the fashionable breed is, but they have +qualities of pluck, good humour, and a certain well-wearing virtue which +are not altogether bad. They will not hold aloof from the life of the +land, nor pray in unknown tongues to Byzantine saints; while the very +tenacity and caution which made them cleave to England this long, help +them to root deeply elsewhere. They are more likely to bring their women +than other classes, and those women will make sacred and individual +homes. A little-regarded Crown Colony has a proverb that no district can +be called settled till there are pots of musk in the house-windows—sure +sign that an English family has come to stay. It is not certain how much +of the present steamer-dumped foreign population has any such idea. We +have seen a financial panic in one country send whole army corps of +aliens kiting back to the lands whose allegiance they forswore. What +would they or their likes do in time of real stress, since no instinct +in their bodies or their souls would call them to stand by till the +storm were over?</p> + +<p>Surely the conclusion of the whole matter throughout the whole Empire +must be men and women of our own stock, habits, language, and hopes +brought in by every possible means under a well-settled policy? Time +will not be allowed us to multiply to unquestionable peace, but by +drawing upon England we can swiftly transfuse what we need of her +strength into her veins, and by that operation bleed her into health and +sanity Meantime, the only serious enemy to the Empire, within or +without, is that very Democracy which depends on the Empire for its +proper comforts, and in whose behalf these things are urged.</p> +<br /> + +<a name="part3" id="part3"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>EGYPT OF THE MAGICIANS</h2> +<h3>1913</h3> + +<p> +<a href="#chap18">SEA TRAVEL.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap19">A RETURN TO THE EAST.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap20">A SERPENT OF OLD NILE.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap21">UP THE RIVER.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap22">DEAD KINGS.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap23">THE FACE OF THE DESERT.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap24">THE RIDDLE OF EMPIRE.</a></p> + +<p><i>And the magicians of Egypt did so with their enchantments</i> .—EXODUS +vii. 22.</p> + + +<a name="chap18" id="chap18"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>I</h2> +<h2>SEA TRAVEL</h2> + +<p>I had left Europe for no reason except to discover the Sun, and there +were rumours that he was to be found in Egypt.</p> + +<p>But I had not realised what more I should find there.</p> + +<p>A P. & O. boat carried us out of Marseilles. A serang of lascars, with +whistle, chain, shawl, and fluttering blue clothes, was at work on the +baggage-hatch. Somebody bungled at the winch. The serang called him a +name unlovely in itself but awakening delightful memories in the hearer.</p> + +<p>'O Serang, is that man a fool?'</p> + +<p>'Very foolish, sahib. He comes from Surat. He only comes for his food's +sake.'</p> + +<p>The serang grinned; the Surtee man grinned; the winch began again, and +the voices that called: 'Lower away! Stop her!' were as familiar as the +friendly whiff from the lascars' galley or the slap of bare feet along +the deck. But for the passage of a few impertinent years, I should have +gone without hesitation to share their rice. Serangs used to be very +kind to little white children below the age of caste. Most familiar of +all was the ship itself. It had slipped my memory, nor was there +anything in the rates charged to remind me, that single-screws still +lingered in the gilt-edged passenger trade.</p> + +<p>Some North Atlantic passengers accustomed to real ships made the +discovery, and were as pleased about it as American tourists at +Stratford-on-Avon.</p> + +<p>'Oh, come and see!' they cried. 'She has <i>one</i> screw—only one screw! +Hear her thump! And <i>have</i> you seen their old barn of a saloon? <i>And</i> the officers' library? It's open for two half-hours a day week-days and +one on Sundays. You pay a dollar and a quarter deposit on each book. We +wouldn't have missed this trip for anything. It's like sailing with +Columbus.'</p> + +<p>They wandered about—voluble, amazed, and happy, for they were getting +off at Port Said.</p> + +<p>I explored, too. From the rough-ironed table-linen, the thick +tooth-glasses for the drinks, the slummocky set-out of victuals at +meals, to the unaccommodating regulations in the curtainless cabin, +where they had not yet arrived at bunk-edge trays for morning tea, time +and progress had stood still with the P. & O. To be just, there were +electric-fan fittings in the cabins, but the fans were charged extra; +and there was a rumour, unverified, that one could eat on deck or in +one's cabin without a medical certificate from the doctor. All the rest +was under the old motto: '<i>Quis separabit</i> '—'This is quite separate +from other lines.'</p> + +<p>'After all,' said an Anglo-Indian, whom I was telling about civilised +ocean travel, 'they don't want you Egyptian trippers. They're sure of +<i>us</i> , because——' and he gave me many strong reasons connected with +leave, finance, the absence of competition, and the ownership of the +Bombay foreshore.</p> + +<p>'But it's absurd,' I insisted. 'The whole concern is out of date. +There's a notice on my deck forbidding smoking and the use of naked +lights, and there's a lascar messing about the hold-hatch outside my +cabin with a candle in a lantern.'</p> + +<p>Meantime, our one-screw tub thumped gingerly toward Port Said, because +we had no mails aboard, and the Mediterranean, exhausted after severe +February hysterics, lay out like oil.</p> + +<p>I had some talk with a Scotch quartermaster who complained that lascars +are not what they used to be, owing to their habit (but it has existed +since the beginning) of signing on as a clan or family—all sorts +together.</p> + +<p>The serang said that, for <i>his</i> part, he had noticed no difference in +twenty years. 'Men are always of many kinds, sahib. And that is because +God makes men this and that. Not all one pattern—not by any means all +one pattern.' He told me, too, that wages were rising, but the price of +ghee, rice, and curry-stuffs was up, too, which was bad for wives and +families at Porbandar. 'And that also is thus, and no talk makes it +otherwise.' After Suez he would have blossomed into thin clothes and +long talks, but the bitter spring chill nipped him, as the thought of +partings just accomplished and work just ahead chilled the Anglo-Indian +contingent. Little by little one came at the outlines of the old +stories—a sick wife left behind here, a boy there, a daughter at +school, a very small daughter trusted to friends or hirelings, certain +separation for so many years and no great hope or delight in the future. +It was not a nice India that the tales hinted at. Here is one that +explains a great deal:</p> + +<p>There was a Pathan, a Mohammedan, in a Hindu village, employed by the +village moneylender as a debt-collector, which is not a popular trade. +He lived alone among Hindus, and—so ran the charge in the lower +court—he wilfully broke the caste of a Hindu villager by forcing on him +forbidden Mussulman food, and when that pious villager would have taken +him before the headman to make reparation, the godless one drew his +Afghan knife and killed the headman, besides wounding a few others. The +evidence ran without flaw, as smoothly as well-arranged cases should, +and the Pathan was condemned to death for wilful murder. He appealed +and, by some arrangement or other, got leave to state his case +personally to the Court of Revision. 'Said, I believe, that he did not +much trust lawyers, but that if the sahibs would give him a hearing, as +man to man, he might have a run for his money.</p> + +<p>Out of the jail, then, he came, and, Pathan-like, not content with his +own good facts, must needs begin by some fairy-tale that he was a secret +agent of the government sent down to spy on that village. Then he warmed +to it. Yes, he <i>was</i> that money-lender's agent—a persuader of the +reluctant, if you like—working for a Hindu employer. Naturally, many +men owed him grudges. A lot of the evidence against him was quite true, +but the prosecution had twisted it abominably. About that knife, for +instance. True, he had a knife in his hand exactly as they had alleged. +But why? Because with that very knife he was cutting up and distributing +a roast sheep which he had given as a feast to the villagers. At that +feast, he sitting in amity with all his world, the village rose up at +the word of command, laid hands on him, and dragged him off to the +headman's house. How could he have broken <i>any</i> man's caste when they +were all eating his sheep? And in the courtyard of the headman's house +they surrounded him with heavy sticks and worked themselves into anger +against him, each man exciting his neighbour. He was a Pathan. He knew +what that sort of talk meant. A man cannot collect debts without making +enemies. So he warned them. Again and again he warned them, saying: +'Leave me alone. Do not lay hands on me.' But the trouble grew worse, +and he saw it was intended that he should be clubbed to death like a +jackal in a drain. Then he said, 'If blows are struck, I strike, and <i>I</i> strike to kill, because I am a Pathan,' But the blows were struck, heavy +ones. Therefore, with the very Afghan knife that had cut up the mutton, +he struck the headman. 'Had you meant to kill the headman?' 'Assuredly! +I am a Pathan. When I strike, I strike to kill. I had warned them again +and again. I think I got him in the liver. He died. And that is all +there is to it, sahibs. It was my life or theirs. They would have taken +mine over my freely given meats. <i>Now</i> , what'll you do with me?'</p> + +<p>In the long run, he got several years for culpable homicide.</p> + +<p>'But,' said I, when the tale had been told, 'whatever made the lower +court accept all that village evidence? It was too good on the face of +it,'</p> + +<p>'The lower court said it could not believe it possible that so many +respectable native gentle could have banded themselves together to tell +a lie.'</p> + +<p>'Oh! Had the lower court been long in the country?'</p> + +<p>'It was a native judge,' was the reply.</p> + +<p>If you think this over in all its bearings, you will see that the lower +court was absolutely sincere. Was not the lower court itself a product +of Western civilisation, and, as such, bound to play up—to pretend to +think along Western lines—translating each grade of Indian village +society into its English equivalent, and ruling as an English judge +would have ruled? Pathans and, incidentally, English officials must look +after themselves.</p> + +<p>There is a fell disease of this century called 'snobbery of the soul.' +Its germ has been virulently developed in modern cultures from the +uncomplex bacillus isolated sixty years ago by the late William +Makepeace Thackeray. Precisely as Major Ponto, with his plated dishes +and stable-boy masquerading as footman, lied to himself and his guests +so—but the <i>Book of Snobs</i> can only be brought up to date by him who +wrote it.</p> + +<p>Then, a man struck in from the Sudan—far and far to the south—with a +story of a discomposed judge and a much too collected prisoner.</p> + +<p>To the great bazaars of Omdurman, where all things are sold, came a +young man from the uttermost deserts of somewhere or other and heard a +gramophone. Life was of no value to him till he had bought the creature. +He took it back to his village, and at twilight set it going among his +ravished friends. His father, sheik of the village, came also, listened +to the loud shoutings without breath, the strong music lacking +musicians, and said, justly enough: 'This thing is a devil. You must not +bring devils into my village. Lock it up.'</p> + +<p>They waited until he had gone away and then began another tune. A second +time the sheik came, repeated the command, and added that if the singing +box was heard again, he would slay the buyer. But their curiosity and +joy defied even this, and for the third time (late at night) they +slipped in pin and record and let the djinn rave. So the sheik, with his +rifle, shot his son as he had promised, and the English judge before +whom he eventually came had all the trouble in the world to save that +earnest gray head from the gallows. Thus:</p> + +<p>'Now, old man, you must say guilty or not guilty.'</p> + +<p>'But I shot him. That is why I am here. I——'</p> + +<p>'Hush! It is a form of words which the law asks. <i>(Sotte voce</i> . Write +down that the old idiot doesn't understand.) Be still now.'</p> + +<p>'But I shot him. What else could I have done? He bought a devil in a +box, and——'</p> + +<p>'Quiet! That comes later. Leave talking.'</p> + +<p>'But I am sheik of the village. One must not bring devils into a +village. I <i>said</i> I would shoot him.'</p> + +<p>'This matter is in the hands of the law. <i>I</i> judge.'</p> + +<p>'What need? I shot him. Suppose that <i>your</i> son had brought a devil in a +box to <i>your</i> village——'</p> + +<p>They explained to him, at last, that under British rule fathers must +hand over devil-dealing children to be shot by the white men (the first +step, you see, on the downward path of State aid), and that he must go +to prison for several months for interfering with a government shoot.</p> + +<p>We are a great race. There was a pious young judge in Nigeria once, who +kept a condemned prisoner waiting very many minutes while he hunted +through the Hausa dictionary, word by word, for, +'May—God—have—mercy—on—your—soul.'</p> + +<p>And I heard another tale—about the Suez Canal this time—a hint of what +may happen some day at Panama. There was a tramp steamer, loaded with +high explosives, on her way to the East, and at the far end of the Canal +one of the sailors very naturally upset a lamp in the fo'c'sle. After a +heated interval the crew took to the desert alongside, while the captain +and the mate opened all cocks and sank her, not in the fairway but up +against a bank, just leaving room for a steamer to squeeze past. Then +the Canal authorities wired to her charterers to know exactly what there +might be in her; and it is said that the reply kept them awake of +nights, for it was their business to blow her up.</p> + +<p>Meantime, traffic had to go through, and a P. & O. steamer came along. +There was the Canal; there was the sunken wreck, marked by one elderly +Arab in a little boat with a red flag, and there was about five foot +clearance on each side for the P. & O. She went through a-tiptoe, +because even fifty tons of dynamite will jar a boat, perceptibly, and +the tramp held more—very much more, not to mention detonators. By some +absurd chance, almost the only passenger who knew about the thing at the +time was an old lady rather proud of the secret.</p> + +<p>'Ah,' she said, in the middle of that agonised glide, 'you may depend +upon it that if everybody knew what, I know, they'd all be on the other +side of the ship.'</p> + +<p>Later on, the authorities blew up the tramp with infinite precautions +from some two miles off, for which reason she neither destroyed the Suez +Canal nor dislocated the Sweet Water Canal alongside, but merely dug out +a hole a hundred feet or a hundred yards deep, and so vanished from +Lloyd's register.</p> + +<p>But no stories could divert one long from the peculiarities of that +amazing line which exists strictly for itself. There was a bathroom +(occupied) at the windy end of an open alleyway. In due time the bather +came out.</p> + +<p>Said the steward, as he swabbed out the tub for his successor: 'That was +the Chief Engineer. 'E's been some time. Must 'ave 'ad a mucky job +below, this mornin'.'</p> + +<p>I have a great admiration for Chief Engineers. They are men in +authority, needing all the comforts and aids that can possibly be given +them—such as bathrooms of their own close to their own cabins, where +they can clean off at leisure.</p> + +<p>It is not fair to mix them up with the ruck of passengers, nor is it +done on real ships. Nor, when a passenger wants a bath in the evening, +do the stewards of real ships roll their eyes like vergers in a +cathedral and say, 'We'll see if it can be managed.' They double down +the alleyway and shout, 'Matcham' or 'Ponting' or 'Guttman,' and in +fifteen seconds one of those swift three has the taps going and the +towels out. Real ships are not annexes of Westminster Abbey or Borstal +Reformatory. They supply decent accommodation in return for good money, +and I imagine that their directors instruct their staffs to look pleased +while at work.</p> + +<p>Some generations back there must have been an idea that the P. & O. was +vastly superior to all lines afloat—a sort of semipontifical show not +to be criticised. How much of the notion was due to its own excellence +and how much to its passenger-traffic monopoly does not matter. To-day, +it neither feeds nor tends its passengers, nor keeps its ships well +enough to put on any airs at all.</p> + +<p>For which reason, human nature being what it is, it surrounds itself +with an ungracious atmosphere of absurd ritual to cover grudged and +inadequate performance.</p> + +<p>What it really needs is to be dropped into a March North Atlantic, +without any lascars, and made to swim for its life between a C.P.R. boat +and a North German Lloyd—till it learns to smile.</p> + + +<a name="chap19" id="chap19"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>II</h2> +<h2>A RETURN TO THE EAST</h2> + +<p>The East is a much larger slice of the world than Europeans care to +admit. Some say it begins at St. Gothard, where the smells of two +continents meet and fight all through that terrible restaurant-car +dinner in the tunnel. Others have found it at Venice on warm April +mornings. But the East is wherever one sees the lateen sail—that +shark's fin of a rig which for hundreds of years has dogged all white +bathers round the Mediterranean. There is still a suggestion of menace, +a hint of piracy, in the blood whenever the lateen goes by, fishing or +fruiting or coasting.</p> + +<p>'This is <i>not</i> my ancestral trade,' she whispers to the accomplice sea. +'If everybody had their rights I should be doing something quite +different; for my father, he was the Junk, and my mother, she was the +Dhow, and between the two of 'em they made Asia.' Then she tacks, +disorderly but deadly quick, and shuffles past the unimaginative +steam-packet with her hat over one eye and a knife, as it were, up her +baggy sleeves.</p> + +<p>Even the stone-boats at Port Said, busied on jetty extensions, show +their untamed descent beneath their loaded clumsiness. They are all +children of the camel-nosed dhow, who is the mother of mischief; but it +was very good to meet them again in raw sunshine, unchanged in any rope +and patch.</p> + +<p>Old Port Said had disappeared beneath acres of new buildings where one +could walk at leisure without being turned back by soldiers.</p> + +<p>Two or three landmarks remained; two or three were reported as still in +existence, and one Face showed itself after many years—ravaged but +respectable—rigidly respectable.</p> + +<p>'Yes,' said the Face, 'I have been here all the time. But I have made +money, and when I die I am going home to be buried.'</p> + +<p>'Why not go home before you are buried, O Face?'</p> + +<p>'Because I have lived here <i>so</i> long. Home is only good to be buried +in.'</p> + +<p>'And what do you do, nowadays?'</p> + +<p>'Nothing now. I live on my <i>rentes</i> —my income.'</p> + +<p>Think of it! To live icily in a perpetual cinematograph show of excited, +uneasy travellers; to watch huge steamers, sliding in and out all day +and all night like railway trucks, unknowing and unsought by a single +soul aboard; to talk five or six tongues indifferently, but to have no +country—no interest in any earth except one reservation in a +Continental cemetery.</p> + +<p>It was a cold evening after heavy rain and the half-flooded streets +reeked. But we undefeated tourists ran about in droves and saw all that +could be seen before train-time. We missed, most of us, the Canal +Company's garden, which happens to mark a certain dreadful and exact +division between East and West.</p> + +<p>Up to that point—it is a fringe of palms, stiff against the sky—the +impetus of home memories and the echo of home interests carry the young +man along very comfortably on his first journey. But at Suez one must +face things. People, generally the most sympathetic, leave the boat +there; the older men who are going on have discovered each other and +begun to talk shop; no newspapers come aboard, only clipped Reuter +telegrams; the world seems cruelly large and self-absorbed. One goes for +a walk and finds this little bit of kept ground, with comfortable +garden-gated houses on either side of the path. Then one begins to +wonder—in the twilight, for choice—when one will see those palms again +from the other side. Then the black hour of homesickness, vain regrets, +foolish promises, and weak despair shuts down with the smell of strange +earth and the cadence of strange tongues.</p> + +<p>Cross-roads and halting-places in the desert are always favoured by +djinns and afrits. The young man will find them waiting for him in the +Canal Company's garden at Port Said.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, if he is fortunate enough to have won the East by +inheritance, as there are families who served her for five or six +generations, he will meet no ghouls in that garden, but a free and a +friendly and an ample welcome from good spirits of the East that awaits +him. The voices of the gardeners and the watchmen will be as the +greetings of his father's servants in his father's house; the evening +smells and the sight of the hibiscus and poinsettia will unlock his +tongue in words and sentences that he thought he had clean forgotten, +and he will go back to the ship (I have seen) as a prince entering on +his kingdom.</p> + +<p>There was a man in our company—a young Englishman—who had just been +granted his heart's desire in the shape of some raw district south of +everything southerly in the Sudan, where, on two-thirds of a member of +Parliament's wage, under conditions of life that would horrify a +self-respecting operative, he will see perhaps some dozen white men in a +year, and will certainly pick up two sorts of fever. He had been moved +to work very hard for this billet by the representations of a friend in +the same service, who said that it was a 'rather decent sort of +service,' and he was all of a heat to reach Khartum, report for duty, +and fall to. If he is lucky, he may get a district where the people are +so virtuous that they do not know how to wear any clothes at all, and so +ignorant that they have never yet come across strong drink.</p> + +<p>The train that took us to Cairo was own sister in looks and fittings to +any South African train—for which I loved her—but she was a trial to +some citizens of the United States, who, being used to the Pullman, did +not understand the side-corridored, solid-compartment idea. The trouble +with a standardised democracy seems to be that, once they break loose +from their standards, they have no props. People are <i>not</i> left behind +and luggage is rarely mislaid on the railroads of the older world. There +is an ordained ritual for the handling of all things, to which if a man +will only conform and keep quiet, he and his will be attended to with +the rest. The people that I watched would not believe this. They charged +about futilely and wasted themselves in trying to get ahead of their +neighbours.</p> + +<p>Here is a fragment from the restaurant-car: 'Look at here! Me and some +friends of mine are going to dine at this table. We don't want to be +separated and—'</p> + +<p>'You 'ave your number for the service, sar?' 'Number? What number? We +want to dine <i>here</i> , I tell you.'</p> + +<p>'You shall get your number, sar, for the first service?'</p> + +<p>'Haow's that? Where in thunder do we <i>get</i> the numbers, anyway?'</p> + +<p>'I will give you the number, sar, at the time—for places at the first +service.'</p> + +<p>'Yes, but we want to dine together here—right <i>now.</i> '</p> + +<p>'The service is not yet ready, sar.'</p> + +<p>And so on—and so on; with marchings and counter-marchings, and every +word nervously italicised. In the end they dined precisely where there +was room for them in that new world which they had strayed into.</p> + +<p>On one side our windows looked out on darkness of the waste; on the +other at the black Canal, all spaced with monstrous headlights of the +night-running steamers. Then came towns, lighted with electricity, +governed by mixed commissions, and dealing in cotton. Such a town, for +instance, as Zagazig, last seen by a very small boy who was lifted out +of a railway-carriage and set down beneath a whitewashed wall under +naked stars in an illimitable emptiness because, they told him, the +train was on fire. Childlike, this did not worry him. What stuck in his +sleepy mind was the absurd name of the place and his father's prophecy +that when he grew up he would 'come that way in a big steamer.'</p> + +<p>So all his life, the word 'Zagazig' carried memories of a brick shed, +the flicker of an oil-lamp's floating wick, a sky full of eyes, and an +engine coughing in a desert at the world's end; which memories returned +in a restaurant-car jolting through what seemed to be miles of +brilliantly lighted streets and factories. No one at the table had even +turned his head for the battlefields of Kassassin and Tel-el-Kebir. +After all, why should they? That work is done, and children are getting +ready to be born who will say: '<i>I</i> can remember Gondokoro (or El-Obeid +or some undreamed of Clapham Junction, Abyssinia-way) before a single +factory was started—before the overhead traffic began. Yes, when there +was a fever—actually fever—in the city itself!'</p> + +<p>The gap is no greater than that between to-day's and t'other day's +Zagazig—between the horsed vans of the Overland Route in Lieutenant +Waghorn's time and the shining motor that flashed us to our Cairo hotel +through what looked like the suburbs of Marseilles or Rome.</p> + +<p>Always keep a new city till morning, 'In the daytime,' as it is written +in the Perspicuous Book,<a name="FNanchor6"></a><a href="#Footnote6">[6]</a> 'thou hast long occupation,' Our window gave +on to the river, but before one moved toward it one heard the thrilling +squeal of the kites—those same thievish Companions of the Road who, at +that hour, were watching every Englishman's breakfast in every compound +and camp from Cairo to Calcutta.</p> + +<a name="Footnote6"></a><a href="#FNanchor6">[6]</a> The Koran. + +<p>Voices rose from below—unintelligible words in maddeningly familiar +accents. A black boy in one blue garment climbed, using his toes as +fingers, the tipped mainyard of a Nile boat and framed himself in the +window. Then, because he felt happy, he sang, all among the wheeling +kites. And beneath our balcony rolled very Nile Himself, golden in +sunshine, wrinkled under strong breezes, with a crowd of creaking +cargo-boats waiting for a bridge to be opened.</p> + +<p>On the cut-stone quay above, a line of cab drivers—a <i>ticca-gharri</i> stand, nothing less—lolled and chaffed and tinkered with their +harnesses in every beautiful attitude of the ungirt East. All the ground +about was spotted with chewed sugarcane—first sign of the hot weather +all the world over.</p> + +<p>Troops with startlingly pink faces (one would not have noticed this +yesterday) rolled over the girder bridge between churning motors and +bubbling camels, and the whole long-coated loose-sleeved Moslem world +was awake and about its business, as befits sensible people who pray at +dawn.</p> + +<p>I made haste to cross the bridge and to hear the palms in the wind on +the far side. They sang as nobly as though they had been true coconuts, +and the thrust of the north wind behind them was almost as open-handed +as the thrust of the Trades. Then came a funeral—the sheeted corpse on +the shallow cot, the brisk-pacing bearers (if he was good, the sooner he +is buried the sooner in heaven; if bad, bury him swiftly for the sake of +the household—either way, as the Prophet says, do not let the mourners +go too long weeping and hungry)—the women behind, tossing their arms +and lamenting, and men and boys chanting low and high.</p> + +<p>They might have come forth from the Taksali Gate in the city of Lahore +on just such a cold weather morning as this, on their way to the +Mohammedan burial-grounds by the river. And the veiled countrywomen, +shuffling side by side, elbow pressed to hip, and eloquent right hand +pivoting round, palm uppermost, to give value to each shrill phrase, +might have been the wives of so many Punjabi cultivators but that they +wore another type of bangle and slipper. A knotty-kneed youth sitting +high on a donkey, both amuleted against the evil eye, chewed three +purplish-feet of sugar-cane, which made one envious as well as +voluptuously homesick, though the sugar-cane of Egypt is not to be +compared with that of Bombay.</p> + +<p>Hans Breitmann writes somewhere:</p> + +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Oh, if you live in Leyden town You'll meet, if troot be told, Der</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">forms of all der freunds dot tied When du werst six years old.</span><br /> + +<p>And they were all there under the chanting palms—saices, orderlies, +pedlars, water-carriers, street-cleaners, chicken-sellers and the +slate-coloured buffalo with the china-blue eyes being talked to by a +little girl with the big stick. Behind the hedges of well-kept gardens +squatted the brown gardener, making trenches indifferently with a hoe or +a toe, and under the municipal lamp-post lounged the bronze policeman—a +touch of Arab about mouth and lean nostril—quite unconcerned with a +ferocious row between two donkey-men. They were fighting across the body +of a Nubian who had chosen to sleep in that place. Presently, one of +them stepped back on the sleeper's stomach. The Nubian grunted, elbowed +himself up, rolled his eyes, and pronounced a few utterly dispassionate +words. The warriors stopped, settled their headgear, and went away as +quickly as the Nubian went to sleep again. This was life, the real, +unpolluted stuff—worth a desert-full of mummies. And right through the +middle of it—hooting and kicking up the Nile—passed a Cook's steamer +all ready to take tourists to Assuan. From the Nubian's point of view +she, and not himself, was the wonder—as great as the Swiss-controlled, +Swiss-staffed hotel behind her, whose lift, maybe, the Nubian helped to +run. Marids, and afrits, guardians of hidden gold, who choke or crush +the rash seeker; encounters with the long-buried dead in a Cairo +back-alley; undreamed-of promotions, and suddenly lit loves are the +stuff of any respectable person's daily life; but the white man from +across the water, arriving in hundreds with his unveiled womenfolk, who +builds himself flying-rooms and talks along wires, who flees up and down +the river, mad to sit upon camels and asses, constrained to throw down +silver from both hands—at once a child and a warlock—this thing must +come to the Nubian sheer out of the <i>Thousand and One Nights</i> . At any +rate, the Nubian was perfectly sane. Having eaten, he slept in God's own +sunlight, and I left him, to visit the fortunate and guarded and +desirable city of Cairo, to whose people, male and female, Allah has +given subtlety in abundance. Their jesters are known to have surpassed +in refinement the jesters of Damascus, as did their twelve police +captains the hardiest and most corrupt of Bagdad in the tolerant days of +Harun-al-Raschid; while their old women, not to mention their young +wives, could deceive the Father of Lies himself. Delhi is a great +place—most bazaar storytellers in India make their villain hail from +there; but when the agony and intrigue are piled highest and the tale +halts till the very last breathless sprinkle of cowries has ceased to +fall on his mat, why then, with wagging head and hooked forefinger, the +storyteller goes on:</p> + +<p>'<i>But</i> there was a man from Cairo, an Egyptian of the Egyptians, +who'—and all the crowd knows that a bit of real metropolitan devilry is +coming.</p> + + +<a name="chap20" id="chap20"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>III</h2> +<h2>A SERPENT OF OLD NILE</h2> + +<p>Modern Cairo is an unkempt place. The streets are dirty and +ill-constructed, the pavements unswept and often broken, the tramways +thrown, rather than laid, down, the gutters neglected. One expects +better than this in a city where the tourist spends so much every +season. Granted that the tourist is a dog, he comes at least with a bone +in his mouth, and a bone that many people pick. He should have a cleaner +kennel. The official answer is that the tourist-traffic is a flea-bite +compared with the cotton industry. Even so, land in Cairo city must be +too valuable to be used for cotton growing. It might just as well be +paved or swept. There is some sort of authority supposed to be in charge +of municipal matters, but its work is crippled by what is called 'The +Capitulations.' It was told to me that every one in Cairo except the +English, who appear to be the mean whites of these parts, has the +privilege of appealing to his consul on every conceivable subject from +the disposal of a garbage-can to that of a corpse. As almost every one +with claims to respectability, and certainly every one without any, +keeps a consul, it follows that there is one consul per superficial +meter, arshin, or cubit of Ezekiel within the city. And since every +consul is zealous for the honour of his country and not at all above +annoying the English on general principles, municipal progress is slow.</p> + +<p>Cairo strikes one as unventilated and unsterilised, even when the sun +and wind are scouring it together. The tourist talks a good deal, as you +may see here, but the permanent European resident does not open his +mouth more than is necessary—sound travels so far across flat water. +Besides, the whole position of things, politically and administratively, +is essentially false.</p> + +<p>Here is a country which is not a country but a longish strip of +market-garden, nominally in charge of a government which is not a +government but the disconnected satrapy of a half-dead empire, +controlled pecksniffingly by a Power which is not a Power but an Agency, +which Agency has been tied up by years, custom, and blackmail into all +sorts of intimate relations with six or seven European Powers, all with +rights and perquisites, none of whose subjects seem directly amenable to +any Power which at first, second, or third hand is supposed to be +responsible. That is the barest outline. To fill in the details (if any +living man knows them) would be as easy as to explain baseball to an +Englishman or the Eton Wall game to a citizen of the United States. But +it is a fascinating play. There are Frenchmen in it, whose logical mind +it offends, and they revenge themselves by printing the finance-reports +and the catalogue of the Bulak Museum in pure French. There are Germans +in it, whose demands must be carefully weighed—not that they can by any +means be satisfied, but they serve to block other people's. There are +Russians in it, who do not very much matter at present but will be heard +from later. There are Italians and Greeks in it (both rather pleased +with themselves just now), full of the higher finance and the finer +emotions. There are Egyptian pashas in it, who come back from Paris at +intervals and ask plaintively to whom they are supposed to belong. There +is His Highness, the Khedive, in it, and <i>he</i> must be considered not a +little, and there are women in it, up to their eyes. And there are great +English cotton and sugar interests, and angry English importers +clamouring to know why they cannot do business on rational lines or get +into the Sudan, which they hold is ripe for development if the +administration there would only see reason. Among these conflicting +interests and amusements sits and perspires the English official, whose +job is irrigating or draining or reclaiming land on behalf of a trifle +of ten million people, and he finds himself tripped up by skeins of +intrigue and bafflement which may ramify through half a dozen harems and +four consulates. All this makes for suavity, toleration, and the blessed +habit of not being surprised at anything whatever.</p> + +<p>Or, so it seemed to me, watching a big dance at one of the hotels. Every +European race and breed, and half of the United States were +represented, but I fancied I could make out three distinct groupings. +The tourists with the steamer-trunk creases still across their dear, +excited backs; the military and the officials sure of their partners +beforehand, and saying clearly what ought to be said; and a third +contingent, lower-voiced, softer-footed, and keener-eyed than the other +two, at ease, as gipsies are on their own ground, flinging half-words in +local <i>argot</i> over shoulders at their friends, understanding on the nod +and moved by springs common to their clan only. For example, a woman was +talking flawless English to her partner, an English officer. Just before +the next dance began, another woman beckoned to her, Eastern fashion, +all four fingers flicking downward. The first woman crossed to a potted +palm; the second moved toward it also, till the two drew, up, not +looking at each other, the plant between them. Then she who had beckoned +spoke in a strange tongue <i>at</i> the palm. The first woman, still looking +away, answered in the same fashion with a rush of words that rattled +like buckshot through the stiff fronds. Her tone had nothing to do with +that in which she greeted her new partner, who came up as the music +began. The one was a delicious drawl; the other had been the guttural +rasp and click of the kitchen and the bazaar. So she moved off, and, in +a little, the second woman disappeared into the crowd. Most likely it +was no more than some question of the programme or dress, but the +prompt, feline stealth and coolness of it, the lightning-quick return to +and from world-apart civilisations stuck in my memory.</p> + +<p>So did the bloodless face of a very old Turk, fresh from some horror of +assassination in Constantinople in which he, too, had been nearly +pistolled, but, they said, he had argued quietly over the body of a late +colleague, as one to whom death was of no moment, until the hysterical +Young Turks were abashed and let him get away—to the lights and music +of this elegantly appointed hotel.</p> + +<p>These modern 'Arabian Nights' are too hectic for quiet folk. I declined +upon a more rational Cairo—the Arab city where everything is as it was +when Maruf the Cobbler fled from Fatima-el-Orra and met the djinn in the +Adelia Musjid. The craftsmen and merchants sat on their shop-boards, a +rich mystery of darkness behind them, and the narrow gullies were +polished to shoulder-height by the mere flux of people. Shod white men, +unless they are agriculturists, touch lightly, with their hands at most, +in passing. Easterns lean and loll and squat and sidle against things as +they daunder along. When the feet are bare, the whole body thinks. +Moreover, it is unseemly to buy or to do aught and be done with it. Only +people with tight-fitting clothes that need no attention have time for +that. So we of the loose skirt and flowing trousers and slack slipper +make full and ample salutations to our friends, and redouble them toward +our ill-wishers, and if it be a question of purchase, the stuff must be +fingered and appraised with a proverb or so, and if it be a +fool-tourist who thinks that he cannot be cheated, O true believers! +draw near and witness how we shall loot him.</p> + +<p>But I bought nothing. The city thrust more treasure upon me than I could +carry away. It came out of dark alleyways on tawny camels loaded with +pots; on pattering asses half buried under nets of cut clover; in the +exquisitely modelled hands of little children scurrying home from the +cookshop with the evening meal, chin pressed against the platter's edge +and eyes round with responsibility above the pile; in the broken lights +from jutting rooms overhead, where the women lie, chin between palms, +looking out of windows not a foot from the floor; in every glimpse into +every courtyard, where the men smoke by the tank; in the heaps of +rubbish and rotten bricks that flanked newly painted houses, waiting to +be built, some day, into houses once more; in the slap and slide or the +heelless red-and-yellow slippers all around, and, above all, in the +mixed delicious smells of frying butter, Mohammedan bread, kababs, +leather, cooking-smoke, assafetida, peppers, and turmeric. Devils cannot +abide the smell of burning turmeric, but the right-minded man loves it. +It stands for evening that brings all home, the evening meal, the +dipping of friendly hands in the dish, the one face, the dropped veil, +and the big, guttering pipe afterward.</p> + +<p>Praised be Allah for the diversity of His creatures and for the Five +Advantages of Travel and for the glories of the Cities of the Earth! +Harun-al-Raschid, in roaring Bagdad of old, never delighted himself to +the limits of such a delight as was mine, that afternoon. It is true +that the call to prayer, the cadence of some of the street-cries, and +the cut of some of the garments differed a little from what I had been +brought up to; but for the rest, the shadow on the dial had turned back +twenty degrees for me, and I found myself saying, as perhaps the dead +say when they have recovered their wits, 'This is my real world again,'</p> + +<p>Some men are Mohammedan by birth, some by training, and some by fate, +but I have never met an Englishman yet who hated Islam and its people as +I have met Englishmen who hated some other faiths. <i>Musalmani awadani</i> , +as the saying goes—where there are Mohammedans, there is a +comprehensible civilisation.</p> + +<p>Then we came upon a deserted mosque of pitted brick colonnades round a +vast courtyard open to the pale sky. It was utterly empty except for its +own proper spirit, and that caught one by the throat as one entered. +Christian churches may compromise with images and side-chapels where the +unworthy or abashed can traffic with accessible saints. Islam has but +one pulpit and one stark affirmation—living or dying, one only—and +where men have repeated that in red-hot belief through centuries, the +air still shakes to it.</p> + +<p>Some say now that Islam is dying and that nobody cares; others that, if +she withers in Europe and Asia, she will renew herself in Africa and +will return—terrible—after certain years, at the head of all the nine +sons of Ham; others dream that the English understand Islam as no one +else does, and, in years to be, Islam will admit this and the world will +be changed. If you go to the mosque Al Azhar—the thousand-year-old +University of Cairo—you will be able to decide for yourself. There is +nothing to see except many courts, cool in hot weather, surrounded by +cliff-like brick walls. Men come and go through dark doorways, giving on +to yet darker cloisters, as freely as though the place was a bazaar. +There are no aggressive educational appliances. The students sit on the +ground, and their teachers instruct them, mostly by word of mouth, in +grammar, syntax, logic; <i>al-hisab</i> , which is arithmetic; <i>al-jab'r w'al +muqabalah</i> , which is algebra; <i>at-tafsir,</i> commentaries on the Koran, +and last and most troublesome, <i>al-ahadis,</i> traditions, and yet more +commentaries on the law of Islam, which leads back, like everything, to +the Koran once again. (For it is written, 'Truly the Quran is none other +than a revelation.') It is a very comprehensive curriculum. No man can +master it entirely, but any can stay there as long as he pleases. The +university provides commons—twenty-five thousand loaves a day, I +believe,—and there is always a place to lie down in for such as do not +desire a shut room and a bed. Nothing could be more simple or, given +certain conditions, more effective. Close upon six hundred professors, +who represent officially or unofficially every school or thought, teach +ten or twelve thousand students, who draw from every Mohammedan +community, west and east between Manila and Morocco, north and south +between Kamchatka and the Malay mosque at Cape Town. These drift off to +become teachers of little schools, preachers at mosques, students of the +Law known to millions (but rarely to Europeans), dreamers, devotees, or +miracle-workers in all the ends of the earth. The man who interested me +most was a red-bearded, sunk-eyed mullah from the Indian frontier, not +likely to be last at any distribution of food, who stood up like a lean +wolfhound among collies in a little assembly at a doorway.</p> + +<p>And there was another mosque, sumptuously carpeted and lighted (which +the Prophet does not approve of), where men prayed in the dull mutter +that, at times, mounts and increases under the domes like the boom of +drums or the surge of a hot hive before the swarm flings out. And round +the corner of it, one almost ran into Our inconspicuous and wholly +detached Private of Infantry, his tunic open, his cigarette alight, +leaning against some railings and considering the city below. Men in +forts and citadels and garrisons all the world over go up at twilight as +automatically as sheep at sundown, to have a last look round. They say +little and return as silently across the crunching gravel, detested by +bare feet, to their whitewashed rooms and regulated lives. One of the +men told me he thought well of Cairo. It was interesting. 'Take it from +me,' he said, 'there's a lot in seeing places, because you can remember +'em afterward.'</p> + +<p>He was very right. The purple and lemon-coloured hazes of dusk and +reflected day spread over the throbbing, twinkling streets, masked the +great outline of the citadel and the desert hills, and conspired to +confuse and suggest and evoke memories, till Cairo the Sorceress cast +her proper shape and danced before me in the heartbreaking likeness of +every city I had known and loved, a little farther up the road.</p> + +<p>It was a cruel double-magic. For in the very hour that my homesick soul +had surrendered itself to the dream of the shadow that had turned back +on the dial, I realised all the desolate days and homesickness of all +the men penned in far-off places among strange sounds and smells.</p> + + +<a name="chap21" id="chap21"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>IV</h2> +<h2>UP THE RIVER</h2> + +<p>Once upon a time there was a murderer who got off with a life-sentence. +What impressed him most, when he had time to think, was the frank +boredom of all who took part in the ritual.</p> + +<p>'It was just like going to a doctor or a dentist,' he explained. '<i>You</i> come to 'em very full of your affairs, and then you discover that it's +only part of their daily work to <i>them</i> . I expect,' he added, 'I should +have found it the same if—er—I'd gone on to the finish.'</p> + +<p>He would have. Break into any new Hell or Heaven and you will be met at +its well-worn threshold by the bored experts in attendance.</p> + +<p>For three weeks we sat on copiously chaired and carpeted decks, +carefully isolated from everything that had anything to do with Egypt, +under chaperonage of a properly orientalised dragoman. Twice or thrice +daily, our steamer drew up at a mud-bank covered with donkeys. Saddles +were hauled out of a hatch in our bows; the donkeys were dressed, dealt +round like cards: we rode off through crops or desert, as the case might +be, were introduced in ringing tones to a temple, and were then duly +returned to our bridge and our Baedekers. For sheer comfort, not to say +padded sloth, the life was unequalled, and since the bulk of our +passengers were citizens of the United States—Egypt in winter ought to +be admitted into the Union as a temporary territory—there was no lack +of interest. They were overwhelmingly women, with here and there a +placid nose-led husband or father, visibly suffering from congestion of +information about his native city. I had the joy of seeing two such men +meet. They turned their backs resolutely on the River, bit and lit +cigars, and for one hour and a quarter ceased not to emit statistics of +the industries, commerce, manufacture, transport, and journalism of +their towns;—Los Angeles, let us say, and Rochester, N.Y. It sounded +like a duel between two cash-registers.</p> + +<p>One forgot, of course, that all the dreary figures were alive to them, +and as Los Angeles spoke Rochester visualised. Next day I met an +Englishman from the Soudan end of things, very full of a little-known +railway which had been laid down in what had looked like raw desert, and +therefore had turned out to be full of paying freight. He was in the +full-tide of it when Los Angeles ranged alongside and cast anchor, +fascinated by the mere roll of numbers.</p> + +<p>'Haow's that?' he cut in sharply at a pause.</p> + +<p>He was told how, and went on to drain my friend dry concerning that +railroad, out of sheer fraternal interest, as he explained, in 'any +darn' thing that's being made anywheres,'</p> + +<p>'So you see,' my friend went on, 'we shall be bringing Abyssinian cattle +into Cairo.'</p> + +<p>'On the hoof?' One quick glance at the Desert ranges.</p> + +<p>'No, no! By rail and River. And after <i>that</i> we're going to grow cotton +between the Blue and the White Nile and knock spots out of the States.'</p> + +<p>'Ha-ow's that?'</p> + +<p>'This way.' The speaker spread his first and second fingers fanwise +under the big, interested beak. 'That's the Blue Nile. And that's the +White. There's a difference of so many feet between 'em, an' in that +fork here, 'tween my fingers, we shall—'</p> + +<p>'<i>I</i> see. Irrigate on the strength of the little difference in the +levels. How many acres?'</p> + +<p>Again Los Angeles was told. He expanded like a frog in a shower. 'An' I +thought,' he murmured, 'Egypt was all mummies and the Bible! <i>I</i> used to +know something about cotton. Now we'll talk.'</p> + +<p>All that day the two paced the deck with the absorbed insolente of +lovers; and, lover-like, each would steal away and tell me what a +splendid soul was his companion.</p> + +<p>That was one type; but there were others—professional men who did not +make or sell things—and these the hand of an all-exacting Democracy +seemed to have run into one mould. They 'were not reticent, but no +matter whence they hailed, their talk was as standardised as the +fittings of a Pullman.</p> + +<p>I hinted something of this to a woman aboard who was learned in their +sermons of either language.</p> + +<p>'I think,' she began, 'that the staleness you complain of—'</p> + +<p>'I never said "staleness,"' I protested.</p> + +<p>'But you thought it. The staleness you noticed is due to our men being +so largely educated by old women—old maids. Practically till he goes to +College, and not always then, a boy can't get away from them.'</p> + +<p>'Then what happens?'</p> + +<p>'The natural result. A man's instinct is to teach a boy to think for +himself. If a woman can't make a boy think <i>as</i> she thinks, she sits +down and cries. A man hasn't any standards. He makes 'em. A woman's the +most standardised being in the world. She has to be. <i>Now</i> d'you see?'</p> + +<p>'Not yet.'</p> + +<p>'Well, our trouble in America is that we're being school-marmed to +death. You can see it in any paper you pick up. What were those men +talking about just now?'</p> + +<p>'Food adulteration, police-reform, and beautifying waste-lots in towns,' +I replied promptly.</p> + +<p>She threw up her hands. 'I knew it!' she cried. 'Our great National +Policy of co-educational housekeeping! Ham-frills and pillow-shams. Did +you ever know a man get a woman's respect by parading around creation +with a dish-clout pinned to his coat-tails?'</p> + +<p>'But if his woman ord——told him to do it?' I suggested.</p> + +<p>'Then she'd despise him the more for doing it. <i>You</i> needn't laugh. +'You're coming to the same sort of thing in England.'</p> + +<p>I returned to the little gathering. A woman was talking to them as one +accustomed to talk from birth. They listened with the rigid attention of +men early trained to listen to, but not to talk with, women. She was, to +put it mildly, the mother of all she-bores, but when she moved on, no +man ventured to say as much.</p> + +<p>'That's what I mean by being school-manned to death,' said my +acquaintance wickedly. 'Why, she bored 'em stiff; but they are so well +brought up, they didn't even know they were bored. Some day the American +Man is going to revolt.'</p> + +<p>'And what'll the American Woman do?'</p> + +<p>'She'll sit and cry—and it'll do her good.'</p> + +<p>Later on, I met a woman from a certain Western State seeing God's great, +happy, inattentive world for the first time, and rather distressed that +it was not like hers. She had always understood that the English were +brutal to their wives—the papers of her State said so. (If you only +knew the papers of her State I) But she had not noticed any scandalous +treatment so far, and Englishwomen, whom she admitted she would never +understand, seemed to enjoy a certain specious liberty and equality; +while Englishmen were distinctly kind to girls in difficulties over +their baggage and tickets on strange railways. Quite a nice people, she +concluded, but without much sense of humour. One day, she showed me +what looked like a fashion-paper print of a dress-stuff—a pretty oval +medallion of stars on a striped grenadine background that somehow seemed +familiar.</p> + +<p>'How nice! What is it?' I asked.</p> + +<p>'Our National Flag,' she replied.</p> + +<p>'Indeed. But it doesn't look quite——'</p> + +<p>'No. This is a new design for arranging the stars so that they shall be +easier to count and more decorative in effect. We're going to take a +vote on it in our State, where <i>we</i> have the franchise. I shall cast my +vote when I get home.'</p> + +<p>'Really! And how will you vote?'</p> + +<p>'I'm just thinking that out.' She spread the picture on her knee and +considered it, head to one side, as though it were indeed dress +material.</p> + +<p>All this while the land of Egypt marched solemnly beside us on either +hand. The river being low, we saw it from the boat as one long plinth, +twelve to twenty feet high of brownish, purplish mud, visibly upheld +every hundred yards or so by glistening copper caryatides in the shape +of naked men baling water up to the crops above. Behind that bright +emerald line ran the fawn-or tiger-coloured background of desert, and a +pale blue sky closed all. There was Egypt even as the Pharaohs, their +engineers and architects, had seen it—land to cultivate, folk and +cattle for the work, and outside that work no distraction nor allurement +of any kind whatever, save when the dead were taken to their place +beyond the limits of cultivation. When the banks grew lower, one looked +across as much as two miles of green-stuff packed like a toy Noah's-ark +with people, camels, sheep, goats, oxen, buffaloes, and an occasional +horse. The beasts stood as still, too, as the toys, because they were +tethered or hobbled each to his own half-circle of clover, and moved +forward when that was eaten. Only the very little kids were loose, and +these played on the flat mud roofs like kittens.</p> + +<p>No wonder 'every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians.' The +dusty, naked-footed field-tracks are cut down to the last centimetre of +grudged width; the main roads are lifted high on the flanks of the +canals, unless the permanent-way of some light railroad can be pressed +to do duty for them. The wheat, the pale ripened tufted sugar-cane, the +millet, the barley, the onions, the fringed castor-oil bushes jostle +each other for foothold, since the Desert will not give them room; and +men chase the falling Nile inch by inch, each dawn, with new furrowed +melon-beds on the still dripping mud-banks.</p> + +<p>Administratively, such a land ought to be a joy. The people do not +emigrate; all their resources are in plain sight; they are as accustomed +as their cattle to being led about. All they desire, and it has been +given them, is freedom from murder and mutilation, rape and robbery. The +rest they can attend to in their silent palm-shaded villages where the +pigeons coo and the little children play in the dust.</p> + +<p>But Western civilisation is a devastating and a selfish game. Like the +young woman from 'our State,' it says in effect: 'I am rich. I've +nothing to do. I <i>must</i> do something. I shall take up social reform.'</p> + +<p>Just now there is a little social reform in Egypt which is rather +amusing. The Egyptian cultivator borrows money; as all farmers must. +This land without hedge or wild-flower is his passion by age-long +inheritance and suffering, by, in and for which he lives. He borrows to +develop it and to buy more at from £30 to £200 per acre, the profit on +which, when all is paid, works out at between £5 to £10 per acre. +Formerly, he borrowed from the local money-lenders, mostly Greeks, at 30 +per cent per annum and over. This rate is not excessive, so long as +public opinion allows the borrower from time to time to slay the lender; +but modern administration calls that riot and murder. Some years ago, +therefore, there was established a State-guaranteed Bank which lent to +the cultivators at eight per cent, and the cultivator zealously availed +himself of that privilege. He did not default more than in reason, but +being a farmer, he naturally did not pay up till threatened with being +sold up. So he prospered and bought more land, which was his heart's +desire. This year—1913—the administration issued sudden orders that no +man owning less than five acres could borrow on security of his land. +The matter interested me directly, because I held five hundred pounds +worth of shares in that State-guaranteed Bank, and more than half our +clients were small men of less than five acres. So I made inquiries in +quarters that seemed to possess information, and was told that the new +law was precisely on all-fours with the Homestead Act or the United +States and France, and the intentions of Divine Providence—or words to +that effect.</p> + +<p>'But,' I asked, 'won't this limitation of credit prevent the men with +less than five acres from borrowing more to buy more land and getting on +in the world?'</p> + +<p>'Yes,' was the answer, 'of course it will. That's just what we want to +prevent. Half these fellows ruin themselves trying to buy more land. +We've got to protect them against themselves.'</p> + +<p>That, alas! is the one enemy against which no law can protect any son of +Adam; since the real reasons that make or break a man are too absurd or +too obscene to be reached from outside. Then I cast about in other +quarters to discover what the cultivator was going to do about it.</p> + +<p>'Oh, him?' said one of my many informants. '<i>He's</i> all right. There are +about six ways of evading the Act that, <i>I</i> know of. The fellah probably +knows another six. He has been trained to look after himself since the +days of Rameses. He can forge land-transfers for one thing; borrow land +enough to make his holding more than five acres for as long as it takes +to register a loan; get money from his own women (yes, that's one result +of modern progress in this land!) or go back to his old friend the Greek +at 30 per cent.'</p> + +<p>'Then the Greek will sell him up, and that will be against the law, +won't it?' I said.</p> + +<p>'Don't you worry about the Greek. He can get through any law ever made +if there's five piastres on the other side of it.'</p> + +<p>'Maybe; but <i>was</i> the Agricultural Bank selling the cultivators up too +much?'</p> + +<p>'Not in the least. The number of small holdings is on the increase, if +anything. Most cultivators won't pay a loan until you point a +judgment-summons at their head. They think that shows they're men of +consequence. This swells the number of judgment-summonses issued, but it +doesn't mean a land-sale for each summons. Another fact is that in real +life some men don't get on as well as others. Either they don't farm +well enough, or they take to hashish, or go crazy about a girl and +borrow money for her, or—er—something of that kind, and they are sold +up. You may have noticed that.'</p> + +<p>'I have. And meantime, what is the fellah doing?'</p> + +<p>'Meantime, the fellah has misread the Act—as usual. He thinks it's +retrospective, and that he needn't pay past debts. They may make +trouble, but I fancy your Bank will keep quiet.'</p> + +<p>'Keep quiet! With the bottom knocked out of two-thirds of its business +and—and my five hundred pounds involved!'</p> + +<p>'Is that your trouble? I don't think your shares will rise in a hurry; +but if you want some fun, go and talk to the French about it,'</p> + +<p>This seemed as good a way as any of getting a little interest. The +Frenchman that I went to spoke with a certain knowledge of finance and +politics and the natural malice of a logical race against an illogical +horde.</p> + +<p>'Yes,' he said. 'The idea of limiting credit under these circumstances +is absurd. But that is not all. People are not frightened, business is +not upset by one absurd idea, but by the possibilities of more,'</p> + +<p>'Are there any more ideas, then, that are going to be tried on this +country?'</p> + +<p>'Two or three,' he replied placidly. 'They are all generous; but they +are all ridiculous. Egypt is not a place where one should promulgate +ridiculous ideas.'</p> + +<p>'But my shares—my shares!' I cried. 'They have already dropped several +points.'</p> + +<p>'It is possible. They will drop more. Then they will rise.'</p> + +<p>'Thank you. But why?'</p> + +<p>'Because the idea is fundamentally absurd. That will never be admitted +by your people, but there will be arrangements, accommodations, +adjustments, till it is all the same as it used to be. It will be the +concern of the Permanent Official—poor devil!—to pull it straight. It +is always his concern. Meantime, prices will rise for all things.'</p> + +<p>'Why?'</p> + +<p>'Because the land is the chief security in Egypt. If a man cannot borrow +on that security, the rates of interest will increase on whatever other +security he offers. That will affect all work and wages and Government +contracts.'</p> + +<p>He put it so convincingly and with so many historical illustrations +that I saw whole perspectives of the old energetic Pharaohs, masters of +life and death along the River, checked in mid-career by cold-blooded +accountants chanting that not even the Gods themselves can make two plus +two more than four. And the vision ran down through the ages to one +little earnest head on a Cook's steamer, bent sideways over the vital +problem of rearranging 'our National Flag' so that it should be 'easier +to count the stars.'</p> + +<p>For the thousandth time: Praised be Allah for the diversity of His +creatures!</p> + + +<a name="chap22" id="chap22"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>V</h2> +<h2>DEAD KINGS</h2> + +<p>The Swiss are the only people who have taken the trouble to master the +art of hotel-keeping. Consequently, in the things that really +matter—beds, baths, and victuals—they control Egypt; and since every +land always throws back to its aboriginal life (which is why the United +States delight in telling aged stories), any ancient Egyptian would at +once understand and join in with the life that roars through the +nickel-plumbed tourist-barracks on the river, where all the world +frolics in the sunshine. At first sight, the show lends itself to cheap +moralising, till one recalls that one only sees busy folk when they are +idle, and rich folk when they have made their money. A citizen of the +United States—his first trip abroad—pointed out a middle-aged +Anglo-Saxon who was relaxing after the manner of several school-boys.</p> + +<p>'There's a sample!' said the Son of Hustle scornfully. 'Tell me, <i>he</i> ever did anything in his life?' Unluckily he had pitched upon one who, +when he is in collar, reckons thirteen and a half hours a fairish day's +work.</p> + +<p>Among this assembly were men and women burned to an even blue-black +tint—civilised people with bleached hair and sparkling eyes. They +explained themselves as 'diggers'—just diggers—and opened me a new +world. Granted that all Egypt is one big undertaker's emporium, what +could be more fascinating than to get Government leave to rummage in a +corner of it, to form a little company and spend the cold weather trying +to pay dividends in the shape of amethyst necklaces, lapis-lazuli +scarabs, pots of pure gold, and priceless bits of statuary? Or, if one +is rich, what better fun than to grub-stake an expedition on the +supposed site of a dead city and see what turns up? There was a big-game +hunter who had used most of the Continent, quite carried away by this +sport.</p> + +<p>'I'm going to take shares in a city next year, and watch the digging +myself,' he said. 'It beats elephants to pieces. In <i>this</i> game you're +digging up dead things and making them alive. Aren't you going to have a +flutter?'</p> + +<p>He showed me a seductive little prospectus. Myself, I would sooner not +lay hands on a dead man's kit or equipment, especially when he has gone +to his grave in the belief that the trinkets guarantee salvation. Of +course, there is the other argument, put forward by sceptics, that the +Egyptian was a blatant self-advertiser, and that nothing would please +him more than the thought that he was being looked at and admired after +all these years. Still, one might rob some shrinking soul who didn't see +it in that light.</p> + +<p>At the end of spring the diggers flock back out of the Desert and +exchange chaff and flews in the gorgeous verandahs. For example, A's +company has made a find of priceless stuff, Heaven knows how old, and +is—not too meek about it. Company B, less fortunate, hints that if only +A knew to what extent their native diggers had been stealing and +disposing of the thefts, under their very archaeological noses, they +would not be so happy.</p> + +<p>'Nonsense,' says Company A. 'Our diggers are above suspicion. Besides, +we watched 'em.'</p> + +<p>'<i>Are</i> they?' is the reply. 'Well, next time you are in Berlin, go to +the Museum and you'll see what the Germans have got hold of. It must +have come out of your ground. The Dynasty proves it.' So A's cup is +poisoned—till next year.</p> + +<p>No collector or curator of a museum should have any moral scruples +whatever; and I have never met one who had; though I have been informed +by deeply-shocked informants of four nationalities that the Germans are +the most flagrant pirates of all.</p> + +<p>The business of exploration is about as romantic as earth-work on Indian +railways. There are the same narrow-gauge trams and donkeys, the same +shining gangs in the borrow-pits and the same skirling dark-blue crowds +of women and children with the little earth-baskets. But the hoes are +not driven in, nor the clods jerked aside at random, and when the work +fringes along the base of some mighty wall, men use their hands +carefully. A white man—or he was white at breakfast-time—patrols +through the continually renewed dust-haze. Weeks may pass without a +single bead, but anything may turn up at any moment, and it is his to +answer the shout of discovery.</p> + +<p>We had the good fortune to stay a while at the Headquarters of the +Metropolitan Museum (New York) in a valley riddled like a rabbit-warren +with tombs. Their stables, store-houses, and servants' quarters are old +tombs; their talk is of tombs, and their dream (the diggers' dream +always) is to discover a virgin tomb where the untouched dead lie with +their jewels upon them. Four miles away are the wide-winged, rampant +hotels. Here is nothing whatever but the rubbish of death that died +thousands of years ago, on whose grave no green thing has ever grown. +Villages, expert in two hundred generations of grave-robbing, cower +among the mounds of wastage, and whoop at the daily tourist. Paths made +by bare feet run from one half-tomb, half-mud-heap to the next, not much +more distinct than snail smears, but they have been used since....</p> + +<p>Time is a dangerous thing to play with. That morning the concierge had +toiled for us among steamer-sailings to see if we could save three days. +That evening we sat with folk for whom Time had stood still since the +Ptolemies. I wondered, at first, how it concerned them or any man if +such and such a Pharaoh had used to his own glory the plinths and +columns of such another Pharaoh before or after Melchizedek. Their +whole background was too inconceivably remote for the mind to work on. +But the next morning we were taken to the painted tomb of a noble—a +Minister of Agriculture—who died four or five thousand years ago. He +said to me, in so many words: 'Observe I was very like your friend, the +late Mr. Samuel Pepys, of your Admiralty. I took an enormous interest in +life, which I most thoroughly enjoyed, on its human and on its spiritual +side. I do not think you will find many departments of State better +managed than mine, or a better-kept house, or a nicer set of young +people ... My daughters! The eldest, as you can see, takes after her +mother. The youngest, my favourite, is supposed to favour me. Now I will +show you all the things that I did, and delighted in, till it was time +for me to present my accounts elsewhere.' And he showed me, detail by +detail, in colour and in drawing, his cattle, his horses, his crops, his +tours in the district, his accountants presenting the revenue returns, +and he himself, busiest of the busy, in the good day.</p> + +<p>But when we left that broad, gay ante-room and came to the narrower +passage where once his body had lain and where all his doom was +portrayed, I could not follow him so well. I did not see how he, so +experienced in life, could be cowed by friezes of brute-headed +apparitions or satisfied by files of repeated figures. He explained, +something to this effect:</p> + +<p>'We live on the River—a line without breadth or thickness. Behind us +is the Desert, which nothing can affect; wither no man goes till he is +dead, (One does not use good agricultural ground for cemeteries.) +Practically, then, we only move in two dimensions—up stream or down. +Take away the Desert, which we don't consider any more than a healthy +man considers death, and you will see that we have no background +whatever. Our world is all one straight bar of brown or green earth, +and, for some months, mere sky-reflecting water that wipes out +everything You have only to look at the Colossi to realise how +enormously and extravagantly man and his works must scale in such a +country. Remember too, that our crops are sure, and our life is very, +very easy. Above all, we have no neighbours That is to say, we must give +out, for we cannot take in. Now, I put it to you, what is left for a +priest with imagination, except to develop ritual and multiply gods on +friezes? Unlimited leisure, limited space of two dimensions, divided by +the hypnotising line of the River, and bounded by visible, unalterable +death—must, <i>ipso facto</i> ——'</p> + +<p>'Even so,' I interrupted. 'I do not comprehend your Gods—your direct +worship of beasts, for instance?'</p> + +<p>'You prefer the indirect? The worship of Humanity with a capital H? My +Gods, or what I saw in them, contented me.'</p> + +<p>'What did you see in your Gods as affecting belief and conduct?'</p> + +<p>'You know the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx?'</p> + +<p>'No,' I murmured. 'What is it?'</p> + +<p>'"All sensible men are of the same religion, but no sensible man ever +tells,"' he replied. With that I had to be content, for the passage +ended in solid rock.</p> + +<p>There were other tombs in the valley, but the owners were dumb, except +one Pharaoh, who from the highest motives had broken with the creeds and +instincts of his country, and so had all but wrecked it. One of his +discoveries was an artist, who saw men not on one plane but modelled +full or three-quarter face, with limbs suited to their loads and +postures. His vividly realised stuff leaped to the eye out of the +acreage of low-relief in the old convention, and I applauded as a +properly brought-up tourist should.</p> + +<p>'Mine was a fatal mistake,' Pharaoh Ahkenaton sighed in my ear,' I +mistook the conventions of life for the realities.'</p> + +<p>'Ah, those soul-crippling conventions!' I cried.</p> + +<p>'You mistake <i>me</i> ,' he answered more stiffly. 'I was so sure of their +reality that I thought that they were really lies, whereas they were +only invented to cover the raw facts of life.'</p> + +<p>'Ah, those raw facts of life!' I cried, still louder; for it is not +often that one has a chance of impressing a Pharaoh.' We must face them +with open eyes and an open mind! Did <i>you</i> ?'</p> + +<p>'I had no opportunity of avoiding them,' he replied. 'I broke every +convention in my land.'</p> + +<p>'Oh, noble! And what happened?'</p> + +<p>'What happens when you strip the cover off a hornet's nest? The raw +fact of life is that mankind is just a little lower than the angels, and +the conventions are based on that fact in order that men may become +angels. But if you begin, as I did, by the convention that men are +angels they will assuredly become bigger beasts than ever.'</p> + +<p>'That,' I said firmly, 'is altogether out-of-date. You should have +brought a larger mentality, a more vital uplift, and—er—all that sort +of thing, to bear on—all that sort of thing, you know.'</p> + +<p>'I did,' said Ahkenaton gloomily. 'It broke me!' And he, too, went dumb +among the ruins.</p> + +<p>There is a valley of rocks and stones in every shade of red and brown, +called the Valley of the Kings, where a little oil-engine coughs behind +its hand all day long, grinding electricity to light the faces of dead +Pharaohs a hundred feet underground. All down the valley, during the +tourist season, stand char-a-bancs and donkeys and sand-carts, with here +and there exhausted couples who have dropped out of the processions and +glisten and fan themselves in some scrap of shade. Along the sides of +the valley are the tombs of the kings neatly numbered, as it might be +mining adits with concrete steps leading up to them, and iron grilles +that lock of nights, and doorkeepers of the Department of Antiquities +demanding the proper tickets. One enters, and from deeps below deeps +hears the voices of dragomans booming through the names and titles of +the illustrious and thrice-puissant dead. Rock-cut steps go down into +hot, still darkness, passages-twist and are led over blind pits which, +men say, the wise builders childishly hoped would be taken for the real +tombs by thieves to come. Up and down these alley-ways clatter all the +races of Europe with a solid backing of the United States. Their +footsteps are suddenly blunted on the floor of a hall paved with +immemorial dust that will never dance in any wind. They peer up at the +blazoned ceilings, stoop down to the minutely decorated walls, crane and +follow the sombre splendours of a cornice, draw in their breaths and +climb up again to the fierce sunshine to re-dive into the next adit on +their programme. What they think proper to say, they say aloud—and some +of it is very interesting. What they feel you can guess from a certain +haste in their movements—something between the shrinking modesty of a +man under fire and the Hadn't-we-better-be-getting-on attitude of +visitors to a mine. After all, it is not natural for man to go +underground except for business or for the last time. He is conscious of +the weight of mother-earth overhead, and when to her expectant bulk is +added the whole beaked, horned, winged, and crowned hierarchy of a lost +faith flaming at every turn of his eye, he naturally wishes to move +away. Even the sight of a very great king indeed, sarcophagused under +electric light in a hall full of most fortifying pictures, does not hold +him too long.</p> + +<p>Some men assert that the crypt of St. Peter's, with only nineteen +centuries bearing down on the groining, and the tombs of early popes and +kings all about, is more impressive than the Valley of the Kings +because it explains how and out of what an existing creed grew. But the +Valley of the Kings explains nothing except that most terrible line in +<i>Macbeth</i> :</p> + +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">To the last syllable of recorded time.</span><br /> + +<p>Earth opens her dry lips and says it.</p> + +<p>In one of the tombs there is a little chamber whose ceiling, probably +because of a fault in the rock, could not be smoothed off like the +others. So the decorator, very cunningly, covered it with a closely +designed cloth-pattern—just such a chintz-like piece of stuff as, in +real life, one would use to underhang a rough roof with. He did it +perfectly, down there in the dark, and went his way. Thousands of years +later, there was born a man of my acquaintance who, for good and +sufficient reason, had an almost insane horror of anything in the nature +of a ceiling-cloth. He used to make excuses for not going into the dry +goods shops at Christmas, when hastily enlarged annexes are hidden, roof +and sides, with embroideries. Perhaps a snake or a lizard had dropped on +his mother from the roof before he was born; perhaps it was the memory +of some hideous fever-bout in a tent. At any rate, that man's idea of +The Torment was a hot, crowded underground room, underhung with +patterned cloths. Once in his life at a city in the far north, where he +had to make a speech, he met that perfect combination. They led him up +and down narrow, crowded, steam-heated passages, till they planted him +at last in a room without visible windows (by which he knew +he was, underground), and directly beneath a warm-patterned +ceiling-cloth—rather like a tent-lining. And there he had to say his +say, while panic terror sat in his throat. The second time was in the +Valley of the Kings, where very similar passages, crowded with people, +led him into a room cut of rock, fathoms underground, with what looked +like a sagging chintz cloth not three feet above his head. The man I'd +like to catch,' he said when he came outside again, 'is that +decorator-man. D'you suppose he meant to produce that effect?'</p> + +<p>Every man has his private terrors, other than those of his own +conscience. From what I saw in the Valley of the Kings, the Egyptians +seem to have known this some time ago. They certainly have impressed it +on most unexpected people. I heard two voices down a passage talking +together as follows:</p> + +<p><i>She</i> . I guess we weren't ever meant to see these old tombs from inside, +anyway.</p> + +<p><i>He</i> . How so?</p> + +<p><i>She</i> . For one thing, they believe so hard in being dead. Of course, +their outlook on spiritual things wasn't as broad as ours.</p> + +<p><i>He</i> . Well, there's no danger of <i>our</i> being led away by it. Did you buy +that alleged scarab off the dragoman this morning?</p> + + +<a name="chap23" id="chap23"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>VI</h2> +<h2>THE FACE OF THE DESERT</h2> + +<p>Going up the Nile is like running the gauntlet before Eternity. Till one +has seen it, one does not realise the amazing thinness of that little +damp trickle of life that steals along undefeated through the jaws of +established death. A rifle-shot would cover the widest limits of +cultivation, a bow-shot would reach the narrower. Once beyond them a man +may carry his next drink with him till he reaches Cape Blanco on the +west (where he may signal for one from a passing Union Castle boat) or +the Karachi Club on the east. Say four thousand dry miles to the left +hand and three thousand to the right.</p> + +<p>The weight of the Desert is on one, every day and every hour. At +morning, when the cavalcade tramps along in the rear of the tulip-like +dragoman, She says: 'I am here——just beyond that ridge of pink sand +that you are admiring. Come along, pretty gentleman, and I'll tell you +your fortune.' But the dragoman says very clearly: 'Please, sar, do not +separate yourself at <i>all</i> from the main body,' which, the Desert knows +well, you had no thought of doing. At noon, when the stewards rummage +out lunch-drinks from the dewy ice-chest, the Desert whines louder than +the well-wheels on the bank: 'I am here, only a quarter of a mile away. +For mercy's sake, pretty gentleman, spare a mouthful of that prickly +whisky-and-soda you are lifting to your lips. There's a white man a few +hundred miles off, dying on my lap of thirst—thirst that you cure with +a rag dipped in lukewarm water while you hold him down with the one +hand, and he thinks he is cursing you aloud, but he isn't, because his +tongue is outside his mouth and he can't get it back. Thank <i>you</i> , my +noble captain!' For naturally one tips half the drink over the rail with +the ancient prayer: 'May it reach him who needs it,' and turns one's +back on the pulsing ridges and fluid horizons that are beginning their +mid-day mirage-dance.</p> + +<p>At evening the Desert obtrudes again—tricked out as a Nautch girl in +veils of purple, saffron, gold-tinsel, and grass-green. She postures +shamelessly before the delighted tourists with woven skeins of +homeward-flying pelicans, fringes of wild duck, black spotted on +crimson, and cheap jewellery of opal clouds. 'Notice Me!' She cries, +like any other worthless woman. 'Admire the play of My mobile +features—the revelations of My multi-coloured soul! Observe My +allurements and potentialities. Thrill while I stir you!' So She floats +through all Her changes and retires upstage into the arms of the dusk. +But at midnight She drops all pretence and bears down in Her natural +shape, which depends upon the conscience of the beholder and his +distance from the next white man.</p> + +<p>You will observe in the <i>Benedicite Omnia Opera</i> that the Desert is the +sole thing not enjoined to 'bless the Lord, praise Him and magnify Him +for ever.' This is because when our illustrious father, the Lord Adam, +and his august consort, the Lady Eve, were expelled from Eden, Eblis the +Accursed, fearful lest mankind should return ultimately to the favour of +Allah, set himself to burn and lay waste all the lands east and west of +Eden.</p> + +<p>Oddly enough, the Garden of Eden is almost the exact centre of all the +world's deserts, counting from Gobi to Timbuctoo; and all that land +<i>qua</i> land is 'dismissed from the mercy of God.' Those who use it do so +at their own risk. Consequently the Desert produces her own type of man +exactly as the sea does. I was fortunate enough to meet one sample, aged +perhaps twenty-five. His work took him along the edge of the Red Sea, +where men on swift camels come to smuggle hashish, and sometimes guns, +from dhows that put in to any convenient beach. These smugglers must be +chased on still swifter camels, and since the wells are few and known, +the game is to get ahead of them and occupy their drinking-places.</p> + +<p>But they may skip a well or so, and do several days' march in one. Then +their pursuer must take e'en greater risks and make crueller marches +that the Law may be upheld. The one thing in the Law's favour is that +<i>hashish</i> smells abominably—worse than a heated camel—so, when they +range alongside, no time is lost in listening to lies. It was not told +to me how they navigate themselves across the broken wastes, or by what +arts they keep alive in the dust-storms and heat. That was taken for +granted, and the man who took it so considered himself the most +commonplace of mortals. He was deeply moved by the account of a new +aerial route which the French are laying out somewhere in the Sahara +over a waterless stretch of four hundred miles, where if the aeroplane +is disabled between stations the pilot will most likely die and dry up +beside it. To do the Desert justice, she rarely bothers to wipe out +evidence of a kill. There are places in the Desert, men say, where even +now you come across the dead of old battles, all as light as last year's +wasps' nests, laid down in swaths or strung out in flight, with, here +and there, the little sparkling lines of the emptied cartridge-cases +that dropped them.</p> + +<p>There are valleys and ravines that the craziest smugglers do not care to +refuge in at certain times of the year; as there are rest-houses where +one's native servants will not stay because they are challenged on their +way to the kitchen by sentries of old Soudanese regiments which have +long gone over to Paradise. And of voices and warnings and outcries +behind rocks there is no end. These last arise from the fact that men +very rarely live in a spot so utterly still that they can hear the +murmuring race of the blood over their own ear-drums. Neither ship, +prairie, nor forest gives that silence. I went out to find it once, when +our steamer tied up and the rest of them had gone to see a sight, but I +never dared venture more than a mile from our funnel-smoke. At that +point I came upon a hill honey-combed with graves that held a multitude +of paper-white skulls, all grinning cheerfully like ambassadors of the +Desert. But I did not accept their invitation. They had told me that all +the little devils learn to draw in the Desert, which explains the +elaborate and purposeless detail that fills it. None but devils could +think of etching every rock outcrop with wind-lines, or skinning it down +to its glistening nerves with sand-blasts; of arranging hills in the +likeness of pyramids and sphinxes and wrecked town-suburbs; of covering +the space of half an English county with sepia studies of interlacing +and recrossing ravines, dongas, and nullahs, each an exposition of much +too clever perspective; and of wiping out the half-finished work with a +wash of sand in three tints, only to pick it up again in silver-point on +the horizon's edge. This they do in order to make lost travellers think +they can recognise landmarks and run about identifying them till the +madness comes. The Desert is all devil-device—as you might say 'blasted +cleverness'—crammed with futile works, always promising something fresh +round the next corner, always leading out through heaped decoration and +over-insistent design into equal barrenness.</p> + +<p>There was a morning of mornings when we lay opposite the rock-hewn +Temple of Abu Simbel, where four great figures, each sixty feet high, +sit with their hands on their knees waiting for Judgment Day. At their +feet is a little breadth of blue-green crop; they seem to hold back all +the weight of the Desert behind them, which, none the less, lips over at +one side in a cataract of vividest orange sand. The tourist is +recommended to see the sunrise here, either from within the temple where +it falls on a certain altar erected by Rameses in his own honour, or +from without where another Power takes charge.</p> + +<p>The stars had paled when we began our watch; the river birds were just +whispering over their toilettes in the uncertain purplish light. Then +the river dimmered up like pewter; the line of the ridge behind the +Temple showed itself against a milkiness in the sky; one felt rather +than saw that there were four figures in the pit of gloom below it. +These blocked themselves out, huge enough, but without any special +terror, while the glorious ritual of the Eastern dawn went forward. Some +reed of the bank revealed itself by reflection, black on silver; arched +wings flapped and jarred the still water to splintered glass; the desert +ridge turned to topaz, and the four figures stood clear, yet without +shadowing, from their background. The stronger light flooded them red +from head to foot, and they became alive—as horridly and tensely yet +blindly alive as pinioned men in the death-chair before the current is +switched on. One felt that if by any miracle the dawn could be delayed a +second longer, they would tear themselves free, and leap forth to +heaven knows what sort of vengeance. But that instant the full sun +pinned them in their places—nothing more than statues slashed with +light and shadow—and another day got to work.</p> + +<p>A few yards to the left of the great images, close to the statue of an +Egyptian princess, whose face was the very face of 'She,' there was a +marble slab over the grave of an English officer killed in a fight +against dervishes nearly a generation ago.</p> + +<p>From Abu Simbel to Wady Halfa the river, escaped from the domination of +the Pharaohs, begins to talk about dead white men. Thirty years ago, +young English officers in India lied and intrigued furiously that they +might be attached to expeditions whose bases were sometimes at Suakim, +sometimes quite in the desert air, but all of whose deeds are now quite +forgotten. Occasionally the dragoman, waving a smooth hand east or +south-easterly, will speak of some fight. Then every one murmurs: 'Oh +yes. That was Gordon, of course,' or 'Was that before or after +Omdurman?' But the river is much more precise. As the boat quarters +the falling stream like a puzzled hound, all the old names spurt +up again under the paddle-wheels—'Hicks' army—Val Baker—El +Teb—Tokar—Tamai—Tamanieb and Osman Digna!' Her head swings round for +another slant: '<i>We cannot land English or Indian troops: if consulted, +recommend abandonment of the Soudan within certain limits.</i> ' That was my +Lord Granville chirruping to the advisers of His Highness the Khedive, +and the sentence comes back as crisp as when it first shocked one in +'84. Next—here is a long reach between flooded palm trees—next, of +course, comes Gordon—and a delightfully mad Irish war correspondent +who was locked up with him in Khartoum. +Gordon—Eighty-four—Eighty-five—the Suakim-Berber Railway really begun +and quite as really abandoned. Korti—Abu Klea—the Desert Column—a +steamer called the <i>Safieh</i> > not the <i>Condor</i> , which rescued two other +steamers wrecked on their way back from a Khartoum in the red hands of +the Mahdi of those days. Then—the smooth glide over deep water +continues—another Suakim expedition with a great deal of Osman Digna +and renewed attempts to build the Suakim-Berber Railway. 'Hashin,' say +the paddle-wheels, slowing all of a sudden—'MacNeill's Zareba—the 15th +Sikhs and another native regiment—Osman Digna in great pride and power, +and Wady Halfa a frontier town. Tamai, once more; another siege of +Suakim: Gemaiza; Handub; Trinkitat, and Tokar—1887.'</p> + +<p>The river recalls the names; the mind at once brings up the face and +every trick of speech of some youth met for a few hours, maybe, in a +train on the way to Egypt of the old days. Both name and face had +utterly vanished from one's memory till then.</p> + +<p>It was another generation that picked up the ball ten years later and +touched down in Khartoum. Several people aboard the Cook boat had been +to that city. They all agreed that the hotel charges were very high, but +that you could buy the most delightful curiosities in the native +bazaar. But I do not like bazaars of the Egyptian kind, since a +discovery I made at Assouan. There was an old man—a Mussulman—who +pressed me to buy some truck or other, but not with the villainous +camaraderie that generations of low-caste tourists have taught the +people, nor yet with the cosmopolitan light-handedness of appeal which +the town-bred Egyptian picks up much too quickly; but with a certain +desperate zeal, foreign to his whole creed and nature. He fingered, he +implored, he fawned with an unsteady eye, and while I wondered I saw +behind him the puffy pink face of a fezzed Jew, watching him as a stoat +watches a rabbit. When he moved the Jew followed and took position at a +commanding angle. The old man glanced from me to him and renewed his +solicitations. So one could imagine an elderly hare thumping wildly on a +tambourine with the stoat behind him. They told me afterwards that Jews +own most of the stalls in Assouan bazaar, the Mussulmans working for +them, since tourists need Oriental colour. Never having seen or imagined +a Jew coercing a Mussulman, this colour was new and displeasing to me.</p> + +<a name="chap24" id="chap24"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>VII</h2> +<h2>THE RIDDLE OF EMPIRE</h2> + +<p>At Halfa one feels the first breath of a frontier. Here the Egyptian +Government retires into the background, and even the Cook steamer does not +draw up in the exact centre of the postcard. At the telegraph-office, too, +there are traces, diluted but quite recognisable, of military +administration. Nor does the town, in any way or place whatever, +smell—which is proof that it is not looked after on popular lines. There +is nothing to see in it any more than there is in Hulk C. 60, late of her +Majesty's troopship <i>Himalaya</i> , now a coal-hulk in the Hamoaze at +Plymouth. A river front, a narrow terraced river-walk of semi-oriental +houses, barracks, a mosque, and half-a-dozen streets at right angles, the +Desert racing up to the end of each, make all the town. A mile or so up +stream under palm trees are bungalows of what must have been cantonments, +some machinery repair-shops, and odds and ends of railway track. It is all +as paltry a collection of whitewashed houses, pitiful gardens, dead walls, +and trodden waste spaces as one would wish to find anywhere; and every bit +of it quivers with the remembered life of armies and river-fleets, as the +finger-bowl rings when the rubbing finger is lifted. The most unlikely men +have done time there; stores by the thousand ton have been rolled and +pushed and hauled up the banks by tens of thousands of scattered hands; +hospitals have pitched themselves there, expanded enormously, shrivelled +up and drifted away with the drifting regiments; railway sidings by the +mile have been laid down and ripped up again, as need changed, and utterly +wiped out by the sands.</p> + +<p>Halfa has been the rail-head, Army Headquarters, and hub of the +universe—the one place where a man could make sure of buying tobacco +and sardines, or could hope for letters for himself and medical +attendance for his friend. Now she is a little shrunken shell of a town +without a proper hotel, where tourists hurry up from the river to buy +complete sets of Soudan stamps at the Post Office.</p> + +<p>I went for a purposeless walk from one end of the place to the other, +and found a crowd of native boys playing football on what might have +been a parade-ground of old days.</p> + +<p>'And what school is that?' I asked in English of a small, eager youth.</p> + +<p>'Madrissah,' said he most intelligently, which being translated means +just 'school.'</p> + +<p>'Yes, but <i>what</i> school?'</p> + +<p>'Yes, Madrissah, school, sir,' and he tagged after to see what else the +imbecile wanted.</p> + +<p>A line of railway track, that must have fed big workshops in its time, +led me between big-roomed houses and offices labelled departmentally, +with here and there a clerk at work. I was directed and re-directed by +polite Egyptian officials (I wished to get at a white officer if +possible, but there wasn't one about); was turned out of a garden which +belonged to an Authority; hung round the gate of a bungalow with an +old-established compound and two white men sitting in chairs on a +verandah; wandered down towards the river under the palm trees, where +the last red light came through; lost myself among rusty boilers and +balks of timber; and at last loafed back in the twilight escorted by the +small boy and an entire brigade of ghosts, not one of whom I had ever +met before, but all of whom I knew most intimately. They said it was the +evenings that used to depress <i>them</i> most, too; so they all came back +after dinner and bore me company, while I went to meet a friend arriving +by the night train from Khartoum.</p> + +<p>She was an hour late, and we spent it, the ghosts and I, in a +brick-walled, tin-roofed shed, warm with the day's heat; a crowd of +natives laughing and talking somewhere behind in the darkness. We knew +each other so well by that time, that we had finished discussing every +conceivable topic of conversation—the whereabouts of the Mahdi's head, +for instance—work, reward, despair, acknowledgment, flat failure, all +the real motives that had driven us to do anything, and all our other +longings. So we sat still and let the stars move, as men must do when +they meet this kind of train.</p> + +<p>Presently I asked: 'What is the name of the next station out from +here?'</p> + +<p>'Station Number One,' said a ghost.</p> + +<p>'And the next?'</p> + +<p>'Station Number Two, and so on to Eight, I think.'</p> + +<p>'And wasn't it worth while to name even <i>one</i> of these stations from +some man, living or dead, who had something to do with making the line?'</p> + +<p>'Well, they didn't, anyhow,' said another ghost. 'I suppose they didn't +think it worth while. Why? What do <i>you</i> think?'</p> + +<p>'I think, I replied, 'it is the sort of snobbery that nations go to +Hades for.'</p> + +<p>Her headlight showed at last, an immense distance off; the economic +electrics were turned up, the ghosts vanished, the dragomans of the +various steamers flowed forward in beautiful garments to meet their +passengers who had booked passages in the Cook boats, and the Khartoum +train decanted a joyous collection of folk, all decorated with horns, +hoofs, skins, hides, knives, and assegais, which they had been buying at +Omdurman. And when the porters laid hold upon their bristling bundles, +it was like MacNeill's Zareba without the camels.</p> + +<p>Two young men in tarboushes were the only people who had no part in the +riot. Said one of them to the other:</p> + +<p>'Hullo?'</p> + +<p>Said the other: 'Hullo!'</p> + +<p>They grunted together for a while. Then one pleasantly:</p> + +<p>'Oh, I'm sorry for <i>that</i> ! I thought I was going to have you under me +for a bit. Then you'll use the rest-house there?'</p> + +<p>'I suppose so,' said the other. 'Do you happen to know if the roof's +on?'</p> + +<p>Here a woman wailed aloud for her dervish spear which had gone adrift, +and I shall never know, except from the back pages of the Soudan +Almanack, what state that rest-house there is in.</p> + +<p>The Soudan Administration, by the little I heard, is a queer service. It +extends itself in silence from the edges of Abyssinia to the swamps of +the Equator at an average pressure of one white man to several thousand +square miles. It legislates according to the custom of the tribe where +possible, and on the common sense of the moment when there is no +precedent. It is recruited almost wholly from the army, armed chiefly +with binoculars, and enjoys a death-rate a little lower than its own +reputation. It is said to be the only service in which a man taking +leave is explicitly recommended to get out of the country and rest +himself that he may return the more fit to his job. A high standard of +intelligence is required, and lapses are not overlooked. For instance, +one man on leave in London took the wrong train from Boulogne, and +instead of going to Paris, which, of course, he had intended, found +himself at a station called Kirk Kilissie or Adrianople West, where he +stayed for some weeks. It was a mistake that might have happened to any +one on a dark night after a stormy passage, but the authorities would +not believe it, and when I left Egypt were busily engaged in boiling +him in hot oil. They are grossly respectable in the Soudan now.</p> + +<p>Long and long ago, before even the Philippines were taken, a friend of +mine was reprimanded by a British Member of Parliament, first for the +sin of blood-guiltiness because he was by trade a soldier, next for +murder because he had fought in great battles, and lastly, and most +important, because he and his fellow-braves had saddled the British +taxpayer with the expense of the Soudan. My friend explained that all +the Soudan had ever cost the British taxpayer was the price of about one +dozen of regulation Union Jacks—one for each province. 'That,' said the +M.P. triumphantly, 'is all it will ever be worth.' He went on to justify +himself, and the Soudan went on also. To-day it has taken its place as +one of those accepted miracles which are worked without heat or +headlines by men who do the job nearest their hand and seldom fuss about +their reputations.</p> + +<p>But less than sixteen years ago the length and breadth of it was one +crazy hell of murder, torture, and lust, where every man who had a sword +used it till he met a stronger and became a slave. It was—men say who +remember it—a hysteria of blood and fanaticism; and precisely as an +hysterical woman is called to her senses by a dash of cold water, so at +the battle of Omdurman the land was reduced to sanity by applied death +on such a scale as the murderers and the torturers at their most +unbridled could scarcely have dreamed. In a day and a night all who had +power and authority were wiped out and put under till, as the old song +says, no chief remained to ask after any follower. They had all charged +into Paradise. The people who were left looked for renewed massacres of +the sort they had been accustomed to, and when these did not come, they +said helplessly: 'We have nothing. We are nothing. Will you sell us into +slavery among the Egyptians?' The men who remember the old days of the +Reconstruction—which deserves an epic of its own—say that there was +nothing left to build on, not even wreckage. Knowledge, decency, +kinship, property, tide, sense of possession had all gone. The people +were told they were to sit still and obey orders; and they stared and +fumbled like dazed crowds after an explosion. Bit by bit, however, they +were fed and watered and marshalled into some sort of order; set to +tasks they never dreamed to see the end of; and, almost by physical +force, pushed and hauled along the ways of mere life. They came to +understand presently that they might reap what they had sown, and that +man, even a woman, might walk for a day's journey with two goats and a +native bedstead and live undespoiled. But they had to be taught +kindergarten-fashion.</p> + +<p>And little by little, as they realised that the new order was sure and +that their ancient oppressors were quite dead, there returned not only +cultivators, craftsmen, and artisans, but outlandish men of war, scarred +with old wounds and the generous dimples that the Martini-Henry bullet +used to deal—fighting men on the lookout for new employ. They would +hang about, first on one leg, then on the other, proud or uneasily +friendly, till some white officer circulated near by. And at his fourth +or fifth passing, brown and white having approved each other by eye, the +talk—so men say—would run something like this:</p> + +<p>OFFICER (<i>with air of sudden discovery</i> ). Oh, you by the hut, there, +what is your business?</p> + +<p>WARRIOR (<i>at 'attention' complicated by attempt to salute</i> ). I am +So-and-So, son of So-and-So, from such and such a place.</p> + +<p>OFFICER. I hear. And ...?</p> + +<p>WARRIOR (<i>repeating salute</i> ). And a fighting man also.</p> + +<p>OFFICER (<i>impersonally to horizon</i> ). But they <i>all</i> say that nowadays.</p> + +<p>WARRIOR (<i>very loudly</i> ). But there is a man in one of your battalions +who can testify to it. He is the grandson of my father's uncle.</p> + +<p>OFFICER (<i>confidentially to his boots</i> ). Hell is <i>quite</i> full of such +grandsons of just such father's uncles; and how do I know if Private +So-and-So speaks the truth about his family? (<i>Makes to go.</i> )</p> + +<p>WARRIOR (<i>swiftly removing necessary garments</i> ). Perhaps. But <i>these</i> don't lie. Look! I got this ten, twelve years ago when I was quite a +lad, close to the old Border, Yes, Halfa. It was a true Snider bullet. +Feel it! This little one on the leg I got at the big fight that finished +it all last year. But I am not lame (<i>violent leg-exercise</i> ), not in +the least lame. See! I run. I jump. I kick. Praised be Allah!</p> + +<p>OFFICER. Praised be Allah! And then?</p> + +<p>WARRIOR (<i>coquettishly</i> ). Then, I shoot. I am not a common spear-man. +(<i>Lapse into English.</i> ) Yeh, dam goo' shot! (<i>pumps lever of imaginary +Martini</i> ).</p> + +<p>OFFICER (<i>unmoved</i> ). I see. And then?</p> + +<p>WARRIOR (<i>indignantly</i> ). <i>I</i> am come here—after many days' marching. +(<i>Change to childlike wheedle</i> .) Are <i>all</i> the regiments full?</p> + +<p>At this point the relative, in uniform, generally discovered himself, +and if the officer liked the cut of his jib, another 'old Mahdi's man' +would be added to the machine that made itself as it rolled along. They +dealt with situations in those days by the unclouded light of reason and +a certain high and holy audacity.</p> + +<p>There is a tale of two Sheikhs shortly after the Reconstruction began. +One of them, Abdullah of the River, prudent and the son of a +slave-woman, professed loyalty to the English very early in the day, and +used that loyalty as a cloak to lift camels from another Sheikh, Farid +of the Desert, still at war with the English, but a perfect gentleman, +which Abdullah was not. Naturally, Farid raided back on Abdullah's kine, +Abdullah complained to the authorities, and the Border fermented. To +Farid in his desert camp with a clutch of Abdullah's cattle round him, +entered, alone and unarmed, the officer responsible for the peace of +those parts. After compliments, for they had had dealings with each +other before: 'You've been driving Abdullah's stock again,' said the +Englishman.</p> + +<p>'I should think I had!' was the hot answer. 'He lifts my camels and +scuttles back into your territory, where he knows I can't follow him for +the life; and when I try to get a bit of my own back, he whines to you. +He's a cad—an utter cad.'</p> + +<p>'At any rate, he is loyal. If you'd only come in and be loyal too, you'd +both be on the same footing, and then if he stole from you, he'd catch +it!'</p> + +<p>'He'd never dare to steal except under your protection. Give him what +he'd have got in the Mahdi's time—a first-class flogging. <i>You</i> know he +deserves it!'</p> + +<p>'I'm afraid that isn't allowed. You have to let me shift all those +bullocks of his back again.'</p> + +<p>'And if I don't?'</p> + +<p>'Then, I shall have to ride back and collect all my men and begin war +against you.'</p> + +<p>'But what prevents my cutting your throat where you sit?</p> + +<p>'For one thing, you aren't Abdullah, and——'</p> + +<p>'There! You confess he's a cad!'</p> + +<p>'And for another, the Government would only send another officer who +didn't understand your ways, and then there <i>would</i> be war, and no one +would score except Abdullah. He'd steal your camels and get credit for +it.'</p> + +<p>'So he would, the scoundrel! This is a hard world for honest men. Now, +you admit Abdullah is a cad. Listen to me, and I'll tell you a few more +things about him. He was, etc., etc. He is, etc., etc.'</p> + +<p>'You're perfectly right, Sheikh, but don't you see I can't tell him what +I think of him so long as he's loyal and you're out against us? Now, if +<i>you</i> come in I promise you that I'll give Abdullah a telling-off—yes, +in your presence—that will do you good to listen to.'</p> + +<p>'No! I won't come in! But—I tell you what I will do. I'll accompany you +to-morrow as your guest, understand, to your camp. Then you send for +Abdullah, and <i>if</i> I judge that his fat face has been sufficiently +blackened in my presence, I'll think about coming in later.'</p> + +<p>So it was arranged, and they slept out the rest of the night, side by +side, and in the morning they gathered up and returned all Abdullah's +cattle, and in the evening, in Farid's presence, Abdullah got the +tongue-lashing of his wicked old life, and Farid of the Desert laughed +and came in; and they all lived happy ever afterwards.</p> + +<p>Somewhere or other in the nearer provinces the old heady game must be +going on still, but the Soudan proper has settled to civilisation of the +brick-bungalow and bougainvillea sort, and there is a huge technical +college where the young men are trained to become fitters, surveyors, +draftsmen, and telegraph employees at fabulous wages. In due time, they +will forget how warily their fathers had to walk in the Mahdi's time to +secure even half a bellyful; then, as has happened elsewhere. They will +honestly believe that they themselves originally created and since then +have upheld the easy life into which they were bought at so heavy a +price. Then the demand will go up for 'extension of local government,' +'Soudan for the Soudanese,' and so on till the whole cycle has to be +retrodden. It is a hard law but an old one—Rome died learning it, as +our western civilisation may die—that if you give any man anything that +he has not painfully earned for himself, you infallibly make him or his +descendants your devoted enemies.</p> + +<br /> + +<p>THE END</p> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12089 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + + + + diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a13ab91 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #12089 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12089) diff --git a/old/12089-8.txt b/old/12089-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..417bc08 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/12089-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7287 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Letters of Travel (1892-1913), by Rudyard Kipling + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Letters of Travel (1892-1913) + +Author: Rudyard Kipling + +Release Date: April 20, 2004 [EBook #12089] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS OF TRAVEL (1892-1913) *** + + + + +Produced by Sjaani and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + +LETTERS OF TRAVEL + +THE DOMINIONS EDITION + +LETTERS OF TRAVEL + +(1892-1913) + +BY RUDYARD KIPLING + + +MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED +ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON +1920 + +The Letters entitled 'FROM TIDEWAY TO TIDEWAY' were published +originally in _The Times_; those entitled 'LETTERS TO THE FAMILY' in +_The Morning Post_; and those entitled 'EGYPT OF THE MAGICIANS' in +_Nash's Magazine_. + +COPYRIGHT + +_This Edition is intended for circulation only in India +and the British Dominions over the Seas_ + + + + +CONTENTS + + +FROM TIDEWAY TO TIDEWAY (1892)-- + +In Sight of Monadnock +Across a Continent +The Edge of the East +Our Overseas Men +Some Earthquakes +Half-a-Dozen Pictures +'Captains Courageous' +On One Side Only +Leaves from a Winter Note-Book + + +LETTERS TO THE FAMILY (1907)-- + +The Road to Quebec +A People at Home +Cities and Spaces +Newspapers and Democracy +Labour +The Fortunate Towns +Mountains and the Pacific +A Conclusion + + +EGYPT OF THE MAGICIANS (1913)-- + +Sea Travel +A Return to the East +A Serpent of Old Nile +Up the River +Dead Kings +The Face of the Desert +The Riddle of Empire + + * * * * * + +FROM TIDEWAY TO TIDEWAY + +1892-95 + +IN SIGHT OF MONADNOCK. +ACROSS A CONTINENT. +THE EDGE OF THE EAST. +OUR OVERSEAS MEN. +SOME EARTHQUAKES. +HALF-A-DOZEN PICTURES. +'CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS.' +ON ONE SIDE ONLY. +LEAVES FROM A WINTER NOTE-BOOK. + + * * * * * + +IN SIGHT OF MONADNOCK + +After the gloom of gray Atlantic weather, our ship came to America in a +flood of winter sunshine that made unaccustomed eyelids blink, and the +New Yorker, who is nothing if not modest, said, 'This isn't a sample of +our really fine days. Wait until such and such times come, or go to such +and a such a quarter of the city.' We were content, and more than +content, to drift aimlessly up and down the brilliant streets, wondering +a little why the finest light should be wasted on the worst pavements in +the world; to walk round and round Madison Square, because that was full +of beautifully dressed babies playing counting-out games, or to gaze +reverently at the broad-shouldered, pug-nosed Irish New York policemen. +Wherever we went there was the sun, lavish and unstinted, working nine +hours a day, with the colour and the clean-cut lines of perspective that +he makes. That any one should dare to call this climate muggy, yea, even +'subtropical,' was a shock. There came such a man, and he said, 'Go +north if you want weather--weather that _is_ weather. Go to New +England.' So New York passed away upon a sunny afternoon, with her roar +and rattle, her complex smells, her triply over-heated rooms, and much +too energetic inhabitants, while the train went north to the lands where +the snow lay. It came in one sweep--almost, it seemed, in one turn of +the wheels--covering the winter-killed grass and turning the frozen +ponds that looked so white under the shadow of lean trees into pools of +ink. + +As the light closed in, a little wooden town, white, cloaked, and dumb, +slid past the windows, and the strong light of the car lamps fell upon a +sleigh (the driver furred and muffled to his nose) turning the corner of +a street. Now the sleigh of a picture-book, however well one knows it, +is altogether different from the thing in real life, a means of +conveyance at a journey's end; but it is well not to be over-curious in +the matter, for the same American who has been telling you at length how +he once followed a kilted Scots soldier from Chelsea to the Tower, out +of pure wonder and curiosity at his bare knees and sporran, will laugh +at your interest in 'just a cutter.' + +The staff of the train--surely the great American nation would be lost +if deprived of the ennobling society of brakeman, conductor, Pullman-car +conductor, negro porter, and newsboy--told pleasant tales, as they +spread themselves at ease in the smoking compartments, of snowings up +the line to Montreal, of desperate attacks--four engines together and a +snow-plough in front--on drifts thirty feet high, and the pleasures of +walking along the tops of goods wagons to brake a train, with the +thermometer thirty below freezing. 'It comes cheaper to kill men that +way than to put air-brakes on freight-cars,' said the brakeman. + +Thirty below freezing! It was inconceivable till one stepped out into it +at midnight, and the first shock of that clear, still air took away the +breath as does a plunge into sea-water. A walrus sitting on a woolpack +was our host in his sleigh, and he wrapped us in hairy goatskin coats, +caps that came down over the ears, buffalo robes and blankets, and yet +more buffalo-robes till we, too, looked like walruses and moved almost +as gracefully. The night was as keen as the edge of a newly-ground +sword; breath froze on the coat-lapels in snow; the nose became without +sensation, and the eyes wept bitterly because the horses were in a hurry +to get home; and whirling through air at zero brings tears. But for the +jingle of the sleigh-bells the ride might have taken place in a dream, +for there was no sound of hoofs upon the snow, the runners sighed a +little now and again as they glided over an inequality, and all the +sheeted hills round about were as dumb as death. Only the Connecticut +River kept up its heart and a lane of black water through the packed +ice; we could hear the stream worrying round the heels of its small +bergs. Elsewhere there was nothing but snow under the moon--snow drifted +to the level of the stone fences or curling over their tops in a lip of +frosted silver; snow banked high on either side of the road, or lying +heavy on the pines and the hemlocks in the woods, where the air seemed, +by comparison, as warm as a conservatory. It was beautiful beyond +expression, Nature's boldest sketch in black and white, done with a +Japanese disregard of perspective, and daringly altered from time to +time by the restless pencils of the moon. + +In the morning the other side of the picture was revealed in the colours +of the sunlight. There was never a cloud in the sky that rested on the +snow-line of the horizon as a sapphire on white velvet. Hills of pure +white, or speckled and furred with woods, rose up above the solid white +levels of the fields, and the sun rioted over their embroideries till +the eyes ached. Here and there on the exposed slopes the day's +warmth--the thermometer was nearly forty degrees--and the night's cold +had made a bald and shining crust upon the snow; but the most part was +soft powdered stuff, ready to catch the light on a thousand crystals and +multiply it sevenfold. Through this magnificence, and thinking nothing +of it, a wood-sledge drawn by two shaggy red steers, the unbarked logs +diamond-dusted with snow, shouldered down the road in a cloud of frosty +breath. It is the mark of inexperience in this section of the country to +confound a sleigh which you use for riding with the sledge that is +devoted to heavy work; and it is, I believe, a still greater sign of +worthlessness to think that oxen are driven, as they are in most places, +by scientific twisting of the tail. The driver with red mittens on his +hands, felt overstockings that come up to his knees, and, perhaps, a +silvery-gray coon-skin coat on his back, walks beside, crying, 'Gee, +haw!' even as is written in American stories. And the speech of the +driver explains many things in regard to the dialect story, which at its +best is an infliction to many. Now that I have heard the long, unhurried +drawl of Vermont, my wonder is, not that the New England tales should be +printed in what, for the sake of argument, we will call English and its +type, but rather that they should not have appeared in Swedish or +Russian. Our alphabet is too limited. This part of the country belongs +by laws unknown to the United States, but which obtain all the world +over, to the New England story and the ladies who write it. You feel +this in the air as soon as you see the white-painted wooden houses left +out in the snow, the austere schoolhouse, and the people--the men of the +farms, the women who work as hard as they with, it may be, less +enjoyment of life--the other houses, well painted and quaintly roofed, +that belong to Judge This, Lawyer That, and Banker Such an one; all +powers in the metropolis of six thousand folk over by the railway +station. More acutely still, do you realise the atmosphere when you read +in the local paper announcements of 'chicken suppers' and 'church +sociables' to be given by such and such a denomination, sandwiched +between paragraphs of genial and friendly interest, showing that the +countryside live (and without slaying each other) on terms of terrifying +intimacy. + +The folk of the old rock, the dwellers in the older houses, born and +raised hereabouts, would not live out of the town for any consideration, +and there are insane people from the South--men and women from Boston +and the like--who actually build houses out in the open country, two, +and even three miles from Main Street which is nearly 400 yards long, +and the centre of life and population. With the strangers, more +particularly if they do not buy their groceries 'in the street,' which +means, and is, the town, the town has little to do; but it knows +everything, and much more also, that goes on among them. Their dresses, +their cattle, their views, the manners of their children, their manner +towards their servants, and every other conceivable thing, is reported, +digested, discussed, and rediscussed up and down Main Street. Now, the +wisdom of Vermont, not being at all times equal to grasping all the +problems of everybody else's life with delicacy, sometimes makes +pathetic mistakes, and the town is set by the ears. You will see, +therefore, that towns of a certain size do not differ materially all the +world over. The talk of the men of the farms is of their +farms--purchase, mortgage, and sale, recorded rights, boundary lines, +and road tax. It was in the middle of New Zealand, on the edge of the +Wild horse plains, that I heard this talk last, when a man and his wife, +twenty miles from the nearest neighbour, sat up half the night +discussing just the same things that the men talked of in Main Street, +Vermont, U.S.A. + +There is one man in the State who is much exercised over this place. He +is a farm-hand, raised in a hamlet fifteen or twenty miles from the +nearest railway, and, greatly daring, he has wandered here. The bustle +and turmoil of Main Street, the new glare of the electric lights and the +five-storeyed brick business block, frighten and distress him much. He +has taken service on a farm well away from these delirious delights, +and, says he, 'I've been offered $25 a month to work in a bakery at New +York. But you don't get me to no New York, I've seen this place an' it +just scares me,' His strength is in the drawing of hay and the feeding +of cattle. Winter life on a farm does not mean the comparative idleness +that is so much written of. Each hour seems to have its sixty minutes of +work; for the cattle are housed and eat eternally; the colts must be +turned out for their drink, and the ice broken for them if necessary; +then ice must be stored for the summer use, and then the real work of +hauling logs for firewood begins. New England depends for its fuel on +the woods. The trees are 'blazed' in the autumn just before the fall of +the leaf, felled later, cut into four-foot lengths, and, as soon as the +friendly snow makes sledging possible, drawn down to the woodhouse. +Afterwards the needs of the farm can be attended to, and a farm, like an +arch, is never at rest. A little later will come maple-sugar time, when +the stately maples are tapped as the sap begins to stir, and be-ringed +with absurd little buckets (a cow being milked into a thimble gives some +idea of the disproportion), which are emptied into cauldrons. +Afterwards (this is the time of the 'sugaring-off parties') you pour the +boiled syrup into tins full of fresh snow, where it hardens, and you +pretend to help and become very sticky and make love, boys and girls +together. Even the introduction of patent sugar evaporators has not +spoiled the love-making. + +There is a certain scarcity of men to make love with; not so much in +towns which have their own manufactories and lie within a lover's +Sabbath-day journey of New York, but in the farms and villages. The men +have gone away--the young men are fighting fortune further West, and the +women remain--remain for ever as women must. On the farms, when the +children depart, the old man and the old woman strive to hold things +together without help, and the woman's portion is work and monotony. +Sometimes she goes mad to an extent which appreciably affects statistics +and is put down in census reports. More often, let us hope, she dies. In +the villages where the necessity for heavy work is not so urgent the +women find consolation in the formation of literary clubs and circles, +and so gather to themselves a great deal of wisdom in their own way. +That way is not altogether lovely. They desire facts and the knowledge +that they are at a certain page in a German or an Italian book before a +certain time, or that they have read the proper books in a proper way. +At any rate, they have something to do that seems as if they were doing +something. It has been said that the New England stories are cramped +and narrow. Even a far-off view of the iron-bound life whence they are +drawn justifies the author. You can carve a nut in a thousand different +ways by reason of the hardness of the shell. + +Twenty or thirty miles across the hills, on the way to the Green +Mountains, lie some finished chapters of pitiful stories--a few score +abandoned farms, started in a lean land, held fiercely so long as there +was any one to work them, and then left on the hill-sides. Beyond this +desolation are woods where the bear and the deer still find peace, and +sometimes even the beaver forgets that he is persecuted and dares to +build his lodge. These things were told me by a man who loved the woods +for their own sake and not for the sake of slaughter--a quiet, +slow-spoken man of the West, who came across the drifts on show-shoes +and refrained from laughing when I borrowed his foot-gear and tried to +walk. The gigantic lawn-tennis bats strung with hide are not easy to +manoeuvre. If you forget to keep the long heels down and trailing in the +snow you turn over and become as a man who fails into deep water with a +life-belt tied to his ankles. If you lose your balance, do not attempt +to recover it, but drop, half-sitting and half-kneeling, over as large +an area as possible. When you have mastered the wolf-step, can slide one +shoe above the other deftly, that is to say, the sensation of paddling +over a ten-foot-deep drift and taking short cuts by buried fences is +worth the ankle-ache. The man from the West interpreted to me the signs +on the snow, showed how a fox (this section of the country is full of +foxes, and men shoot them because riding is impossible) leaves one kind +of spoor, walking with circumspection as becomes a thief, and a dog, who +has nothing to be ashamed of, but widens his four legs and plunges, +another; how coons go to sleep for the winter and squirrels too, and how +the deer on the Canada border trample down deep paths that are called +yards and are caught there by inquisitive men with cameras, who hold +them by their tails when the deer have blundered into deep snow, and so +photograph their frightened dignity. He told me of people also--the +manners and customs of New Englanders here, and how they blossom and +develop in the Far West on the newer railway lines, when matters come +very nearly to civil war between rival companies racing for the same +cañon; how there is a country not very far away called Caledonia, +populated by the Scotch, who can give points to a New Englander in a +bargain, and how these same Scotch-Americans by birth, name their +townships still after the cities of their thrifty race. It was all as +new and delightful as the steady 'scrunch' of the snow-shoes and the +dazzling silence of the hills. + +Beyond the very furthest range, where the pines turn to a faint blue +haze against the one solitary peak--a real mountain and not a +hill--showed like a gigantic thumbnail pointing heavenward. + +'And that's Monadnock,' said the man from the West; 'all the hills have +Indian names. You left Wantastiquet on your right coming out of town,' + +You know how it often happens that a word shuttles in and out of many +years, waking all sorts of incongruous associations. I had met Monadnock +on paper in a shameless parody of Emerson's style, before ever style or +verse had interest for me. But the word stuck because of a rhyme, in +which one was + + ... crowned coeval + With Monadnock's crest, + And my wings extended + Touch the East and West. + +Later the same word, pursued on the same principle as that blessed one +Mesopotamia, led me to and through Emerson, up to his poem on the peak +itself--the wise old giant 'busy with his sky affairs,' who makes us +sane and sober and free from little things if we trust him. So Monadnock +came to mean everything that was helpful, healing, and full of quiet, +and when I saw him half across New Hampshire he did not fail. In that +utter stillness a hemlock bough, overweighted with snow, came down a +foot or two with a tired little sigh; the snow slid off and the little +branch flew nodding back to its fellows. + +For the honour of Monadnock there was made that afternoon an image of +snow of Gautama Buddha, something too squat and not altogether equal on +both sides, but with an imperial and reposeful waist. He faced towards +the mountain, and presently some men in a wood-sledge came up the road +and faced him. Now, the amazed comments of two Vermont farmers on the +nature and properties of a swag-bellied god are worth hearing. They were +not troubled about his race, for he was aggressively white; but rounded +waists seem to be out of fashion in Vermont. At least, they said so, +with rare and curious oaths. + +Next day all the idleness and trifling were drowned in a snowstorm that +filled the hollows of the hills with whirling blue mist, bowed the +branches of the woods till you ducked, but were powdered all the same +when you drove through, and wiped out the sleighing tracks. Mother +Nature is beautifully tidy if you leave her alone. She rounded off every +angle, broke down every scarp, and tucked the white bedclothes, till not +a wrinkle remained, up to the chine of the spruces and the hemlocks that +would not go to sleep. + +'Now,' said the man of the West, as we were driving to the station, and +alas! to New York, 'all my snow-tracks are gone; but when that snow +melts, a week hence or a month hence, they'll all come up again and show +where I've been.' + +Curious idea, is it not? Imagine a murder committed in the lonely woods, +a snowstorm that covers the tracks of the flying man before the avenger +of blood has buried the body, and then, a week later, the withdrawal of +the traitorous snow, revealing step by step the path Cain took--the +six-inch dee-trail of his snow-shoes--each step a dark disk on the +white till the very end. + +There is so much, so very much to write, if it were worth while, about +that queer little town by the railway station, with its life running, to +all outward seeming, as smoothly as the hack-coupés on their sleigh +mounting, and within disturbed by the hatreds and troubles and +jealousies that vex the minds of all but the gods. For instance--no, it +is better to remember the lesson Monadnock, and Emerson has said, 'Zeus +hates busy-bodies and people who do too much.' + +That there are such folk, a long nasal drawl across Main Street attests. +A farmer is unhitching his horses from a post opposite a store. He +stands with the tie-rope in his hand and gives his opinion to his +neighbour and the world generally--'But them there Andersons, they ain't +got no notion of etikwette!' + + + + +ACROSS A CONTINENT + + +It is not easy to escape from a big city. An entire continent was +waiting to be traversed, and, for that reason, we lingered in New York +till the city felt so homelike that it seemed wrong to leave it. And +further, the more one studied it, the more grotesquely bad it grew--bad +in its paving, bad in its streets, bad in its street-police, and but for +the kindness of the tides would be worse than bad in its sanitary +arrangements. No one as yet has approached the management of New York in +a proper spirit; that is to say, regarding it as the shiftless outcome +of squalid barbarism and reckless extravagance. No one is likely to do +so, because reflections on the long, narrow pig-trough are construed as +malevolent attacks against the spirit and majesty of the great American +people, and lead to angry comparisons. Yet, if all the streets of London +were permanently up and all the lamps permanently down, this would not +prevent the New York streets taken in a lump from being first cousins to +a Zanzibar foreshore, or kin to the approaches of a Zulu kraal. Gullies, +holes, ruts, cobbles-stones awry, kerbstones rising from two to six +inches above the level of the slatternly pavement; tram-lines from two +to three inches above street level; building materials scattered half +across the street; lime, boards, cut stone, and ash-barrels generally +and generously everywhere; wheeled traffic taking its chances, dray +_versus_ brougham, at cross roads; sway-backed poles whittled and +unpainted; drunken lamp-posts with twisted irons; and, lastly, a +generous scatter of filth and more mixed stinks than the winter wind can +carry away, are matters which can be considered quite apart from the +'Spirit of Democracy' or 'the future of this great and growing country.' +In any other land, they would be held to represent slovenliness, +sordidness, and want of capacity. Here it is explained, not once but +many times, that they show the speed at which the city has grown and the +enviable indifference of her citizens to matters of detail. One of these +days, you are told, everything will be taken in hand and put straight. +The unvirtuous rulers of the city will be swept away by a cyclone, or a +tornado, or something big and booming, of popular indignation; everybody +will unanimously elect the right men, who will justly earn the enormous +salaries that are at present being paid to inadequate aliens for road +sweepings, and all will be well. At the same time the lawlessness +ingrained by governors among the governed during the last thirty, forty, +or it may be fifty years; the brutal levity of the public conscience in +regard to public duty; the toughening and suppling of public morals, and +the reckless disregard for human life, bred by impotent laws and +fostered by familiarity with needless accidents and criminal neglect, +will miraculously disappear. If the laws of cause and effect that +control even the freest people in the world say otherwise, so much the +worse for the laws. America makes her own. Behind her stands the ghost +of the most bloody war of the century caused in a peaceful land by long +temporising with lawlessness, by letting things slide, by shiftlessness +and blind disregard for all save the material need of the hour, till the +hour long conceived and let alone stood up full-armed, and men said, +'Here is an unforeseen crisis,' and killed each other in the name of God +for four years. + +In a heathen land the three things that are supposed to be the pillars +of moderately decent government are regard for human life, justice, +criminal and civil, as far as it lies in man to do justice, and good +roads. In this Christian city they think lightly of the first--their own +papers, their own speech, and their own actions prove it; buy and sell +the second at a price openly and without shame; and are, apparently, +content to do without the third. One would almost expect racial sense of +humour would stay them from expecting only praise--slab, lavish, and +slavish--from the stranger within their gates. But they do not. If he +holds his peace, they forge tributes to their own excellence which they +put into his mouth, thereby treating their own land which they profess +to honour as a quack treats his pills. If he speaks--but you shall see +for yourselves what happens then. And they cannot see that by untruth +and invective it is themselves alone that they injure. + +The blame of their city evils is not altogether with the gentlemen, +chiefly of foreign extraction, who control the city. These find a people +made to their hand--a lawless breed ready to wink at one evasion of the +law if they themselves may profit by another, and in their rare leisure +hours content to smile over the details of a clever fraud. Then, says +the cultured American, 'Give us time. Give us time, and we shall +arrive.' The otherwise American, who is aggressive, straightway proceeds +to thrust a piece of half-hanged municipal botch-work under the nose of +the alien as a sample of perfected effort. There is nothing more +delightful than to sit for a strictly limited time with a child who +tells you what he means to do when he is a man; but when that same +child, loud-voiced, insistent, unblushingly eager for praise, but +thin-skinned as the most morbid of hobbledehoys, stands about all your +ways telling you the same story in the same voice, you begin to yearn +for something made and finished--say Egypt and a completely dead mummy. +It is neither seemly nor safe to hint that the government of the largest +city in the States is a despotism of the alien by the alien for the +alien, tempered with occasional insurrections of the decent folk. Only +the Chinaman washes the dirty linen of other lands. + +St. Paul, Minnesota. + +Yes, it is very good to get away once more and pick up the old and ever +fresh business of the vagrant, loafing through new towns, learned in +the manners of dogs, babies, and perambulators half the world over, and +tracking the seasons by the up-growth of flowers in stranger-people's +gardens. St. Paul, standing at the barn-door of the Dakota and Minnesota +granaries, is all things to all men except to Minneapolis, eleven miles +away, whom she hates and by whom she is patronised. She calls herself +the capital of the North-West, the new North-West, and her citizens +wear, not only the tall silk hat of trade, but the soft slouch of the +West. She talks in another tongue than the New Yorker, and--sure sign +that we are far across the continent--her papers argue with the San +Francisco ones over rate wars and the competition of railway companies. +St. Paul has been established many years, and if one were reckless +enough to go down to the business quarters one would hear all about her +and more also. But the residential parts of the town are the crown of +it. In common with scores of other cities, broad-crowned suburbs--using +the word in the English sense--that make the stranger jealous. You get +here what you do not get in the city--well-paved or asphalted roads, +planted with trees, and trim side-walks, studded with houses of +individuality, not boorishly fenced off from each other, but standing +each on its plot of well-kept turf running down to the pavement. It is +always Sunday in these streets of a morning. The cable-car has taken the +men down town to business, the children are at school, and the big dogs, +three and a third to each absent child, lie nosing the winter-killed +grass and wondering when the shoots will make it possible for a +gentleman to take his spring medicine. In the afternoon, the children on +tricycles stagger up and down the asphalt with due proportion of big +dogs at each wheel; the cable-cars coming up hill begin to drop the men +each at his own door--the door of the house that he builded for himself +(though the architect incited him to that vile little attic tower and +useless loggia), and, naturally enough, twilight brings the lovers +walking two by two along the very quiet ways. You can tell from the +houses almost the exact period at which they were built, whether in the +jig-saw days, when if behoved respectability to use unlovely turned +rails and pierced gable-ends, or during the Colonial craze, which means +white paint and fluted pillars, or in the latest domestic era, a most +pleasant mixture, that is, of stained shingles, hooded dormer-windows, +cunning verandas, and recessed doors. Seeing these things, one begins to +understand why the Americans visiting England are impressed with the old +and not with the new. He is not much more than a hundred years ahead of +the English in design, comfort, and economy, and (this is most +important) labour-saving appliances in his house. From Newport to San +Diego you will find the same thing to-day. + +Last tribute of respect and admiration. One little brown house at the +end of an avenue is shuttered down, and a doctor's buggy stands before +it. On the door a large blue and white label says--' Scarlet Fever.' Oh, +most excellent municipality of St. Paul. It is because of these little +things, and not by rowdying and racketing in public places, that a +nation becomes great and free and honoured. In the cars to-night they +will be talking wheat, girding at Minneapolis, and sneering at Duluth's +demand for twenty feet of water from Duluth to the Atlantic--matters of +no great moment compared with those streets and that label. + + +_A day later_. + +'Five days ago there wasn't a foot of earth to see. It was just +naturally covered with snow,' says the conductor standing in the rear +car of the Great Northern train. He speaks as though the snow had hidden +something priceless. Here is the view: One railway track and a line of +staggering telegraph poles ending in a dot and a blur on the horizon. To +the left and right, a sweep as it were of the sea, one huge plain of +corn land waiting for the spring, dotted at rare intervals with wooden +farmhouses, patent self-reapers and binders almost as big as the houses, +ricks left over from last year's abundant harvest, and mottled here and +there with black patches to show that the early ploughing had begun. The +snow lies in a last few streaks and whirls by the track; from sky-line +to sky-line is black loam and prairie grass so dead that it seems as +though no one year's sun would waken it. This is the granary of the land +where the farmer who bears the burdens of the State--and who, therefore, +ascribes last year's bumper crop to the direct action of the McKinley +Bill--has, also, to bear the ghastly monotony of earth and sky. He keeps +his head, having many things to attend to, but his wife sometimes goes +mad as the women do in Vermont. There is little variety in Nature's big +wheat-field. They say that when the corn is in the ear, the wind, +chasing shadows across it for miles on miles, breeds as it were a +vertigo in those who must look and cannot turn their eyes away. And they +tell a nightmare story of a woman who lived with her husband for +fourteen years at an Army post in just such a land as this. Then they +were transferred to West Point, among the hills over the Hudson, and she +came to New York, but the terror of the tall houses grew upon her and +grew till she went down with brain fever, and the dread of her delirium +was that the terrible things would topple down and crush her. That is a +true story. + +They work for harvest with steam-ploughs here. How could mere horses +face the endless furrows? And they attack the earth with toothed, +cogged, and spiked engines that would be monstrous in the shops, but +here are only speckles on the yellow grass. Even the locomotive is +cowed. A train of freight cars is passing along a line that comes out of +the blue and goes on till it meets the blue again. Elsewhere the train +would move off with a joyous, vibrant roar. Here it steals away down the +vista of the telegraph poles with an awed whisper--steals away and sinks +into the soil. + +Then comes a town deep in black mud--a straggly, inch-thick plank town, +with dull red grain elevators. The open country refuses to be subdued +even for a few score rods. Each street ends in the illimitable open, and +it is as though the whole houseless, outside earth were racing through +it. Towards evening, under a gray sky, flies by an unframed picture of +desolation. In the foreground a farm wagon almost axle deep in mud, the +mire dripping from the slow-turning wheels as the man flogs the horses. +Behind him on a knoll of sodden soggy grass, fenced off by raw rails +from the landscape at large, are a knot of utterly uninterested citizens +who have flogged horses and raised wheat in their time, but to-day lie +under chipped and weather-worn wooden headstones. Surely burial here +must be more awful to the newly-made ghost than burial at sea. + +There is more snow as we go north, and Nature is hard at work breaking +up the ground for the spring. The thaw has filled every depression with +a sullen gray-black spate, and out on the levels the water lies six +inches deep, in stretch upon stretch, as far as the eye can reach. Every +culvert is full, and the broken ice clicks against the wooden +pier-guards of the bridges. Somewhere in this flatness there is a +refreshing jingle of spurs along the cars, and a man of the Canadian +Mounted Police swaggers through with his black fur cap and the yellow +tab aside, his well-fitting overalls and his better set-up back. One +wants to shake hands with him because he is clean and does not slouch +nor spit, trims his hair, and walks as a man should. Then a +custom-house officer wants to know too much about cigars, whisky, and +Florida water. Her Majesty the Queen of England and Empress of India has +us in her keeping. Nothing has happened to the landscape, and Winnipeg, +which is, as it were, a centre of distribution for emigrants, stands up +to her knees in the water of the thaw. The year has turned in earnest, +and somebody is talking about the 'first ice-shove' at Montreal, 1300 or +1400 miles east. + +They will not run trains on Sunday at Montreal, and this is Wednesday. +Therefore, the Canadian Pacific makes up a train for Vancouver at +Winnipeg. This is worth remembering, because few people travel in that +train, and you escape any rush of tourists running westward to catch the +Yokohama boat. The car is your own, and with it the service of the +porter. Our porter, seeing things were slack, beguiled himself with a +guitar, which gave a triumphal and festive touch to the journey, +ridiculously out of keeping with the view. For eight-and-twenty long +hours did the bored locomotive trail us through a flat and hairy land, +powdered, ribbed, and speckled with snow, small snow that drives like +dust-shot in the wind--the land of Assiniboia. Now and again, for no +obvious reason to the outside mind, there was a town. Then the towns +gave place to 'section so and so'; then there were trails of the +buffalo, where he once walked in his pride; then there was a mound of +white bones, supposed to belong to the said buffalo, and then the +wilderness took up the tale. Some of it was good ground, but most of it +seemed to have fallen by the wayside, and the tedium of it was eternal. + +At twilight--an unearthly sort of twilight--there came another curious +picture. Thus--a wooden town shut in among low, treeless, rolling +ground, a calling river that ran unseen between scarped banks; barracks +of a detachment of mounted police, a little cemetery where ex-troopers +rested, a painfully formal public garden with pebble paths and foot-high +fir trees, a few lines of railway buildings, white women walking up and +down in the bitter cold with their bonnets off, some Indians in red +blanketing with buffalo horns for sale trailing along the platform, and, +not ten yards from the track, a cinnamon bear and a young grizzly +standing up with extended arms in their pens and begging for food. It +was strange beyond anything that this bald telling can suggest--opening +a door into a new world. The only commonplace thing about the spot was +its name--Medicine Hat, which struck me instantly as the only possible +name such a town could carry. This is that place which later became a +town; but I had seen it three years before when it was even smaller and +was reached by me in a freight-car, ticket unpaid for. + +That next morning brought us the Canadian Pacific Railway as one reads +about it. No pen of man could do justice to the scenery there. The +guide-books struggle desperately with descriptions, adapted for summer +reading, of rushing cascades, lichened rocks, waving pines, and +snow-capped mountains; but in April these things are not there. The +place is locked up--dead as a frozen corpse. The mountain torrent is a +boss of palest emerald ice against the dazzle of the snow; the +pine-stumps are capped and hooded with gigantic mushrooms of snow; the +rocks are overlaid five feet deep; the rocks, the fallen trees, and the +lichens together, and the dumb white lips curl up to the track cut in +the side of the mountain, and grin there fanged with gigantic icicles. +You may listen in vain when the train stops for the least sign of breath +or power among the hills. The snow has smothered the rivers, and the +great looping trestles run over what might be a lather of suds in a huge +wash-tub. The old snow near by is blackened and smirched with the smoke +of locomotives, and its dulness is grateful to aching eyes. But the men +who live upon the line have no consideration for these things. At a +halting-place in a gigantic gorge walled in by the snows, one of them +reels from a tiny saloon into the middle of the track where half-a-dozen +dogs are chasing a pig off the metals. He is beautifully and eloquently +drunk. He sings, waves his hands, and collapses behind a shunting +engine, while four of the loveliest peaks that the Almighty ever moulded +look down upon him. The landslide that should have wiped that saloon +into kindlings has missed its mark and has struck a few miles down the +line. One of the hillsides moved a little in dreaming of the spring and +caught a passing freight train. Our cars grind cautiously by, for the +wrecking engine has only just come through. The deceased engine is +standing on its head in soft earth thirty or forty feet down the slide, +and two long cars loaded with shingles are dropped carelessly atop of +it. It looks so marvellously like a toy train flung aside by a child, +that one cannot realise what it means till a voice cries, 'Any one +killed?' The answer comes back, 'No; all jumped'; and you perceive with +a sense of personal insult that this slovenliness of the mountain is an +affair which may touch your own sacred self. In which case.... But the +train is out on a trestle, into a tunnel, and out on a trestle again. It +was here that every one began to despair of the line when it was under +construction, because there seemed to be no outlet. But a man came, as a +man always will, and put a descent thus and a curve in this manner, and +a trestle so; and behold, the line went on. It is in this place that we +heard the story of the Canadian Pacific Railway told as men tell a +many-times-repeated tale, with exaggerations and omissions, but an +imposing tale, none the less. In the beginning, when they would federate +the Dominion of Canada, it was British Columbia who saw objections to +coming in, and the Prime Minister of those days promised it for a bribe, +an iron band between tidewater and tidewater that should not break. Then +everybody laughed, which seems necessary to the health of most big +enterprises, and while they were laughing, things were being done. The +Canadian Pacific Railway was given a bit of a line here and a bit of a +line there and almost as much land as it wanted, and the laughter was +still going on when the last spike was driven between east and west, at +the very place where the drunken man sprawled behind the engine, and the +iron band ran from tideway to tideway as the Premier said, and people in +England said 'How interesting,' and proceeded to talk about the 'bloated +Army estimates.' Incidentally, the man who told us--he had nothing to do +with the Canadian Pacific Railway--explained how it paid the line to +encourage immigration, and told of the arrival at Winnipeg of a +train-load of Scotch crofters on a Sunday. They wanted to stop then and +there for the Sabbath--they and all the little stock they had brought +with them. It was the Winnipeg agent who had to go among them arguing +(he was Scotch too, and they could not quite understand it) on the +impropriety of dislocating the company's traffic. So their own minister +held a service in the station, and the agent gave them a good dinner, +cheering them in Gaelic, at which they wept, and they went on to settle +at Moosomin, where they lived happily ever afterwards. Of the manager, +the head of the line from Montreal to Vancouver, our companion spoke +with reverence that was almost awe. That manager lived in a palace at +Montreal, but from time to time he would sally forth in his special car +and whirl over his 3000 miles at 50 miles an hour. The regulation pace +is twenty-two, but he sells his neck with his head. Few drivers cared +for the honour of taking him over the road. A mysterious man he was, who +'carried the profile of the line in his head,' and, more than that, knew +intimately the possibilities of back country which he had never seen nor +travelled over. There is always one such man on every line. You can hear +similar tales from drivers on the Great Western in England or Eurasian +stationmasters on the big North-Western in India. Then a +fellow-traveller spoke, as many others had done, on the possibilities of +Canadian union with the United States; and his language was not the +language of Mr. Goldwin Smith. It was brutal in places. Summarised it +came to a pronounced objection to having anything to do with a land +rotten before it was ripe, a land with seven million negroes as yet +unwelded into the population, their race-type unevolved, and rather more +than crude notions on murder, marriage, and honesty. 'We've picked up +their ways of politics,' he said mournfully. 'That comes of living next +door to them; but I don't think we're anxious to mix up with their other +messes. They say they don't want us. They keep on saying it. There's a +nigger on the fence somewhere, or they wouldn't lie about it.' + +'But does it follow that they are lying?' + +'Sure. I've lived among 'em. They can't go straight. There's some dam' +fraud at the back of it.' + +From this belief he would not be shaken. He had lived among +them--perhaps had been bested in trade. Let them keep themselves and +their manners and customs to their own side of the line, he said. + +This is very sad and chilling. It seemed quite otherwise in New York, +where Canada was represented as a ripe plum ready to fell into Uncle +Sam's mouth when he should open it. The Canadian has no special love for +England--the Mother of Colonies has a wonderful gift for alienating the +affections of her own household by neglect--but, perhaps, he loves his +own country. We ran out of the snow through mile upon mile of +snow-sheds, braced with twelve-inch beams, and planked with two-inch +planking. In one place a snow slide had caught just the edge of a shed +and scooped it away as a knife scoops cheese. High up the hills men had +built diverting barriers to turn the drifts, but the drifts had swept +over everything, and lay five deep on the top of the sheds. When we woke +it was on the banks of the muddy Fraser River and the spring was +hurrying to meet us. The snow had gone; the pink blossoms of the wild +currant were open, the budding alders stood misty green against the blue +black of the pines, the brambles on the burnt stumps were in tenderest +leaf, and every moss on every stone was this year's work, fresh from the +hand of the Maker. The land opened into clearings of soft black earth. +At one station a hen had laid an egg and was telling the world about it. +The world answered with a breath of real spring--spring that flooded the +stuffy car and drove us out on the platform to snuff and sing and +rejoice and pluck squashy green marsh-flags and throw them at the +colts, and shout at the wild duck that rose from a jewel-green lakelet. +God be thanked that in travel one can follow the year! This, my spring, +I lost last November in New Zealand. Now I shall hold her fast through +Japan and the summer into New Zealand again. + +Here are the waters of the Pacific, and Vancouver (completely destitute +of any decent defences) grown out of all knowledge in the last three +years. At the railway wharf, with never a gun to protect her, lies the +_Empress of India_--the Japan boat--and what more auspicious name could +you wish to find at the end of one of the strong chains of empire? + + + + +THE EDGE OF THE EAST + + +The mist was clearing off Yokohama harbour and a hundred junks had their +sails hoisted for the morning breeze, so that the veiled horizon was +stippled with square blurs of silver. An English man-of-war showed +blue-white on the haze, so new was the daylight, and all the water lay +out as smooth as the inside of an oyster shell. Two children in blue and +white, their tanned limbs pink in the fresh air, sculled a marvellous +boat of lemon-hued wood, and that was our fairy craft to the shore +across the stillness and the mother o' pearl levels. + +There are ways and ways of entering Japan. The best is to descend upon +it from America and the Pacific--from the barbarians and the deep sea. +Coming from the East, the blaze of India and the insolent tropical +vegetation of Singapore dull the eye to half-colours and little tones. +It is at Bombay that the smell of All Asia boards the ship miles off +shore, and holds the passenger's nose till he is clear of Asia again. +That is a violent, and aggressive smell, apt to prejudice the stranger, +but kin none the less to the gentle and insinuating flavour that stole +across the light airs of the daybreak when the fairy boat went to +shore--a smell of very clean new wood; split bamboo, wood-smoke, damp +earth, and the things that people who are not white people eat--a +homelike and comforting smell. Then followed on shore the sound of an +Eastern tongue, that is beautiful or not as you happen to know it. The +Western races have many languages, but a crowd of Europeans heard +through closed doors talk with the Western pitch and cadence. So it is +with the East. A line of jinrickshaw coolies sat in the sun discoursing +to each other, and it was as though they were welcoming a return in +speech that the listener must know as well as English. They talked and +they talked, but the ghosts of familiar words would not grow any clearer +till presently the Smell came down the open streets again, saying that +this was the East where nothing matters, and trifles old as the Tower of +Babel mattered less than nothing, and that there were old acquaintances +waiting at every corner beyond the township. Great is the Smell of the +East! Railways, telegraphs, docks, and gunboats cannot banish it, and it +will endure till the railways are dead. He who has not smelt that smell +has never lived. + +Three years ago Yokohama was sufficiently Europeanised in its shops to +suit the worst and wickedest taste. To-day it is still worse if you keep +to the town limits. Ten steps beyond into the fields all the +civilisation stops exactly as it does in another land a few thousand +miles further West. The globe-trotting, millionaires anxious to spend +money, with a nose on whatever caught their libertine fancies, had +explained to us aboard-ship that they came to Japan in haste, advised by +their guide-books to do so, lest the land should be suddenly civilised +between steamer-sailing and steamer-sailing. When they touched land they +ran away to the curio shops to buy things which are prepared for +them--mauve and magenta and blue-vitriol things. By this time they have +a 'Murray' under one arm and an electric-blue eagle with a copperas beak +and a yellow '_E pluribus unum_' embroidered on apple-green silk, under +the other. + +We, being wise, sit in a garden that is not ours, but belongs to a +gentleman in slate-coloured silk, who, solely for the sake of the +picture, condescends to work as a gardener, in which employ he is +sweeping delicately a welt of fallen cherry blossoms from under an +azalea aching to burst into bloom. Steep stone steps, of the colour that +nature ripens through long winters, lead up to this garden by way of +clumps of bamboo grass. You see the Smell was right when it talked of +meeting old friends. Half-a-dozen blue-black pines are standing akimbo +against a real sky--not a fog-blur nor a cloud-bank, nor a gray +dish-clout wrapped round the sun--but a blue sky. A cherry tree on a +slope below them throws up a wave of blossom that breaks all creamy +white against their feet, and a clump of willows trail their palest +green shoots in front of all. The sun sends for an ambassador through +the azalea bushes a lordly swallow-tailed butterfly, and his squire +very like the flitting 'chalk-blue' of the English downs. The warmth of +the East, that goes through, not over, the lazy body, is added to the +light of the East--the splendid lavish light that clears but does not +bewilder the eye. Then the new leaves of the spring wink like fat +emeralds and the loaded branches of cherry-bloom grow transparent and +glow as a hand glows held up against flame. Little, warm sighs come up +from the moist, warm earth, and the fallen petals stir on the ground, +turn over, and go to sleep again. Outside, beyond the foliage, where the +sunlight lies on the slate-coloured roofs, the ridged rice-fields beyond +the roofs, and the hills beyond the rice-fields, is all Japan--only all +Japan; and this that they call the old French Legation is the Garden of +Eden that most naturally dropped down here after the Fall. For some +small hint of the beauties to be shown later there is the roof of a +temple, ridged and fluted with dark tiles, flung out casually beyond the +corner of the bluff on which the garden stands. Any other curve of the +eaves would not have consorted with the sweep of the pine branches; +therefore, this curve was made, and being made, was perfect. The +congregation of the globe-trotters are in the hotel, scuffling for +guides, in order that they may be shown the sights of Japan, which is +all one sight. They must go to Tokio, they must go to Nikko; they must +surely see all that is to be seen and then write home to their barbarian +families that they are getting used to the sight of bare, brown legs. +Before this day is ended, they will all, thank goodness, have splitting +headaches and burnt-out eyes. It is better to lie still and hear the +grass grow--to soak in the heat and the smell and the sounds and the +sights that come unasked. + +Our garden overhangs the harbour, and by pushing aside one branch we +look down upon a heavy-sterned fishing-boat, the straw-gold mats of the +deck-house pushed back to show the perfect order and propriety of the +housekeeping that is going forward. The father-fisher, sitting +frog-fashion, is poking at a tiny box full of charcoal, and the light, +white ash is blown back into the face of a largish Japanese doll, price +two shillings and threepence in Bayswater. The doll wakes, turns into a +Japanese baby something more valuable than money could buy--a baby with +a shaven head and aimless legs. It crawls to the thing in the polished +brown box, is picked up just as it is ready to eat live coals, and is +set down behind a thwart, where it drums upon a bucket, addressing the +firebox from afar. Half-a-dozen cherry blossoms slide off a bough, and +waver down to the water close to the Japanese doll, who in another +minute will be overside in pursuit of these miracles. The father-fisher +has it by the pink hind leg, and this time it is tucked away, all but +the top-knot, out of sight among umber nets and sepia cordage. Being an +Oriental it makes no protest, and the boat scuds out to join the little +fleet in the offing. + +Then two sailors of a man-of-war come along the sea face, lean over the +canal below the garden, spit, and roll away. The sailor in port is the +only superior man. To him all matters rare and curious are either 'them +things' or 'them other things.' He does not hurry himself, he does not +seek Adjectives other than those which custom puts into his mouth for +all occasions; but the beauty of life penetrates his being insensibly +till he gets drunk, falls foul of the local policeman, smites him into +the nearest canal, and disposes of the question of treaty revision with +a hiccup. All the same, Jack says that he has a grievance against the +policeman, who is paid a dollar for every strayed seaman he brings up to +the Consular Courts for overstaying his leave, and so forth. Jack says +that the little fellows deliberately hinder him from getting back to his +ship, and then with devilish art and craft of wrestling tricks--'there +are about a hundred of 'em, and they can throw you with every qualified +one'--carry him to justice. Now when Jack is softened with drink he does +not tell lies. This is his grievance, and he says that them blanketed +consuls ought to know. 'They plays into each other's hands, and stops +you at the Hatoba'--the policemen do. The visitor who is neither a +seaman nor drunk, cannot swear to the truth of this, or indeed anything +else. He moves not only among fascinating scenes and a lovely people +but, as he is sure to find out before he has been a day ashore, between +stormy questions. Three years ago there were no questions that were not +going to be settled off-hand in a blaze of paper lanterns. The +Constitution was new. It has a gray, pale cover with a chrysanthemum at +the back, and a Japanese told me then, 'Now we have Constitution same as +other countries, and _so_ it is all right. Now we are quite civilised +because of Constitution.' + +[A perfectly irrelevant story comes to mind here. Do you know that in +Madeira once they had a revolution which lasted just long enough for the +national poet to compose a national anthem, and then was put down? All +that is left of the revolt now is the song that you hear on the +twangling _nachettes_, the baby-banjoes, of a moonlight night under the +banana fronds at the back of Funchal. And the high-pitched nasal refrain +of it is 'Consti-tuci-_oun_!'] + +Since that auspicious date it seems that the questions have +impertinently come up, and the first and the last of them is that of +Treaty Revision. Says the Japanese Government, 'Only obey our laws, our +new laws that we have carefully compiled from all the wisdom of the +West, and you shall go up country as you please and trade where you +will, instead of living cooped up in concessions and being judged by +consuls. Treat us as you would treat France or Germany, and we will +treat you as our own subjects.' + +Here, as you know, the matter rests between the two thousand foreigners +and the forty million Japanese--a God-send to all editors of Tokio and +Yokohama, and the despair of the newly arrived in whose nose, remember, +is the smell of the East, One and Indivisible, Immemorial, Eternal, and, +above all, Instructive. + +Indeed, it is only by walking out at least half a mile that you escape +from the aggressive evidences of civilisation, and come out into the +rice-fields at the back of the town. Here men with twists of blue and +white cloth round their heads are working knee deep in the thick black +mud. The largest field may be something less than two tablecloths, while +the smallest is, say, a speck of undercliff, on to which it were hard to +back a 'rickshaw, wrested from the beach and growing its clump of barley +within spray-shot of the waves. The field paths are the trodden tops of +the irrigating cuts, and the main roads as wide as two perambulators +abreast. From the uplands--the beautiful uplands planted in exactly the +proper places with pine and maple--the ground comes down in terraced +pocket on pocket of rich earth to the levels again, and it would seem +that every heavily-thatched farmhouse was chosen with special regard to +the view. If you look closely when the people go to work you will see +that a household spreads itself over plots, maybe, a quarter of a mile +apart. A revenue map of a village shows that this scatteration is +apparently designed, but the reason is not given. One thing at least is +certain. The assessment of these patches can be no light piece of +work--just the thing, in fact, that would give employment to a large +number of small and variegated Government officials, any one of whom, +assuming that he was of an Oriental cast of mind, might make the +cultivator's life interesting. I remember now--a second-time-seen place +brings back things that were altogether buried--seeing three years ago +the pile of Government papers required in the case of one farm. They +were many and systematic, but the interesting thing about them was the +amount of work that they must have furnished to those who were neither +cultivators nor Treasury officials. + +If one knew Japanese, one could collogue with that gentleman in the +straw-hat and the blue loincloth who is chopping within a sixteenth of +an inch of his naked toes with the father and mother of all weed-spuds. +His version of local taxation might be inaccurate, but it would sure to +be picturesque. Failing his evidence, be pleased to accept two or three +things that may or may not be facts of general application. They differ +in a measure from statements in the books. The present land-tax is +nominally 2-1/2 per cent, payable in cash on a three, or as some say a +five, yearly settlement. But, according to certain officials, there has +been no settlement since 1875. Land lying fallow for a season pays the +same tax as land in cultivation, unless it is unproductive through flood +or calamity (read earthquake here). The Government tax is calculated on +the capital value of the land, taking a measure of about 11,000 square +feet or a quarter of an acre as the unit. + +Now, one of the ways of getting at the capital value of the land is to +see what the railways have paid for it. The very best rice land, taking +the Japanese dollar at three shillings, is about £65:10s per acre. +Unirrigated land for vegetable growing is something over £9:12s., and +forest £2:11s. As these are railway rates, they may be fairly held to +cover large areas. In private sales the prices may reasonably be higher. + +It is to be remembered that some of the very best rice land will bear +two crops of rice in the year. Most soil will bear two crops, the first +being millet, rape, vegetables, and so on, sown on dry soil and ripening +at the end of May. Then the ground is at once prepared for the wet crop, +to be harvested in October or thereabouts. Land-tax is payable in two +instalments. Rice land pays between the 1st November and the middle of +December and the 1st January and the last of February. Other land pays +between July and August and September and December. Let us see what the +average yield is. The gentleman in the sun-hat and the loin-cloth would +shriek at the figures, but they are approximately accurate. Rice +naturally fluctuates a good deal, but it may be taken in the rough at +five Japanese dollars (fifteen shillings) per _koku_ of 330 lbs. Wheat +and maize of the first spring crop is worth about eleven shillings per +_koku_. The first crop gives nearly 1-3/4 _koku_ per _tau_ (the quarter +acre unit of measurement aforesaid), or eighteen shillings per quarter +acre, or £3:12s. per acre. The rice crop at two _koku_ or £1:10s. the +quarter acre gives £6 an acre. Total £9:12s. This is not altogether bad +if you reflect that the land in question is not the very best rice land, +but ordinary No. 1, at £25:16s. per acre, capital value. + +A son has the right to inherit his father's land on the father's +assessment, so long as its term runs, or, when the term has expired, has +a prior claim as against any one else. Part of the taxes, it is said, +lies by in the local prefecture's office as a reserve fund against +inundations. Yet, and this seems a little confusing, there are between +five and seven other local, provincial, and municipal taxes which can +reasonably be applied to the same ends. No one of these taxes exceeds a +half of the land-tax, unless it be the local prefecture tax of 2-1/2 per +cent. + +In the old days the people were taxed, or perhaps squeezed would be the +better word, to about one-half of the produce of the land. There are +those who may say that the present system is not so advantageous as it +looks. Beforetime, the farmers, it is true, paid heavily, but only, on +their nominal holdings. They could, and often did, hold more land than +they were assessed on. Today a rigid bureaucracy surveys every foot of +their farms, and upon every foot they have to pay. Somewhat similar +complaints are made still by the simple peasantry of India, for if there +is one thing that the Oriental detests more than another, it is the +damnable Western vice of accuracy. That leads to doing things by rule. +Still, by the look of those terraced fields, where the water is led so +cunningly from level to level, the Japanese cultivator must enjoy at +least one excitement. If the villages up the valley tamper with the +water supply, there must surely be excitement down the valley--argument, +protest, and the breaking of heads. + +The days of romance, therefore, are not all dead. + + * * * * * + +This that follows happened on the coast twenty miles through the fields +from Yokohama, at Kamakura, that is to say, where the great bronze +Buddha sits facing the sea to hear the centuries go by. He has been +described again and again--his majesty, his aloofness, and every one of +his dimensions, the smoky little shrine within him, and the plumed hill +that makes the background to his throne. For that reason he remains, as +he remained from the beginning, beyond all hope of description--as it +might be, a visible god sitting in the garden of a world made new. They +sell photographs of him with tourists standing on his thumb nail, and, +apparently, any brute of any gender can scrawl his or its ignoble name +over the inside of the massive bronze plates that build him up. Think +for a moment of the indignity and the insult! Imagine the ancient, +orderly gardens with their clipped trees, shorn turf, and silent ponds +smoking in the mist that the hot sun soaks up after rain, and the +green-bronze image of the Teacher of the Law wavering there as it half +seems through incense clouds. The earth is all one censer, and myriads +of frogs are making the haze ring. It is too warm to do more than to sit +on a stone and watch the eyes that, having seen all things, see no +more--the down-dropped eyes, the forward droop of the head, and the +colossal simplicity of the folds of the robe over arm and knee. Thus, +and in no other fashion, did Buddha sit in the-old days when Ananda +asked questions and the dreamer began to dream of the lives that lay +behind him ere the lips moved, and as the Chronicles say: 'He told a +tale.' This would be the way he began, for dreamers in the East tell +something the same sort of tales to-day: 'Long ago when Devadatta was +King of Benares, there lived a virtuous elephant, a reprobate ox, and a +King without understanding.' And the tale would end, after the moral had +been drawn for Ananda's benefit: 'Now, the reprobate ox was such an one, +and the King was such another, but the virtuous elephant was I, myself, +Ananda.' Thus, then, he told the tales in the bamboo grove, and the +bamboo grove is there to-day. Little blue and gray and slate robed +figures pass under its shadow, buy two or three joss-sticks, disappear +into the shrine, that is, the body of the god, come out smiling, and +drift away through the shrubberies. A fat carp in a pond sucks at a +fallen leaf with just the sound of a wicked little worldly kiss. Then +the earth steams, and steams in silence, and a gorgeous butterfly, full +six inches from wing to wing, cuts through the steam in a zigzag of +colour and flickers up to the forehead of the god. And Buddha said that +a man must look on everything as illusion--even light and colour--the +time-worn bronze of metal against blue-green of pine and pale emerald of +bamboo--the lemon sash of the girl in the cinnamon dress, with coral +pins in her hair, leaning against a block of weather-bleached +stone--and, last, the spray of blood-red azalea that stands on the pale +gold mats of the tea-house beneath the honey-coloured thatch. To overcome +desire and covetousness of mere gold, which is often very vilely designed, +that is conceivable; but why must a man give up the delight of the eye, +colour that rejoices, light that cheers, and line that satisfies the +innermost deeps of the heart? Ah, if the Bodhisat had only seen his own +image! + + + + +OUR OVERSEAS MEN + + +All things considered, there are only two kinds of men in the +world--those that stay at home and those that do not. The second are the +most interesting. Some day a man will bethink himself and write a book +about the breed in a book called 'The Book of the Overseas Club,' for it +is at the clubhouses all the way from Aden to Yokohama that the life of +the Outside Men is best seen and their talk is best heard. A strong +family likeness runs through both buildings and members, and a large and +careless hospitality is the note. There is always the same open-doored, +high-ceiled house, with matting on the floors; the same come and go of +dark-skinned servants, and the same assembly of men talking horse or +business, in raiment that would fatally scandalise a London committee, +among files of newspapers from a fortnight to five weeks old. The life +of the Outside Men includes plenty of sunshine, and as much air as may +be stirring. At the Cape, where the Dutch housewives distil and sell the +very potent Vanderhum, and the absurd home-made hansom cabs waddle up +and down the yellow dust of Adderley Street, are the members of the big +import and export firms, the shipping and insurance offices, inventors +of mines, and exploiters of new territories with now and then an officer +strayed from India to buy mules for the Government, a Government House +aide-de-camp, a sprinkling of the officers of the garrison, tanned +skippers of the Union and Castle Lines, and naval men from the squadron +at Simon's Town. Here they talk of the sins of Cecil Rhodes, the +insolence of Natal, the beauties or otherwise of the solid Boer vote, +and the dates of the steamers. The _argot_ is Dutch and Kaffir, and +every one can hum the national anthem that begins 'Pack your kit and +trek, Johnny Bowlegs.' In the stately Hongkong Clubhouse, which is to +the further what the Bengal Club is to the nearer East, you meet much +the same gathering, _minus_ the mining speculators and _plus_ men whose +talk is of tea, silk, shortings, and Shanghai ponies. The speech of the +Outside Men at this point becomes fearfully mixed with pidgin-English +and local Chinese terms, rounded with corrupt Portuguese. At Melbourne, +in a long verandah giving on a grass plot, where laughing-jackasses +laugh very horribly, sit wool-kings, premiers, and breeders of horses +after their kind. The older men talk of the days of the Eureka Stockade +and the younger of 'shearing wars' in North Queensland, while the +traveller moves timidly among them wondering what under the world every +third word means. At Wellington, overlooking the harbour (all +right-minded clubs should command the sea), another, and yet a like, +sort of men speak of sheep, the rabbits, the land-courts, and the +ancient heresies of Sir Julius Vogel; and their more expressive +sentences borrow from the Maori. And elsewhere, and elsewhere, and +elsewhere among the Outside Men it is the same--the same mixture of +every trade, calling, and profession under the sun; the same clash of +conflicting interests touching the uttermost parts of the earth; the +same intimate, and sometimes appalling knowledge of your neighbour's +business and shortcomings; the same large-palmed hospitality, and the +same interest on the part of the younger men in the legs of a horse. +Decidedly, it is at the Overseas Club all the world over that you get to +know some little of the life of the community. London is egoistical, and +the world for her ends with the four-mile cab radius. There is no +provincialism like the provincialism of London. That big slack-water +coated with the drift and rubbish of a thousand men's thoughts esteems +itself the open sea because the waves of all the oceans break on her +borders. To those in her midst she is terribly imposing, but they forget +that there is more than one kind of imposition. Look back upon her from +ten thousand miles, when the mail is just in at the Overseas Club, and +she is wondrous tiny. Nine-tenths of her news--so vital, so epoch-making +over there--loses its significance, and the rest is as the scuffling of +ghosts in a back-attic. + +Here in Yokohama the Overseas Club has two mails and four sets of +papers--English, French, German, and American, as suits the variety of +its constitution--and the verandah by the sea, where the big telescope +stands, is a perpetual feast of the Pentecost. The population of the +club changes with each steamer in harbour, for the sea-captains swing +in, are met with 'Hello! where did you come from?' and mix at the bar +and billiard-tables for their appointed time and go to sea again. The +white-painted warships supply their contingent of members also, and +there are wonderful men, mines of most fascinating adventure, who have +an interest in sealing-brigs that go to the Kurile Islands, and somehow +get into trouble with the Russian authorities. Consuls and judges of the +Consular Courts meet men over on leave from the China ports, or it may +be Manila, and they all talk tea, silk, banking, and exchange with its +fixed residents. Everything is always as bad as it can possibly be, and +everybody is on the verge of ruin. That is why, when they have decided +that life is no longer worth living, they go down to the +skittle-alley--to commit suicide. From the outside, when a cool wind +blows among the papers and there is a sound of smashing ice in an inner +apartment, and every third man is talking about the approaching races, +the life seems to be a desirable one. 'What more could a man need to +make him happy?' says the passer-by. A perfect climate, a lovely +country, plenty of pleasant society, and the politest people on earth to +deal with. The resident smiles and invites the passer-by to stay through +July and August. Further, he presses him to do business with the +politest people on earth, and to continue so doing for a term of years. +Thus the traveller perceives beyond doubt that the resident is +prejudiced by the very fact of his residence, and gives it as his +matured opinion that Japan is a faultless land, marred only by the +presence of the foreign community. And yet, let us consider. It is the +foreign community that has made it possible for the traveller to come +and go from hotel to hotel, to get his passport for inland travel, to +telegraph his safe arrival to anxious friends, and generally enjoy +himself much more than he would have been able to do in his own country. +Government and gunboats may open a land, but it is the men of the +Overseas Club that keep it open. Their reward (not alone in Japan) is +the bland patronage or the scarcely-veiled contempt of those who profit +by their labours. It is hopeless to explain to a traveller who has been +'ohayoed' into half-a-dozen shops and 'sayonaraed' out of half-a-dozen +more and politely cheated in each one, that the Japanese is an Oriental, +and, therefore, embarrassingly economical of the truth. 'That's his +politeness,' says the traveller. 'He does not wish to hurt your +feelings. Love him and treat him like a brother, and he'll change.' To +treat one of the most secretive of races on a brotherly basis is not +very easy, and the natural politeness that enters into a signed and +sealed contract and undulates out of it so soon as it does not +sufficiently pay is more than embarrassing. It is almost annoying. The +want of fixity or commercial honour may be due to some natural infirmity +of the artistic temperament, or to the manner in which the climate has +affected, and his ruler has ruled, the man himself for untold centuries. + +Those who know the East know, where the system of 'squeeze,' which is +commission, runs through every transaction of life, from the sale of a +groom's place upward, where the woman walks behind the man in the +streets, and where the peasant gives you for the distance to the next +town as many or as few miles as he thinks you will like, that these +things must be so. Those who do not know will not be persuaded till they +have lived there. The Overseas Club puts up its collective nose +scornfully when it hears of the New and Regenerate Japan sprung to life +since the 'seventies. It grins, with shame be it written, at an Imperial +Diet modelled on the German plan and a Code Napoléon à la Japonaise. It +is so far behind the New Era as to doubt that an Oriental country, +ridden by etiquette of the sternest, and social distinctions almost as +hard as those of caste, can be turned out to Western gauge in the +compass of a very young man's life. And it _must_ be prejudiced, because +it is daily and hourly in contact with the Japanese, except when it can +do business with the Chinaman whom it prefers. Was there ever so +disgraceful a club! + +Just at present, a crisis, full blown as a chrysanthemum, has developed +in the Imperial Diet. Both Houses accuse the Government of improper +interference--this Japanese for 'plenty stick and some bank-note'--at +the recent elections. They then did what was equivalent to passing a +vote of censure on the Ministry and refusing to vote government +measures. So far the wildest advocate of representative government could +have desired nothing better. Afterwards, things took a distinctly +Oriental turn. The Ministry refused to resign, and the Mikado prorogued +the Diet for a week to think things over. The Japanese papers are now at +issue over the event. Some say that representative government implies +party government, and others swear at large. The Overseas Club says for +the most part--'Skittles!' + +It is a picturesque situation--one that suggests romances and +extravaganzas. Thus, imagine a dreaming Court intrenched behind a triple +line of moats where the lotus blooms in summer--a Court whose outer +fringe is aggressively European, but whose heart is Japan of long ago, +where a dreaming King sits among some wives or other things, amused from +time to time with magic-lantern shows and performing fleas--a holy King +whose sanctity is used to conjure with, and who twice a year gives +garden-parties where every one must come in top-hat and frock coat. +Round this Court, wavering between the splendours of the sleeping and +the variety shows of the Crystal Palace, place in furious but +carefully-veiled antagonism the fragments of newly shattered castes, +their natural Oriental eccentricities overlaid with borrowed Western +notions. Imagine now, a large and hungry bureaucracy, French in its +fretful insistence on detail where detail is of no earthly moment, +Oriental in its stress on etiquette and punctillo, recruited from a +military caste accustomed for ages past to despise alike farmer and +trader. This caste, we will suppose, is more or less imperfectly +controlled by a syndicate of three clans, which supply their own +nominees to the Ministry. These are adroit, versatile, and unscrupulous +men, hampered by no western prejudice in favour of carrying any plan to +completion. Through and at the bidding of these men, the holy Monarch +acts; and the acts are wonderful. To criticise these acts exists a +wild-cat Press, liable to suppression at any moment, as morbidly +sensitive to outside criticism as the American, and almost as childishly +untruthful, fungoid in the swiftness of its growth, and pitiable in its +unseasoned rashness. Backers of this press in its wilder moments, +lawless, ignorant, sensitive and vain, are the student class, educated +in the main at Government expense, and a thorn in the side of the State. +Judges without training handle laws without precedents, and new measures +are passed and abandoned with almost inconceivable levity. Out of the +welter of classes and interests that are not those of the common folk is +evolved the thing called Japanese policy that has the proportion and the +perspective of a Japanese picture. + +Finality and stability are absent from its councils. To-day, for reasons +none can explain, it is pro-foreign to the verge of servility. +To-morrow, for reasons equally obscure, the pendulum swings back, +and--the students are heaving mud at the foreigners in the streets. +Vexatious, irresponsible, incoherent, and, above all, cheaply +mysterious, is the rule of the land--stultified by intrigue and +counter-intrigue, chequered with futile reforms begun on European lines +and light-heartedly thrown aside; studded, as a bower-bird's run is +studded with shells and shining pebbles, with plagiarisms from half the +world--an operetta of administration, wherein the shadow of the King +among his wives, Samurai policemen, doctors who have studied under +Pasteur, kid-gloved cavalry officers from St. Cyr, judges with +University degrees, harlots with fiddles, newspaper correspondents, +masters of the ancient ceremonies of the land, paid members of the Diet, +secret societies that borrow the knife and the dynamite of the Irish, +sons of dispossessed Daimios returned from Europe and waiting for what +may turn up, with ministers of the syndicate who have wrenched Japan +from her repose of twenty years ago, circle, flicker, shift, and reform, +in bewildering rings, round the foreign resident. Is the extravaganza +complete? + +Somewhere in the background of the stage are the people of the land--of +whom a very limited proportion enjoy the privileges of representative +government. Whether in the past few years they have learned what the +thing means, or, learning, have the least intention of making any use of +it, is not clear. Meantime, the game of government goes forward as +merrily as a game of puss-in-the-corner, with the additional joy that +not more than half-a-dozen men know who is controlling it or what in +the wide world it intends to do. In Tokio live the steadily-diminishing +staff of Europeans employed by the Emperor as engineers, railway +experts, professors in the colleges and so forth. Before many years they +will all be dispensed with, and the country will set forth among the +nations alone and on its own responsibility. + +In fifty years then, from the time that the intrusive American first +broke her peace, Japan will experience her new birth and, reorganised +from sandal to top-knot, play the _samisen_ in the march of modern +progress. This is the great advantage of being born into the New Era, +when individual and community alike can get something for nothing--pay +without work, education without effort, religion without thought, and +free government without slow and bitter toil. + +The Overseas Club, as has been said, is behind the spirit of the age. It +has to work for what it gets, and it does not always get what it works +for. Nor can its members take ship and go home when they please. Imagine +for a little, the contented frame of mind that is bred in a man by the +perpetual contemplation of a harbour full of steamers as a Piccadilly +cab-rank of hansoms. The weather is hot, we will suppose; something has +gone wrong with his work that day, or his children are not looking so +well as might be. Pretty tiled bungalows, bowered in roses and wistaria, +do not console him, and the voices of the politest people on earth jar +sorely. He knows every soul in the club, has thoroughly talked out +every subject of interest, and would give half a year's--oh, five +years'--pay for one lung-filling breath of air that has life in it, one +sniff of the haying grass, or half a mile of muddy London street where +the muffin bell tinkles in the four o'clock fog. Then the big liner +moves out across the staring blue of the bay. So-and-so and such-an-one, +both friends, are going home in her, and some one else goes next week by +the French mail. He, and he alone, it seems to him, must stay on; and it +is so maddeningly easy to go--for every one save himself. The boat's +smoke dies out along the horizon, and he is left alone with the warm +wind and the white dust of the Bund. Now Japan is a good place, a place +that men swear by and live in for thirty years at a stretch. There are +China ports a week's sail to the westward where life is really hard, and +where the sight of the restless shipping hurts very much indeed. +Tourists and you who travel the world over, be very gentle to the men of +the Overseas Clubs. Remember that, unlike yourselves, they have not come +here for the good of their health, and that the return ticket in your +wallet may possibly colour your views of their land. Perhaps it would +not be altogether wise on the strength of much kindness from Japanese +officials to recommend that these your countrymen be handed over lock, +stock, and barrel to a people that are beginning to experiment with +fresh-drafted half-grafted codes which do not include juries, to a +system that does not contemplate a free Press, to a suspicious +absolutism from which there is no appeal. Truly, it might be +interesting, but as surely it would begin in farce and end in tragedy, +that would leave the politest people on earth in no case to play at +civilised government for a long time to come. In his concession, where +he is an apologetic and much sat-upon importation, the foreign resident +does no harm. He does not always sue for money due to him on the part of +a Japanese. Once outside those limits, free to move into the heart of +the country, it would only be a question of time as to where and when +the trouble would begin. And in the long run it would not be the foreign +resident that would suffer. The imaginative eye can see the most +unpleasant possibilities, from a general overrunning of Japan by the +Chinaman, who is far the most important foreign resident, to the +shelling of Tokio by a joyous and bounding Democracy, anxious to +vindicate her national honour and to learn how her newly-made navy +works. + +But there are scores of arguments that would confute and overwhelm this +somewhat gloomy view. The statistics of Japan, for instance, are as +beautiful and fit as neatly as the woodwork of her houses. By these it +would be possible to prove anything. + + + + +SOME EARTHQUAKES + + +A Radical Member of Parliament at Tokio has just got into trouble with +his constituents, and they have sent him a priceless letter of reproof. +Among other things they point out that a politician should not be 'a +waterweed which wobbles hither and thither according to the motion of +the stream.' Nor should he 'like a ghost without legs drift along before +the wind.' 'Your conduct,' they say, 'has been both of a waterweed and a +ghost, and we purpose in a little time to give you proof of our true +Japanese spirit.' That member will very likely be mobbed in his +'rickshaw and prodded to inconvenience with sword-sticks; for the +constituencies are most enlightened. But how in the world can a man +under these skies behave except as a waterweed and a ghost? It is in the +air--the wobble and the legless drift An energetic tourist would have +gone to Hakodate, seen Ainos at Sapporo, ridden across the northern +island under the gigantic thistles, caught salmon, looked in at +Vladivostock, and done half a hundred things in the time that one lazy +loafer has wasted watching the barley turn from green to gold, the +azaleas blossom and burn out, and the spring give way to the warm rains +of summer. Now the iris has taken up the blazonry of the year, and the +tide of the tourists ebbs westward. + +The permanent residents are beginning to talk of hill places to go to +for the hot weather, and all the available houses in the resort are let. +In a little while the men from China will be coming over for their +holidays, but just at present we are in the thick of the tea season, and +there is no time to waste on frivolities. 'Packing' is a valid excuse +for anything, from forgetting a dinner to declining a tennis party, and +the tempers of husbands are judged leniently. All along the sea face is +an inspiring smell of the finest new-mown hay, and canals are full of +boats loaded up with the boxes jostling down to the harbour. At the club +men say rude things about the arrivals of the mail. There never was a +post-office yet that did not rejoice in knocking a man's Sabbath into +flinders. A fair office day's work may begin at eight and end at six, +or, if the mail comes in, at midnight. There is no overtime or +eight-hours' baby-talk in tea. Yonder are the ships; here is the stuff, +and behind all is the American market. The rest is your own affair. + +The narrow streets are blocked with the wains bringing down, in boxes of +every shape and size, the up-country rough leaf. Some one must take +delivery of these things, find room for them in the packed warehouse, +and sample them before they are blended and go to the firing. + +More than half the elaborate processes are 'lost work' so far as the +quality of the stuff goes; but the markets insist on a good-looking +leaf, with polish, face and curl to it, and in this, as in other +businesses, the call of the markets is the law. The factory floors are +made slippery with the tread of bare-footed coolies, who shout as the +tea whirls through its transformations. The over-note to the clamour--an +uncanny thing too--is the soft rustle-down of the tea itself--stacked in +heaps, carried in baskets, dumped through chutes, rising and falling in +the long troughs where it is polished, and disappearing at last into the +heart of the firing-machine--always this insistent whisper of moving +dead leaves. Steam-sieves sift it into grades, with jarrings and +thumpings that make the floor quiver, and the thunder of steam-gear is +always at its heels; but it continues to mutter unabashed till it is +riddled down into the big, foil-lined boxes and lies at peace. + +A few days ago the industry suffered a check which, lasting not more +than two minutes, lost several hundred pounds of hand-fired tea. It was +something after this way. Into the stillness of a hot, stuffy morning +came an unpleasant noise as of batteries of artillery charging up all +the roads together, and at least one bewildered sleeper waking saw his +empty boots where they 'sat and played toccatas stately at the +clavicord.' It was the washstand really but the effect was awful. Then a +clock fell and a wall cracked, and heavy hands caught the house by the +roof-pole and shook it furiously. To preserve an equal mind when things +are hard is good, but he who has not fumbled desperately at bolted +jalousies that will not open while a whole room is being tossed in a +blanket does not know how hard it is to find any sort of mind at all. +The end of the terror was inadequate--a rush into the still, heavy +outside air, only to find the servants in the garden giggling (the +Japanese would giggle through the Day of Judgment) and to learn that the +earthquake was over. Then came the news, swift borne from the business +quarters below the hill, that the coolies of certain factories had fled +shrieking at the first shock, and that all the tea in the pans was +burned to a crisp. That, certainly, was some consolation for undignified +panic; and there remained the hope that a few tall chimneys up the line +at Tokio would have collapsed. They stood firm, however, and the local +papers, used to this kind of thing, merely spoke of the shock as +'severe.' Earthquakes are demoralising; but they bring out all the +weaknesses of human nature. First is downright dread; the stage +of--'only let me get into the open and I'll reform,' then the impulse to +send news of the most terrible shock of modern times flying east and +west among the cables. (Did not your own hair stand straight on end, +and, therefore, must not everybody else's have done likewise?) Last, as +fallen humanity picks itself together, comes the cry of the mean little +soul: 'What! Was _that_ all? I wasn't frightened from the beginning.' + +It is wholesome and tonic to realise the powerlessness of man in the +face of these little accidents. The heir of all the ages, the +annihilator of time and space, who politely doubts the existence of his +Maker, hears the roof-beams crack and strain above him, and scuttles +about like a rabbit in a stoppered warren. If the shock endures for +twenty minutes, the annihilator of time and space must camp out under +the blue and hunt for his dead among the rubbish. Given a violent +convulsion (only just such a slipping of strata as carelessly piled +volumes will accomplish in a book-case) and behold, the heir of all the +ages is stark, raving mad--a brute among the dishevelled hills. Set a +hundred of the world's greatest spirits, men of fixed principles, high +aims, resolute endeavour, enormous experience, and the modesty that +these attributes bring--set them to live through such a catastrophe as +that which wiped out Nagoya last October, and at the end of three days +there would remain few whose souls might be called their own. + +So much for yesterday's shock. To-day there has come another; and a most +comprehensive affair it is. It has broken nothing, unless maybe an old +heart or two cracks later on; and the wise people in the settlement are +saying that they predicted it from the first. None the less as an +earthquake it deserves recording. + +It was a very rainy afternoon; all the streets were full of gruelly mud, +and all the business men were at work in their offices when it began. A +knot of Chinamen were studying a closed door from whose further side +came a most unpleasant sound of bolting and locking up. The notice on +the door was interesting. With deep regret did the manager of the New +Oriental Banking Corporation, Limited (most decidedly limited), announce +that on telegraphic orders from home he had suspended payment. Said one +Chinaman to another in pidgin-Japanese: 'It is shut,' and went away. The +noise of barring up continued, the rain fell, and the notice stared down +the wet street. That was all. There must have been two or three men +passing by to whom the announcement meant the loss of every penny of +their savings--comforting knowledge to digest after tiffin. In London, +of course, the failure would not mean so much; there are many banks in +the City, and people would have had warning. Here banks are few, people +are dependent on them, and this news came out of the sea unheralded, an +evil born with all its teeth. + +After the crash of a bursting shell every one who can picks himself up, +brushes the dirt off his uniform, and tries to make a joke of it. Then +some one whips a handkerchief round his hand--a splinter has torn +it--and another finds warm streaks running down his forehead. Then a +man, overlooked till now and past help, groans to the death. Everybody +perceives with a start that this is no time for laughter, and the dead +and wounded are attended to. + +Even so at the Overseas Club when the men got out of office. The brokers +had told them the news. In filed the English, and Americans, and +Germans, and French, and 'Here's a pretty mess!' they said one and all. +Many of them were hit, but, like good men, they did not say how +severely. + +'Ah!' said a little P. and O. official, wagging his head sagaciously (he +had lost a thousand dollars since noon), 'it's all right _now_. They're +trying to make the best of it. In three or four days we shall hear more +about it. I meant to draw my money just before I went down coast, +but----' Curiously enough, it was the same story throughout the Club. +Everybody had intended to withdraw, and nearly everybody had--not done +so. The manager of a bank which had _not_ failed was explaining how, in +his opinion, the crash had come about. This was also very human. It +helped none. Entered a lean American, throwing back his waterproof all +dripping with the rain; his face was calm and peaceful. 'Boy, whisky and +soda,' he said. + +'How much haf you losd?' said a Teuton bluntly. 'Eight-fifty,' replied +the son of George Washington sweetly. 'Don't see how that prevents me +having a drink. My glass, sirr.' He continued an interrupted whistling +of 'I owe ten dollars to O'Grady' (which he very probably did), and his +countenance departed not from its serenity. If there is anything that +one loves an American for it is the way he stands certain kinds of +punishment. An Englishman and a heavy loser was being chaffed by a +Scotchman whose account at the Japan end of the line had been a trifle +overdrawn. True, he would lose in England, but the thought of the few +dollars saved here cheered him. + +More men entered, sat down by tables, stood in groups, or remained +apart by themselves, thinking with knit brows. One must think quickly +when one's bills are falling due. The murmur of voices thickened, and +there was no rumbling in the skittle alley to interrupt it. Everybody +knows everybody else at the Overseas Club, and everybody sympathises. A +man passed stiffly and some one of a group turned to ask lightly, 'Hit, +old man?' 'Like hell,' he said, and went on biting his unlit cigar. +Another man was telling, slowly and somewhat bitterly, how he had +expected one of his children to join him out here, and how the passage +had been paid with a draft on the O.B.C. But now ... _There_, ladies and +gentlemen, is where it hurts, this little suspension out here. It +destroys plans, pretty ones hoped for and prayed over, maybe for years; +it knocks pleasant domestic arrangements galleywest over and above all +the mere ruin that it causes. The curious thing in the talk was that +there was no abuse of the bank. The men were in the Eastern trade +themselves and they knew. It was the Yokohama manager and the clerks +thrown out of employment (connection with a broken bank, by the way, +goes far to ruin a young man's prospects) for whom they were sorry. +'We're doing ourselves well this year,' said a wit grimly. 'One +free-shooting case, one thundering libel case, and a bank smash. Showing +off pretty before the globe-trotters, aren't we?' + +'Gad, think of the chaps at sea with letters of credit. Eh? They'll land +and get the best rooms at the hotels and find they're penniless,' said +another. + +'Never mind the globe-trotters,' said a third. 'Look nearer home. This +does for so-and-so, and so-and-so, and so-and-so, all old men; and every +penny of theirs goes.' Poor devils!' + +'That reminds me of some one else,' said yet another voice, '_His_ +wife's at home, too. Whew!' and he whistled drearily. So did the tide of +voices run on till men got to talking over the chances of a dividend, +'They went to the Bank of England,' drawled an American, 'and the Bank +of England let them down; said their securities weren't good enough.' + +'Great Scott!'--a hand came down on a table to emphasise the remark--'I +sailed half way up the Mediterranean once with a Bank of England +director; wish I'd tipped him over the rail and lowered him a boat on +his own security--if it was good enough.' + +'Baring's goes. The O.B.C. don't,' replied the American, blowing smoke +through his nose. 'This business looks de-ci-ded-ly prob-le-mat-i-cal. +What-at?' + +'Oh, they'll pay the depositors in full. Don't you fret,' said a man who +had lost nothing and was anxious to console. + +'I'm a shareholder,' said the American, and smoked on. + +The rain continued to fall, and the umbrellas dripped in the racks, and +the wet men came and went, circling round the central fact that it was a +bad business, till the day, as was most fit, shut down in drizzling +darkness. There was a refreshing sense of brotherhood in misfortunes in +the little community that had just been electrocuted and did not want +any more shocks. All the pain that in England would be taken home to be +borne in silence and alone was here bulked, as it were, and faced in +line of company. Surely the Christians of old must have fought much +better when they met the lions by fifties at a time. + +At last the men departed; the bachelors to cast up accounts by +themselves (there should be some good ponies for sale shortly) and the +married men to take counsel. May heaven help him whose wife does not +stand by him now! But the women of the Overseas settlements are as +thorough as the men. There will be tears for plans forgone, the changing +of the little ones' schools and elder children's careers, unpleasant +letters to be written home, and more unpleasant ones to be received from +relatives who 'told you so from the first.' There will be pinchings too, +and straits of which the outside world will know nothing, but the women +will pull it through smiling. + +Beautiful indeed are the operations of modern finance--especially when +anything goes wrong with the machine. To-night there will be trouble in +India among the Ceylon planters, the Calcutta jute and the Bombay +cotton-brokers, besides the little households of small banked savings. +In Hongkong, Singapore, and Shanghai there will be trouble too, and +goodness only knows what wreck at Cheltenham, Bath, St. Leonards, +Torquay, and the other camps of the retired Army officers. They are +lucky in England who know what happens when it happens, but here the +people are at the wrong end of the cables, and the situation is not +good. Only one thing seems certain. There is a notice on a shut door, in +the wet, and by virtue of that notice all the money that was theirs +yesterday is gone away, and it may never come back again. So all the +work that won the money must be done over again; but some of the people +are old, and more are tired, and all are disheartened. It is a very +sorrowful little community that goes to bed to-night, and there must be +as sad ones the world over. Let it be written, however, that of the +sections under fire here (and some are cruelly hit) no man whined, or +whimpered, or broke down. There was no chance of fighting. It was bitter +defeat, but they took it standing. + + + + +HALF-A-DOZEN PICTURES + + +'Some men when they grow rich, store pictures in a gallery,' Living, +their friends envy them, and after death the genuineness of the +collection is disputed under the dispersing hammer. + +A better way is to spread your picture over all earth; visiting them as +Fate allows. Then none can steal or deface, nor any reverse of fortune +force a sale; sunshine and tempest warm and ventilate the gallery for +nothing, and--in spite of all that has been said of her +crudeness--Nature is not altogether a bad frame-maker. The knowledge +that you may never live to see an especial treasure twice teaches the +eyes to see quickly while the light lasts; and the possession of such a +gallery breeds a very fine contempt for painted shows and the smeary +things that are called pictures. + +In the North Pacific, to the right hand as you go westward, hangs a +small study of no particular value as compared with some others. The +mist is down on an oily stretch of washed-out sea; through the mist the +bats-wings of a sealing schooner are just indicated. In the foreground, +all but leaping out of the frame, an open rowboat, painted the rawest +blue and white, rides up over the shoulder of a swell. A man in +blood-red jersey and long boots, all shining with moisture, stands at +the bows holding up the carcase of a silver-bellied sea-otter from whose +pelt the wet drips in moonstones. Now the artist who could paint the +silver wash of the mist, the wriggling treacly reflection of the boat, +and the raw red wrists of the man would be something of a workman. + +But my gallery is in no danger of being copied at present. Three years +since, I met an artist in the stony bed of a brook, between a line of +300 graven, lichened godlings and a flaming bank of azaleas, swearing +horribly. He had been trying to paint one of my pictures--nothing more +than a big water-worn rock tufted with flowers and a snow-capped hill +for background. Most naturally he failed, because there happened to be +absolutely no perspective in the thing, and he was pulling the lines +about to make some for home consumption. No man can put the contents of +a gallon jar into a pint mug. The protests of all uncomfortably-crowded +mugs since the world began have settled that long ago, and have given us +the working theories, devised by imperfect instruments for imperfect +instruments, which are called Rules of Art. + +Luckily, those who painted my gallery were born before man. Therefore, +my pictures, instead of being boxed up by lumbering bars of gold, are +disposed generously between latitudes, equinoxes, monsoons, and the +like, and, making all allowance for an owner's partiality, they are +really not so bad. + +'Down in the South where the ships never go'--between the heel of New +Zealand and the South Pole, there is a sea-piece showing a steamer +trying to come round in the trough of a big beam sea. The wet light of +the day's end comes more from the water than the sky, and the waves are +colourless through the haze of the rain, all but two or three blind +sea-horses swinging out of the mist on the ship's dripping weather side. +A lamp is lighted in the wheel-house; so one patch of yellow light falls +on the green-painted pistons of the steering gear as they snatch up the +rudder-chains. A big sea has got home. Her stern flies up in the lather +of a freed screw, and her deck from poop to the break of the foc's'le +goes under in gray-green water level as a mill-race except where it +spouts up above the donkey-engine and the stored derrick-booms. Forward +there is nothing but this glare; aft, the interrupted wake drives far to +leeward, a cut kite-string dropped across the seas. The sole thing that +has any rest in the turmoil is the jewelled, unwinking eye of an +albatross, who is beating across wind leisurely and unconcerned, almost +within hand's touch. It is the monstrous egotism of that eye that makes +the picture. By all the rules of art there should be a lighthouse or a +harbour pier in the background to show that everything will end happily. +But there is not, and the red eye does not care whether the thing +beneath its still wings stays or staves. + +The sister-panel hangs in the Indian Ocean and tells a story, but is +none the worse for that. Here you have hot tropical sunlight and a +foreshore clothed in stately palms running out into a still and steamy +sea burnished steel blue. Along the foreshore, questing as a wounded +beast quests for lair, hurries a loaded steamer never built for speed. +Consequently, she tears and threshes the water to pieces, and piles it +under her nose and cannot put it under her cleanly. Coir-coloured cargo +bales are stacked round both masts, and her decks are crammed and +double-crammed with dark-skinned passengers--from the foc's'le where +they interfere with the crew to the stern where they hamper the wheel. + +The funnel is painted blue on yellow, giving her a holiday air, a little +out of keeping with the yellow and black cholera flag at her main. She +dare not stop; she must not communicate with any one. There are leprous +streaks of lime-wash trickling down her plates for a sign of this. So +she threshes on down the glorious coast, she and her swarming +passengers, with the sickness that destroyeth in the noonday eating out +her heart. + +Yet another, the pick of all the East rooms, before we have done with +blue water. Most of the nations of the earth are at issue under a +stretch of white awning above a crowded deck. The cause of the dispute, +a deep copper bowl full of rice and fried onions, is upset in the +foreground. Malays, Lascars, Hindus, Chinese, Japanese, Burmans--the +whole gamut of racetints, from saffron to tar-black--are twisting and +writhing round it, while their vermilion, cobalt, amber, and emerald +turbans and head-cloths are lying underfoot. Pressed against the yellow +ochre of the iron bulwarks to left and right are frightened women and +children in turquoise and isabella-coloured clothes. They are half +protected by mounds of upset bedding, straw mats, red lacquer boxes, and +plaited bamboo trunks, mixed up with tin plates, brass and copper +_hukas_, silver opium pipes, Chinese playing cards, and properties +enough to drive half-a-dozen artists wild. In the centre of the crowd of +furious half-naked men, the fat bare back of a Burman, tattooed from +collar-bone to waist-cloth with writhing patterns of red and blue +devils, holds the eye first. It is a wicked back. Beyond it is the +flicker of a Malay _kris_. A blue, red, and yellow macaw chained to a +stanchion spreads his wings against the sun in an ecstasy of terror. +Half-a-dozen red-gold pines and bananas have been knocked down from +their ripening-places, and are lying between the feet of the fighters. +One pine has rolled against the long brown fur of a muzzled bear. His +owner, a bushy-bearded Hindu, kneels over the animal, his body-cloth +thrown clear of a hard brown arm, his fingers ready to loose the +muzzle-strap. The ship's cook, in blood-stained white, watches from the +butcher's shop, and a black Zanzibari stoker grins through the bars of +the engine-room-hatch, one ray of sun shining straight into his pink +mouth. The officer of the watch, a red-whiskered man, is kneeling down +on the bridge to peer through the railings, and is shifting a long, thin +black revolver from his left hand to his right. The faithful sunlight +that puts everything into place, gives his whiskers and the hair on the +back of his tanned wrist just the colour of the copper pot, the bear's +fur and the trampled pines. For the rest, there is the blue sea beyond +the awnings. + +Three years' hard work, beside the special knowledge of a lifetime, +would be needed to copy--even to copy--this picture. Mr. So-and-so, +R.A., could undoubtedly draw the bird; Mr. Such-another (equally R.A.) +the bear; and scores of gentlemen the still life; but who would be the +man to pull the whole thing together and make it the riotous, tossing +cataract of colour and life that it is? And when it was done, some +middle-aged person from the provinces, who had never seen a pineapple +out of a plate, or a _kris_ out of the South Kensington, would say that +it did not remind him of something that it ought to remind him of, and +therefore that it was bad. If the gallery could be bequeathed to the +nation, something might, perhaps, be gained, but the nation would +complain of the draughts and the absence of chairs. But no matter. In +another world we shall see certain gentlemen set to tickle the backs of +Circe's swine through all eternity. Also, they will have to tickle with +their bare hands. + +The Japanese rooms, visited and set in order for the second time, hold +more pictures than could be described in a month; but most of them are +small and, excepting always the light, within human compass. One, +however, might be difficult. It was an unexpected gift, picked up in a +Tokio bye-street after dark. Half the town was out for a walk, and all +the people's clothes were indigo, and so were the shadows, and most of +the paper-lanterns were drops of blood red. By the light of smoking +oil-lamps people were selling flowers and shrubs--wicked little dwarf +pines, stunted peach and plum trees, wisteria bushes clipped and twisted +out of all likeness to wholesome plants, leaning and leering out of +green-glaze pots. In the flickering of the yellow flames, these forced +cripples and the yellow faces above them reeled to and fro fantastically +all together. As the light steadied they would return to the pretence of +being green things till a puff of the warm night wind among the flares +set the whole line off again in a crazy dance of dwergs, their shadows +capering on the house fronts behind them. + +At a corner of a street, some rich men had got together and left +unguarded all the gold, diamonds, and rubies of the East; but when you +came near you saw that this treasure was only a gathering of goldfish in +glass globes--yellow, white, and red fish, with from three to five +forked tails apiece and eyes that bulged far beyond their heads. There +were wooden pans full of tiny ruby fish, and little children with nets +dabbled and shrieked in chase of some special beauty, and the frightened +fish kicked up showers of little pearls with their tails. The children +carried lanterns in the shape of small red paper fish bobbing at the end +of slivers of bamboo, and these drifted through the crowd like a strayed +constellation of baby stars. When the children stood at the edge of a +canal and called down to unseen friends in boats the pink lights were +all reflected orderly below. The light of the thousand small lights in +the street went straight up into the darkness among the interlacing +telegraph wires, and just at the edge of the shining haze, on a sort of +pigeon-trap, forty feet above ground, sat a Japanese fireman, wrapped up +in his cloak, keeping watch against fires. He looked unpleasantly like a +Bulgarian atrocity or a Burmese 'deviation from the laws of humanity,' +being very still and all huddled up in his roost. That was a superb +picture and it arranged itself to admiration. Now, disregarding these +things and others--wonders and miracles all--men are content to sit in +studios and, by light that is not light, to fake subjects from pots and +pans and rags and bricks that are called 'pieces of colour.' Their +collection of rubbish costs in the end quite as much as a ticket, a +first-class one, to new worlds where the 'props' are given away with the +sunshine. To do anything because it is, or may not be, new on the market +is wickedness that carries its own punishment; but surely there must be +things in this world paintable other and beyond those that lie between +the North Cape, say, and Algiers. For the sake of the pictures, putting +aside the dear delight of the gamble, it might be worth while to +venture out a little beyond the regular circle of subjects and--see what +happens. If a man can draw one thing, it has been said, he can draw +anything. At the most he can but fail, and there are several matters in +the world worse than failure. Betting on a certainty, for instance, or +playing with nicked cards is immoral, and secures expulsion from clubs. +Keeping deliberately to one set line of work because you know you can do +it and are certain to get money by so doing is, on the other hand, +counted a virtue, and secures admission to clubs. There must be a middle +way somewhere, as there must be somewhere an unmarried man with no +position, reputation, or other vanity to lose, who most keenly wants to +find out what his palette is set for in this life. He will pack his +steamer-trunk and get into the open to wrestle with effects that he can +never reproduce. All the same his will be a superb failure. + + + + +'CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS' + +From Yokohama to Montreal is a long day's journey, and the forepart is +uninviting. In three voyages out of five, the North Pacific, too big to +lie altogether idle, too idle to get hands about the business of a +storm, sulks and smokes like a chimney; the passengers fresh from Japan +heat wither in the chill, and a clammy dew distils from the rigging. +That gray monotony of sea is not at all homelike, being as yet new and +not used to the procession of keels. It holds a very few pictures and +the best of its stories--those relating to seal-poaching among the +Kuriles and the Russian rookeries--are not exactly fit for publication. +There is a man in Yokohama who in a previous life burned galleons with +Drake. He is a gentleman adventurer of the largest and most +resourceful--by instinct a carver of kingdoms, a ruler of men on the +high seas, and an inveterate gambler against Death. Because he supplies +nothing more than sealskins to the wholesale dealers at home, the fame +of his deeds, his brilliant fights, his more brilliant escapes, and his +most brilliant strategy will be lost among sixty-ton schooners, or told +only in the mouths of drunken seamen whom none believe. Now there sits +a great spirit under the palm trees of the Navigator Group, a thousand +leagues to the south, and he, crowned with roses and laurels, strings +together the pearls of those parts. When he has done with this down +there perhaps he will turn to the Smoky Seas and the Wonderful +Adventures of Captain--. Then there will be a tale to listen to. + +But the first touch of dry land makes the sea and all upon it unreal. +Five minutes after the traveller is on the C.P.R, train at Vancouver +there is no romance of blue water, but another kind--the life of the +train into which he comes to grow as into life aboard ship. A week on +wheels turns a man into a part of the machine. He knows when the train +will stop to water, wait for news of the trestle ahead, drop the +dining-car, slip into a siding to let the West-bound mail go by, or yell +through the thick night for an engine to help push up the bank. The +snort, the snap and whine of the air-brakes have a meaning for him, and +he learns to distinguish between noises--between the rattle of a +loose lamp and the ugly rattle of small stones on a scarped +embankment--between the 'Hoot! toot!' that scares wandering cows from +the line, and the dry roar of the engine at the distance-signal. In +England the railway came late into a settled country fenced round with +the terrors of the law, and it has remained ever since just a little +outside daily life--a thing to be respected. Here it strolls along, with +its hands in its pockets and a straw in its mouth, on the heels of the +rough-hewn trail or log road--a platformless, regulationless necessity; +and it is treated even by sick persons and young children with a +familiarity that sometimes affects the death-rate. There was a small +maiden aged seven, who honoured our smoking compartment with her +presence when other excitements failed, and it was she that said to the +conductor, 'When do we change crews? I want to pick water-lilies--yellow +ones.' A mere halt she knew would not suffice for her needs; but the +regular fifteen-minute stop, when the red-painted tool-chest was taken +off the rear car and a new gang came aboard. The big man bent down to +little Impudence--'Want to pick lilies, eh? What would you do if the +cars went on and took mama away, Sis?' 'Take the, next train,' she +replied, 'and tell the conductor to send me to Brooklyn. I live there.' +'But s'pose he wouldn't?' 'He'd have to,' said Young America. 'I'd be a +lost child.' + +Now, from the province of Alberta to Brooklyn, U.S.A., may be three +thousand miles. A great stretch of that distance is as new as the day +before yesterday, and strewn with townships in every stage of growth +from the city of one round house, two log huts, and a Chinese camp +somewhere in the foot-hills of the Selkirks, to Winnipeg with her +league-long main street and her warring newspapers. Just at present +there is an epidemic of politics in Manitoba, and brass bands and +notices of committee meetings are splashed about the towns. By reason +of their closeness to the Stages they have caught the contagion of +foul-mouthedness, and accusations of bribery, corruption, and +evil-living are many. It is sweet to find a little baby-city, with only +three men in it who can handle type, cursing and swearing across the +illimitable levels for all the world as though it were a grown-up +Christian centre. + +All the new towns have their own wants to consider, and the first of +these is a railway. If the town is on a line already, then a new line to +tap the back country; but at all costs a line. For this it will sell its +corrupted soul, and then be very indignant because the railway before +which it has grovelled rides rough-shod over the place. + +Each new town believes itself to be a possible Winnipeg until the +glamour of the thing is a little worn off, and the local paper, sliding +down the pole of Pride with the hind legs of despair, says defiantly: +'At least, a veterinary surgeon and a drug store would meet with +encouragement in our midst, and it is a fact that five new buildings +have been erected in our midst since the spring.' From a distance +nothing is easier than to smile at this sort of thing, but he must have +a cool head who can keep his pulse level when just such a wildcat +town--ten houses, two churches, and a line of rails--gets 'on the boom,' +The reader at home says, 'Yes, but it's all a lie.' It may be, but--did +men lie about Denver, Leadville, Ballarat, Broken Hill, Portland, or +Winnipeg twenty years ago--or Adelaide when town lots went begging +within the memory of middle-aged men? Did they lie about Vancouver six +years since, or Creede not twenty months gone? Hardly; and it is just +this knowledge that leads the passer-by to give ear to the wildest +statements of the wildest towns. Anything is possible, especially among +the Rockies where the minerals lie over and above the mining towns, the +centres of ranching country, and the supply towns to the farming +districts. There are literally scores upon scores of lakelets in the +hills, buried in woods now, that before twenty years are run will be +crowded summer resorts. You in England have no idea of what 'summering' +means in the States, and less of the amount of money that is spent on +the yearly holiday. People have no more than just begun to discover the +place called the Banff Hot Springs, two days west of Winnipeg.[1] In a +little time they will know half-a-dozen spots not a day's ride from +Montreal, and it is along that line that money will be made. In those +days, too, wheat will be grown for the English market four hundred miles +north of the present fields on the west side; and British Columbia, +perhaps the loveliest land in the world next to New Zealand, will have +her own line of six thousand ton steamers to Australia, and the British +investor will no longer throw away his money on hellicat South American +republics, or give it as a hostage to the States. He will keep it in the +family as a wise man should. Then the towns that are to-day the only +names in the wilderness, yes, and some of those places marked on the map +as Hudson Bay Ports, will be cities, because--but it is hopeless to make +people understand that actually and indeed, we _do_ possess an Empire of +which Canada is only one portion--an Empire which is not bounded by +election-returns on the North and Eastbourne riots on the South--an +Empire that has not yet been scratched. + +[Footnote 1: See pp. 187-188.] + +Let us return to the new towns. Three times within one year did fortune +come knocking to the door of a man I know. Once at Seattle, when that +town was a gray blur after a fire; once at Tacoma, in the days when the +steam-tram ran off the rails twice a week; and once at Spokane Falls. +But in the roar of the land-boom he did not hear her, and she went away +leaving him only a tenderness akin to weakness for all new towns, and a +desire, mercifully limited by lack of money, to gamble in every one of +them. Of all the excitements that life offers there are few to be +compared with the whirl of a red-hot boom; also it is strictly moral, +because you _do_ fairly earn your 'unearned increment' by labour and +perspiration and sitting up far into the night--by working like a fiend, +as all pioneers must do. And consider all that is in it! The headlong +stampede to the new place; the money dashed down like counters for +merest daily bread; the arrival of the piled cars whence the raw +material of a city--men, lumber, and shingle--are shot on to the not yet +nailed platform; the slashing out and pegging down of roads across the +blank face of the wilderness; the heaving up amid shouts and yells of +the city's one electric light--a raw sizzling arc atop of an unbarked +pine pole; the sweating, jostling mob at the sale of town-lots; the roar +of 'Let the woman have it!' that stops all bidding when the one other +woman in the place puts her price on a plot; the packed real-estate +offices; the real-estate agents themselves, lost novelists of prodigious +imagination; the gorgeous pink and blue map of the town, hung up in the +bar-room, with every railroad from Portland to Portland meeting in its +heart; the misspelled curse against 'this dam hole in the ground' +scrawled on the flank of a strayed freight-car by some man who had lost +his money and gone away; the conferences at street corners of syndicates +six hours established by men not twenty-five years old; the outspoken +contempt for the next town, also 'on the boom,' and, therefore, utterly +vile; the unceasing tramp of heavy feet on the board pavement, where +stranger sometimes turns on stranger in an agony of conviction, and, +shaking him by the shoulder, shouts in his ear, 'By G--d! Isn't it +grand? Isn't it glorious? 'and last, the sleep of utterly worn-out men, +three in each room of the shanty hotel: 'All meals two dollars. All +drinks thirty-five cents. No washing done here. The manager not +responsible for anything.' Does the bald catalogue of these recitals +leave you cold? It is possible; but it is also possible after three days +in a new town to set the full half of a truck-load of archbishops +fighting for corner lots as they never fought for mitre or crozier. +There is a contagion in a boom as irresistible as that of a panic in a +theatre. + +After a while things settle down, and then the carpenter, who is also an +architect, can lay his bare arms across the bar and sell them to the +highest bidder, for the houses are coming up like toadstools after rain. +The men who do not build cheer those who do, in that building means +backing your belief in your town--yours to you and peculiarly. Confound +all other towns whatsoever. Behind the crowd of business men the weekly +town paper plays as a stockwhip plays on a mob of cattle. There is +honour, heaped, extravagant, imperial for the good--the employer of +labour, the builder of stores, the spender of money; there is abuse, +savage and outrageous, for the bad, the man who 'buys out of the town,' +the man who intends to go, the sitter on the fence; with persuasion and +invitation in prose, verse, and zincograph for all that outside world +which prefers to live in cities other than Ours. + +Now the editor, as often as not, begins as a mercenary and ends as a +patriot. This, too, is all of a piece with human nature. A few years +later, if Providence is good, comes the return for judicious investment. +Perhaps the town has stood the test of boom, and that which was +clapboard is now Milwaukee brick or dressed stone, vile in design but +permanent. The shanty hotel is the Something House, with accommodation +for two hundred guests. The manager who served you in his shirt-sleeves +as his own hotel clerk, is gorgeous in broadcloth, and needs to be +reminded of the first meeting. Suburban villas more or less adorn the +flats, from which the liveliest fancy (and fancy was free in the early +days) hung back. Horse-cars jingle where the prairie schooner used to +stick fast in the mud-hole, scooped to that end, opposite the saloon; +and there is a Belt Electric Service paying fabulous dividends. Then, do +you, feeling older than Methuselah and twice as important, go forth and +patronise things in general, while the manager tells you exactly what +sort of millionaire you would have been if you had 'stayed by the town.' + +Or else--the bottom has tumbled out of the boom, and the town new made +is dead--dead as a young man's corpse laid out in the morning. Success +was not justified by success. Of ten thousand not three hundred remain, +and these live in huts on the outskirts of the brick streets. The hotel, +with its suites of musty rooms, is a big tomb; the factory chimneys are +cold; the villas have no glass in them, and the fire-weed glows in the +centre of the driveways, mocking the arrogant advertisements in the +empty shops. There is nothing to do except to catch trout in the stream +that was to have been defiled by the city sewage. A two-pounder lies +fanning himself just in the cool of the main culvert, where the alders +have crept up to the city wall. You pay your money and, more or less, +you take your choice. + +By the time that man has seen these things and a few others that go +with a boom he may say that he has lived, and talk with his enemies in +the gate. He has heard the Arabian Nights retold and knows the inward +kernel of that romance, which some? little folk say is vanished. Here +they lie in their false teeth, for Cortes is not dead, nor Drake, and +Sir Philip Sidney dies every few months if you know where to look. The +adventurers and captains courageous of old have only changed their dress +a little and altered their employment to suit the world in which they +move. Clive came down from Lobengula's country a few months ago +protesting that there was an empire there, and finding very few that +believed. Hastings studied a map of South Africa in a corrugated iron +hut at Johannesburg ten years ago. Since then he has altered the map +considerably to the advantage of the Empire, but the heart of the Empire +is set on ballot-boxes and small lies. The illustrious Don Quixote +to-day lives on the north coast of Australia where he has found the +treasure of a sunken Spanish galleon. Now and again he destroys black +fellows who hide under his bed to spear him. Young Hawkins, with a still +younger Boscawen for his second, was till last year chasing slave-dhows +round Tajurrah; they have sent him now to the Zanzibar coast to be +grilled into an admiral; and the valorous Sandoval has been holding the +'Republic' of Mexico by the throat any time these fourteen years gone. +The others, big men all and not very much afraid of responsibility, are +selling horses, breaking trails, drinking sangaree, running railways +beyond the timberline, swimming rivers, blowing up tree-stumps, and +making cities where no cities were, in all the five quarters of the +world. Only people will not believe this when you tell them. They are +too near things and a great deal too well fed. So they say of the most +cold-blooded realism: 'This is romance. How interesting!' And of +over-handled, thumb-marked realism: 'This is indeed romance!' It is the +next century that, looking over its own, will see the heroes of our time +clearly. + +Meantime this earth of ours--we hold a fair slice of it so far--is full +of wonders and miracles and mysteries and marvels, and, in default, it +is good to go up and down seeing and hearing tell of them all. + + + + +ON ONE SIDE ONLY + + +NEW OXFORD, U.S.A., _June-July_ 1892. + +'The truth is,' said the man in the train, 'that we live in a tropical +country for three months of the year, only we won't recognise. Look at +this.' He handed over a long list of deaths from heat that enlivened the +newspapers. All the cities where men live at breaking-strain were +sending in their butcher-bills, and the papers of the cities, themselves +apostles of the Gospel of Rush, were beseeching their readers to keep +cool and not to overwork themselves while the hot wave was upon them. +The rivers were patched and barred with sun-dried pebbles; the logs and +loggers were drought-bound somewhere up the Connecticut; and the grass +at the side of the track was burned in a hundred places by the sparks +from locomotives. Men--hatless, coatless, and gasping--lay in the shade +of that station where only a few months ago the glass stood at 30 below +zero. Now the readings were 98 degrees in the shade. Main Street--do you +remember Main Street of a little village locked up in the snow this +spring?[2]--had given up the business of life, and an American flag +with some politician's name printed across the bottom hung down across +the street as stiff as a board. There were men with fans and alpaca +coats curled up in splint chairs in the verandah of the one hotel--among +them an ex-President of the United States. He completed the impression +that the furniture of the entire country had been turned out of doors +for summer cleaning in the absence of all the inhabitants. Nothing looks +so hopelessly 'ex' as a President 'returned to stores,' The stars and +stripes signified that the Presidential Campaign had opened in Main +Street--opened and shut up again. Politics evaporate at summer heat when +all hands are busy with the last of the hay, and, as the formers put it, +'Vermont's bound to go Republican.' The custom of the land is to drag +the scuffle and dust of an election over several months--to the +improvement of business and manners; but the noise of that war comes +faintly up the valley of the Connecticut and is lost among the fiddling +of the locusts. Their music puts, as it were, a knife edge upon the heat +of the day. In truth, it is a tropical country for the time being. +Thunder-storms prowl and growl round the belted hills, spit themselves +away in a few drops of rain, and leave the air more dead than before. In +the woods, where even the faithful springs are beginning to run low, the +pines and balsams have thrown out all their fragrance upon the heat and +wait for the wind to bring news of the rain. The clematis, wild carrot, +and all the gipsy-flowers camped by sufferance between fence line and +road net are masked in white dust, and the golden-rod of the pastures +that are burned to flax-colour burns too like burnished brass. A pillar +of dust on the long hog-back of the road across the hills shows where a +team is lathering between farms, and the roofs of the wooden houses +flicker in the haze of their own heat. Overhead the chicken-hawk is the +only creature at work, and his shrill kite-like call sends the gaping +chickens from the dust-bath in haste to their mothers. The red squirrel +as usual feigns business of importance among the butternuts, but this is +pure priggishness. When the passer-by is gone he ceases chattering and +climbs back to where the little breezes can stir his tail-plumes. From +somewhere under the lazy fold of a meadow comes the drone of a +mowing-machine among the hay--its _whurr-oo_ and the grunt of the tired +horses. + +[Footnote 2: See 'In Sight of Monadnock.'] + +Houses are only meant to eat and sleep in. The rest of life is lived at +full length in the verandah. When traffic is brisk three whole teams +will pass that verandah in one day, and it is necessary to exchange news +about the weather and the prospects for oats. When oats are in there +will be slack time on the farm, and the farmers will seriously think of +doing the hundred things that they have let slide during the summer. +They will undertake this and that, 'when they get around to it.' The +phrase translated is the exact equivalent to the _mañana_ of the +Spaniard, the _kul hojaiga_ of Upper India, the _yuroshii_ of the +Japanese, and the long drawled _taihod_ of the Maori. The only person +who 'gets around' in this weather is the summer boarder--the refugee +from the burning cities of the Plain, and she is generally a woman. She +walks, and botanizes, and kodaks, and strips the bark off the white +birch to make blue-ribboned waste-paper baskets, and the farmer regards +her with wonder. More does he wonder still at the city clerk in a +blazer, who has two weeks' holiday in the year and, apparently, +unlimited money, which he earns in the easiest possible way by 'sitting +at a desk and writing,' The farmer's wife sees the fashions of the +summer boarder, and between them man and woman get a notion of the +beauties of city life for which their children may live to blame them. +The blazer and the town-made gown are innocent recruiting sergeants for +the city brigades; and since one man's profession is ever a mystery to +his fellow, blazer and gown believe that the farmer must be happy and +content. A summer resort is one of the thousand windows whence to watch +the thousand aspects of life in the Atlantic States. Remember that +between June and September it is the desire of all who can to get away +from the big cities--not on account of wantonness, as people leave +London--but because of actual heat. So they get away in their millions +with their millions--the wives of the rich men for five clear months, +the others for as long as they can; and, like drawing like, they make +communities set by set, breed by breed, division by division, over the +length and breadth of the land--from Maine and the upper reaches of the +Saguenay, through the mountains and hot springs of half-a-dozen +interior States, out and away to Sitka in steamers. Then they spend +money on hotel bills, among ten thousand farms, on private companies who +lease and stock land for sporting purposes, on yachts and canoes, +bicycles, rods, châlets, cottages, reading circles, camps, tents, and +all the luxuries they know. But the luxury of rest most of them do not +know; and the telephone and telegraph are faithfully dragged after them, +lest their men-folk should for a moment forget the ball and chain at +foot. + +For sadness with laughter at bottom there are few things to compare with +the sight of a coat-less, muddy-booted, millionaire, his hat adorned +with trout-flies, and a string of small fish in his hand, clawing wildly +at the telephone of some back-of-beyond 'health resort.' Thus: + +'Hello! Hello! Yes. Who's there? Oh, all right. Go ahead. Yes, it's me! +Hey, what? Repeat. Sold for _how_ much? Forty-four and a half? Repeat. +No! I _told_ you to hold on. What? What? _Who_ bought at that? Say, hold +a minute. Cable the other side. No. Hold on. I'll come down. (_Business +with watch_.) Tell Schaefer I'll see him to-morrow.' (_Over his shoulder +to his wife, who wears half-hoop diamond rings at_ 10 A.M.) 'Lizzie, +where's my grip? I've got to go down.' + +And he goes down to eat in a hotel and sleep in his shut-up house. Men +are as scarce at most of the summer places as they are in Indian +hill-stations in late April. The women tell you that they can't get +away, and if they did they would only be miserable to get back. Now +whether this wholesale abandonment of husbands by wives is wholesome let +those who know the beauties of the Anglo-Indian system settle for +themselves. + +That both men and women need rest very badly a glance at the crowded +hotel tables makes plain--so plain, indeed, that the foreigner who has +not been taught that fuss and worry are in themselves honourable wishes +sometimes he could put the whole unrestful crowd to sleep for seventeen +hours a day. I have inquired of not less than five hundred men and women +in various parts of the States why they broke down and looked so gash. +And the men said: 'If you don't keep up with the procession in America +you are left'; and the women smiled an evil smile and answered that no +outsider yet had discovered the real cause of their worry and strain, or +why their lives were arranged to work with the largest amount of +friction in the shortest given time. Now, the men can be left to their +own folly, but the cause of the women's trouble has been revealed to me. +It is the thing called 'Help' which is no help. In the multitude of +presents that the American man has given to the American woman (for +details see daily papers) he has forgotten or is unable to give her good +servants, and that sordid trouble runs equally through the household of +the millionaire or the flat of the small city man. 'Yes, it's easy +enough to laugh,' said one woman passionately, 'we are worn out, and our +children are worn out too, and we're always worrying, I know it. What +can we do? If you stay here you'll know that this is the land of all +the luxuries and none of the necessities. You'll know and then you won't +laugh. You'll know why women are said to take their husbands to +boarding-houses and never have homes. You'll know what an Irish Catholic +means. The men won't get up and attend to these things, but _we_ would. +If _we_ had female suffrage, we'd shut the door to _all_ the Irish and +throw it open to _all_ the Chinese, and let the women have a little +protection.' It was the cry of a soul worn thin with exasperation, but +it was truth. To-day I do not laugh any more at the race that depends on +inefficient helot races for its inefficient service. When next you, +housekeeping in England, differ with the respectable, amiable, +industrious sixteen-pound maid, who wears a cap and says 'Ma'am,' +remember the pauper labour of America--the wives of the sixty million +kings who have no subjects. No man could get a thorough knowledge of the +problem in one lifetime, but he could guess at the size and the import +of it after he has descended into the arena and wrestled with the Swede +and the Dane and the German and the unspeakable Celt. Then he perceives +how good for the breed it must be that a man should thresh himself to +pieces in naked competition with his neighbour while his wife struggles +unceasingly over primitive savagery in the kitchen. In India sometimes +when a famine is at hand the life of the land starts up before your eyes +in all its bareness and bitter stress. Here, in spite of the trimmings +and the frillings, it refuses to be subdued and the clamour and the +clatter of it are loud above all other sounds--as sometimes the thunder +of disorganised engines stops conversations along the decks of a liner, +and in the inquiring eyes of the passengers you read the question--'This +thing is made and paid to bear us to port quietly. Why does it not do +so?' Only here, the rattle of the badly-put-together machine is always +in the ears, though men and women run about with labour-saving +appliances and gospels of 'power through repose,' tinkering and oiling +and making more noise. The machine is new. Some day it is going to be +the finest machine in the world. To the ranks of the amateur artificers, +therefore, are added men with notebooks tapping at every nut and +bolthead, fiddling with the glands, registering revolutions, and crying +out from time to time that this or that is or is not 'distinctively +American.' Meantime, men and women die unnecessarily in the wheels, and +they are said to have fallen 'in the battle of life.' + +The God Who sees us all die knows that there is far too much of that +battle, but we do not, and so continue worshipping the knife that cuts +and the wheel that breaks us, as blindly as the outcast sweeper worships +Lal-Beg the Glorified Broom that is the incarnation of his craft. But +the sweeper has sense enough not to kill himself, and to be proud of it, +with sweeping. + +A foreigner can do little good by talking of these things; for the same +lean dry blood that breeds the fever of unrest breeds also the savage +parochial pride that squeals under a steady stare or a pointed finger. +Among themselves the people of the Eastern cities admit that they and +their womenfolk overwork grievously and go to pieces very readily, and +that the consequences for the young stock are unpleasant indeed; but +before the stranger they prefer to talk about the future of their mighty +continent (which has nothing to do with the case) and to call aloud on +Baal of the Dollars--to catalogue their lines, mines, telephones, banks, +and cities, and all the other shells, buttons, and counters that they +have made their Gods over them. Now a nation does not progress upon its +brain-pan, as some books would have us believe, but upon its belly as +did the Serpent of old; and in the very long run the work of the brain +comes to be gathered in by a slow-footed breed that have unimaginative +stomachs and the nerves that know their place. + +All this is very consoling from the alien's point of view. He perceives, +with great comfort, that out of strain is bred impatience in the shape +of a young bundle of nerves, who is about as undisciplined an imp as the +earth can show. Out of impatience, grown up, habituated to violent and +ugly talk, and the impatience and recklessness of his neighbours, is +begotten lawlessness, encouraged by laziness and suppressed by violence +when it becomes insupportable. Out of lawlessness is bred rebellion (and +that fruit has been tasted once already), and out of rebellion comes +profit to those who wait. He hears of the power of the People who, +through rank slovenliness, neglect to see that their laws are soberly +enforced from the beginning; and these People, not once or twice in a +year, but many times within a month, go out in the open streets and, with +a maximum waste of power and shouting, strangle other people with ropes. +They are, he is told, law-abiding citizens who have executed 'the will +of the people'; which is as though a man should leave his papers +unsorted for a year and then smash his desk with an axe, crying, 'Am I +not orderly?' He hears lawyers, otherwise sane and matured, defend this +pig-jobbing murder on the grounds that 'the People stand behind the +Law'--the law that they never administered. He sees a right, at present +only half--but still half--conceded to anticipate the law in one's own +interests; and nervous impatience (always nerves) forejudging the +suspect in gaol, the prisoner in the dock, and the award between nation +and nation ere it is declared. He knows that the maxim in London, +Yokohama, and Hongkong in doing business with the pure-bred American is +to keep him waiting, for the reason that forced inaction frets the man +to a lather, as standing in harness frets a half-broken horse. He comes +across a thousand little peculiarities of speech, manner, and +thought--matters of nerve and stomach developed by everlasting +friction--and they are all just the least little bit in the world +lawless. No more so than the restless clicking together of horns in a +herd of restless cattle, but certainly no less. They are all good--good +for those who wait. + +On the other hand, to consider the matter more humanly, there are +thousands of delightful men and women going to pieces for the pitiful +reason that if they do not keep up with the procession, 'they are left.' +And they are left--in clothes that have no back to them, among mounds of +smilax. And young men--chance-met in the streets, talk to you about +their nerves which are things no young man should know anything about; +and the friends of your friends go down with nervous prostration, and +the people overheard in the trains talk about their nerves and the +nerves of their relatives; and the little children must needs have their +nerves attended to ere their milk-teeth are shed, and the middle-aged +women and the middle-aged men have got them too, and the old men lose +the dignity of their age in an indecent restlessness, and the +advertisements in the papers go to show that this sweeping list is no +lie. Atop of the fret and the stampede, the tingling self-consciousness +of a new people makes them take a sort of perverted pride in the futile +racket that sends up the death-rate--a child's delight in the blaze and +the dust of the March of Progress. Is it not 'distinctively American'? +It is, and it is not. If the cities were all America, as they pretend, +fifty years would see the March of Progress brought to a standstill, as +a locomotive is stopped by heated bearings.... + +Down in the meadow the mowing-machine has checked, and the horses are +shaking themselves. The last of the sunlight leaves the top of +Monadnock, and four miles away Main Street lights her electric lamps. It +is band-night in Main Street, and the folks from Putney, from +Marlboro', from Guildford, and even New Fane will drive in their +well-filled waggons to hear music and look at the Ex-President. Over the +shoulder of the meadow two men come up very slowly, their hats off and +their arms swinging loosely at their sides. They do not hurry, they have +not hurried, and they never will hurry, for they are of country--bankers +of the flesh and blood of the ever bankrupt cities. Their children may +yet be pale summer boarders; as the boarders, city-bred weeds, may take +over their farms. From the plough to the pavement goes man, but to the +plough he returns at last. + +'Going to supper?' + +'Ye-ep,' very slowly across the wash of the uncut grass. + +'Say, that corncrib wants painting.' + +''Do that when we get around to it.' + +They go off through the dusk, without farewell or salutation steadily as +their own steers. And there are a few millions of them--unhandy men to +cross in their ways, set, silent, indirect in speech, and as +impenetrable as that other Eastern fanner who is the bedrock of another +land. They do not appear in the city papers, they are not much heard in +the streets, and they tell very little in the outsider's estimate of +America. + +And _they_ are the American. + + + + +LEAVES FROM A WINTER NOTE-BOOK + +(1895) + + +We had walked abreast of the year from the very beginning, and that was +when the first blood-root came up between the patches of April snow, +while yet the big drift at the bottom of the meadow held fast. In the +shadow of the woods and under the blown pine-needles, clots of snow lay +till far into May, but neither the season nor the flowers took any note +of them, and, before we were well sure Winter had gone, the lackeys of +my Lord Baltimore in their new liveries came to tell us that Summer was +in the valley, and please might they nest at the bottom of the garden? + +Followed, Summer, angry, fidgety, and nervous, with the corn and tobacco +to ripen in five short months, the pastures to reclothe, and the fallen +leaves to hide away under new carpets. Suddenly, in the middle of her +work, on a stuffy-still July day, she called a wind out of the +Northwest, a wind blown under an arch of steel-bellied clouds, a wicked +bitter wind with a lacing of hail to it, a wind that came and was gone +in less than ten minutes, but blocked the roads with fallen trees, +toppled over a barn, and--blew potatoes out of the ground! When that was +done, a white cloud shaped like a dumb-bell whirled down the valley +across the evening blue, roaring and twisting and twisting and roaring +all alone by itself. A West Indian hurricane could not have been quicker +on its feet than our little cyclone, and when the house rose a-tiptoe, +like a cockerel in act to crow, and a sixty-foot elm went by the board, +and that which had been a dusty road became a roaring torrent all in +three minutes, we felt that the New England summer had creole blood in +her veins. She went away, red-faced and angry to the last, slamming all +the doors of the hills behind her, and Autumn, who is a lady, took +charge. + +No pen can describe the turning of the leaves--the insurrection of the +tree-people against the waning year. A little maple began it, flaming +blood-red of a sudden where he stood against the dark green of a +pine-belt. Next morning there was an answering signal from the swamp +where the sumacs grow. Three days later, the hill-sides as far as the +eye could range were afire, and the roads paved, with crimson and gold. +Then a wet wind blew, and ruined all the uniforms of that gorgeous army; +and the oaks, who had held themselves in reserve, buckled on their dull +and bronzed cuirasses and stood it out stiffly to the last blown leaf, +till nothing remained but pencil-shading of bare boughs, and one could +see into the most private heart of the woods. + +Frost may be looked for till the middle of May and after the middle of +September, so Summer has little time for enamel-work or leaf-embroidery. +Her sisters bring the gifts--Spring, wind-flowers, Solomon's-Seal, +Dutchman's-breeches, Quaker-ladies, and trailing arbutus, that smells as +divinely as the true May. Autumn has golden-rod and all the tribe of +asters, pink, lilac, and creamy white, by the double armful. When these +go the curtain comes down, and whatever Powers shift the scenery behind, +work without noise. In tropic lands you can hear the play of growth and +decay at the back of the night-silences. Even in England the tides of +the winter air have a set and a purpose; but here they are dumb +altogether. The very last piece of bench-work this season was the +trailed end of a blackberry-vine, most daringly conventionalised in +hammered iron, flung down on the frosty grass an instant before people +came to look. The blue bloom of the furnace was still dying along the +central rib, and the side-sprays were cherry red, even as they had been +lifted from the charcoal. It was a detail, evidently, of some invisible +gate in the woods; but we never found that workman, though he had left +the mark of his cloven foot as plainly as any strayed deer. In a week +the heavy frosts with scythes and hammers had slashed and knocked down +all the road-side growth and the kindly bushes that veil the drop off +the unfenced track. + +There the seasons stopped awhile. Autumn was gone, Winter was not. We +had Time dealt out to us--mere, clear, fresh Time--grace-days to enjoy. +The white wooden farm-houses were banked round two feet deep with dried +leaves or earth, and the choppers went out to get ready next year's +stores of wood. Now, chopping is an art, and the chopper in all respects +an artist. He makes his own axe-helve, and for each man there is but one +perfect piece of wood in all the world. This he never finds, but the +likest substitute is trimmed and balanced and poised to that ideal. One +man I know has evolved very nearly the weapon of Umslopogaas. It is +almost straight, lapped at the butt with leather, amazingly springy, and +carries a two-edged blade for splitting and chopping. If his Demon be +with him--and what artist can answer for all his moods?--he will cause a +tree to fall upon any stick or stone that you choose, uphill or down, to +the right or to the left. Artist-like, however, he explains that that is +nothing. Any fool can play with a tree in the open, but it needs the +craftsman to bring a tree down in thick timber and do no harm. To see an +eighty-foot maple, four feet in the butt, dropped, deftly as a fly is +cast, in the only place where it will not outrage the feelings and swipe +off the tops of fifty juniors, is a revelation. White pine, hemlock, and +spruce share this country with maples, black and white birches, and +beech. Maple seems to have few preferences, and the white birches +straggle and shiver on the outskirts of every camp; but the pines hold +together in solid regiments, sending out skirmishers to invade a +neglected pasture on the first opportunity. There is no overcoat warmer +than the pines in a gale when the woods for miles round are singing like +cathedral organs, and the first snow of the year powders the +rock-ledges. + +The mosses and lichens, green, sulphur, and amber, stud the copper floor +of needles, where the feathery ground-pine runs aimlessly to and fro +along the ground, spelling out broken words of half-forgotten charms. +There are checker-berries on the outskirts of the wood, where the +partridge (he is a ruffed grouse really) dines, and by the deserted +logging-roads toadstools of all colours sprout on the decayed stumps. +Wherever a green or blue rock lifts from the hillside, the needles have +been packed and matted round its base, till, when the sunshine catches +them, stone and setting together look no meaner than turquoise in dead +gold. The woods are full of colour, belts and blotches of it, the +colours of the savage--red, yellow, and blue. Yet in their lodges there +is very little life, for the wood-people do not readily go into the +shadows. The squirrels have their business among the beeches and +hickories by the road-side, where they can watch the traffic and talk. +We have no gray ones hereabouts (they are good to eat and suffer for +it), but five reds live in a hickory hard by, and no weather puts them +to sleep. The wood-chuck, a marmot and a strategist, makes his burrow in +the middle of a field, where he must see you ere you see him. Now and +again a dog manages to cut him off his base, and the battle is worth +crossing fields to watch. But the woodchuck turned in long ago, and will +not be out till April. The coon lives--well, no one seems to know +particularly where Brer Coon lives, but when the Hunter's Moon is large +and full he descends into the corn-lands, and men chase him with dogs +for his fur, which makes the finest kind of overcoat, and his flesh, +which tastes like chicken. He cries at night sorrowfully as though a +child were lost. + +They seem to kill, for one reason or other, everything that moves in +this land. Hawks, of course; eagles for their rarity; foxes for their +pelts; red-shouldered blackbirds and Baltimore orioles because they are +pretty, and the other small things for sport--French fashion. You can +get a rifle of a kind for twelve shillings, and if your neighbour be +fool enough to post notices forbidding 'hunting' and fishing, you +naturally seek his woods. So the country is very silent and unalive. + +There are, however, bears within a few miles, as you will see from this +notice, picked up at the local tobacconist's: + + JOHNNY GET YOUR GUN! BEAR HUNT! + +As bears are too numerous in the town of Peltyville Corners, Vt., the +hunters of the surrounding towns are invited to participate in a grand +hunt to be held on Blue Mountains in the town of Peltyville Corners, +Vt., Wednesday, Nov. 8th, if pleasant. If not, first fine day. Come one, +come all! + +They went, but it was the bear that would not participate. The notice +was printed at somebody's Electric Print Establishment. Queer mixture, +isn't it? + +The bear does not run large as a rule, but he has a weakness for swine +and calves which brings punishment. Twelve hours' rail and a little +marching take you up to the moose-country; and twenty-odd miles from +here as the crow flies you come to virgin timber, where trappers live, +and where there is a Lost Pond that many have found once but can never +find again. + +Men, who are of one blood with sheep, have followed their friends and +the railway along the river valleys where the towns are. Across the +hills the inhabitants are few, and, outside their State, little known. +They withdraw from society in November if they live on the uplands, +coming down in May as the snow gives leave. Not much more than a +generation ago these farms made their own clothes, soap, and candles, +and killed their own meat thrice a year, beef, veal, and pig, and sat +still between-times. Now they buy shop-made clothes, patent soaps, and +kerosene; and it is among their tents that the huge red and gilt +Biographies of Presidents, and the twenty-pound family Bibles, with +illuminated marriage-registers, mourning-cards, baptismal certificates, +and hundreds of genuine steel-engravings, sell best. Here, too, off the +main-travelled roads, the wandering quack--Patent Electric Pills, nerve +cures, etc.--divides the field with the seed and fruit man and the +seller of cattle-boluses. They dose themselves a good deal, I fancy, +for it is a poor family that does not know all about nervous +prostration. So the quack drives a pair of horses and a gaily-painted +waggon with a hood, and sometimes takes his wife with him. Once only +have I met a pedlar afoot. He was an old man, shaken with palsy, and he +pushed a thing exactly like a pauper's burial-cart, selling pins, tape, +scents, and flavourings. You helped yourself, for his hands had no +direction, and he told a long tale in which the deeding away of a farm +to one of his family was mixed up with pride at the distances he still +could cover daily. As much as six miles sometimes. He was no Lear, as +the gift of the farm might suggest, but sealed of the tribe of the +Wandering Jew--a tremulous old giddy-gaddy. There are many such rovers, +gelders of colts and the like, who work a long beat, south to Virginia +almost, and north to the frontier, paying with talk and gossip for their +entertainment. + +Yet tramps are few, and that is well, for the American article answers +almost exactly to the vagrant and criminal tribes of India, being a +predatory ruffian who knows too much to work. 'Bad place to beg in after +dark--on a farm--very--is Vermont. Gypsies pitch their camp by the river +in the spring, and cooper horses in the manner of their tribe. They have +the gypsy look and some of the old gypsy names, but say that they are +largely mixed with Gentile blood. + +Winter has chased all these really interesting people south, and in a +few weeks, if we have anything of a snow, the back farms will be +unvisited save by the doctor's hooded sleigh. It is no child's play to +hold a practice here through the winter months, when the drifts are +really formed, and a pair can drop in up to their saddle-pads. Four +horses a day some of them use, and use up--for they are good men. + +Now in the big silence of the snow is born, perhaps, not a little of +that New England conscience which her children write about. There is +much time to think, and thinking is a highly dangerous business. +Conscience, fear, undigested reading, and, it may be, not too well +cooked food, have full swing. A man, and more particularly a woman, can +easily hear strange voices--the Word of the Lord rolling between the +dead hills; may see visions and dream dreams; get revelations and an +outpouring of the spirit, and end (such things have been) lamentably +enough in those big houses by the Connecticut River which have been +tenderly christened The Retreat. Hate breeds as well as religion--the +deep, instriking hate between neighbours, that is born of a hundred +little things added up, brooded over, and hatched by the stove when two +or three talk together in the long evenings. It would be very +interesting to get the statistics of revivals and murders, and find how +many of them have been committed in the spring. But for undistracted +people winter is one long delight of the eye. In other lands one knows +the snow as a nuisance that comes and goes, and is sorely man-handled +and messed at the last. Here it lies longer on the ground than any +crop--from November to April sometimes--and for three months life goes +to the tune of sleigh-bells, which are not, as a Southern visitor once +hinted, ostentation, but safeguards. The man who drives without them is +not loved. The snow is a faithful barometer, foretelling good sleighing +or stark confinement to barracks. It is all the manure the stony +pastures receive; it cloaks the ground and prevents the frost bursting +pipes; it is the best--I had almost written the only--road-maker in the +States. On the other side it can rise up in the night and bid the people +sit still as the Egyptians. It can stop mails; wipe out all time-tables; +extinguish the lamps of twenty towns, and kill man within sight of his +own door-step or hearing of his cattle unfed. No one who has been +through even so modified a blizzard as New England can produce talks +lightly of the snow. Imagine eight-and-forty hours of roaring wind, the +thermometer well down towards zero, scooping and gouging across a +hundred miles of newly fallen snow. The air is full of stinging shot, +and at ten yards the trees are invisible. The foot slides on a reef, +polished and black as obsidian, where the wind has skinned an exposed +corner of road down to the dirt ice of early winter. The next step ends +hip-deep and over, for here an unseen wall is banking back the rush of +the singing drifts. A scarped slope rises sheer across the road. The +wind shifts a point or two, and all sinks down, like sand in the +hour-glass, leaving a pot-hole of whirling whiteness. There is a lull, +and you can see the surface of the fields settling furiously in one +direction--a tide that spurts from between the tree-boles. The hollows +of the pasture fill while you watch; empty, fill, and discharge anew. +The rock-ledges show the bare flank of a storm-chased liner for a +moment, and whitening, duck under. Irresponsible snow-devils dance by +the lee of a barn where three gusts meet, or stagger out into the open +till they are cut down by the main wind. At the worst of the storm there +is neither Heaven nor Earth, but only a swizzle into which a man may be +brewed. Distances grow to nightmare scale, and that which in the summer +was no more than a minute's bare-headed run, is half an hour's gasping +struggle, each foot won between the lulls. Then do the heavy-timbered +barns talk like ships in a cross-sea, beam working against beam. The +winter's hay is ribbed over with long lines of snow dust blown between +the boards, and far below in the byre the oxen clash their horns and +moan uneasily. + +The next day is blue, breathless, and most utterly still. The farmers +shovel a way to their beasts, bind with chains their large ploughshares +to their heaviest wood-sled and take of oxen as many as Allah has given +them. These they drive, and the dragging share makes a furrow in which a +horse can walk, and the oxen, by force of repeatedly going in up to +their bellies, presently find foothold. The finished road is a deep +double gutter between three-foot walls of snow, where, by custom, the +heavier vehicle has the right of way. The lighter man when he turns out +must drop waist-deep and haul his unwilling beast into the drift, +leaving Providence to steady the sleigh. + +In the towns, where they choke and sputter and gasp, the big snow turns +to horsepondine. With us it stays still: but wind, sun, and rain get to +work upon it, lest the texture and colour should not change daily. Rain +makes a granulated crust over all, in which white shagreen the trees are +faintly reflected. Heavy mists go up and down, and create a sort of +mirage, till they settle and pack round the iron-tipped hills, and then +you know how the moon must look to an inhabitant of it. At twilight, +again, the beaten-down ridges and laps and folds of the uplands take on +the likeness of wet sand--some huge and melancholy beach at the world's +end--and when day meets night it is all goblin country. To westward; the +last of the spent day--rust-red and pearl, illimitable levels of shore +waiting for the tide to turn again. To eastward, black night among the +valleys, and on the rounded hill slopes a hard glaze that is not so much +light as snail-slime from the moon. Once or twice perhaps in the winter +the Northern Lights come out between the moon and the sun, so that to +the two unearthly lights is added the leap and flare of the Aurora +Borealis. + +In January or February come the great ice-storms, when every branch, +blade, and trunk is coated with frozen rain, so that you can touch +nothing truly. The spikes of the pines are sunk into pear-shaped +crystals, and each fence-post is miraculously hilted with diamonds. If +you bend a twig, the icing cracks like varnish, and a half-inch branch +snaps off at the lightest tap. If wind and sun open the day together, +the eye cannot look steadily at the splendour of this jewelry. The woods +are full of the clatter of arms; the ringing of bucks' horns in flight; +the stampede of mailed feet up and down the glades; and a great dust of +battle is puffed out into the open, till the last of the ice is beaten +away and the cleared branches take up their regular chant. + +Again the mercury drops twenty and more below zero, and the very trees +swoon. The snow turns to French chalk, squeaking under the heel, and +their breath cloaks the oxen in rime. At night a tree's heart will break +in him with a groan. According to the books, the frost has split +something, but it is a fearful sound, this grunt as of a man stunned. + +Winter that is winter in earnest does not allow cattle and horses to +play about the fields, so everything comes home; and since no share can +break ground to any profit for some five months, there would seem to be +very little to do. As a matter of fact, country interests at all seasons +are extensive and peculiar, and the day is not long enough for them when +you take out that time which a self-respecting man needs to turn himself +round in. Consider! The solid undisturbed hours stand about one like +ramparts. At a certain time the sun will rise. At another hour, equally +certain, he will set. This much we know. Why, in the name of Reason, +therefore, should we vex ourselves with vain exertions? An occasional +visitor from the Cities of the Plains comes up panting to do things. He +is set down to listen to the normal beat of his own heart--a sound that +very few men have heard. In a few days, when the lather of impatience +has dried off, he ceases to talk of 'getting there' or 'being left.' He +does not desire to accomplish matters 'right away,' nor does he look at +his watch from force of habit, but keeps it where it should be--in his +stomach. At the last he goes back to his beleaguered city, unwillingly, +partially civilised, soon to be resavaged by the clash of a thousand +wars whose echo does not reach here. + +The air which kills germs dries out the very newspapers. They might be +of to-morrow or a hundred years ago. They have nothing to do with +to-day--the long, full, sunlit to-day. Our interests are not on the same +scale as theirs, perhaps, but much more complex. The movement of a +foreign power--an alien sleigh on this Pontic shore--must be explained +and accounted for, or this public's heart will burst with unsatisfied +curiosity. If it be Buck Davis, with the white mare that he traded his +colt for, and the practically new sleigh-robe that he bought at the +Sewell auction, _why_ does Buck Davis, who lives on the river flats, +cross our hills, unless Murder Hollow be blockaded with snow, or unless +he has turkeys for sale? _But_ Buck Davis with turkeys would surely +have stopped here, unless he were selling a large stock in town. A wail +from the sacking at the back of the sleigh tells the tale. It is a +winter calf, and Buck Davis is going to sell it for one dollar to the +Boston Market where it will be turned into potted chicken. This leaves +the mystery of his change of route unexplained. After two days' sitting +on tenter-hooks it is discovered, obliquely, that Buck went to pay a +door-yard call on Orson Butler, who lives on the saeter where the wind +and the bald granite scaurs fight it out together. Kirk Demming had +brought Orson news of a fox at the back of Black Mountain, and Orson's +eldest son, going to Murder Hollow with wood for the new barn floor that +the widow Amidon is laying down, told Buck that he might as well come +round to talk to his father about the pig. _But_ old man Butler meant +fox-hunting from the first, and what he wanted to do was to borrow +Buck's dog, who had been duly brought over with the calf, and left on +the mountain. No old man Butler did _not_ go hunting alone, but waited +till Buck came back from town. Buck sold the calf for a dollar and a +quarter and not for seventy-five cents as was falsely asserted by +interested parties. _Then_ the two went after the fox together. This +much learned, everybody breathes freely, if life has not been +complicated in the meantime by more strange counter-marchings. + +Five or six sleighs a day we can understand, if we know why they are +abroad; but any metropolitan rush of traffic disturbs and excites. + + + + +LETTERS TO THE FAMILY + + +1908 + +These letters appeared in newspapers during the spring of 1908, after a +trip to Canada undertaken in the autumn of 1907. They are now reprinted +without alteration. + +THE ROAD TO QUEBEC. +A PEOPLE AT HOME. +CITIES AND SPACES. +NEWSPAPERS AND DEMOCRACY. +LABOUR. +THE FORTUNATE TOWNS. +MOUNTAINS AND THE PACIFIC. +A CONCLUSION. + + * * * * * + +THE ROAD TO QUEBEC + +(1907) + + +It must be hard for those who do not live there to realise the cross +between canker and blight that has settled on England for the last +couple of years. The effects of it are felt throughout the Empire, but +at headquarters we taste the stuff in the very air, just as one tastes +iodoform in the cups and bread-and-butter of a hospital-tea. So far as +one can come at things in the present fog, every form of unfitness, +general or specialised, born or created, during the last generation has +combined in one big trust--a majority of all the minorities--to play the +game of Government. Now that the game ceases to amuse, nine-tenths of +the English who set these folk in power are crying, 'If we had only +known what they were going to do we should never have voted for them!' + +Yet, as the rest of the Empire perceived at the time, these men were +always perfectly explicit as to their emotions and intentions. They said +first, and drove it home by large pictures, that no possible advantage +to the Empire outweighed the cruelty and injustice of charging the +British working man twopence halfpenny a week on some of his provisions. +Incidentally they explained, so that all Earth except England heard it, +that the Army was wicked; much of the Navy unnecessary; that half the +population of one of the Colonies practised slavery, with torture, for +the sake of private gain, and that the mere name of Empire wearied and +sickened them. On these grounds they stood to save England; on these +grounds they were elected, with what seemed like clear orders to destroy +the blood-stained fetish of Empire as soon as possible. The present +mellow condition of Ireland, Egypt, India, and South Africa is proof of +their honesty and obedience. Over and above this, their mere presence in +office produced all along our lines the same moral effect as the +presence of an incompetent master in a classroom. Paper pellets, books, +and ink began to fly; desks were thumped; dirty pens were jabbed into +those trying to work; rats and mice were set free amid squeals of +exaggerated fear; and, as usual, the least desirable characters in the +forms were loudest to profess noble sentiments, and most eloquent grief +at being misjudged. Still, the English are not happy, and the unrest and +slackness increase. + +On the other hand, which is to our advantage, the isolation of the unfit +in one political party has thrown up the extremists in what the Babu +called 'all their naked _cui bono_.' These last are after satisfying the +two chief desires of primitive man by the very latest gadgets in +scientific legislation. But how to get free food, and free--shall we +say--love? within the four corners of an Act of Parliament without +giving the game away too grossly, worries them a little. It is easy +enough to laugh at this, but we are all so knit together nowadays that a +rot at what is called 'headquarters' may spread like bubonic, with every +steamer. I went across to Canada the other day, for a few weeks, mainly +to escape the Blight, and also to see what our Eldest Sister was doing. +Have you ever noticed that Canada has to deal in the lump with most of +the problems that afflict us others severally? For example, she has the +Double-Language, Double-Law, Double-Politics drawback in a worse form +than South Africa, because, unlike our Dutch, her French cannot well +marry outside their religion, and they take their orders from +Italy--less central, sometimes, than Pretoria or Stellenbosch. She has, +too, something of Australia's labour fuss, minus Australia's isolation, +but plus the open and secret influence of 'Labour' entrenched, with +arms, and high explosives on neighbouring soil. To complete the +parallel, she keeps, tucked away behind mountains, a trifle of land +called British Columbia, which resembles New Zealand; and New Zealanders +who do not find much scope for young enterprise in their own country are +drifting up to British Columbia already. + +Canada has in her time known calamity more serious than floods, frost, +drought, and fire--and has macadamized some stretches of her road toward +nationhood with the broken hearts of two generations. That is why one +can discuss with Canadians of the old stock matters which an Australian +or New Zealander could no more understand than a wealthy child +understands death. Truly we are an odd Family! Australia and New Zealand +(the Maori War not counted) got everything for nothing. South Africa +gave everything and got less than nothing. Canada has given and taken +all along the line for nigh on three hundred years, and in some respects +is the wisest, as she should be the happiest, of us all. She seems to be +curiously unconscious of her position in the Empire, perhaps because she +has lately been talked at, or down to, by her neighbours. You know how +at any gathering of our men from all quarters it is tacitly conceded +that Canada takes the lead in the Imperial game. To put it roughly, she +saw the goal more than ten years ago, and has been working the ball +toward it ever since. That is why her inaction at the last Imperial +Conference made people who were interested in the play wonder why she, +of all of us, chose to brigade herself with General Botha and to block +the forward rush. I, too, asked that question of many. The answer was +something like this: 'We saw that England wasn't taking anything just +then. Why should we have laid ourselves open to be snubbed worse than we +were? We sat still.' Quite reasonable--almost too convincing. There was +really no need that Canada should have done other than she did--except +that she was the Eldest Sister, and more was expected of her. She is a +little too modest. + +We discussed this, first of all, under the lee of a wet deck-house in +mid-Atlantic; man after man cutting in and out of the talk as he sucked +at his damp tobacco. The passengers were nearly all unmixed Canadian, +mostly born in the Maritime Provinces, where their fathers speak of +'Canada' as Sussex speaks of 'England,' but scattered about their +businesses throughout the wide Dominion. They were at ease, too, among +themselves, with that pleasant intimacy that stamps every branch of Our +Family and every boat that it uses on its homeward way. A Cape liner is +all the sub-Continent from the Equator to Simon's Town; an Orient boat +is Australasian throughout, and a C.P.R. steamer cannot be confused with +anything except Canada. It is a pity one may not be born in four places +at once, and then one would understand the half-tones and asides, and +the allusions of all our Family life without waste of precious time. +These big men, smoking in the drizzle, had hope in their eyes, belief in +their tongues, and strength in their hearts. I used to think miserably +of other boats at the South end of this ocean--a quarter full of people +deprived of these things. A young man kindly explained to me how Canada +had suffered through what he called 'the Imperial connection'; how she +had been diversely bedevilled by English statesmen for political +reasons. He did not know his luck, nor would he believe me when I tried +to point it out; but a nice man in a plaid (who knew South Africa) +lurched round the corner and fell on him with facts and imagery which +astonished the patriotic young mind. The plaid finished his outburst +with the uncontradicted statement that the English were mad. All our +talks ended on that note. + +It was an experience to move in the midst of a new contempt. One +understands and accepts the bitter scorn of the Dutch, the hopeless +anger of one's own race in South Africa is also part of the burden; but +the Canadian's profound, sometimes humorous, often bewildered, always +polite contempt of the England of to-day cuts a little. You see, that +late unfashionable war[3] was very real to Canada. She sent several men +to it, and a thinly-populated country is apt to miss her dead more than +a crowded one. When, from her point of view, they have died for no +conceivable advantage, moral or material, her business instincts, or it +may be mere animal love of her children, cause her to remember and +resent quite a long time after the thing should be decently forgotten. I +was shocked at the vehemence with which some men (and women) spoke of +the affair. Some of them went so far as to discuss--on the ship and +elsewhere--whether England would stay in the Family or whether, as some +eminent statesman was said to have asserted in private talk, she would +cut the painter to save expense. One man argued, without any heat, that +she would not so much break out of the Empire in one flurry, as +politically vend her children one by one to the nearest Power that +threatened her comfort; the sale of each case to be preceded by a +steady blast of abuse of the chosen victim. He quoted--really these +people have viciously long memories!--the five-year campaign of abuse +against South Africans as a precedent and a warning. + +[Footnote 3: Boer 'war' of 1899-1902.] + +Our Tobacco Parliament next set itself to consider by what means, if +this happened, Canada could keep her identity unsubmerged; and that led +to one of the most curious talks I have ever heard. It seemed to be +decided that she might--just might--pull through by the skin of her +teeth as a nation--if (but this was doubtful) England did not help +others to hammer her. Now, twenty years ago one would not have heard any +of this sort of thing. If it sounds a little mad, remember that the +Mother Country was throughout considered as a lady in violent hysterics. + +Just at the end of the talk one of our twelve or thirteen hundred +steerage-passengers leaped overboard, ulstered and booted, into a +confused and bitter cold sea. Every horror in the world has its fitting +ritual. For the fifth time--and four times in just such weather--I heard +the screw stop; saw our wake curve like a whiplash as the great township +wrenched herself round; the lifeboat's crew hurry to the boat-deck; the +bare-headed officer race up the shrouds and look for any sign of the +poor head that had valued itself so lightly. A boat amid waves can see +nothing. There was nothing to see from the first. We waited and +quartered the ground back and forth for a long hour, while the rain fell +and the seas slapped along our sides, and the steam fluttered drearily +through the escapes. Then we went ahead. + +The St. Lawrence on the last day of the voyage played up nobly. The +maples along its banks had turned--blood red and splendid as the banners +of lost youth. Even the oak is not more of a national tree than the +maple, and the sight of its welcome made the folks aboard still more +happy. A dry wind brought along all the clean smell of their +Continent-mixed odours of sawn lumber, virgin earth, and wood-smoke; and +they snuffed it, and their eyes softened as they, identified point after +point along their own beloved River--places where they played and fished +and amused themselves in holiday time. It must be pleasant to have a +country of one's very own to show off. Understand, they did not in any +way boast, shout, squeak, or exclaim, these even-voiced returned men and +women. They were simply and unfeignedly glad to see home again, and they +said: 'Isn't it lovely? Don't you think it's beautiful? We love it.' + +At Quebec there is a sort of place, much infested by locomotives, like a +coal-chute, whence rise the heights that Wolfe's men scaled on their way +to the Plains of Abraham. Perhaps of all the tide-marks in all our lands +the affair of Quebec touches the heart and the eye more nearly than any +other. Everything meets there; France, the jealous partner of England's +glory by land and sea for eight hundred years; England, bewildered as +usual, but for a wonder not openly opposing Pitt, who knew; those other +people, destined to break from England as soon as the French peril was +removed; Montcalm himself, doomed and resolute; Wolfe, the inevitable +trained workman appointed for the finish; and somewhere in the +background one James Cook, master of H.M.S. _Mercury_, making beautiful +and delicate charts of the St. Lawrence River. + +For these reasons the Plains of Abraham are crowned with all sorts of +beautiful things--including a jail and a factory. Montcalm's left wing +is marked by the jail, and Wolfe's right by the factory. There is, +happily, now a movement on foot to abolish these adornments and turn the +battle-field and its surroundings into a park, which by nature and +association would be one of the most beautiful in our world. + +Yet, in spite of jails on the one side and convents on the other and the +thin black wreck of the Quebec Railway Bridge, lying like a dumped +car-load of tin cans in the river, the Eastern Gate to Canada is noble +with a dignity beyond words. We saw it very early, when the under sides +of the clouds turned chilly pink over a high-piled, brooding, +dusky-purple city. Just at the point of dawn, what looked like the +Sultan Harun-al-Raschid's own private shallop, all spangled with +coloured lights, stole across the iron-grey water, and disappeared into +the darkness of a slip. She came out again in three minutes, but the +full day had come too; so she snapped off her masthead, steering and +cabin electrics, and turned into a dingy white ferryboat, full of cold +passengers. I spoke to a Canadian about her. 'Why, she's the old +So-and-So, to Port Levis,' he answered, wondering as the Cockney wonders +when a stranger stares at an Inner Circle train. This was _his_ Inner +Circle--the Zion where he was all at ease. He drew my attention to +stately city and stately river with the same tranquil pride that we each +feel when the visitor steps across our own threshold, whether that be +Southampton Water on a grey, wavy morning; Sydney Harbour with a regatta +in full swing; or Table Mountain, radiant and new-washed after the +Christmas rains. He had, quite rightly, felt personally responsible for +the weather, and every flaming stretch of maple since we had entered the +river. (The North-wester in these parts is equivalent to the +South-easter elsewhere, and may impress a guest unfavourably.) + +Then the autumn sun rose, and the man smiled. Personally and politically +he said he loathed the city--but it was his. + +'Well,' he asked at last, 'what do you think? Not so bad?' + +'Oh no. Not at all so bad,' I answered; and it wasn't till much later +that I realised that we had exchanged the countersign which runs clear +round the Empire. + + + + +A PEOPLE AT HOME + + +An up-country proverb says, 'She was bidden to the wedding and set down +to grind corn.' The same fate, reversed, overtook me on my little +excursion. There is a crafty network of organisations of business men +called Canadian Clubs. They catch people who look interesting, assemble +their members during the mid-day lunch-hour, and, tying the victim to a +steak, bid him discourse on anything that he thinks he knows. The idea +might be copied elsewhere, since it takes men out of themselves to +listen to matters not otherwise coming under their notice and, at the +same time, does not hamper their work. It is safely short, too. The +whole affair cannot exceed an hour, of which the lunch fills half. The +Clubs print their speeches annually, and one gets cross-sections of many +interesting questions--from practical forestry to State mints--all set +out by experts. + +Not being an expert, the experience, to me, was very like hard work. +Till then I had thought speech-making was a sort of conversational +whist, that any one could cut in at it. I perceive now that it is an Art +of conventions remote from anything that comes out of an inkpot, and of +colours hard to control. The Canadians seem to like listening to +speeches, and, though this is by no means a national vice, they make +good oratory on occasion. You know the old belief that the white man on +brown, red, or black lands, will throw back in manner and instinct to +the type originally bred there? Thus, a speech in the taal should carry +the deep roll, the direct belly-appeal, the reiterated, cunning +arguments, and the few simple metaphors of the prince of commercial +orators, the Bantu. A New Zealander is said to speak from his diaphragm, +hands clenched at the sides, as the old Maoris used. What we know of +first-class Australian oratory shows us the same alertness, swift +flight, and clean delivery as a thrown boomerang. I had half expected in +Canadian speeches some survival of the Redskin's elaborate appeal to +Suns, Moons, and Mountains--touches of grandiosity and ceremonial +invocations. But nothing that I heard was referable to any primitive +stock. There was a dignity, a restraint, and, above all, a weight in it, +rather curious when one thinks of the influences to which the land lies +open. Red it was not; French it was not; but a thing as much by itself +as the speakers. + +So with the Canadian's few gestures and the bearing of his body. During +the (Boer) war one watched the contingents from every point of view, +and, most likely, drew wrong inferences. It struck me then that the +Canadian, even when tired, slacked off less than the men from the hot +countries, and while resting did not lie on his back or his belly, but +rather on his side, a leg doubled under him, ready to rise in one surge. + +This time while I watched assemblies seated, men in hotels and +passers-by, I fancied that he kept this habit of semi-tenseness at home +among his own; that it was the complement of the man's still +countenance, and his even, lowered voice. Looking at their footmarks on +the ground they seem to throw an almost straight track, neither splayed +nor in-toed, and to set their feet down with a gentle forward pressure, +rather like the Australian's stealthy footfall. Talking among +themselves, or waiting for friends, they did not drum with their +fingers, fiddle with their feet, or feel the hair on their faces. These +things seem trivial enough, but when breeds are in the making everything +is worth while. A man told me once--but I never tried the +experiment--that each of our Four Races light and handle fire in their +own way. + +Small wonder we differ! Here is a people with no people at their backs, +driving the great world-plough which wins the world's bread up and up +over the shoulder of the world--a spectacle, as it might be, out of some +tremendous Norse legend. North of them lies Niflheim's enduring cold, +with the flick and crackle of the Aurora for Bifrost Bridge that Odin +and the Aesir visited. These people also go north year by year, and drag +audacious railways with them. Sometimes they burst into good wheat or +timber land, sometimes into mines of treasure, and all the North is +foil of voices--as South Africa was once--telling discoveries and making +prophecies. + +When their winter comes, over the greater part of this country outside +the cities they must sit still, and eat and drink as the Aesir did. In +summer they cram twelve months' work into six, because between such and +such dates certain far rivers will shut, and, later, certain others, +till, at last, even the Great Eastern Gate at Quebec locks, and men must +go in and out by the side-doors at Halifax and St. John. These are +conditions that make for extreme boldness, but not for extravagant +boastings. + +The maples tell when it is time to finish, and all work in hand is +regulated by their warning signal. Some jobs can be put through before +winter; others must be laid aside ready to jump forward without a lost +minute in spring. Thus, from Quebec to Calgary a note of drive--not +hustle, but drive and finish-up--hummed like the steam-threshers on the +still, autumn air. + +Hunters and sportsmen were coming in from the North; prospectors with +them, their faces foil of mystery, their pockets full of samples, like +prospectors the world over. They had already been wearing wolf and coon +skin coats. In the great cities which work the year round, +carriage--shops exhibited one or two seductive nickel-plated sledges, as +a hint; for the sleigh is 'the chariot at hand here of Love.' In the +country the farmhouses were stacking up their wood-piles within reach of +the kitchen door, and taking down the fly-screens, (One leaves these +on, as a rule, till the double windows are brought up from the cellar, +and one has to hunt all over the house for missing screws.) Sometimes +one saw a few flashing lengths of new stovepipe in a backyard, and +pitied the owner. There is no humour in the old, bitter-true stovepipe +jests of the comic papers. + +But the railways--the wonderful railways--told the winter's tale most +emphatically. The thirty-ton coal cars were moving over three thousand +miles of track. They grunted and lurched against each other in the +switch-yards, or thumped past statelily at midnight on their way to +provident housekeepers of the prairie towns. It was not a clear way +either; for the bacon, the lard, the apples, the butter, and the cheese, +in beautiful whitewood barrels, were rolling eastwards toward the +steamers before the wheat should descend on them. That is the fifth act +of the great Year-Play for which the stage must be cleared. On scores of +congested sidings lay huge girders, rolled beams, limbs, and boxes of +rivets, once intended for the late Quebec Bridge--now so much mere +obstruction--and the victuals had to pick their way through 'em; and +behind the victuals was the lumber--clean wood out of the +mountains--logs, planks, clapboards, and laths, for which we pay such +sinful prices in England--all seeking the sea. There was housing, food, +and fuel for millions, on wheels together, and never a grain yet shifted +of the real staple which men for five hundred miles were threshing out +in heaps as high as fifty-pound villas. + +Add to this, that the railways were concerned for their own new +developments--double-trackings, loops, cutoffs, taps, and feeder lines, +and great swoops out into untouched lands soon to be filled with men. So +the construction, ballast, and material trains, the grading machines, +the wrecking cars with their camel-like sneering cranes--the whole plant +of a new civilisation--had to find room somewhere in the general rally +before Nature cried, 'Lay off!' + +Does any one remember that joyful strong confidence after the war, when +it seemed that, at last, South Africa was to be developed--when men laid +out railways, and gave orders for engines, and fresh rolling-stock, and +labour, and believed gloriously in the future? It is true the hope was +murdered afterward, but--multiply that good hour by a thousand, and you +will have some idea of how it feels to be in Canada--a place which even +an 'Imperial' Government cannot kill. I had the luck to be shown some +things from the inside--to listen to the details of works projected; the +record of works done. Above all, I saw what had actually been achieved +in the fifteen years since I had last come that way. One advantage of a +new land is that it makes you feel older than Time. I met cities where +there had been nothing--literally, absolutely nothing, except, as the +fairy tales say, 'the birds crying, and the grass waving in the wind.' +Villages and hamlets had grown to great towns, and the great towns +themselves had trebled and quadrupled. And the railways rubbed their +hands and cried, like the Afrites of old, 'Shall we make a city where +no city is; or render flourishing a city that is dasolate?' They do it +too, while, across the water, gentlemen, never forced to suffer one +day's physical discomfort in all their lives, pipe up and say, 'How +grossly materialistic!' + +I wonder sometimes whether any eminent novelist, philosopher, dramatist, +or divine of to-day has to exercise half the pure imagination, not to +mention insight, endurance, and self-restraint, which is accepted +without comment in what is called 'the material exploitation' of a new +country. Take only the question of creating a new city at the junction +of two lines--all three in the air. The mere drama of it, the play of +the human virtues, would fill a book. And when the work is finished, +when the city is, when the new lines embrace a new belt of farms, and +the tide of the Wheat has rolled North another unexpected degree, the +men who did it break off, without compliments, to repeat the joke +elsewhere. + +I had some talk with a youngish man whose business it was to train +avalanches to jump clear of his section of the track. Thor went to +Jotunheim only once or twice, and he had his useful hammer Miolnr with +him. This Thor lived in Jotunheim among the green-ice-crowned peaks of +the Selkirks--where if you disturb the giants at certain seasons of the +year, by making noises, they will sit upon you and all your fine +emotions. So Thor watches them glaring under the May sun, or dull and +doubly dangerous beneath the spring rains. He wards off their strokes +with enormous brattices of wood, wing-walls of logs bolted together, and +such other contraptions as experience teaches. He bears the giants no +malice; they do their work, he his. What bothers him a little is that +the wind of their blows sometimes rips pines out of the opposite +hill-sides--explodes, as it were, a whole valley. He thinks, however, he +can fix things so as to split large avalanches into little ones. + +Another man, to whom I did not talk, sticks in my memory. He had for +years and years inspected trains at the head of a heavyish grade in the +mountains--though not half so steep as the Hex[4]--where all brakes are +jammed home, and the cars slither warily for ten miles. Tire-troubles +there would be inconvenient, so he, as the best man, is given the +heaviest job--monotony and responsibility combined. He did me the honour +of wanting to speak to me, but first he inspected his train--on all +fours with a hammer. By the time he was satisfied of the integrity of +the underpinnings it was time for us to go; and all that I got was a +friendly wave of the hand--a master craftsman's sign, you might call it. + +[Footnote 4: Hex River, South Africa.] + +Canada seems full of this class of materialist. + +Which reminds me that the other day I saw the Lady herself in the shape +of a tall woman of twenty-five or six, waiting for her tram on a street +corner. She wore her almost flaxen-gold hair waved, and parted low on +the forehead, beneath a black astrachan toque, with a red enamel +maple-leaf hatpin in one side of it. This was the one touch of colour +except the flicker of a buckle on the shoe. The dark, tailor-made dress +had no trinkets or attachments, but fitted perfectly. She stood for +perhaps a minute without any movement, both hands--right bare, left +gloved--hanging naturally at her sides, the very fingers still, the +weight of the superb body carried evenly on both feet, and the profile, +which was that of Gudrun or Aslauga, thrown out against a dark stone +column. What struck me most, next to the grave, tranquil eyes, was her +slow, unhurried breathing in the hurry about her. She was evidently a +regular fare, for when her tram stopped she smiled at the lucky +conductor; and the last I saw of her was a flash of the sun on the red +maple-leaf, the full face still lighted by that smile, and her hair very +pale gold against the dead black fur. But the power of the mouth, the +wisdom of the brow, the human comprehension of the eyes, and the +outstriking vitality of the creature remained. That is how _I_ would +have my country drawn, were I a Canadian--and hung in Ottawa Parliament +House, for the discouragement of prevaricators. + + + + +CITIES AND SPACES + +What would you do with a magic carpet if one were lent you? I ask +because for a month we had a private car of our very own--a trifling +affair less than seventy foot long and thirty ton weight. 'You may find +her useful,' said the donor casually, 'to knock about the country. Hitch +on to any train you choose and stop off where you choose.' + +So she bore us over the C.P.R. from the Atlantic to the Pacific and +back, and when we had no more need of her, vanished like the mango tree +after the trick. + +A private car, though many books have been written in it, is hardly the +best place from which to study a country, unless it happen that you have +kept house and seen the seasons round under normal conditions on the +same continent. Then you know how the cars look from the houses; which +is not in the least as the houses look from the cars. Then, the very +porter's brush in its nickel clip, the long cathedral-like aisle between +the well-known green seats, the toll of the bell and the deep organ-like +note of the engine wake up memories; and every sight, smell, and sound +outside are like old friends remembering old days together. A piano-top +buggy on a muddy, board-sidewalked street, all cut up by the narrow +tires; the shingling at the corner of a veranda on a new-built house; a +broken snake-fence girdling an old pasture of mulleins and skull-headed +boulders; a wisp of Virginia creeper dying splendidly on the edge of a +patch of corn; half a dozen panels of snow-fence above a cutting, or +even a shameless patent-medicine advertisement, yellow on the black of a +tobacco-barn, can make the heart thump and the eyes fill if the beholder +have only touched the life of which they are part. What must they mean +to the native-born? There was a prairie-bred girl on the train, coming +back after a year on the Continent, for whom the pine-belted hills, with +real mountains behind, the solemn loops of the river, and the intimate +friendly farm had nothing to tell. + +'You can do these landscapes better in Italy,' she explained, and, with +the indescribable gesture of plains folk stifled in broken ground, 'I +want to push these hills away and get into the open again! I'm +Winnipeg.' + +She would have understood that Hanover Road schoolmistress, back from a +visit to Cape Town, whom I once saw drive off into thirty miles of +mirage almost shouting, 'Thank God, here's something like home at last.' + +Other people ricochetted from side to side of the car, reviving this, +rediscovering that, anticipating t'other thing, which, sure enough, slid +round the next curve to meet them, caring nothing if all the world knew +they were home again; and the newly arrived Englishman with his large +wooden packing-cases marked 'Settlers' Effects' had no more part in the +show than a new boy his first day at school. But two years in Canada and +one run home will make him free of the Brotherhood in Canada as it does +anywhere else. He may grumble at certain aspects of the life, lament +certain richnesses only to be found in England, but as surely as he +grumbles so surely he returns to the big skies, and the big chances. The +failures are those who complain that the land 'does not know a gentleman +when it sees him.' They are quite right. The land suspends all judgment +on all men till it has seen them work. Thereafter as may be; but work +they must because there is a very great deal to be done. + +Unluckily the railroads which made the country are bringing in persons +who are particular as to the nature and amenities of their work, and if +so be they do not find precisely what they are looking for, they +complain in print which makes all men seem equal. + +The special joy of our trip lay in having travelled the line when it was +new and, like the Canada of those days, not much believed in, when all +the high and important officials, whose little fingers unhooked cars, +were also small and disregarded. To-day, things, men, and cities were +different, and the story of the line mixed itself up with the story of +the country, the while the car-wheels clicked out, 'John Kino--John +Kino! Nagasaki, Yokohama, Hakodate, Heh!' for we were following in the +wake of the Imperial Limited, all full of Hongkong and Treaty Ports men. +There were old, known, and wonderfully grown cities to be looked at +before we could get away to the new work out west, and, 'What d'you +think of this building and that suburb?' they said, imperiously. 'Come +out and see what has been done in this generation.' + +The impact of a Continent is rather overwhelming till you remind +yourself that it is no more than your own joy and love and pride in your +own patch of garden written a little large over a few more acres. Again, +as always, it was the dignity of the cities that impressed--an austere +Northern dignity of outline, grouping, and perspective, aloof from the +rush of traffic in the streets. Montreal, of the black-frocked priests +and the French notices, had it; and Ottawa, of the grey stone palaces +and the St. Petersburg-like shining water-frontages; and Toronto, +consumingly commercial, carried the same power in the same repose. Men +are always building better than they know, and perhaps this steadfast +architecture is waiting for the race when their first flurry of +newly-realised expansion shall have spent itself, and the present +hurrah's-nest of telephone poles in the streets shall have been +abolished. There are strong objections to any non-fusible, bi-lingual +community within a nation, but however much the French are made to hang +back in the work of development, their withdrawn and unconcerned +cathedrals, schools, and convents, and one aspect of the spirit that +breathes from them, make for good. Says young Canada: 'There are +millions of dollars' worth of church property in the cities which aren't +allowed to be taxed.' On the other hand, the Catholic schools and +universities, though they are reported to keep up the old medieval +mistrust of Greek, teach the classics as lovingly, tenderly, and +intimately as the old Church has always taught them. After all, it must +be worth something to say your prayers in a dialect of the tongue that +Virgil handled; and a certain touch of insolence, more magnificent and +more ancient than the insolence of present materialism, makes a good +blend in a new land. + +I had the good fortune to see the cities through the eyes of an +Englishman out for the first time. 'Have you been to the Bank?' he +cried. 'I've never seen anything like it!' 'What's the matter with the +Bank?' I asked: for the financial situation across the Border was at +that moment more than usual picturesque. 'It's wonderful!' said he; +'marble pillars--acres of mosaic--steel grilles--'might be a cathedral. +No one ever told me.' 'I shouldn't worry over a Bank that pays its +depositors,' I replied soothingly. 'There are several like it in Ottawa +and Toronto.' Next he ran across some pictures in some palaces, and was +downright angry because no one had told him that there were five +priceless private galleries in one city. 'Look here!' he explained. +'I've been seeing Corots, and Greuzes, and Gainsboroughs, and a +Holbein, and--and hundreds of really splendid pictures!' 'Why shouldn't +you?' I said. 'They've given up painting their lodges with vermilion +hereabouts.' 'Yes, but what I mean is, have you seen the equipment of +their schools and colleges--desks, libraries, and lavatories? It's miles +ahead of anything we have and--no one ever told me.' 'What was the good +of telling? You wouldn't have believed. There's a building in one of the +cities, on the lines of the Sheldonian, but better, and if you go as far +as Winnipeg, you'll see the finest hotel in all the world.' + +'Nonsense!' he said. 'You're pulling my leg! Winnipeg's a prairie-town.' + +I left him still lamenting--about a Club and a Gymnasium this time--that +no one had ever told him about; and still doubting all that he had heard +of Wonders to come. + +If we could only manacle four hundred Members of Parliament, like the +Chinese in the election cartoons, and walk them round the Empire, what +an all-comprehending little Empire we should be when the survivors got +home! + +Certainly the Cities have good right to be proud, and I waited for them +to boast; but they were so busy explaining they were only at the +beginning of things that, for the honour of the Family, I had to do the +boasting. In this praiseworthy game I credited Melbourne (rightly, I +hope, but the pace was too good to inquire) with acres of municipal +buildings and leagues of art galleries; enlarged the borders of Sydney +harbour to meet a statement about Toronto's, wharfage; and recommended +folk to see Cape Town Cathedral when it should be finished. But Truth +will out even on a visit. Our Eldest Sister has more of beauty and +strength inside her three cities alone than the rest of Us put together. +Yet it would do her no harm to send a commission through the ten great +cities of the Empire to see what is being done there in the way of +street cleaning, water-supply, and traffic-regulation. + +Here and there the people are infected with the unworthy superstition of +'hustle,' which means half-doing your appointed job and applauding your +own slapdasherie for as long a time as would enable you to finish off +two clean pieces of work. Little congestions of traffic, that an English +rural policeman, in a country town, disentangles automatically, are +allowed to develop into ten-minute blocks, where wagons and men bang, +and back, and blaspheme, for no purpose except to waste time. + +The assembly and dispersal of crowds, purchase of tickets, and a good +deal of the small machinery of life is clogged and hampered by this +unstable, southern spirit which is own brother to Panic. 'Hustle' does +not sit well on the national character any more than falsetto or +fidgeting becomes grown men. 'Drive,' a laudable and necessary quality, +is quite different, and one meets it up the Western Road where the new +country is being made. + +We got clean away from the Three Cities and the close-tilled farming +and orchard districts, into the Land of Little Lakes--a country of +rushing streams, clear-eyed ponds, and boulders among berry-bushes; all +crying 'Trout' and 'Bear.' + +Not so very long ago only a few wise people kept holiday in that part of +the world, and they did not give away their discoveries. Now it has +become a summer playground where people hunt and camp at large. The +names of its further rivers are known in England, and men, otherwise +sane, slip away from London into the birches, and come out again bearded +and smoke-stained, when the ice is thick enough to cut a canoe. +Sometimes they go to look for game; sometimes for minerals--perhaps, +even, oil. No one can prophesy. 'We are only at the beginning of +things.' + +Said an Afrite of the Railway as we passed in our magic carpet: 'You've +no notion of the size of our tourist-traffic. It has all grown up since +the early 'Nineties. The trolley car teaches people in the towns to go +for little picnics. When they get more money they go for long ones. All +this Continent will want playgrounds soon. We're getting them ready.' + +The girl from Winnipeg saw the morning frost lie white on the long grass +at the lake edges, and watched the haze of mellow golden birch leaves as +they dropped. 'Now that's the way trees ought to turn,' she said. 'Don't +you think our Eastern maple is a little violent in colour?' Then we +passed through a country where for many hours the talk in the cars was +of mines and the treatment of ores. Men told one tales--prospectors' +yarns of the sort one used to hear vaguely before Klondike or Nome were +public property. They did not care whether one believed or doubted. +They, too, were only at the beginning of things--silver perhaps, gold +perhaps, nickel perhaps. If a great city did not arise at such a +place--the very name was new since my day--it would assuredly be born +within a few miles of it. The silent men boarded the cars, and dropped +off, and disappeared beyond thickets and hills precisely as the first +widely spaced line of skirmishers fans out and vanishes along the front +of the day's battle. + +One old man sat before me like avenging Time itself, and talked of +prophecies of evil, that had been falsified. '_They_ said there wasn't +nothing here excep' rocks an' snow. _They_ said there never _wouldn't_ +be nothing here excep' the railroad. There's them that can't see _yit_,' +and he gimleted me with a fierce eye. 'An' all the while, fortunes is +made--piles is made--right under our noses.' + +'Have you made your pile?' I asked. + +He smiled as the artist smiles--all true prospectors have that lofty +smile--'Me? No. I've been a prospector most o' my time, but I haven't +lost anything. I've had my fun out of the game. By God, I've had my fun +out of it! + +I told him how I had once come through when land and timber grants +could have been picked up for half less than nothing. + +'Yes,' he said placidly. 'I reckon if you'd had any kind of an education +you could ha' made a quarter of a million dollars easy in those days. +And it's to be made now if you could see where. How? Can you tell me +what the capital of the Hudson Bay district's goin' to be? You can't. +Nor I. Nor yet where the six next new cities is going to arise, I get +off here, but if I have my health I'll be out next summer +again--prospectin' North.' + +Imagine a country where men prospect till they are seventy, with no fear +of fever, fly, horse-sickness, or trouble from the natives--a country +where food and water always taste good! He told me curious things about +some fabled gold--the Eternal Mother-lode--out in the North, which is +to humble the pride of Nome. And yet, so vast is the Empire, he had +never heard the name of Johannesburg! + +As the train swung round the shores of Lake Superior the talk swung over +to Wheat. Oh yes, men said, there were mines in the country--they were +only at the beginning of mines--but that part of the world existed to +clean and grade and handle and deliver the Wheat by rail and steamer. +The track was being duplicated by a few hundred miles to keep abreast of +the floods of it. By and by it might be a four-track road. They were +only at the beginning. Meantime here was the Wheat sprouting, tender +green, a foot high, among a hundred sidings where it had spilled from +the cars; there were the high-shouldered, tea-caddy grain-elevators to +clean, and the hospitals to doctor the Wheat; here was new, gaily +painted machinery going forward to reap and bind and thresh the Wheat, +and all those car-loads of workmen had been slapping down more sidings +against the year's delivery of the Wheat. + +Two towns stand on the shores of the lake less than a mile apart. What +Lloyd's is to shipping, or the College of Surgeons to medicine, that +they are to the Wheat. Its honour and integrity are in their hands; and +they hate each other with the pure, poisonous, passionate hatred which +makes towns grow. If Providence wiped out one of them, the survivor +would pine away and die--a mateless hate-bird. Some day they must unite, +and the question of the composite name they shall then carry already +vexes them. A man there told me that Lake Superior was 'a useful piece +of water,' in that it lay so handy to the C.P.R. tracks. There is a +quiet horror about the Great Lakes which grows as one revisits them. +Fresh water has no right or call to dip over the horizon, pulling down +and pushing up the hulls of big steamers; no right to tread the slow, +deep-sea dance-step between wrinkled cliffs; nor to roar in on weed and +sand beaches between vast headlands that run out for leagues into haze +and sea-fog. Lake Superior is all the same stuff as what towns pay taxes +for, but it engulfs and wrecks and drives ashore, like a fully +accredited ocean--a hideous thing to find in the heart of a continent. +Some people go sailing on it for pleasure, and it has produced a breed +of sailors who bear the same relation to the salt-water variety as a +snake-charmer does to a lion-tamer. + +Yet it is undoubtedly a useful piece of water. + + + + +NEWSPAPERS AND DEMOCRACY + + +Let it be granted that, as the loud-voiced herald hired by the Eolithic +tribe to cry the news of the coming day along the caves, preceded the +chosen Tribal Bard who sang the more picturesque history of the tribe, +so is Journalism senior to Literature, in that Journalism meets the +first tribal need after warmth, food, and women. + +In new countries it shows clear trace of its descent from the Tribal +Herald. A tribe thinly occupying large spaces feels lonely. It desires +to hear the roll-call of its members cried often and loudly; to comfort +itself with the knowledge that there are companions just below the +horizon. It employs, therefore, heralds to name and describe all who +pass. That is why newspapers of new countries seem often so outrageously +personal. The tribe, moreover, needs quick and sure knowledge of +everything that touches on its daily life in the big spaces--earth, air, +and water news which the Older Peoples have put behind them. That is why +its newspapers so often seem so laboriously trivial. + +For example, a red-nosed member of the tribe, Pete O'Halloran, comes in +thirty miles to have his horse shod, and incidentally smashes the +king-bolt of his buckboard at a bad place in the road. The Tribal +Herald--a thin weekly, with a patent inside--connects the red nose and +the breakdown with an innuendo which, to the outsider, is clumsy libel. +But the Tribal Herald understands that two-and-seventy families of the +tribe may use that road weekly. It concerns them to discover whether the +accident was due to Pete being drunk or, as Pete protests, to the +neglected state of the road. Fifteen men happen to know that Pete's nose +is an affliction, not an indication. One of them loafs across and +explains to the Tribal Herald, who, next week, cries aloud that the road +ought to be mended. Meantime Pete, warmed to the marrow at having +focussed the attention of his tribe for a few moments, retires thirty +miles up-stage, pursued by advertisements of buckboards guaranteed not +to break their king-bolts, and later (which is what the tribe were after +all the time) some tribal authority or other mends the road. + +This is only a big-scale diagram, but with a little attention you can +see the tribal instinct of self-preservation quite logically +underrunning all sorts of queer modern developments. + +As the tribe grows, and men do not behold the horizon from edge to +unbroken edge, their desire to know all about the next man weakens a +little--but not much. Outside the cities are still the long distances, +the 'vast, unoccupied areas' of the advertisements; and the men who come +and go yearn to keep touch with and report themselves as of old to +their lodges. A man stepping out of the dark into the circle of the +fires naturally, if he be a true man, holds up his hands and says, 'I, +So-and-So, am here.' You can watch the ritual in full swing at any hotel +when the reporter (_pro_ Tribal Herald) runs his eyes down the list of +arrivals, and before he can turn from the register is met by the +newcomer, who, without special desire for notoriety, explains his +business and intentions. Observe, it is always at evening that the +reporter concerns himself with strangers. By day he follows the +activities of his own city and the doings of nearby chiefs; but when it +is time to close the stockade, to laager the wagons, to draw the +thorn-bush back into the gap, then in all lands he reverts to the Tribal +Herald, who is also the tribal Outer Guard. + +There are countries where a man is indecently pawed over by chattering +heralds who bob their foul torches in his face till he is singed and +smoked at once. In Canada the necessary 'Stand and deliver your +sentiments' goes through with the large decency that stamps all the +Dominion. A stranger's words are passed on to the tribe quite +accurately; no dirt is put into his mouth, and where the heralds judge +that it would be better not to translate certain remarks they +courteously explain why. + +It was always delightful to meet the reporters, for they were men +interested in their land, with the keen, unselfish interest that one +finds in young house-surgeons or civilians. Thanks to the (Boer) war, +many of them had reached out to the ends of our earth, and spoke of the +sister nations as it did one good to hear. Consequently the +interviews--which are as dreary for the reporter as the reported--often +turned into pleasant and unpublished talks. One felt at every turn of +the quick sentences to be dealing with made and trained players of the +game--balanced men who believed in decencies not to be disregarded, +confidences not to be violated, and honour not to be mocked. (This may +explain what men and women have told me--that there is very little of +the brutal domestic terrorism of the Press in Canada, and not much +blackmailing.) They neither spat nor wriggled; they interpolated no +juicy anecdotes of murder or theft among their acquaintance; and not +once between either ocean did they or any other fellow-subjects +volunteer that their country was 'law-abiding.' + +You know the First Sign-post on the Great Main Road? 'When a Woman +advertises that she is virtuous, a Man that he is a gentleman, a +Community that it is loyal, or a Country that it is law-abiding--go the +other way!' + +Yet, while the men's talk was so good and new, their written word seemed +to be cast in conventional, not to say old-fashioned, moulds. A quarter +of a century ago a sub-editor, opening his mail, could identify the +Melbourne _Argus_, the Sydney _Morning Herald_, or the Cape _Times_ as +far as he could see them. Even unheaded clippings from them declared +their origin as a piece of hide betrays the beast that wore it. But he +noticed then that Canadian journals left neither spoor nor scent--might +have blown in from anywhere between thirty degrees of latitude--and had +to be carefully identified by hand. To-day, the spacing, the headlines, +the advertising of Canadian papers, the chessboard-like look of the open +page which should be a daily beautiful study in black and white, the +brittle pulp-paper, the machine-set type, are all as standardised as the +railway cars of the Continent. Indeed, looking through a mass of +Canadian journals is like trying to find one's own sleeper in a corridor +train. Newspaper offices are among the most conservative organisations +in the world; but surely after twenty-five years some changes might be +permitted to creep in; some original convention of expression or +assembly might be developed. + +I drew up to this idea cautiously among a knot of fellow-craftsmen. 'You +mean,' said one straight-eyed youth, 'that we are a back-number copying +back-numbers?' + +It was precisely what I did mean, so I made haste to deny it. 'We know +that,' he said cheerfully. 'Remember we haven't the sea all round +us--and the postal rates to England have only just been lowered. It will +all come right.' + +Surely it will; but meantime one hates to think of these splendid people +using second-class words to express first-class emotions. + +And so naturally from Journalism to Democracy. Every country is entitled +to her reservations, and pretences, but the more 'democratic' a land +is, the more make-believes must the stranger respect. Some of the Tribal +Heralds were very good to me in this matter, and, as it were, nudged me +when it was time to duck in the House of Rimmon. During their office +hours they professed an unflinching belief in the blessed word +'Democracy,' which means any crowd on the move--that is to say, the +helpless thing which breaks through floors and falls into cellars; +overturns pleasure-boats by rushing from port to starboard; stamps men +into pulp because it thinks it has lost sixpence, and jams and grills in +the doorways of blazing theatres. Out of office, like every one else, +they relaxed. Many winked, a few were flippant, but they all agreed that +the only drawback to Democracy was Demos--a jealous God of primitive +tastes and despotic tendencies. I received a faithful portrait of him +from a politician who had worshipped him all his life. It was +practically the Epistle of Jeremy--the sixth chapter of Baruch--done +into unquotable English. + +But Canada is not yet an ideal Democracy. For one thing she has had to +work hard among rough-edged surroundings which carry inevitable +consequences. For another, the law in Canada exists and is administered, +not as a surprise, a joke, a favour, a bribe, or a Wrestling Turk +exhibition, but as an integral part of the national character--no more +to be forgotten or talked about than one's trousers. If you kill, you +hang. If you steal, you go to jail. This has worked toward peace, +self-respect, and, I think, the innate dignity of the people. On the +other hand--which is where the trouble will begin--railways and steamers +make it possible nowadays to bring in persons who need never lose touch +of hot and cold water-taps, spread tables, and crockery till they are +turned out, much surprised, into the wilderness. They clean miss the +long weeks of salt-water and the slow passage across the plains which +pickled and tanned the early emigrants. They arrive with soft bodies and +unaired souls. I had this vividly brought home to me by a man on a train +among the Selkirks. He stood on the safely railed rear-platform, looked +at the gigantic pine-furred shoulder round which men at their lives' +risk had led every yard of the track, and chirruped: 'I say, why can't +all this be nationalised?' There was nothing under heaven except the +snows and the steep to prevent him from dropping off the cars and +hunting a mine for himself. Instead of which he went into the +dining-car. That is one type. + +A man told me the old tale of a crowd of Russian immigrants who at a big +fire in a city 'verted to the ancestral type, and blocked the streets +yelling, 'Down with the Czar!' That is another type. A few days later I +was shown a wire stating that a community of Doukhobors--Russians +again--had, not for the first time, undressed themselves, and were +fleeing up the track to meet the Messiah before the snow fell. Police +were pursuing them with warm underclothing, and trains would please +take care not to run over them. + +So there you have three sort of steam-borne unfitness--soft, savage, and +mad. There is a fourth brand, which may be either home-grown or +imported, but democracies do not recognise it, of downright bad +folk--grown, healthy men and women who honestly rejoice in doing evil. +These four classes acting together might conceivably produce a rather +pernicious democracy; alien hysteria, blood-craze, and the like, +reinforcing local ignorance, sloth, and arrogance. For example, I read a +letter in a paper sympathising with these same Doukhobors. The writer +knew a community of excellent people in England (you see where the rot +starts!) who lived barefoot, paid no taxes, ate nuts, and were above +marriage. They were a soulful folk, living pure lives. The Doukhobors +were also pure and soulful, entitled in a free country to live their own +lives, and not to be oppressed, etc. etc. (Imported soft, observe, +playing up to Imported mad.) Meantime, disgusted police were chasing the +Doukhobors into flannels that they might live to produce children fit to +consort with the sons of the man who wrote that letter and the daughters +of the crowd that lost their heads at the fire. + +'All of which,' men and women answered, 'we admit. But what can we do? +We want people.' And they showed vast and well-equipped schools, where +the children of Slav immigrants are taught English and the songs of +Canada. 'When they grow up,' people said, 'you can't tell them from +Canadians.' It was a wonderful work. The teacher holds up pens, reels, +and so forth, giving the name in English; the children repeating Chinese +fashion. Presently when they have enough words they can bridge back to +the knowledge they learned in their own country, so that a boy of +twelve, at, say, the end of a year, will produce a well-written English +account of his journey from Russia, how much his mother paid for food by +the way, and where his father got his first job. He will also lay his +hand on his heart, and say, 'I--am--a--Canadian.' This gratifies the +Canadian, who naturally purrs over an emigrant owing everything to the +land which adopted him and set him on his feet. The Lady Bountiful of an +English village takes the same interest in a child she has helped on in +the world. And the child repays by his gratitude and good behaviour? + +Personally, one cannot care much for those who have renounced their own +country. They may have had good reason, but they have broken the rules +of the game, and ought to be penalised instead of adding to their score. +Nor is it true, as men pretend, that a few full meals and fine clothes +obliterate all taint of alien instinct and reversion. A thousand years +cannot be as yesterday for mankind; and one has only to glance at the +races across the Border to realise how in outlook, manner, expression, +and morale the South and South-east profoundly and fatally affects the +North and North-west. That was why the sight of the beady-eyed, +muddy-skinned, aproned women, with handkerchiefs on their heads and +Oriental bundles in their hands, always distressed one. + +'But _why_ must you get this stuff?' I asked. 'You know it is not your +equal, and it knows that it is not your equal; and that is bad for you +both. What is the matter with the English as immigrants?' + +The answers were explicit: 'Because the English do not work. Because we +are sick of Remittance-men and loafers sent out here. Because the +English are rotten with Socialism. Because the English don't fit with +our life. They kick at our way of doing things. They are always telling +us how things are done in England. They carry frills! Don't you know the +story of the Englishman who lost his way and was found half-dead of +thirst beside a river? When he was asked why he didn't drink, he said, +"How the deuce can I without a glass?"' + +'But,' I argued over three thousand miles of country, 'all these are +excellent reasons for bringing in the Englishman. It is true that in his +own country he is taught to shirk work, because kind, silly people fall +over each other to help and debauch and amuse him. Here, General January +will stiffen him up. Remittance-men are an affliction to every branch of +the Family, but your manners and morals can't be so tender as to suffer +from a few thousand of them among your six millions. As to the +Englishman's Socialism, he is, by nature, the most unsocial animal +alive. What you call Socialism is his intellectual equivalent for +Diabolo and Limerick competitions. As to his criticisms, you surely +wouldn't marry a woman who agreed with you in everything, and you ought +to choose your immigrants on the same lines. You admit that the Canadian +is too busy to kick at anything. The Englishman is a born kicker. ("Yes, +he is all that," they said.) He kicks on principle, and that is what +makes for civilisation. So did your Englishman's instinct about the +glass. Every new country needs--vitally needs--one-half of one per cent +of its population trained to die of thirst rather than drink out of +their hands. You are always talking of the second generation of your +Smyrniotes and Bessarabians. Think what the second generation of the +English are!' + +They thought--quite visibly--but they did not much seem to relish it. +There was a queer stringhalt in their talk--a conversational shy across +the road--when one touched on these subjects. After a while I went to a +Tribal Herald whom I could trust, and demanded of him point-blank where +the trouble really lay, and who was behind it. + +'It is Labour,' he said. 'You had better leave it alone.' + + + + +LABOUR + + +One cannot leave a thing alone if it is thrust under the nose at every +turn. I had not quitted the Quebec steamer three minutes when I was +asked point-blank: 'What do you think of the question of Asiatic +Exclusion which is Agitating our Community?' + +The Second Sign-Post on the Great Main Road says: 'If a Community is +agitated by a Question--inquire politely after the health of the +Agitator,' This I did, without success; and had to temporise all across +the Continent till I could find some one to help me to acceptable +answers. The Question appears to be confined to British Columbia. There, +after a while, the men who had their own reasons for not wishing to talk +referred me to others who explained, and on the acutest understanding +that no names were to be published (it is sweet to see engineers afraid +of being hoist by their own petards) one got more or less at something +like facts. + +The Chinaman has always been in the habit of coming to British Columbia, +where he makes, as he does elsewhere, the finest servant in the world. +No one, I was assured on all hands, objects to the biddable Chinaman. +He takes work which no white man in a new country will handle, and when +kicked by the mean white will not grossly retaliate. He has always paid +for the privilege of making his fortune on this wonderful coast, but +with singular forethought and statesmanship, the popular Will, some few +years ago, decided to double the head-tax on his entry. Strange as it +may appear, the Chinaman now charges double for his services, and is +scarce at that. This is said to be one of the reasons why overworked +white women die or go off their heads; and why in new cities you can see +blocks of flats being built to minimise the inconveniences of +housekeeping without help. The birth-rate will fall later in exact +proportion to those flats. + +Since the Russo-Japanese War the Japanese have taken to coming over to +British Columbia. They also do work which no white man will; such as +hauling wet logs for lumber mills out of cold water at from eight to ten +shillings a day. They supply the service in hotels and dining-rooms and +keep small shops. The trouble with them is that they are just a little +too good, and when attacked defend themselves with asperity. + +A fair sprinkling of Punjabis--ex-soldiers, Sikhs, Muzbis, and Jats--are +coming in on the boats. The plague at home seems to have made them +restless, but I could not gather why so many of them come from Shahpur, +Phillour, and Jullundur way. These men do not, of course, offer for +house-service, but work in the lumber mills, and with the least little +care and attention could be made most valuable. Some one ought to tell +them not to bring their old men with them, and better arrangements +should be made for their remitting money home to their villages. They +are not understood, of course; but they are not hated. + +The objection is all against the Japanese. So far--except that they are +said to have captured the local fishing trade at Vancouver, precisely as +the Malays control the Cape Town fish business--they have not yet +competed with the whites; but I was earnestly assured by many men that +there was danger of their lowering the standard of life and wages. The +demand, therefore, in certain quarters is that they go--absolutely and +unconditionally. (You may have noticed that Democracies are strong on +the imperative mood.) An attempt was made to shift them shortly before I +came to Vancouver, but it was not very successful, because the Japanese +barricaded their quarters and flocked out, a broken bottle held by the +neck in either hand, which they jabbed in the faces of the +demonstrators. It is, perhaps, easier to haze and hammer bewildered +Hindus and Tamils, as is being done across the Border, than to stampede +the men of the Yalu and Liaoyang.[5] + +[Footnote 5: Battles in the Russo-Japanese War.] + +But when one began to ask questions one got lost in a maze of hints, +reservations, and orations, mostly delivered with constraint, as though +the talkers were saying a piece learned by heart. Here are some +samples:-- + +A man penned me in a corner with a single heavily capitalised sentence. +'There is a General Sentiment among Our People that the Japanese Must +Go,' said he. + +'Very good,' said I. 'How d'you propose to set about it?' + +'That is nothing to us. There is a General Sentiment,' etc. + +'Quite so. Sentiment is a beautiful thing, but what are you going to +do?' He did not condescend to particulars, but kept repeating the +sentiment, which, as I promised, I record. + +Another man was a little more explicit. 'We desire,' he said, 'to keep +the Chinaman. But the Japanese must go.' + +'Then who takes their place? Isn't this rather a new country to pitch +people out of?' + +'We must develop our Resources slowly, sir--with an Eye to the Interests +of our Children. We must preserve the Continent for Races which will +assimilate with Ours. We must not be swamped by Aliens.' + +'Then bring in your own races and bring 'em in quick,' I ventured. + +This is the one remark one must not make in certain quarters of the +West; and I lost caste heavily while he explained (exactly as the Dutch +did at the Cape years ago) how British Columbia was by no means so rich +as she appeared; that she was throttled by capitalists and monopolists +of all kinds; that white labour had to be laid off and fed and warmed +during the winter; that living expenses were enormously high; that they +were at the end of a period of prosperity, and were now entering on +lean years; and that whatever steps were necessary for bringing in more +white people should be taken with extreme caution. Then he added that +the railway rates to British Columbia were so high that emigrants were +debarred from coming on there. + +'But haven't the rates been reduced?' I asked. + +'Yes--yes, I believe they have, but immigrants are so much in demand +that they are snapped up before they have got so far West. You must +remember, too, that skilled labour is not like agricultural labour. It +is dependent on so many considerations. And the Japanese must go.' + +'So people have told me. But I heard stories of dairies and fruit-farms +in British Columbia being thrown up because there was no labour to milk +or pick the fruit. Is that true, d'you think?' + +'Well, you can't expect a man with all the chances that our country +offers him to milk cows in a pasture. A Chinaman can do that. We want +races that will assimilate with ours,' etc., etc. + +'But didn't the Salvation Army offer to bring in three or four thousand +English some short time ago? What came of that idea?' + +'It--er--fell through.' + +'Why?' + +'For political reasons, I believe. We do not want People who will lower +the Standard of Living. That is why the Japanese must go.' + +'Then why keep the Chinese?' + +'We can get on with the Chinese. We can't get on without the Chinese. +But we must have Emigration of a Type that will assimilate with Our +People. I hope I have made myself clear?' + +I hoped that he had, too. + +Now hear a wife, a mother, and a housekeeper. + +'We have to pay for this precious state of things with our health and +our children's. Do you know the saying that the Frontier is hard on +women and cattle? This isn't the frontier, but in some respects it's +worse, because we have all the luxuries and appearances--the pretty +glass and silver to put on the table. We have to dust, polish, and +arrange 'em after we've done our housework. I don't suppose that means +anything to you, but--try it for a month! We have no help. A Chinaman +costs fifty or sixty dollars a month now. Our husbands can't always +afford that. How old would you take me for? I'm not thirty. Well thank +God, I stopped my sister coming out West. Oh yes, it's a fine +country--for men.' + +'Can't you import servants from England?' + +'I can't pay a girl's passage in order to have her married in three +months. Besides, she wouldn't work. They won't when they see Chinamen +working.' + +'Do you object to the Japanese, too?' + +'Of course not. No one does. It's only politics. The wives of the men +who earn six and seven dollars a day--skilled labour they call it--have +Chinese and Jap servants. _We_ can't afford it. _We_ have to think of +saving for the future, but those other people live up to every cent they +earn. They know _they're_ all right. They're Labour. They'll be looked +after, whatever happens. You can see how the State looks after me.' + +A little later I had occasion to go through a great and beautiful city +between six and seven of a crisp morning. Milk and fish, vegetables, +etc., were being delivered to the silent houses by Chinese and Japanese. +Not a single white man was visible on that chilly job. + +Later still a man came to see me, without too publicly giving his name. +He was in a small way of business, and told me (others had said much the +same thing) that if I gave him away his business would suffer. He talked +for half an hour on end. + +'Am I to understand, then,' I said, 'that what you call Labour +absolutely dominates this part of the world?' + +He nodded. + +'That it is difficult to get skilled labour into here?' + +'Difficult? My God, if I want to get an extra hand for my business--I +pay Union wages, of course--I have to arrange to get him here secretly. +I have to go out and meet him, accidental-like, down the line, and if +the Unions find out that he is coming, they, like as not, order him back +East, or turn him down across the Border.' + +'Even if he has his Union ticket? Why?' + +'They'll tell him that labour conditions are not good here. He knows +what that means. He'll turn back quick enough. I'm in a small way of +business, and I can't afford to take any chances fighting the Unions.' + +'What would happen if you did?' + +'D'you know what's happening across the Border? Men get blown up +there--with dynamite.' + +'But this isn't across the Border?' + +'It's a damn-sight too near to be pleasant. And witnesses get blown up, +too. You see, the Labour situation ain't run from our side the line. +It's worked from down under. You may have noticed men were rather +careful when they talked about it?' + +'Yes, I noticed all that.' + +'Well, it ain't a pleasant state of affairs. I don't say that the Unions +here would do anything _to_ you--and please understand I'm all for the +rights of Labour myself. Labour has no better friend than me--I've been +a working man, though I've got a business of my own now. Don't run away +with any idea that I'm against Labour--will you?' + +'Not in the least. I can see that. You merely find that Labour's a +little bit--er--inconsiderate, sometimes?' + +'Look what happens across the Border! I suppose they've told you that +little fuss with the Japanese in Vancouver was worked from down under, +haven't they? I don't think our own people 'ud have done it by +themselves.' + +'I've heard that several times. Is it quite sporting, do you think, to +lay the blame on another country?' + +'_You_ don't live here. But as I was saying--if we get rid of the Japs +to-day, we'll be told to get rid of some one else to-morrow. There's no +limit, sir, to what Labour wants. None!' + +'I thought they only want a fair day's wage for a fair day's work?' + +'That may do in the Old Country, but here they mean to boss the country. +They do.' + +'And how does the country like it?' + +'We're about sick of it. It don't matter much in flush +times--employers'll do most anything sooner than stop work--but when we +come to a pinch, you'll hear something. We're a rich land--in spite of +everything they make out--but we're held up at every turn by Labour. +Why, there's businesses on businesses which friends of mine--in a small +way like myself--want to start. Businesses in every direction--if they +was only allowed to start in. But they ain't.' + +'That's a pity. Now, what do you think about the Japanese question?' + +'I don't think. I know. Both political parties are playing up to the +Labour vote--if you understand what that means.' + +I tried to understand. + +'And neither side'll tell the truth--that if the Asiatic goes, this side +of the Continent'll drop out of sight, unless we get free white +immigration. And any party that proposed white immigration on a large +scale 'ud be snowed under next election. I'm telling you what +politicians think. Myself, I believe if a man stood up to Labour--not +that I've any feeling against Labour--and just talked sense, a lot of +people would follow him--quietly, of course. I believe he could even get +white immigration after a while. He'd lose the first election, of +course, but in the long run.... We're about sick of Labour. I wanted you +to know the truth.' + +'Thank you. And you don't think any attempt to bring in white +immigration would succeed?' + +'Not if it didn't suit Labour. You can try it if you like, and see what +happens.' + +On that hint I made an experiment in another city. There were three men +of position, and importance, and affluence, each keenly interested in +the development of their land, each asserting that what the land needed +was white immigrants. And we four talked for two hours on the matter--up +and down and in circles. The one point on which those three men were +unanimous was, that whatever steps were taken to bring people into +British Columbia from England, by private recruiting or otherwise, +should be taken secretly. Otherwise the business of the people concerned +in the scheme would suffer. + +At which point I dropped the Great Question of Asiatic Exclusion which +is Agitating all our Community; and I leave it to you, especially in +Australia and the Cape, to draw your own conclusions. + +Externally, British Columbia appears to be the richest and the loveliest +section of the Continent. Over and above her own resources she has a +fair chance to secure an immense Asiatic trade, which she urgently +desires. Her land, in many places over large areas, is peculiarly fitted +for the small former and fruit-grower, who can send his truck to the +cities. On every hand I heard a demand for labour of all kinds. At the +same time, in no other part of the Continent did I meet so many men who +insistently decried the value and possibilities of their country, or who +dwelt more fluently on the hardships and privations to be endured by the +white immigrant. I believe that one or two gentlemen have gone to +England to explain the drawbacks _viva voce_. It is possible that they +incur a great responsibility in the present, and even a terrible one for +the future. + + + + +THE FORTUNATE TOWNS + +After Politics, let us return to the Prairie which is the High Veldt, +plus Hope, Activity, and Reward. Winnipeg is the door to it--a great +city in a great plain, comparing herself, innocently enough, to other +cities of her acquaintance, but quite unlike any other city. + +When one meets, in her own house, a woman not seen since girlhood she is +all a stranger till some remembered tone or gesture links up to the +past, and one cries: 'It _is_ you after all.' But, indeed, the child has +gone; the woman with her influences has taken her place. I tried vainly +to recover the gawky, graceless city I had known, so unformed and so +insistent on her shy self. I even ventured to remind a man of it. 'I +remember,' he said, smiling, 'but we were young then. This thing,' +indicating an immense perspective of asphalted avenue that dipped under +thirty railway tracks, 'only came up in the last ten years--practically +the last five. We've had to enlarge all those warehouses yonder by +adding two or three stories to 'em, and we've hardly begun to go ahead +yet. We're just beginning.' + +Warehouses, railway-sidings, and such are only counters in the White +Man's Game, which can be swept up and re-dealt as the play varies. It +was the spirit in the thin dancing air--the new spirit of the new +city--which rejoiced me. Winnipeg has Things in abundance, but has +learned to put them beneath her feet, not on top of her mind, and so is +older than many cities. None the less the Things had to be shown--for +what shopping is to the woman showing off his town is to the +right-minded man. First came the suburbs--miles on miles of the dainty, +clean-outlined, wooden-built houses, where one can be so happy and so +warm, each unjealously divided from its neighbour by the lightest of +boundaries. One could date them by their architecture, year after year, +back to the Early 'Nineties, which is when civilisation began; could +guess within a few score dollars at their cost and the incomes of their +owners, and could ask questions about the new domestic appliances of +to-day. + +'Asphalt streets and concrete sidewalks came up a few years ago,' said +our host as we trotted over miles of it. 'We found it the only way to +fight the prairie mud. Look!' Where the daring road ended, there lay +unsubdued, level with the pale asphalt, the tenacious prairie, over +which civilisation fought her hub-deep way to the West. And with asphalt +and concrete they fight the prairie back every building season. Next +came the show-houses, built by rich men with an eye to the honour and +glory of their city, which is the first obligation of wealth in a new +land. + +We twisted and turned among broad, clean, tree-lined, sunlit boulevards +and avenues, all sluiced down with an air that forbade any thought of +fatigue, and talked of city government and municipal taxation, till, in +a certain silence, we were shown a suburb of uncared-for houses, shops, +and banks, whose sides and corners were rubbed greasy by the shoulders +of loafers. Dirt and tin cans lay about the street. Yet it was not the +squalor of poverty so much as the lack of instinct to keep clean. One +race prefers to inhabit there. + +Next a glimpse of a cold, white cathedral, red-brick schools almost as +big (thank goodness!) as some convents; hospitals, institutions, a mile +or so of shops, and then a most familiar-feeling lunch at a Club which +would have amazed my Englishman at Montreal, where men, not yet old, +talked of Fort Garry as they remembered it, and tales of the founding of +the city, of early administrative shifts and accidents, mingled with the +younger men's prophecies and frivolities. + +There are a few places still left where men can handle big things with a +light touch, and take more for granted in five minutes than an +Englishman at home could puzzle out in a year. But one would not meet +many English at a lunch in a London club who took the contract for +building London Wall or helped bully King John into signing Magna +Charta. + +I had two views of the city--one on a gray day from the roof of a +monster building, whence it seemed to overflow and fill with noises the +whole vast cup of the horizon; and still, all round its edge, jets of +steam and the impatient cries of machinery showed it was eating out into +the Prairie like a smothered fire. + +The other picture was a silhouette of the city's flank, mysterious as a +line of unexplored cliffs, under a sky crimson--barred from the zenith +to the ground, where it lay, pale emerald behind the uneven ramparts. As +our train halted in the last of the dusk, and the rails glowed dull red, +I caught the deep surge of it, and seven miles across the purple levels +saw the low, restless aurora of its lights. It is rather an awesome +thing to listen to a vanguard of civilisation talking to itself in the +night in the same tone as a thousand-year-old city. + +All the country hereabouts is riddled with railways for business and +pleasure undreamed of fifteen years ago, and it was a long time before +we reached the clear prairie of air and space and open land. The air is +different from any air that ever blew; the space is ampler than most +spaces, because it runs back to the unhampered Pole, and the open land +keeps the secret of its magic as closely as the sea or the desert. + +People here do not stumble against each other around corners, but see +largely and tranquilly from a long way off what they desire, or wish to +avoid, and they shape their path accordingly across the waves, and +troughs, and tongues, and dips and fans of the land. + +When mere space and the stoop of the high sky begin to overwhelm, earth +provides little ponds and lakes, lying in soft-flanked hollows, where +people can step down out of the floods of air, and delight themselves +with small and known distances. Most of the women I saw about the houses +were down in the hollows, and most of the men were on the crests and the +flats. Once, while we halted a woman drove straight down at us from the +sky-line, along a golden path between black ploughed lands. When the +horse, who managed affairs, stopped at the cars, she nodded +mysteriously, and showed us a very small baby in the hollow of her arm. +Doubtless she was some exiled Queen flying North to found a dynasty and +establish a country. The Prairie makes everything wonderful. + +They were threshing the wheat on both sides or the track as far as the +eye could see. The smoke of the machines went up in orderly perspective +alongside the mounds of chaff--thus: a machine, a house, a mound of +chaff, a stretch of wheat in stocks--and then repeat the pattern over +the next few degrees of longitude. We ran through strings of nearly +touching little towns, where I remembered an occasional shack; and +through big towns once represented by a name-board, a siding, and two +troopers of the North-West Police. In those days men proved that Wheat +would not grow north of some fool's line, or other, or, if it did, that +no one would grow it. And now the Wheat was marching with us as far as +the eye could reach; the railways were out, two, three hundred miles +north, peopling a new wheat country; and north of that again the Grand +Trunk was laying down a suburban extension of a few thousand miles +across the Continent, with branches perhaps to Dawson City, certainly to +Hudson Bay. + +'Come north and look!' cried the Afrites of the Railway. 'You're only on +the fringe of it here.' I preferred to keep the old road, and to gape at +miracles accomplished since my day. The old, false-fronted, +hollow-stomached Western hotels were gone; their places filled by +five-storey brick or stone ones, with Post Offices to match. +Occasionally some overlooked fragment of the past still cleaved to a +town, and marked it for an old acquaintance, but often one had to get a +mile away and look back on a place--as one holds a palimpsest up against +the light--to identify the long overlaid lines of the beginnings. Each +town supplied the big farming country behind it, and each town school +carried the Union Jack on a flagstaff in its playground. So far as one +could understand, the scholars are taught neither to hate, nor despise, +nor beg from, their own country. + +I whispered to a man that I was a little tired of a three days' tyranny +of Wheat, besides being shocked at farmers who used clean bright straw +for fuel, and made bonfires of their chaff-hills. 'You're 'way behind +the times,' said he. 'There's fruit and dairying and any quantity of +mixed farming going forward all around--let alone irrigation further +West. Wheat's not our only king by a long sight. Wait till you strike +such and such a place.' It was there I met a prophet and a preacher in +the shape of a Commissioner of the Local Board of Trade (all towns have +them), who firmly showed me the vegetables which his district produced. +They _were_ vegetables too--all neatly staged in a little kiosk near the +station. + +I think the pious Thomas Tusser would have loved that man. 'Providence,' +said he, shedding pamphlets at every gesture, 'did not intend +everlasting Wheat in this section. No, sir! Our business is to keep +ahead of Providence--to meet her with mixed farming. Are you interested +in mixed farming? Psha! Too bad you missed our fruit and vegetable show. +It draws people together, mixed farming does. I don't say Wheat is +narrowing to the outlook, but I claim there's more sociability and money +in mixed farming. We've been hypnotised by Wheat and Cattle. Now--the +cars won't start yet awhile--I'll just tell you my ideas.' + +For fifteen glorious minutes he gave me condensed essence of mixed +farming, with excursions into sugar-beet (did you know they are making +sugar in Alberta?), and he talked of farmyard muck, our dark mother of +all things, with proper devotion. + +'What we want now,' he cried in farewell, 'is men--more men. Yes, and +women.' + +They need women sorely for domestic help, to meet the mad rush of work +at harvest time--maids who will help in house, dairy, and chicken-run +till they are married. + +A steady tide sets that way already; one contented settler recruiting +others from England; but if a tenth of that energy wasted on 'social +reform' could be diverted to decently thought out and supervised +emigration work ('Labour' does not yet object to people working on the +land) we might do something worth talking about. The races which work +and do not form Committees are going into the country at least as fast +as ours. It makes one jealous and afraid to watch aliens taking, and +taking honestly, so much of this treasure of good fortune and sane +living. + +There was a town down the road which I had first heard discussed nigh +twenty years ago by a broken-down prospector in a box-car. 'Young +feller,' said he, after he had made a professional prophecy,' you'll +hear of that town if you live. She's born lucky.' + +I saw the town later--it was a siding by a trestle bridge where Indians +sold beadwork--and as years passed I gathered that the old tramp's +prophecy had come true, and that Luck of some kind had struck the little +town by the big river. So, this trip, I stopped to make sure. It was a +beautiful town of six thousand people, and a railway junction, beside a +high-girdered iron bridge; there was a public garden with trees at the +station. A company of joyous men and women, whom that air and that +light, and their own goodwill, made our brothers and sisters, came along +in motors, and gave us such a day as never was. + +'What about the Luck?' I asked. + +'Heavens!' said one. 'Haven't you heard about our natural gas--the +greatest natural gas in the world? Oh, come and see!' + +I was whirled off to a roundhouse full of engines and machinery-shops, +worked by natural gas which comes out of the earth, smelling slightly of +fried onions, at a pressure of six hundred pounds, and by valves and +taps is reduced to four pounds. There was Luck enough to make a +metropolis. Imagine a city's heating and light--to say nothing of +power--laid on at no greater expense than that of piping! + +'Are there any limits to the possibilities of it?' I demanded. + +'Who knows? We're only at the beginning. We'll show you a brick-making +plant, out on the prairie, run by gas. But just now we want to show you +one of our pet farms.' + +Away swooped the motors, like swallows, over roads any width you please, +and up on to what looked like the High Veldt itself. A Major of the +Mounted Police, who had done a year at the (Boer) war, told us how the +ostrich-farm fencing and the little meercats sitting up and racing about +South Africa had made him homesick for the sight of the gophers by the +wayside, and the endless panels of wire fencing along which we rushed. +(The Prairie has nothing to learn from the Veldt about fencing, or +tricky gates.) + +'After all,' said the Major, 'there's no country to touch this. I've had +thirty years of it--from one end to the other.' + +Then they pointed out all the quarters of the horizon--say, fifty miles +wherever you turned--and gave them names. + +The show farmer had taken his folk to church, but we friendly slipped +through his gates and reached the silent, spick-and-span house, with its +trim barn, and a vast mound of copper-coloured wheat, piled in the sun +between two mounds of golden chaff. Every one thumbed a sample of it and +passed judgment--it must have been worth a few hundred golden sovereigns +as it lay, out on the veldt--and we sat around, on the farm machinery, +and, in the hush that a shut-up house always imposes, we seemed to hear +the lavish earth getting ready for new harvests. There was no true wind, +but a push, as it were, of the whole crystal atmosphere. + +'Now for the brickfield!' they cried. It was many miles off. The road +fed by a never-to-be-forgotten drop, to a river broad as the Orange at +Norval's Pont, rustling between mud hills. An old Scotchman, in the very +likeness of Charon, with big hip boots, controlled a pontoon, which +sagged back and forth by current on a wire rope. The reckless motors +bumped on to this ferry through a foot of water, and Charon, who never +relaxed, bore us statelily across the dark, broad river to the further +bank, where we all turned to look at the lucky little town, and discuss +its possibilities. + +'I think you can see it best from here,' said one. + +'No, from here,' said another, and their voices softened on the very +name of it. + +Then for an hour we raced over true prairie, great yellow-green plains +crossed by old buffalo trails, which do not improve motor springs, till +a single chimney broke the horizon like a mast at sea; and thereby were +more light-hearted men and women, a shed and a tent or two for workmen, +the ribs and frames of the brick-making mechanism, a fifteen foot square +shaft sunk, sixty foot down to the clay, and, stark and black, the pipe +of a natural-gas well. The rest was Prairie--the mere curve of the +earth--with little grey birds calling. + +I thought it could not have been simpler, more audacious or more +impressive, till I saw some women in pretty frocks go up and peer at the +hissing gas-valves. + +'We fancied that it might amuse you,' said all those merry people, and +between laughter and digressions they talked over projects for building, +first their own, and next other cities, in brick of all sorts; giving +figures of output and expenses of plant that made one gasp. To the eye +the affair was no more than a novel or delicious picnic. What it +actually meant was a committee to change the material of civilisation +for a hundred miles around. I felt as though I were assisting at the +planning of Nineveh; and whatever of good comes to the little town that +was born lucky I shall always claim a share. + +But there is no space to tell how we fed, with a prairie appetite, in +the men's quarters, on a meal prepared by an artist; how we raced home +at speeds no child could ever hear of, and no grown-up should attempt; +how the motors squattered at the ford, and took pot-shots at the pontoon +till even Charon smiled; how great horses hauled the motors up the +gravelly bank into the town; how there we met people in their Sunday +best, walking and driving, and pulled ourselves together, and looked +virtuous; and how the merry company suddenly and quietly evanished +because they thought that their guests might be tired. I can give you no +notion of the pure, irresponsible frolic of it--of the almost +affectionate kindness, the gay and inventive hospitality that so +delicately controlled the whole affair--any more than I can describe a +certain quiet half-hour in the dusk just before we left, when the +company gathered to say good-bye, while young couples walked in the +street, and the glare of the never-extinguished natural-gas lamps +coloured the leaves of the trees a stage green. + +It was a woman, speaking out of the shadow, who said, what we all felt, +'You see, we just love our town,' + +'So do we,' I said, and it slid behind us. + + + + +MOUNTAINS AND THE PACIFIC + + +The Prairie proper ends at Calgary, among the cattle-ranches, mills, +breweries, and three million acre irrigation works. The river that +floats timber to the town from the mountains does not slide nor rustle +like Prairie rivers, but brawls across bars of blue pebbles, and a +greenish tinge in its water hints of the snows. + +What I saw of Calgary was crowded into one lively half-hour (motors were +invented to run about new cities). What I heard I picked up, oddly +enough, weeks later, from a young Dane in the North Sea. He was +qualmish, but his Saga of triumph upheld him. + +'Three years ago I come to Canada by steerage--third class. _And_ I have +the language to learn. Look at me! I have now my own dairy business, in +Calgary, and--look at me!--my own half section, that is, three hundred +and twenty acres. All my land which is mine! And now I come home, first +class, for Christmas here in Denmark, and I shall take out back with me, +some friends of mine which are farmers, to farm on those irrigated lands +near by Calgary. Oh, I tell you there is nothing wrong with Canada for a +man which works.' + +'And will your friends go?' I inquired. + +'You bet they will. It is all arranged already. I bet they get ready to +go now already; and in three years they will come back for Christmas +here in Denmark, first class like me.' + +'Then you think Calgary is going ahead?' + +'You bet! We are only at the beginning of things. Look at me! Chickens? +I raise chickens also in Calgary,' etc., etc. + +After all this pageant of unrelieved material prosperity, it was a rest +to get to the stillness of the big foothills, though they, too, had been +in-spanned for the work of civilisation. The timber off their sides was +ducking and pitch-poling down their swift streams, to be sawn into +house-stuff for all the world. The woodwork of a purely English villa +may come from as many Imperial sources as its owner's income. + +The train crept, whistling to keep its heart up, through the winding +gateways of the hills, till it presented itself, very humbly, before the +true mountains, the not so Little Brothers to the Himalayas. Mountains +of the pine-cloaked, snow-capped breed are unchristian things. + +Men mine into the flanks of some of them, and trust to modern science to +pull them through. Not long ago, a mountain kneeled on a little mining +village as an angry elephant kneels; but it did not get up again, and +the half of that camp was no more seen on earth. The other half still +stands--uninhabited. The 'heathen in his blindness' would have made +arrangements with the Genius of the Place before he ever drove a pick +there. 'As a learned scholar of a little-known university once observed +to an engineer officer on the Himalaya-Tibet Road--'You white men gain +nothing by not noticing what you cannot see. You fall off the road, or +the road falls on you, and you die, and you think it all an accident. +How much wiser it was when we were allowed to sacrifice a man +officially, sir, before making bridges or other public works. Then the +local gods were officially recognised, sir, and did not give any more +trouble, and the local workmen, sir, were much pleased with these +precautions.' + +There are many local gods on the road through the Rockies: old bald +mountains that have parted with every shred of verdure and stand wrapped +in sheets of wrinkled silver rock, over which the sight travels slowly +as in delirium; mad, horned mountains, wreathed with dancing mists; +low-browed and bent-shouldered faquirs of the wayside, sitting in +meditation beneath a burden of glacier-ice that thickens every year; and +mountains of fair aspect on one side, but on the other seamed with +hollow sunless clefts, where last year's snow is blackened with this +year's dirt and smoke of forest-fires. The drip from it seeps away +through slopes of unstable gravel and dirt, till, at the appointed +season, the whole half-mile of undermined talus slips and roars into the +horrified valley. + +The railway winds in and out among them with little inexplicable +deviations and side-twists, much as a buck walks through a forest-glade, +sidling and crossing uneasily in what appears to be a plain way. Only +when the track has rounded another shoulder or two, a backward and +upward glance at some menacing slope shows why the train did not take +the easier-looking road on the other side of the gorge. + +From time to time the mountains lean apart, and nurse between them some +golden valley of slow streams, fat pastures, and park-like uplands, with +a little town, and cow bells tinkling among berry bushes; and children +who have never seen the sun rise or set, shouting at the trains; and +real gardens round the houses. + +At Calgary it was a frost, and the dahlias were dead. A day later +nasturtiums bloomed untouched beside the station platforms, and the air +was heavy and liquid with the breath of the Pacific. One felt the spirit +of the land change with the changing outline of the hills till, on the +lower levels by the Fraser, it seemed that even the Sussex Downs must be +nearer at heart to the Prairie than British Columbia. The Prairie people +notice the difference, and the Hill people, unwisely, I think, insist on +it. Perhaps the magic may lie in the scent of strange evergreens and +mosses not known outside the ranges: or it may strike from wall to wall +of timeless rifts and gorges, but it seemed to me to draw out of the +great sea that washes further Asia--the Asia of allied mountains, mines, +and forests. + +We rested one day high up in the Rockies, to visit a lake carved out of +pure jade, whose property is to colour every reflection on its bosom to +its own tint. A belt of brown dead timber on a gravel scar, showed, +upside down, like sombre cypresses rising from green turf and the +reflected snows were pale green. In summer many tourists go there, but +we saw nothing except the wonderworking lake lying mute in its circle of +forest, where red and orange lichens grew among grey and blue moss, and +we heard nothing except the noise of its outfall hurrying through a jam +of bone-white logs. The thing might have belonged to Tibet or some +unexplored valley behind Kin-chinjunga. It had no concern with the West. + +As we drove along the narrow hill-road a piebald pack-pony with a +china-blue eye came round a bend, followed by two women, black-haired, +bare-headed, wearing beadwork squaw-jackets, and riding straddle. A +string of pack-ponies trotted through the pines behind them. + +'Indians on the move?' said I. 'How characteristic!' + +As the women jolted by, one of them very slightly turned her eyes, and +they were, past any doubt, the comprehending equal eyes of the civilised +white woman which moved in that berry-brown face. + +'Yes,' said our driver, when the cavalcade had navigated the next +curve,' that'll be Mrs. So-and-So and Miss So-and-So. They mostly camp +hereabout for three months every year. I reckon they're coming in to the +railroad before the snow falls.' + +'And whereabout do they go?' I asked. + +'Oh, all about anywheres. If you mean where they come from just +now--that's the trail yonder.' + +He pointed to a hair-crack across the face of a mountain, and I took +his word for it that it was a safe pony-trail. The same evening, at an +hotel of all the luxuries, a slight woman in a very pretty evening frock +was turning over photographs, and the eyes beneath the strictly-arranged +hair were the eyes of the woman in the beadwork jacket who had quirted +the piebald pack-pony past our buggy. + +Praised be Allah for the diversity of His creatures! But do you know any +other country where two women could go out for a three months' trek and +shoot in perfect comfort and safety? + +These mountains are only ten days from London, and people more and more +use them for pleasure-grounds. Other and most unthought-of persons buy +little fruit-farms in British Columbia as an excuse for a yearly visit +to the beautiful land, and they tempt yet more people from England. This +is apart from the regular tide of emigration, and serves to make the +land known. If you asked a State-owned railway to gamble on the chance +of drawing tourists, the Commissioner of Railways would prove to you +that the experiment could never succeed, and that it was wrong to risk +the taxpayers' money in erecting first-class hotels. Yet South Africa +could, even now, be made a tourists' place--if only the railroads and +steamship lines had faith. + +On thinking things over I suspect I was not intended to appreciate the +merits of British Columbia too highly. Maybe I misjudged; maybe she was +purposely misrepresented; but I seemed to hear more about 'problems' +and 'crises' and 'situations' in her borders than anywhere else. So far +as eye or ear could gather, the one urgent problem was to find enough +men and women to do the work in hand. + +Lumber, coal, minerals, fisheries, fit soil for fruit, dairy, and +poultry farms are all there in a superb climate. The natural beauty of +earth and sky match these lavish gifts; to which are added thousands of +miles of safe and sheltered waterways for coastal trade; deep harbours +that need no dredge; the ground-works of immense and ice-free ports--all +the title-deeds to half the trade of Asia. For the people's pleasure and +good disport salmon, trout, quail, and pheasant play in front of and +through the suburbs of her capitals. A little axe-work and +road-metalling gives a city one of the loveliest water-girt parks that +we have outside the tropics. Another town is presented with a hundred +islands, knolls, wooded coves, stretches of beach, and dingles, laid +down as expressly for camp-life, picnics, and boating parties, beneath +skies never too hot and rarely too cold. If they care to lift up their +eyes from their almost subtropical gardens they can behold snowy peaks +across blue bays, which must be good for the soul. Though they face a +sea out of which any portent may arise, they are not forced to protect +or even to police its waters. They are as ignorant of drouth, murrain, +pestilence locusts, and blight, as they are of the true meaning of want +and fear. + +Such a land is good for an energetic man. It is also not so bad for the +loafer. I was, as I have told you, instructed on its, drawbacks. I was +to understand that there was no certainty in any employment; and that a +man who earned immense wages for six months of the year would have to be +kept by the community if he fell out of work for the other six. I was +not to be deceived by golden pictures set before me by interested +parties (that is to say, by almost every one I met), and I was to give +due weight to the difficulties and discouragements that beset the +intending immigrant. Were I an intending immigrant I would risk a good +deal of discomfort to get on to the land in British Columbia; and were I +rich, with no attachments outside England, I would swiftly buy me a farm +or a house in that country for the mere joy of it. + +I forgot those doleful and unhumorous conspirators among people who +fervently believed in the place; but afterwards the memory left a bad +taste in my mouth. Cities, like women, cannot be too careful what sort +of men they allow to talk about them. + +Time had changed Vancouver literally out of all knowledge. From the +station to the suburbs, and back to the wharves, every step was strange, +and where I remembered open spaces and still untouched timber, the +tramcars were fleeting people out to a lacrosse game. Vancouver is an +aged city, for only a few days previous to my arrival the Vancouver +Baby--_i.e._ the first child born in Vancouver--had been married. + +A steamer--once familiar in Table Bay--had landed a few hundred Sikhs +and Punjabi Jats--to each man his bundle--and the little groups walked +uneasy alone, keeping, for many of them had been soldiers, to the +military step. Yes, they said they had come to this country to get work. +News had reached their villages that work at great wages was to be had +in this country. Their brethren who had gone before had sent them the +news. Yes, and sometimes the money for the passage out. The money would +be paid back from the so-great wages to come. With interest? Assuredly +with interest.. Did men lend money for nothing in _any_ country? They +were waiting for their brethren to come and show them where to eat, and +later, how to work. Meanwhile this was a new country. How could they say +anything about it? No, it was not like Gurgaon or Shahpur or Jullundur. +The Sickness (plague) had come to all these places. It had come into the +Punjab by every road, and many--many--many had died. The crops, too, had +failed in some districts. Hearing the news about these so-great wages +they had taken ship for the belly's sake--for the money's sake--for the +children's sake. + +'Would they go back again?' + +They grinned as they nudged each other. The Sahib had not quite +understood. They had come over for the sake of the money--the rupees, +no, the dollars. The Punjab was their home where their villages lay, +where their people were waiting. Without doubt--without doubt--they +would go back. Then came the brethren already working in the +mills--cosmopolitans dressed in ready-made clothes, and smoking +cigarettes. + +'This way, O you people,' they cried. The bundles were reshouldered and +the turbaned knots melted away. The last words I caught were true Sikh +talk: 'But what about the money, O my brother?' + +Some Punjabis have found out that money can be too dearly bought. + +There was a Sikh in a sawmill, had been driver in a mountain battery at +home. Himself he was from Amritsar. (Oh, pleasant as cold water in a +thirsty land is the sound of a familiar name in a fair country!) + +'But you had your pension. Why did you come here?' + +'Heaven-born, because my sense was little. And there was also the +Sickness at Amritsar.' + +(The historian a hundred years hence will be able to write a book on +economic changes brought about by pestilence. There is a very +interesting study somewhere of the social and commercial effects of the +Black Death in England.) + +On a wharf, waiting for a steamer, some thirty Sikhs, many of them +wearing their old uniforms (which should not be allowed) were talking at +the tops of their voices, so that the shed rang like an Indian railway +station. A suggestion that if they spoke lower life would be easier was +instantly adopted. Then a senior officer with a British India medal +asked hopefully: 'Has the Sahib any orders where we are to go?' + +Alas he had none--nothing but goodwill and greetings for the sons of +the Khalsa, and they tramped off in fours. + +It is said that when the little riot broke out in Vancouver these +'heathen' were invited by other Asiatics to join in defending themselves +against the white man. They refused on the ground that they were +subjects of the King. I wonder what tales they sent back to their +villages, and where, and how fully, every detail of the affair was +talked over. White men forget that no part of the Empire can live or die +to itself. + +Here is a rather comic illustration of this on the material side. The +wonderful waters between Vancouver and Victoria are full of whales, +leaping and rejoicing in the strong blue all about the steamer. There +is, therefore, a whalery on an island near by, and I had the luck to +travel with one of the shareholders. + +'Whales are beautiful beasts,' he said affectionately. 'We've a contract +with a Scotch firm for every barrel of oil we can deliver for years +ahead. It's reckoned the best for harness-dressing.' + +He went on to tell me how a swift ship goes hunting whales with a +bomb-gun and explodes shells into their insides so that they perish at +once. + +'All the old harpoon and boat business would take till the cows come +home. We kill 'em right off.' + +'And how d'you strip 'em?' + +It seemed that the expeditious ship carried also a large air-pump, and +pumped up the carcass to float roundly till she could attend to it. At +the end of her day's kill she would return, towing sometimes as many as +four inflated whales to the whalery, which is a factory full of modern +appliances. The whales are hauled up inclined planes like logs to a +sawmill, and as much of them as will not make oil for the Scotch +leather-dresser, or cannot be dried for the Japanese market, is +converted into potent manure. + +'No manure can touch ours,' said the shareholder. 'It's so rich in bone, +d'you see. The only thing that has beat us up to date is their hides; +but we've fixed up a patent process now for turning 'em into floorcloth. +Yes, they're beautiful beasts. That fellow,' he pointed to a black hump +in a wreath of spray, 'would cut up a miracle.' + +'If you go on like this you won't have any whales left,' I said. + +'That is so. But the concern pays thirty per cent, and--a few years +back, no one believed in it.' + +I forgave him everything for the last sentence. + + + + +A CONCLUSION + + +Canada possesses two pillars of Strength and Beauty in Quebec and +Victoria. The former ranks by herself among those Mother-cities of whom +none can say 'This reminds me.' To realise Victoria you must take all +that the eye admires most in Bournemouth, Torquay, the Isle of Wight, +the Happy Valley at Hong-Kong, the Doon, Sorrento, and Camps Bay; add +reminiscences of the Thousand Islands, and arrange the whole round the +Bay of Naples, with some Himalayas for the background. + +Real estate agents recommend it as a little piece of England--the island +on which it stands is about the size of Great Britain--but no England is +set in any such seas or so fully charged with the mystery of the larger +ocean beyond. The high, still twilights along the beaches are out of the +old East just under the curve of the world, and even in October the sun +rises warm from the first. Earth, sky, and water wait outside every +man's door to drag him out to play if he looks up from his work; and, +though some other cities in the Dominion do not quite understand this +immoral mood of Nature, men who have made their money in them go off to +Victoria, and with the zeal of converts preach and preserve its +beauties. + +We went to look at a marine junk-store which had once been Esquimalt, a +station of the British Navy. It was reached through winding roads, +lovelier than English lanes, along watersides and parkways any one of +which would have made the fortune of a town. + +'Most cities,' a man said, suddenly, 'lay out their roads at right +angles. We do in the business quarters. What d'you think?' + +'I fancy some of those big cities will have to spend millions on curved +roads some day for the sake of a change,' I said. 'You've got what no +money can buy.' + +'That's what the men tell us who come to live in Victoria. And they've +had experience.' + +It is pleasant to think of the Western millionaire, hot from some +gridiron of rectangular civilisation, confirming good Victorians in the +policy of changing vistas and restful curves. + +There is a view, when the morning mists peel off the harbour where the +steamers tie up, or the Houses of Parliament on one hand, and a huge +hotel on the other, which as an example of cunningly-fitted-in +water-fronts and facades is worth a very long journey. The hotel was +just being finished. The ladies' drawing-room, perhaps a hundred feet by +forty, carried an arched and superbly enriched plaster ceiling of knops +and arabesques and interlacings, which somehow seemed familiar. + +'We saw a photo of it in _Country Life_,' the contractor explained. 'It +seemed just what the room needed, so one of our plasterers, a +Frenchman--that's him--took and copied it. It comes in all right, +doesn't it?' + +About the time the noble original was put up in England Drake might have +been sailing somewhere off this very coast. So, you see, Victoria +lawfully holds the copyright. + +I tried honestly to render something of the colour, the gaiety, and the +graciousness of the town and the island, but only found myself piling up +unbelievable adjectives, and so let it go with a hundred other wonders +and repented that I had wasted my time and yours on the anxious-eyed +gentlemen who talked of 'drawbacks.' A verse cut out of a newspaper +seems to sum up their attitude: + + As the Land of Little Leisure + Is the place where things are done, + So the Land of Scanty Pleasure + Is the place for lots of fun. + In the Land of Plenty Trouble + People laugh as people should, + But there's some one always kicking + In the Land of Heap Too Good! + +At every step of my journey people assured me that I had seen nothing of +Canada. Silent mining men from the North; fruit-farmers from the +Okanagan Valley; foremen of railway gangs, not so long from English +public schools; the oldest inhabitant of the town of Villeneuve, aged +twenty-eight; certain English who lived on the prairie and contrived to +get fun and good fellowship as well as money; the single-minded +wheat-growers and cattle-men; election agents; police troopers +expansive in the dusk of wayside halts; officials dependent on the +popular will, who talked as delicately as they walked; and queer souls +who did not speak English, and said so loudly in the dining-car--each, +in his or her own way, gave me to understand this. My excursion bore the +same relation to their country as a 'bus-ride down the Strand bears to +London, so I knew how they felt. + +The excuse is that our own flesh and blood are more interesting than +anybody else, and I held by birth the same right in them and their lives +as they held in any other part of the Empire. Because they had become a +people within the Empire my right was admitted and no word spoken; which +would not have been the case a few years ago. One may mistake many signs +on the road, but there is no mistaking the spirit of sane and realised +nationality, which fills the land from end to end precisely as the +joyous hum of a big dynamo well settled to its load makes a background +to all the other shop noises. For many reasons that Spirit came late, +but since it has come after the day of little things, doubts, and open +or veiled contempts, there is less danger that it will go astray among +the boundless wealth and luxury that await it. The people, the schools, +the churches, the Press in its degree, and, above all, the women, +understand without manifestoes that their land must now as always abide +under the Law in deed and in word and in thought. This is their +caste-mark, the ark of their covenant, their reason for being what they +are. In the big cities, with their village-like lists of police court +offences; in the wide-open little Western towns where the present is as +free as the lives and the future as safe as the property of their +inhabitants; in the coast cities galled and humiliated at their one +night's riot ('It's not our habit, Sir! It's not our habit!'); up among +the mountains where the officers of the law track and carefully bring +into justice the astounded malefactor; and behind the orderly prairies +to the barren grounds, as far as a single white man can walk, the +relentless spirit of the breed follows up, and oversees, and controls. +It does not much express itself in words, but sometimes, in intimate +discussion, one is privileged to catch a glimpse of the inner fires. +They burn hotly. + +'_We_ do not mean to be de-civilised,' said the first man with whom I +talked about it. + +That was the answer throughout--the keynote and the explanation. + +Otherwise the Canadians are as human as the rest of us to evade or deny +a plain issue. The duty of developing their country is always present, +but when it comes to taking thought, better thought, for her defence, +they refuge behind loose words and childish anticipations of +miracles--quite in the best Imperial manner. All admit that Canada is +wealthy; few that she is weak; still fewer that, unsupported, she would +very soon cease to exist as a nation. The anxious inquirer is told that +she does her duty towards England by developing her resources; that +wages are so high a paid army is out of the question; that she is +really maturing splendid defence schemes, but must not be hurried or +dictated to; that a little wise diplomacy is all that will ever be +needed in this so civilised era; that when the evil day comes something +will happen (it certainly will), the whole concluding, very often, with +a fervent essay on the immorality of war, all about as much to the point +as carrying a dove through the streets to allay pestilence. + +The question before Canada is not what she thinks or pays, but what an +enemy may think it necessary to make her pay. If she continues wealthy +and remains weak she will surely be attacked under one pretext or +another. Then she will go under, and her spirit will return to the dust +with her flag as it slides down the halliards. + +'That is absurd,' is always the quick answer. 'In her own interests +England could never permit it. What you speak of presupposes the fall of +England.' + +Not necessarily. Nothing worse than a stumble by the way; but when +England stumbles the Empire shakes. Canada's weakness is lack of men. +England's weakness is an excess of voters who propose to live at the +expense of the State. These loudly resent that any money should be +diverted from themselves; and since money is spent on fleets and armies +to protect the Empire while it is consolidating, they argue that if the +Empire ceased to exist armaments would cease too, and the money so saved +could be spent on their creature comforts. They pride themselves on +being an avowed and organised enemy of the Empire which, as others see +it, waits only to give them health, prosperity, and power beyond +anything their votes could win them in England. But their leaders need +their votes in England, as they need their outcries and discomforts to +help them in their municipal and Parliamentary careers. No engineer +lowers steam in his own boilers. + +So they are told little except evil of the great heritage outside, and +are kept compounded in cities under promise of free rations and +amusements. If the Empire were threatened they would not, in their own +interests, urge England to spend men and money on it. Consequently it +might be well if the nations within the Empire were strong enough to +endure a little battering unaided at the first outset--till such time, +that is, as England were permitted to move to their help. + +For this end an influx of good men is needed more urgently every year +during which peace holds--men loyal, clean, and experienced in +citizenship, with women not ignorant of sacrifice. + +Here the gentlemen who propose to be kept by their neighbours are our +helpful allies. They have succeeded in making uneasy the class +immediately above them, which is the English working class, as yet +undebauched by the temptation of State-aided idleness or +State-guaranteed irresponsibility. England has millions of such silent +careful folk accustomed, even yet, to provide for their own offspring, +to bring them up in a resolute fear of God, and to desire no more than +the reward of their own labours. A few years ago this class would not +have cared to shift; now they feel the general disquiet. They live close +to it. Tea-and-sugar borrowing friends have told them jocularly, or with +threats, of a good time coming when things will go hard with the +uncheerful giver. The prospect appeals neither to their reason nor to +their Savings Bank books. They hear--they do not need to read--the +speeches delivered in their streets on a Sunday morning. It is one of +their pre-occupations to send their children to Sunday School by +roundabout roads, lest they should pick up abominable blasphemies. When +the tills of the little shops are raided, or when the family +ne'er-do-well levies on his women with more than usual brutality, they +know, because they suffer, what principles are being put into practice. +If these people could quietly be shown a quiet way out of it all, very +many of them would call in their savings (they are richer than they +look), and slip quietly away. In the English country, as well as in the +towns, there is a feeling--not yet panic, but the dull edge of it--that +the future will be none too rosy for such as are working, or are in the +habit of working. This is all to our advantage. + +Canada can best serve her own interests and those of the Empire by +systematically exploiting this new recruiting-ground. Now that South +Africa, with the exception of Rhodesia, has been paralysed, and +Australia has not yet learned the things which belong to her peace, +Canada has the chance of the century to attract good men and capital +into the Dominion. But the men are much more important than the money. +They may not at first be as clever with the hoe as the Bessarabian or +the Bokhariot, or whatever the fashionable breed is, but they have +qualities of pluck, good humour, and a certain well-wearing virtue which +are not altogether bad. They will not hold aloof from the life of the +land, nor pray in unknown tongues to Byzantine saints; while the very +tenacity and caution which made them cleave to England this long, help +them to root deeply elsewhere. They are more likely to bring their women +than other classes, and those women will make sacred and individual +homes. A little-regarded Crown Colony has a proverb that no district can +be called settled till there are pots of musk in the house-windows--sure +sign that an English family has come to stay. It is not certain how much +of the present steamer-dumped foreign population has any such idea. We +have seen a financial panic in one country send whole army corps of +aliens kiting back to the lands whose allegiance they forswore. What +would they or their likes do in time of real stress, since no instinct +in their bodies or their souls would call them to stand by till the +storm were over? + +Surely the conclusion of the whole matter throughout the whole Empire +must be men and women of our own stock, habits, language, and hopes +brought in by every possible means under a well-settled policy? Time +will not be allowed us to multiply to unquestionable peace, but by +drawing upon England we can swiftly transfuse what we need of her +strength into her veins, and by that operation bleed her into health and +sanity Meantime, the only serious enemy to the Empire, within or +without, is that very Democracy which depends on the Empire for its +proper comforts, and in whose behalf these things are urged. + + +EGYPT OF THE MAGICIANS + +1913 + +SEA TRAVEL. +A RETURN TO THE EAST. +A SERPENT OF OLD NILE. +UP THE RIVER. +DEAD KINGS. +THE FACE OF THE DESERT. +THE RIDDLE OF EMPIRE. + +_And the magicians of Egypt did so with their enchantments_.--EXODUS +vii. 22. + + + + +I + + +SEA TRAVEL + +I had left Europe for no reason except to discover the Sun, and there +were rumours that he was to be found in Egypt. + +But I had not realised what more I should find there. + +A P. & O. boat carried us out of Marseilles. A serang of lascars, with +whistle, chain, shawl, and fluttering blue clothes, was at work on the +baggage-hatch. Somebody bungled at the winch. The serang called him a +name unlovely in itself but awakening delightful memories in the hearer. + +'O Serang, is that man a fool?' + +'Very foolish, sahib. He comes from Surat. He only comes for his food's +sake.' + +The serang grinned; the Surtee man grinned; the winch began again, and +the voices that called: 'Lower away! Stop her!' were as familiar as the +friendly whiff from the lascars' galley or the slap of bare feet along +the deck. But for the passage of a few impertinent years, I should have +gone without hesitation to share their rice. Serangs used to be very +kind to little white children below the age of caste. Most familiar of +all was the ship itself. It had slipped my memory, nor was there +anything in the rates charged to remind me, that single-screws still +lingered in the gilt-edged passenger trade. + +Some North Atlantic passengers accustomed to real ships made the +discovery, and were as pleased about it as American tourists at +Stratford-on-Avon. + +'Oh, come and see!' they cried. 'She has _one_ screw--only one screw! +Hear her thump! And _have_ you seen their old barn of a saloon? _And_ +the officers' library? It's open for two half-hours a day week-days and +one on Sundays. You pay a dollar and a quarter deposit on each book. We +wouldn't have missed this trip for anything. It's like sailing with +Columbus.' + +They wandered about--voluble, amazed, and happy, for they were getting +off at Port Said. + +I explored, too. From the rough-ironed table-linen, the thick +tooth-glasses for the drinks, the slummocky set-out of victuals at +meals, to the unaccommodating regulations in the curtainless cabin, +where they had not yet arrived at bunk-edge trays for morning tea, time +and progress had stood still with the P. & O. To be just, there were +electric-fan fittings in the cabins, but the fans were charged extra; +and there was a rumour, unverified, that one could eat on deck or in +one's cabin without a medical certificate from the doctor. All the rest +was under the old motto: '_Quis separabit_'--'This is quite separate +from other lines.' + +'After all,' said an Anglo-Indian, whom I was telling about civilised +ocean travel, 'they don't want you Egyptian trippers. They're sure of +_us_, because----' and he gave me many strong reasons connected with +leave, finance, the absence of competition, and the ownership of the +Bombay foreshore. + +'But it's absurd,' I insisted. 'The whole concern is out of date. +There's a notice on my deck forbidding smoking and the use of naked +lights, and there's a lascar messing about the hold-hatch outside my +cabin with a candle in a lantern.' + +Meantime, our one-screw tub thumped gingerly toward Port Said, because +we had no mails aboard, and the Mediterranean, exhausted after severe +February hysterics, lay out like oil. + +I had some talk with a Scotch quartermaster who complained that lascars +are not what they used to be, owing to their habit (but it has existed +since the beginning) of signing on as a clan or family--all sorts +together. + +The serang said that, for _his_ part, he had noticed no difference in +twenty years. 'Men are always of many kinds, sahib. And that is because +God makes men this and that. Not all one pattern--not by any means all +one pattern.' He told me, too, that wages were rising, but the price of +ghee, rice, and curry-stuffs was up, too, which was bad for wives and +families at Porbandar. 'And that also is thus, and no talk makes it +otherwise.' After Suez he would have blossomed into thin clothes and +long talks, but the bitter spring chill nipped him, as the thought of +partings just accomplished and work just ahead chilled the Anglo-Indian +contingent. Little by little one came at the outlines of the old +stories--a sick wife left behind here, a boy there, a daughter at +school, a very small daughter trusted to friends or hirelings, certain +separation for so many years and no great hope or delight in the future. +It was not a nice India that the tales hinted at. Here is one that +explains a great deal: + +There was a Pathan, a Mohammedan, in a Hindu village, employed by the +village moneylender as a debt-collector, which is not a popular trade. +He lived alone among Hindus, and--so ran the charge in the lower +court--he wilfully broke the caste of a Hindu villager by forcing on him +forbidden Mussulman food, and when that pious villager would have taken +him before the headman to make reparation, the godless one drew his +Afghan knife and killed the headman, besides wounding a few others. The +evidence ran without flaw, as smoothly as well-arranged cases should, +and the Pathan was condemned to death for wilful murder. He appealed +and, by some arrangement or other, got leave to state his case +personally to the Court of Revision. 'Said, I believe, that he did not +much trust lawyers, but that if the sahibs would give him a hearing, as +man to man, he might have a run for his money. + +Out of the jail, then, he came, and, Pathan-like, not content with his +own good facts, must needs begin by some fairy-tale that he was a secret +agent of the government sent down to spy on that village. Then he warmed +to it. Yes, he _was_ that money-lender's agent--a persuader of the +reluctant, if you like--working for a Hindu employer. Naturally, many +men owed him grudges. A lot of the evidence against him was quite true, +but the prosecution had twisted it abominably. About that knife, for +instance. True, he had a knife in his hand exactly as they had alleged. +But why? Because with that very knife he was cutting up and distributing +a roast sheep which he had given as a feast to the villagers. At that +feast, he sitting in amity with all his world, the village rose up at +the word of command, laid hands on him, and dragged him off to the +headman's house. How could he have broken _any_ man's caste when they +were all eating his sheep? And in the courtyard of the headman's house +they surrounded him with heavy sticks and worked themselves into anger +against him, each man exciting his neighbour. He was a Pathan. He knew +what that sort of talk meant. A man cannot collect debts without making +enemies. So he warned them. Again and again he warned them, saying: +'Leave me alone. Do not lay hands on me.' But the trouble grew worse, +and he saw it was intended that he should be clubbed to death like a +jackal in a drain. Then he said, 'If blows are struck, I strike, and _I_ +strike to kill, because I am a Pathan,' But the blows were struck, heavy +ones. Therefore, with the very Afghan knife that had cut up the mutton, +he struck the headman. 'Had you meant to kill the headman?' 'Assuredly! +I am a Pathan. When I strike, I strike to kill. I had warned them again +and again. I think I got him in the liver. He died. And that is all +there is to it, sahibs. It was my life or theirs. They would have taken +mine over my freely given meats. _Now_, what'll you do with me?' + +In the long run, he got several years for culpable homicide. + +'But,' said I, when the tale had been told, 'whatever made the lower +court accept all that village evidence? It was too good on the face of +it,' + +'The lower court said it could not believe it possible that so many +respectable native gentle could have banded themselves together to tell +a lie.' + +'Oh! Had the lower court been long in the country?' + +'It was a native judge,' was the reply. + +If you think this over in all its bearings, you will see that the lower +court was absolutely sincere. Was not the lower court itself a product +of Western civilisation, and, as such, bound to play up--to pretend to +think along Western lines--translating each grade of Indian village +society into its English equivalent, and ruling as an English judge +would have ruled? Pathans and, incidentally, English officials must look +after themselves. + +There is a fell disease of this century called 'snobbery of the soul.' +Its germ has been virulently developed in modern cultures from the +uncomplex bacillus isolated sixty years ago by the late William +Makepeace Thackeray. Precisely as Major Ponto, with his plated dishes +and stable-boy masquerading as footman, lied to himself and his guests +so--but the _Book of Snobs_ can only be brought up to date by him who +wrote it. + +Then, a man struck in from the Sudan--far and far to the south--with a +story of a discomposed judge and a much too collected prisoner. + +To the great bazaars of Omdurman, where all things are sold, came a +young man from the uttermost deserts of somewhere or other and heard a +gramophone. Life was of no value to him till he had bought the creature. +He took it back to his village, and at twilight set it going among his +ravished friends. His father, sheik of the village, came also, listened +to the loud shoutings without breath, the strong music lacking +musicians, and said, justly enough: 'This thing is a devil. You must not +bring devils into my village. Lock it up.' + +They waited until he had gone away and then began another tune. A second +time the sheik came, repeated the command, and added that if the singing +box was heard again, he would slay the buyer. But their curiosity and +joy defied even this, and for the third time (late at night) they +slipped in pin and record and let the djinn rave. So the sheik, with his +rifle, shot his son as he had promised, and the English judge before +whom he eventually came had all the trouble in the world to save that +earnest gray head from the gallows. Thus: + +'Now, old man, you must say guilty or not guilty.' + +'But I shot him. That is why I am here. I----' + +'Hush! It is a form of words which the law asks. _(Sotte voce_. Write +down that the old idiot doesn't understand.) Be still now.' + +'But I shot him. What else could I have done? He bought a devil in a +box, and----' + +'Quiet! That comes later. Leave talking.' + +'But I am sheik of the village. One must not bring devils into a +village. I _said_ I would shoot him.' + +'This matter is in the hands of the law. _I_ judge.' + +'What need? I shot him. Suppose that _your_ son had brought a devil in a +box to _your_ village----' + +They explained to him, at last, that under British rule fathers must +hand over devil-dealing children to be shot by the white men (the first +step, you see, on the downward path of State aid), and that he must go +to prison for several months for interfering with a government shoot. + +We are a great race. There was a pious young judge in Nigeria once, +who kept a condemned prisoner waiting very many minutes while he +hunted through the Hausa dictionary, word by word, for, +'May--God--have--mercy--on--your--soul.' + +And I heard another tale--about the Suez Canal this time--a hint of what +may happen some day at Panama. There was a tramp steamer, loaded with +high explosives, on her way to the East, and at the far end of the Canal +one of the sailors very naturally upset a lamp in the fo'c'sle. After a +heated interval the crew took to the desert alongside, while the captain +and the mate opened all cocks and sank her, not in the fairway but up +against a bank, just leaving room for a steamer to squeeze past. Then +the Canal authorities wired to her charterers to know exactly what there +might be in her; and it is said that the reply kept them awake of +nights, for it was their business to blow her up. + +Meantime, traffic had to go through, and a P. & O. steamer came along. +There was the Canal; there was the sunken wreck, marked by one elderly +Arab in a little boat with a red flag, and there was about five foot +clearance on each side for the P. & O. She went through a-tiptoe, +because even fifty tons of dynamite will jar a boat, perceptibly, and +the tramp held more--very much more, not to mention detonators. By some +absurd chance, almost the only passenger who knew about the thing at the +time was an old lady rather proud of the secret. + +'Ah,' she said, in the middle of that agonised glide, 'you may depend +upon it that if everybody knew what, I know, they'd all be on the other +side of the ship.' + +Later on, the authorities blew up the tramp with infinite precautions +from some two miles off, for which reason she neither destroyed the Suez +Canal nor dislocated the Sweet Water Canal alongside, but merely dug out +a hole a hundred feet or a hundred yards deep, and so vanished from +Lloyd's register. + +But no stories could divert one long from the peculiarities of that +amazing line which exists strictly for itself. There was a bathroom +(occupied) at the windy end of an open alleyway. In due time the bather +came out. + +Said the steward, as he swabbed out the tub for his successor: 'That was +the Chief Engineer. 'E's been some time. Must 'ave 'ad a mucky job +below, this mornin'.' + +I have a great admiration for Chief Engineers. They are men in +authority, needing all the comforts and aids that can possibly be given +them--such as bathrooms of their own close to their own cabins, where +they can clean off at leisure. + +It is not fair to mix them up with the ruck of passengers, nor is it +done on real ships. Nor, when a passenger wants a bath in the evening, +do the stewards of real ships roll their eyes like vergers in a +cathedral and say, 'We'll see if it can be managed.' They double down +the alleyway and shout, 'Matcham' or 'Ponting' or 'Guttman,' and in +fifteen seconds one of those swift three has the taps going and the +towels out. Real ships are not annexes of Westminster Abbey or Borstal +Reformatory. They supply decent accommodation in return for good money, +and I imagine that their directors instruct their staffs to look pleased +while at work. + +Some generations back there must have been an idea that the P. & O. was +vastly superior to all lines afloat--a sort of semipontifical show not +to be criticised. How much of the notion was due to its own excellence +and how much to its passenger-traffic monopoly does not matter. To-day, +it neither feeds nor tends its passengers, nor keeps its ships well +enough to put on any airs at all. + +For which reason, human nature being what it is, it surrounds itself +with an ungracious atmosphere of absurd ritual to cover grudged and +inadequate performance. + +What it really needs is to be dropped into a March North Atlantic, +without any lascars, and made to swim for its life between a C.P.R. boat +and a North German Lloyd--till it learns to smile. + + + + +II + +A RETURN TO THE EAST + +The East is a much larger slice of the world than Europeans care to +admit. Some say it begins at St. Gothard, where the smells of two +continents meet and fight all through that terrible restaurant-car +dinner in the tunnel. Others have found it at Venice on warm April +mornings. But the East is wherever one sees the lateen sail--that +shark's fin of a rig which for hundreds of years has dogged all white +bathers round the Mediterranean. There is still a suggestion of menace, +a hint of piracy, in the blood whenever the lateen goes by, fishing or +fruiting or coasting. + +'This is _not_ my ancestral trade,' she whispers to the accomplice sea. +'If everybody had their rights I should be doing something quite +different; for my father, he was the Junk, and my mother, she was the +Dhow, and between the two of 'em they made Asia.' Then she tacks, +disorderly but deadly quick, and shuffles past the unimaginative +steam-packet with her hat over one eye and a knife, as it were, up her +baggy sleeves. + +Even the stone-boats at Port Said, busied on jetty extensions, show +their untamed descent beneath their loaded clumsiness. They are all +children of the camel-nosed dhow, who is the mother of mischief; but it +was very good to meet them again in raw sunshine, unchanged in any rope +and patch. + +Old Port Said had disappeared beneath acres of new buildings where one +could walk at leisure without being turned back by soldiers. + +Two or three landmarks remained; two or three were reported as still in +existence, and one Face showed itself after many years--ravaged but +respectable--rigidly respectable. + +'Yes,' said the Face, 'I have been here all the time. But I have made +money, and when I die I am going home to be buried.' + +'Why not go home before you are buried, O Face?' + +'Because I have lived here _so_ long. Home is only good to be buried +in.' + +'And what do you do, nowadays?' + +'Nothing now. I live on my _rentes_--my income.' + +Think of it! To live icily in a perpetual cinematograph show of excited, +uneasy travellers; to watch huge steamers, sliding in and out all day +and all night like railway trucks, unknowing and unsought by a single +soul aboard; to talk five or six tongues indifferently, but to have no +country--no interest in any earth except one reservation in a +Continental cemetery. + +It was a cold evening after heavy rain and the half-flooded streets +reeked. But we undefeated tourists ran about in droves and saw all that +could be seen before train-time. We missed, most of us, the Canal +Company's garden, which happens to mark a certain dreadful and exact +division between East and West. + +Up to that point--it is a fringe of palms, stiff against the sky--the +impetus of home memories and the echo of home interests carry the young +man along very comfortably on his first journey. But at Suez one must +face things. People, generally the most sympathetic, leave the boat +there; the older men who are going on have discovered each other and +begun to talk shop; no newspapers come aboard, only clipped Reuter +telegrams; the world seems cruelly large and self-absorbed. One goes for +a walk and finds this little bit of kept ground, with comfortable +garden-gated houses on either side of the path. Then one begins to +wonder--in the twilight, for choice--when one will see those palms again +from the other side. Then the black hour of homesickness, vain regrets, +foolish promises, and weak despair shuts down with the smell of strange +earth and the cadence of strange tongues. + +Cross-roads and halting-places in the desert are always favoured by +djinns and afrits. The young man will find them waiting for him in the +Canal Company's garden at Port Said. + +On the other hand, if he is fortunate enough to have won the East by +inheritance, as there are families who served her for five or six +generations, he will meet no ghouls in that garden, but a free and a +friendly and an ample welcome from good spirits of the East that awaits +him. The voices of the gardeners and the watchmen will be as the +greetings of his father's servants in his father's house; the evening +smells and the sight of the hibiscus and poinsettia will unlock his +tongue in words and sentences that he thought he had clean forgotten, +and he will go back to the ship (I have seen) as a prince entering on +his kingdom. + +There was a man in our company--a young Englishman--who had just been +granted his heart's desire in the shape of some raw district south of +everything southerly in the Sudan, where, on two-thirds of a member of +Parliament's wage, under conditions of life that would horrify a +self-respecting operative, he will see perhaps some dozen white men in a +year, and will certainly pick up two sorts of fever. He had been moved +to work very hard for this billet by the representations of a friend in +the same service, who said that it was a 'rather decent sort of +service,' and he was all of a heat to reach Khartum, report for duty, +and fall to. If he is lucky, he may get a district where the people are +so virtuous that they do not know how to wear any clothes at all, and so +ignorant that they have never yet come across strong drink. + +The train that took us to Cairo was own sister in looks and fittings to +any South African train--for which I loved her--but she was a trial to +some citizens of the United States, who, being used to the Pullman, did +not understand the side-corridored, solid-compartment idea. The trouble +with a standardised democracy seems to be that, once they break loose +from their standards, they have no props. People are _not_ left behind +and luggage is rarely mislaid on the railroads of the older world. There +is an ordained ritual for the handling of all things, to which if a man +will only conform and keep quiet, he and his will be attended to with +the rest. The people that I watched would not believe this. They charged +about futilely and wasted themselves in trying to get ahead of their +neighbours. + +Here is a fragment from the restaurant-car: 'Look at here! Me and some +friends of mine are going to dine at this table. We don't want to be +separated and--' + +'You 'ave your number for the service, sar?' 'Number? What number? We +want to dine _here_, I tell you.' + +'You shall get your number, sar, for the first service?' + +'Haow's that? Where in thunder do we _get_ the numbers, anyway?' + +'I will give you the number, sar, at the time--for places at the first +service.' + +'Yes, but we want to dine together here--right _now._' + +'The service is not yet ready, sar.' + +And so on--and so on; with marchings and counter-marchings, and every +word nervously italicised. In the end they dined precisely where there +was room for them in that new world which they had strayed into. + +On one side our windows looked out on darkness of the waste; on the +other at the black Canal, all spaced with monstrous headlights of the +night-running steamers. Then came towns, lighted with electricity, +governed by mixed commissions, and dealing in cotton. Such a town, for +instance, as Zagazig, last seen by a very small boy who was lifted out +of a railway-carriage and set down beneath a whitewashed wall under +naked stars in an illimitable emptiness because, they told him, the +train was on fire. Childlike, this did not worry him. What stuck in his +sleepy mind was the absurd name of the place and his father's prophecy +that when he grew up he would 'come that way in a big steamer.' + +So all his life, the word 'Zagazig' carried memories of a brick shed, +the flicker of an oil-lamp's floating wick, a sky full of eyes, and an +engine coughing in a desert at the world's end; which memories returned +in a restaurant-car jolting through what seemed to be miles of +brilliantly lighted streets and factories. No one at the table had even +turned his head for the battlefields of Kassassin and Tel-el-Kebir. +After all, why should they? That work is done, and children are getting +ready to be born who will say: '_I_ can remember Gondokoro (or El-Obeid +or some undreamed of Clapham Junction, Abyssinia-way) before a single +factory was started--before the overhead traffic began. Yes, when there +was a fever--actually fever--in the city itself!' + +The gap is no greater than that between to-day's and t'other day's +Zagazig--between the horsed vans of the Overland Route in Lieutenant +Waghorn's time and the shining motor that flashed us to our Cairo hotel +through what looked like the suburbs of Marseilles or Rome. + +Always keep a new city till morning, 'In the daytime,' as it is written +in the Perspicuous Book,[6] 'thou hast long occupation,' Our window gave +on to the river, but before one moved toward it one heard the thrilling +squeal of the kites--those same thievish Companions of the Road who, at +that hour, were watching every Englishman's breakfast in every compound +and camp from Cairo to Calcutta. + +[Footnote 6: The Koran.] + +Voices rose from below--unintelligible words in maddeningly familiar +accents. A black boy in one blue garment climbed, using his toes as +fingers, the tipped mainyard of a Nile boat and framed himself in the +window. Then, because he felt happy, he sang, all among the wheeling +kites. And beneath our balcony rolled very Nile Himself, golden in +sunshine, wrinkled under strong breezes, with a crowd of creaking +cargo-boats waiting for a bridge to be opened. + +On the cut-stone quay above, a line of cab drivers--a _ticca-gharri_ +stand, nothing less--lolled and chaffed and tinkered with their +harnesses in every beautiful attitude of the ungirt East. All the ground +about was spotted with chewed sugarcane--first sign of the hot weather +all the world over. + +Troops with startlingly pink faces (one would not have noticed this +yesterday) rolled over the girder bridge between churning motors and +bubbling camels, and the whole long-coated loose-sleeved Moslem world +was awake and about its business, as befits sensible people who pray at +dawn. + +I made haste to cross the bridge and to hear the palms in the wind on +the far side. They sang as nobly as though they had been true coconuts, +and the thrust of the north wind behind them was almost as open-handed +as the thrust of the Trades. Then came a funeral--the sheeted corpse on +the shallow cot, the brisk-pacing bearers (if he was good, the sooner he +is buried the sooner in heaven; if bad, bury him swiftly for the sake of +the household--either way, as the Prophet says, do not let the mourners +go too long weeping and hungry)--the women behind, tossing their arms +and lamenting, and men and boys chanting low and high. + +They might have come forth from the Taksali Gate in the city of Lahore +on just such a cold weather morning as this, on their way to the +Mohammedan burial-grounds by the river. And the veiled countrywomen, +shuffling side by side, elbow pressed to hip, and eloquent right hand +pivoting round, palm uppermost, to give value to each shrill phrase, +might have been the wives of so many Punjabi cultivators but that they +wore another type of bangle and slipper. A knotty-kneed youth sitting +high on a donkey, both amuleted against the evil eye, chewed three +purplish-feet of sugar-cane, which made one envious as well as +voluptuously homesick, though the sugar-cane of Egypt is not to be +compared with that of Bombay. + +Hans Breitmann writes somewhere: + + Oh, if you live in Leyden town + You'll meet, if troot be told, + Der forms of all der freunds dot tied + When du werst six years old. + +And they were all there under the chanting palms--saices, orderlies, +pedlars, water-carriers, street-cleaners, chicken-sellers and the +slate-coloured buffalo with the china-blue eyes being talked to by a +little girl with the big stick. Behind the hedges of well-kept gardens +squatted the brown gardener, making trenches indifferently with a hoe or +a toe, and under the municipal lamp-post lounged the bronze policeman--a +touch of Arab about mouth and lean nostril--quite unconcerned with a +ferocious row between two donkey-men. They were fighting across the body +of a Nubian who had chosen to sleep in that place. Presently, one of +them stepped back on the sleeper's stomach. The Nubian grunted, elbowed +himself up, rolled his eyes, and pronounced a few utterly dispassionate +words. The warriors stopped, settled their headgear, and went away as +quickly as the Nubian went to sleep again. This was life, the real, +unpolluted stuff--worth a desert-full of mummies. And right through the +middle of it--hooting and kicking up the Nile--passed a Cook's steamer +all ready to take tourists to Assuan. From the Nubian's point of view +she, and not himself, was the wonder--as great as the Swiss-controlled, +Swiss-staffed hotel behind her, whose lift, maybe, the Nubian helped to +run. Marids, and afrits, guardians of hidden gold, who choke or crush +the rash seeker; encounters with the long-buried dead in a Cairo +back-alley; undreamed-of promotions, and suddenly lit loves are the +stuff of any respectable person's daily life; but the white man from +across the water, arriving in hundreds with his unveiled womenfolk, who +builds himself flying-rooms and talks along wires, who flees up and down +the river, mad to sit upon camels and asses, constrained to throw down +silver from both hands--at once a child and a warlock--this thing must +come to the Nubian sheer out of the _Thousand and One Nights_. At any +rate, the Nubian was perfectly sane. Having eaten, he slept in God's own +sunlight, and I left him, to visit the fortunate and guarded and +desirable city of Cairo, to whose people, male and female, Allah has +given subtlety in abundance. Their jesters are known to have surpassed +in refinement the jesters of Damascus, as did their twelve police +captains the hardiest and most corrupt of Bagdad in the tolerant days of +Harun-al-Raschid; while their old women, not to mention their young +wives, could deceive the Father of Lies himself. Delhi is a great +place--most bazaar storytellers in India make their villain hail from +there; but when the agony and intrigue are piled highest and the tale +halts till the very last breathless sprinkle of cowries has ceased to +fall on his mat, why then, with wagging head and hooked forefinger, the +storyteller goes on: + +'_But_ there was a man from Cairo, an Egyptian of the Egyptians, +who'--and all the crowd knows that a bit of real metropolitan devilry is +coming. + + + + +III + + +A SERPENT OF OLD NILE + +Modern Cairo is an unkempt place. The streets are dirty and +ill-constructed, the pavements unswept and often broken, the tramways +thrown, rather than laid, down, the gutters neglected. One expects +better than this in a city where the tourist spends so much every +season. Granted that the tourist is a dog, he comes at least with a bone +in his mouth, and a bone that many people pick. He should have a cleaner +kennel. The official answer is that the tourist-traffic is a flea-bite +compared with the cotton industry. Even so, land in Cairo city must be +too valuable to be used for cotton growing. It might just as well be +paved or swept. There is some sort of authority supposed to be in charge +of municipal matters, but its work is crippled by what is called 'The +Capitulations.' It was told to me that every one in Cairo except the +English, who appear to be the mean whites of these parts, has the +privilege of appealing to his consul on every conceivable subject from +the disposal of a garbage-can to that of a corpse. As almost every one +with claims to respectability, and certainly every one without any, +keeps a consul, it follows that there is one consul per superficial +meter, arshin, or cubit of Ezekiel within the city. And since every +consul is zealous for the honour of his country and not at all above +annoying the English on general principles, municipal progress is slow. + +Cairo strikes one as unventilated and unsterilised, even when the sun +and wind are scouring it together. The tourist talks a good deal, as you +may see here, but the permanent European resident does not open his +mouth more than is necessary--sound travels so far across flat water. +Besides, the whole position of things, politically and administratively, +is essentially false. + +Here is a country which is not a country but a longish strip of +market-garden, nominally in charge of a government which is not a +government but the disconnected satrapy of a half-dead empire, +controlled pecksniffingly by a Power which is not a Power but an Agency, +which Agency has been tied up by years, custom, and blackmail into all +sorts of intimate relations with six or seven European Powers, all with +rights and perquisites, none of whose subjects seem directly amenable to +any Power which at first, second, or third hand is supposed to be +responsible. That is the barest outline. To fill in the details (if any +living man knows them) would be as easy as to explain baseball to an +Englishman or the Eton Wall game to a citizen of the United States. But +it is a fascinating play. There are Frenchmen in it, whose logical mind +it offends, and they revenge themselves by printing the finance-reports +and the catalogue of the Bulak Museum in pure French. There are Germans +in it, whose demands must be carefully weighed--not that they can by any +means be satisfied, but they serve to block other people's. There are +Russians in it, who do not very much matter at present but will be heard +from later. There are Italians and Greeks in it (both rather pleased +with themselves just now), full of the higher finance and the finer +emotions. There are Egyptian pashas in it, who come back from Paris at +intervals and ask plaintively to whom they are supposed to belong. There +is His Highness, the Khedive, in it, and _he_ must be considered not a +little, and there are women in it, up to their eyes. And there are great +English cotton and sugar interests, and angry English importers +clamouring to know why they cannot do business on rational lines or get +into the Sudan, which they hold is ripe for development if the +administration there would only see reason. Among these conflicting +interests and amusements sits and perspires the English official, whose +job is irrigating or draining or reclaiming land on behalf of a trifle +of ten million people, and he finds himself tripped up by skeins of +intrigue and bafflement which may ramify through half a dozen harems and +four consulates. All this makes for suavity, toleration, and the blessed +habit of not being surprised at anything whatever. + +Or, so it seemed to me, watching a big dance at one of the hotels. Every +European race and breed, and half of the United States were +represented, but I fancied I could make out three distinct groupings. +The tourists with the steamer-trunk creases still across their dear, +excited backs; the military and the officials sure of their partners +beforehand, and saying clearly what ought to be said; and a third +contingent, lower-voiced, softer-footed, and keener-eyed than the other +two, at ease, as gipsies are on their own ground, flinging half-words in +local _argot_ over shoulders at their friends, understanding on the nod +and moved by springs common to their clan only. For example, a woman was +talking flawless English to her partner, an English officer. Just before +the next dance began, another woman beckoned to her, Eastern fashion, +all four fingers flicking downward. The first woman crossed to a potted +palm; the second moved toward it also, till the two drew, up, not +looking at each other, the plant between them. Then she who had beckoned +spoke in a strange tongue _at_ the palm. The first woman, still looking +away, answered in the same fashion with a rush of words that rattled +like buckshot through the stiff fronds. Her tone had nothing to do with +that in which she greeted her new partner, who came up as the music +began. The one was a delicious drawl; the other had been the guttural +rasp and click of the kitchen and the bazaar. So she moved off, and, in +a little, the second woman disappeared into the crowd. Most likely it +was no more than some question of the programme or dress, but the +prompt, feline stealth and coolness of it, the lightning-quick return to +and from world-apart civilisations stuck in my memory. + +So did the bloodless face of a very old Turk, fresh from some horror of +assassination in Constantinople in which he, too, had been nearly +pistolled, but, they said, he had argued quietly over the body of a late +colleague, as one to whom death was of no moment, until the hysterical +Young Turks were abashed and let him get away--to the lights and music +of this elegantly appointed hotel. + +These modern 'Arabian Nights' are too hectic for quiet folk. I declined +upon a more rational Cairo--the Arab city where everything is as it was +when Maruf the Cobbler fled from Fatima-el-Orra and met the djinn in the +Adelia Musjid. The craftsmen and merchants sat on their shop-boards, a +rich mystery of darkness behind them, and the narrow gullies were +polished to shoulder-height by the mere flux of people. Shod white men, +unless they are agriculturists, touch lightly, with their hands at most, +in passing. Easterns lean and loll and squat and sidle against things as +they daunder along. When the feet are bare, the whole body thinks. +Moreover, it is unseemly to buy or to do aught and be done with it. Only +people with tight-fitting clothes that need no attention have time for +that. So we of the loose skirt and flowing trousers and slack slipper +make full and ample salutations to our friends, and redouble them toward +our ill-wishers, and if it be a question of purchase, the stuff must be +fingered and appraised with a proverb or so, and if it be a +fool-tourist who thinks that he cannot be cheated, O true believers! +draw near and witness how we shall loot him. + +But I bought nothing. The city thrust more treasure upon me than I could +carry away. It came out of dark alleyways on tawny camels loaded with +pots; on pattering asses half buried under nets of cut clover; in the +exquisitely modelled hands of little children scurrying home from the +cookshop with the evening meal, chin pressed against the platter's edge +and eyes round with responsibility above the pile; in the broken lights +from jutting rooms overhead, where the women lie, chin between palms, +looking out of windows not a foot from the floor; in every glimpse into +every courtyard, where the men smoke by the tank; in the heaps of +rubbish and rotten bricks that flanked newly painted houses, waiting to +be built, some day, into houses once more; in the slap and slide or the +heelless red-and-yellow slippers all around, and, above all, in the +mixed delicious smells of frying butter, Mohammedan bread, kababs, +leather, cooking-smoke, assafetida, peppers, and turmeric. Devils cannot +abide the smell of burning turmeric, but the right-minded man loves it. +It stands for evening that brings all home, the evening meal, the +dipping of friendly hands in the dish, the one face, the dropped veil, +and the big, guttering pipe afterward. + +Praised be Allah for the diversity of His creatures and for the Five +Advantages of Travel and for the glories of the Cities of the Earth! +Harun-al-Raschid, in roaring Bagdad of old, never delighted himself to +the limits of such a delight as was mine, that afternoon. It is true +that the call to prayer, the cadence of some of the street-cries, and +the cut of some of the garments differed a little from what I had been +brought up to; but for the rest, the shadow on the dial had turned back +twenty degrees for me, and I found myself saying, as perhaps the dead +say when they have recovered their wits, 'This is my real world again,' + +Some men are Mohammedan by birth, some by training, and some by fate, +but I have never met an Englishman yet who hated Islam and its people as +I have met Englishmen who hated some other faiths. _Musalmani awadani_, +as the saying goes--where there are Mohammedans, there is a +comprehensible civilisation. + +Then we came upon a deserted mosque of pitted brick colonnades round a +vast courtyard open to the pale sky. It was utterly empty except for its +own proper spirit, and that caught one by the throat as one entered. +Christian churches may compromise with images and side-chapels where the +unworthy or abashed can traffic with accessible saints. Islam has but +one pulpit and one stark affirmation--living or dying, one only--and +where men have repeated that in red-hot belief through centuries, the +air still shakes to it. + +Some say now that Islam is dying and that nobody cares; others that, if +she withers in Europe and Asia, she will renew herself in Africa and +will return--terrible--after certain years, at the head of all the nine +sons of Ham; others dream that the English understand Islam as no one +else does, and, in years to be, Islam will admit this and the world will +be changed. If you go to the mosque Al Azhar--the thousand-year-old +University of Cairo--you will be able to decide for yourself. There is +nothing to see except many courts, cool in hot weather, surrounded by +cliff-like brick walls. Men come and go through dark doorways, giving on +to yet darker cloisters, as freely as though the place was a bazaar. +There are no aggressive educational appliances. The students sit on the +ground, and their teachers instruct them, mostly by word of mouth, in +grammar, syntax, logic; _al-hisab_, which is arithmetic; _al-jab'r w'al +muqabalah_, which is algebra; _at-tafsir,_ commentaries on the Koran, +and last and most troublesome, _al-ahadis,_ traditions, and yet more +commentaries on the law of Islam, which leads back, like everything, to +the Koran once again. (For it is written, 'Truly the Quran is none other +than a revelation.') It is a very comprehensive curriculum. No man can +master it entirely, but any can stay there as long as he pleases. The +university provides commons--twenty-five thousand loaves a day, I +believe,--and there is always a place to lie down in for such as do not +desire a shut room and a bed. Nothing could be more simple or, given +certain conditions, more effective. Close upon six hundred professors, +who represent officially or unofficially every school or thought, teach +ten or twelve thousand students, who draw from every Mohammedan +community, west and east between Manila and Morocco, north and south +between Kamchatka and the Malay mosque at Cape Town. These drift off to +become teachers of little schools, preachers at mosques, students of the +Law known to millions (but rarely to Europeans), dreamers, devotees, or +miracle-workers in all the ends of the earth. The man who interested me +most was a red-bearded, sunk-eyed mullah from the Indian frontier, not +likely to be last at any distribution of food, who stood up like a lean +wolfhound among collies in a little assembly at a doorway. + +And there was another mosque, sumptuously carpeted and lighted (which +the Prophet does not approve of), where men prayed in the dull mutter +that, at times, mounts and increases under the domes like the boom of +drums or the surge of a hot hive before the swarm flings out. And round +the corner of it, one almost ran into Our inconspicuous and wholly +detached Private of Infantry, his tunic open, his cigarette alight, +leaning against some railings and considering the city below. Men in +forts and citadels and garrisons all the world over go up at twilight as +automatically as sheep at sundown, to have a last look round. They say +little and return as silently across the crunching gravel, detested by +bare feet, to their whitewashed rooms and regulated lives. One of the +men told me he thought well of Cairo. It was interesting. 'Take it from +me,' he said, 'there's a lot in seeing places, because you can remember +'em afterward.' + +He was very right. The purple and lemon-coloured hazes of dusk and +reflected day spread over the throbbing, twinkling streets, masked the +great outline of the citadel and the desert hills, and conspired to +confuse and suggest and evoke memories, till Cairo the Sorceress cast +her proper shape and danced before me in the heartbreaking likeness of +every city I had known and loved, a little farther up the road. + +It was a cruel double-magic. For in the very hour that my homesick soul +had surrendered itself to the dream of the shadow that had turned back +on the dial, I realised all the desolate days and homesickness of all +the men penned in far-off places among strange sounds and smells. + + + + +IV + + +UP THE RIVER + +Once upon a time there was a murderer who got off with a life-sentence. +What impressed him most, when he had time to think, was the frank +boredom of all who took part in the ritual. + +'It was just like going to a doctor or a dentist,' he explained. '_You_ +come to 'em very full of your affairs, and then you discover that it's +only part of their daily work to _them_. I expect,' he added, 'I should +have found it the same if--er--I'd gone on to the finish.' + +He would have. Break into any new Hell or Heaven and you will be met at +its well-worn threshold by the bored experts in attendance. + +For three weeks we sat on copiously chaired and carpeted decks, +carefully isolated from everything that had anything to do with Egypt, +under chaperonage of a properly orientalised dragoman. Twice or thrice +daily, our steamer drew up at a mud-bank covered with donkeys. Saddles +were hauled out of a hatch in our bows; the donkeys were dressed, dealt +round like cards: we rode off through crops or desert, as the case might +be, were introduced in ringing tones to a temple, and were then duly +returned to our bridge and our Baedekers. For sheer comfort, not to say +padded sloth, the life was unequalled, and since the bulk of our +passengers were citizens of the United States--Egypt in winter ought to +be admitted into the Union as a temporary territory--there was no lack +of interest. They were overwhelmingly women, with here and there a +placid nose-led husband or father, visibly suffering from congestion of +information about his native city. I had the joy of seeing two such men +meet. They turned their backs resolutely on the River, bit and lit +cigars, and for one hour and a quarter ceased not to emit statistics of +the industries, commerce, manufacture, transport, and journalism of +their towns;--Los Angeles, let us say, and Rochester, N.Y. It sounded +like a duel between two cash-registers. + +One forgot, of course, that all the dreary figures were alive to them, +and as Los Angeles spoke Rochester visualised. Next day I met an +Englishman from the Soudan end of things, very full of a little-known +railway which had been laid down in what had looked like raw desert, and +therefore had turned out to be full of paying freight. He was in the +full-tide of it when Los Angeles ranged alongside and cast anchor, +fascinated by the mere roll of numbers. + +'Haow's that?' he cut in sharply at a pause. + +He was told how, and went on to drain my friend dry concerning that +railroad, out of sheer fraternal interest, as he explained, in 'any +darn' thing that's being made anywheres,' + +'So you see,' my friend went on, 'we shall be bringing Abyssinian cattle +into Cairo.' + +'On the hoof?' One quick glance at the Desert ranges. + +'No, no! By rail and River. And after _that_ we're going to grow cotton +between the Blue and the White Nile and knock spots out of the States.' + +'Ha-ow's that?' + +'This way.' The speaker spread his first and second fingers fanwise +under the big, interested beak. 'That's the Blue Nile. And that's the +White. There's a difference of so many feet between 'em, an' in that +fork here, 'tween my fingers, we shall--' + +'_I_ see. Irrigate on the strength of the little difference in the +levels. How many acres?' + +Again Los Angeles was told. He expanded like a frog in a shower. 'An' I +thought,' he murmured, 'Egypt was all mummies and the Bible! _I_ used to +know something about cotton. Now we'll talk.' + +All that day the two paced the deck with the absorbed insolente of +lovers; and, lover-like, each would steal away and tell me what a +splendid soul was his companion. + +That was one type; but there were others--professional men who did not +make or sell things--and these the hand of an all-exacting Democracy +seemed to have run into one mould. They 'were not reticent, but no +matter whence they hailed, their talk was as standardised as the +fittings of a Pullman. + +I hinted something of this to a woman aboard who was learned in their +sermons of either language. + +'I think,' she began, 'that the staleness you complain of--' + +'I never said "staleness,"' I protested. + +'But you thought it. The staleness you noticed is due to our men being +so largely educated by old women--old maids. Practically till he goes to +College, and not always then, a boy can't get away from them.' + +'Then what happens?' + +'The natural result. A man's instinct is to teach a boy to think for +himself. If a woman can't make a boy think _as_ she thinks, she sits +down and cries. A man hasn't any standards. He makes 'em. A woman's the +most standardised being in the world. She has to be. _Now_ d'you see?' + +'Not yet.' + +'Well, our trouble in America is that we're being school-marmed to +death. You can see it in any paper you pick up. What were those men +talking about just now?' + +'Food adulteration, police-reform, and beautifying waste-lots in towns,' +I replied promptly. + +She threw up her hands. 'I knew it!' she cried. 'Our great National +Policy of co-educational housekeeping! Ham-frills and pillow-shams. Did +you ever know a man get a woman's respect by parading around creation +with a dish-clout pinned to his coat-tails?' + +'But if his woman ord----told him to do it?' I suggested. + +'Then she'd despise him the more for doing it. _You_ needn't laugh. +'You're coming to the same sort of thing in England.' + +I returned to the little gathering. A woman was talking to them as one +accustomed to talk from birth. They listened with the rigid attention of +men early trained to listen to, but not to talk with, women. She was, to +put it mildly, the mother of all she-bores, but when she moved on, no +man ventured to say as much. + +'That's what I mean by being school-manned to death,' said my +acquaintance wickedly. 'Why, she bored 'em stiff; but they are so well +brought up, they didn't even know they were bored. Some day the American +Man is going to revolt.' + +'And what'll the American Woman do?' + +'She'll sit and cry--and it'll do her good.' + +Later on, I met a woman from a certain Western State seeing God's great, +happy, inattentive world for the first time, and rather distressed that +it was not like hers. She had always understood that the English were +brutal to their wives--the papers of her State said so. (If you only +knew the papers of her State I) But she had not noticed any scandalous +treatment so far, and Englishwomen, whom she admitted she would never +understand, seemed to enjoy a certain specious liberty and equality; +while Englishmen were distinctly kind to girls in difficulties over +their baggage and tickets on strange railways. Quite a nice people, she +concluded, but without much sense of humour. One day, she showed me +what looked like a fashion-paper print of a dress-stuff--a pretty oval +medallion of stars on a striped grenadine background that somehow seemed +familiar. + +'How nice! What is it?' I asked. + +'Our National Flag,' she replied. + +'Indeed. But it doesn't look quite----' + +'No. This is a new design for arranging the stars so that they shall be +easier to count and more decorative in effect. We're going to take a +vote on it in our State, where _we_ have the franchise. I shall cast my +vote when I get home.' + +'Really! And how will you vote?' + +'I'm just thinking that out.' She spread the picture on her knee and +considered it, head to one side, as though it were indeed dress +material. + +All this while the land of Egypt marched solemnly beside us on either +hand. The river being low, we saw it from the boat as one long plinth, +twelve to twenty feet high of brownish, purplish mud, visibly upheld +every hundred yards or so by glistening copper caryatides in the shape +of naked men baling water up to the crops above. Behind that bright +emerald line ran the fawn-or tiger-coloured background of desert, and a +pale blue sky closed all. There was Egypt even as the Pharaohs, their +engineers and architects, had seen it--land to cultivate, folk and +cattle for the work, and outside that work no distraction nor allurement +of any kind whatever, save when the dead were taken to their place +beyond the limits of cultivation. When the banks grew lower, one looked +across as much as two miles of green-stuff packed like a toy Noah's-ark +with people, camels, sheep, goats, oxen, buffaloes, and an occasional +horse. The beasts stood as still, too, as the toys, because they were +tethered or hobbled each to his own half-circle of clover, and moved +forward when that was eaten. Only the very little kids were loose, and +these played on the flat mud roofs like kittens. + +No wonder 'every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians.' The +dusty, naked-footed field-tracks are cut down to the last centimetre of +grudged width; the main roads are lifted high on the flanks of the +canals, unless the permanent-way of some light railroad can be pressed +to do duty for them. The wheat, the pale ripened tufted sugar-cane, the +millet, the barley, the onions, the fringed castor-oil bushes jostle +each other for foothold, since the Desert will not give them room; and +men chase the falling Nile inch by inch, each dawn, with new furrowed +melon-beds on the still dripping mud-banks. + +Administratively, such a land ought to be a joy. The people do not +emigrate; all their resources are in plain sight; they are as accustomed +as their cattle to being led about. All they desire, and it has been +given them, is freedom from murder and mutilation, rape and robbery. The +rest they can attend to in their silent palm-shaded villages where the +pigeons coo and the little children play in the dust. + +But Western civilisation is a devastating and a selfish game. Like the +young woman from 'our State,' it says in effect: 'I am rich. I've +nothing to do. I _must_ do something. I shall take up social reform.' + +Just now there is a little social reform in Egypt which is rather +amusing. The Egyptian cultivator borrows money; as all farmers must. +This land without hedge or wild-flower is his passion by age-long +inheritance and suffering, by, in and for which he lives. He borrows to +develop it and to buy more at from £30 to £200 per acre, the profit on +which, when all is paid, works out at between £5 to £10 per acre. +Formerly, he borrowed from the local money-lenders, mostly Greeks, at 30 +per cent per annum and over. This rate is not excessive, so long as +public opinion allows the borrower from time to time to slay the lender; +but modern administration calls that riot and murder. Some years ago, +therefore, there was established a State-guaranteed Bank which lent to +the cultivators at eight per cent, and the cultivator zealously availed +himself of that privilege. He did not default more than in reason, but +being a farmer, he naturally did not pay up till threatened with being +sold up. So he prospered and bought more land, which was his heart's +desire. This year--1913--the administration issued sudden orders that no +man owning less than five acres could borrow on security of his land. +The matter interested me directly, because I held five hundred pounds +worth of shares in that State-guaranteed Bank, and more than half our +clients were small men of less than five acres. So I made inquiries in +quarters that seemed to possess information, and was told that the new +law was precisely on all-fours with the Homestead Act or the United +States and France, and the intentions of Divine Providence--or words to +that effect. + +'But,' I asked, 'won't this limitation of credit prevent the men with +less than five acres from borrowing more to buy more land and getting on +in the world?' + +'Yes,' was the answer, 'of course it will. That's just what we want to +prevent. Half these fellows ruin themselves trying to buy more land. +We've got to protect them against themselves.' + +That, alas! is the one enemy against which no law can protect any son of +Adam; since the real reasons that make or break a man are too absurd or +too obscene to be reached from outside. Then I cast about in other +quarters to discover what the cultivator was going to do about it. + +'Oh, him?' said one of my many informants. '_He's_ all right. There are +about six ways of evading the Act that, _I_ know of. The fellah probably +knows another six. He has been trained to look after himself since the +days of Rameses. He can forge land-transfers for one thing; borrow land +enough to make his holding more than five acres for as long as it takes +to register a loan; get money from his own women (yes, that's one result +of modern progress in this land!) or go back to his old friend the Greek +at 30 per cent.' + +'Then the Greek will sell him up, and that will be against the law, +won't it?' I said. + +'Don't you worry about the Greek. He can get through any law ever made +if there's five piastres on the other side of it.' + +'Maybe; but _was_ the Agricultural Bank selling the cultivators up too +much?' + +'Not in the least. The number of small holdings is on the increase, if +anything. Most cultivators won't pay a loan until you point a +judgment-summons at their head. They think that shows they're men of +consequence. This swells the number of judgment-summonses issued, but it +doesn't mean a land-sale for each summons. Another fact is that in real +life some men don't get on as well as others. Either they don't farm +well enough, or they take to hashish, or go crazy about a girl and +borrow money for her, or--er--something of that kind, and they are sold +up. You may have noticed that.' + +'I have. And meantime, what is the fellah doing?' + +'Meantime, the fellah has misread the Act--as usual. He thinks it's +retrospective, and that he needn't pay past debts. They may make +trouble, but I fancy your Bank will keep quiet.' + +'Keep quiet! With the bottom knocked out of two-thirds of its business +and--and my five hundred pounds involved!' + +'Is that your trouble? I don't think your shares will rise in a hurry; +but if you want some fun, go and talk to the French about it,' + +This seemed as good a way as any of getting a little interest. The +Frenchman that I went to spoke with a certain knowledge of finance and +politics and the natural malice of a logical race against an illogical +horde. + +'Yes,' he said. 'The idea of limiting credit under these circumstances +is absurd. But that is not all. People are not frightened, business is +not upset by one absurd idea, but by the possibilities of more,' + +'Are there any more ideas, then, that are going to be tried on this +country?' + +'Two or three,' he replied placidly. 'They are all generous; but they +are all ridiculous. Egypt is not a place where one should promulgate +ridiculous ideas.' + +'But my shares--my shares!' I cried. 'They have already dropped several +points.' + +'It is possible. They will drop more. Then they will rise.' + +'Thank you. But why?' + +'Because the idea is fundamentally absurd. That will never be admitted +by your people, but there will be arrangements, accommodations, +adjustments, till it is all the same as it used to be. It will be the +concern of the Permanent Official--poor devil!--to pull it straight. It +is always his concern. Meantime, prices will rise for all things.' + +'Why?' + +'Because the land is the chief security in Egypt. If a man cannot borrow +on that security, the rates of interest will increase on whatever other +security he offers. That will affect all work and wages and Government +contracts.' + +He put it so convincingly and with so many historical illustrations +that I saw whole perspectives of the old energetic Pharaohs, masters of +life and death along the River, checked in mid-career by cold-blooded +accountants chanting that not even the Gods themselves can make two plus +two more than four. And the vision ran down through the ages to one +little earnest head on a Cook's steamer, bent sideways over the vital +problem of rearranging 'our National Flag' so that it should be 'easier +to count the stars.' + +For the thousandth time: Praised be Allah for the diversity of His +creatures! + + + + +V + + +DEAD KINGS + +The Swiss are the only people who have taken the trouble to master the +art of hotel-keeping. Consequently, in the things that really +matter--beds, baths, and victuals--they control Egypt; and since every +land always throws back to its aboriginal life (which is why the United +States delight in telling aged stories), any ancient Egyptian would at +once understand and join in with the life that roars through the +nickel-plumbed tourist-barracks on the river, where all the world +frolics in the sunshine. At first sight, the show lends itself to cheap +moralising, till one recalls that one only sees busy folk when they are +idle, and rich folk when they have made their money. A citizen of the +United States--his first trip abroad--pointed out a middle-aged +Anglo-Saxon who was relaxing after the manner of several school-boys. + +'There's a sample!' said the Son of Hustle scornfully. 'Tell me, _he_ +ever did anything in his life?' Unluckily he had pitched upon one who, +when he is in collar, reckons thirteen and a half hours a fairish day's +work. + +Among this assembly were men and women burned to an even blue-black +tint--civilised people with bleached hair and sparkling eyes. They +explained themselves as 'diggers'--just diggers--and opened me a new +world. Granted that all Egypt is one big undertaker's emporium, what +could be more fascinating than to get Government leave to rummage in a +corner of it, to form a little company and spend the cold weather trying +to pay dividends in the shape of amethyst necklaces, lapis-lazuli +scarabs, pots of pure gold, and priceless bits of statuary? Or, if one +is rich, what better fun than to grub-stake an expedition on the +supposed site of a dead city and see what turns up? There was a big-game +hunter who had used most of the Continent, quite carried away by this +sport. + +'I'm going to take shares in a city next year, and watch the digging +myself,' he said. 'It beats elephants to pieces. In _this_ game you're +digging up dead things and making them alive. Aren't you going to have a +flutter?' + +He showed me a seductive little prospectus. Myself, I would sooner not +lay hands on a dead man's kit or equipment, especially when he has gone +to his grave in the belief that the trinkets guarantee salvation. Of +course, there is the other argument, put forward by sceptics, that the +Egyptian was a blatant self-advertiser, and that nothing would please +him more than the thought that he was being looked at and admired after +all these years. Still, one might rob some shrinking soul who didn't see +it in that light. + +At the end of spring the diggers flock back out of the Desert and +exchange chaff and flews in the gorgeous verandahs. For example, A's +company has made a find of priceless stuff, Heaven knows how old, and +is--not too meek about it. Company B, less fortunate, hints that if only +A knew to what extent their native diggers had been stealing and +disposing of the thefts, under their very archaeological noses, they +would not be so happy. + +'Nonsense,' says Company A. 'Our diggers are above suspicion. Besides, +we watched 'em.' + +'_Are_ they?' is the reply. 'Well, next time you are in Berlin, go to +the Museum and you'll see what the Germans have got hold of. It must +have come out of your ground. The Dynasty proves it.' So A's cup is +poisoned--till next year. + +No collector or curator of a museum should have any moral scruples +whatever; and I have never met one who had; though I have been informed +by deeply-shocked informants of four nationalities that the Germans are +the most flagrant pirates of all. + +The business of exploration is about as romantic as earth-work on Indian +railways. There are the same narrow-gauge trams and donkeys, the same +shining gangs in the borrow-pits and the same skirling dark-blue crowds +of women and children with the little earth-baskets. But the hoes are +not driven in, nor the clods jerked aside at random, and when the work +fringes along the base of some mighty wall, men use their hands +carefully. A white man--or he was white at breakfast-time--patrols +through the continually renewed dust-haze. Weeks may pass without a +single bead, but anything may turn up at any moment, and it is his to +answer the shout of discovery. + +We had the good fortune to stay a while at the Headquarters of the +Metropolitan Museum (New York) in a valley riddled like a rabbit-warren +with tombs. Their stables, store-houses, and servants' quarters are old +tombs; their talk is of tombs, and their dream (the diggers' dream +always) is to discover a virgin tomb where the untouched dead lie with +their jewels upon them. Four miles away are the wide-winged, rampant +hotels. Here is nothing whatever but the rubbish of death that died +thousands of years ago, on whose grave no green thing has ever grown. +Villages, expert in two hundred generations of grave-robbing, cower +among the mounds of wastage, and whoop at the daily tourist. Paths made +by bare feet run from one half-tomb, half-mud-heap to the next, not much +more distinct than snail smears, but they have been used since.... + +Time is a dangerous thing to play with. That morning the concierge had +toiled for us among steamer-sailings to see if we could save three days. +That evening we sat with folk for whom Time had stood still since the +Ptolemies. I wondered, at first, how it concerned them or any man if +such and such a Pharaoh had used to his own glory the plinths and +columns of such another Pharaoh before or after Melchizedek. Their +whole background was too inconceivably remote for the mind to work on. +But the next morning we were taken to the painted tomb of a noble--a +Minister of Agriculture--who died four or five thousand years ago. He +said to me, in so many words: 'Observe I was very like your friend, the +late Mr. Samuel Pepys, of your Admiralty. I took an enormous interest in +life, which I most thoroughly enjoyed, on its human and on its spiritual +side. I do not think you will find many departments of State better +managed than mine, or a better-kept house, or a nicer set of young +people ... My daughters! The eldest, as you can see, takes after her +mother. The youngest, my favourite, is supposed to favour me. Now I will +show you all the things that I did, and delighted in, till it was time +for me to present my accounts elsewhere.' And he showed me, detail by +detail, in colour and in drawing, his cattle, his horses, his crops, his +tours in the district, his accountants presenting the revenue returns, +and he himself, busiest of the busy, in the good day. + +But when we left that broad, gay ante-room and came to the narrower +passage where once his body had lain and where all his doom was +portrayed, I could not follow him so well. I did not see how he, so +experienced in life, could be cowed by friezes of brute-headed +apparitions or satisfied by files of repeated figures. He explained, +something to this effect: + +'We live on the River--a line without breadth or thickness. Behind us +is the Desert, which nothing can affect; wither no man goes till he is +dead, (One does not use good agricultural ground for cemeteries.) +Practically, then, we only move in two dimensions--up stream or down. +Take away the Desert, which we don't consider any more than a healthy +man considers death, and you will see that we have no background +whatever. Our world is all one straight bar of brown or green earth, +and, for some months, mere sky-reflecting water that wipes out +everything You have only to look at the Colossi to realise how +enormously and extravagantly man and his works must scale in such a +country. Remember too, that our crops are sure, and our life is very, +very easy. Above all, we have no neighbours That is to say, we must give +out, for we cannot take in. Now, I put it to you, what is left for a +priest with imagination, except to develop ritual and multiply gods on +friezes? Unlimited leisure, limited space of two dimensions, divided by +the hypnotising line of the River, and bounded by visible, unalterable +death--must, _ipso facto_----' + +'Even so,' I interrupted. 'I do not comprehend your Gods--your direct +worship of beasts, for instance?' + +'You prefer the indirect? The worship of Humanity with a capital H? My +Gods, or what I saw in them, contented me.' + +'What did you see in your Gods as affecting belief and conduct?' + +'You know the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx?' + +'No,' I murmured. 'What is it?' + +'"All sensible men are of the same religion, but no sensible man ever +tells,"' he replied. With that I had to be content, for the passage +ended in solid rock. + +There were other tombs in the valley, but the owners were dumb, except +one Pharaoh, who from the highest motives had broken with the creeds and +instincts of his country, and so had all but wrecked it. One of his +discoveries was an artist, who saw men not on one plane but modelled +full or three-quarter face, with limbs suited to their loads and +postures. His vividly realised stuff leaped to the eye out of the +acreage of low-relief in the old convention, and I applauded as a +properly brought-up tourist should. + +'Mine was a fatal mistake,' Pharaoh Ahkenaton sighed in my ear,' I +mistook the conventions of life for the realities.' + +'Ah, those soul-crippling conventions!' I cried. + +'You mistake _me_,' he answered more stiffly. 'I was so sure of their +reality that I thought that they were really lies, whereas they were +only invented to cover the raw facts of life.' + +'Ah, those raw facts of life!' I cried, still louder; for it is not +often that one has a chance of impressing a Pharaoh.' We must face them +with open eyes and an open mind! Did _you_?' + +'I had no opportunity of avoiding them,' he replied. 'I broke every +convention in my land.' + +'Oh, noble! And what happened?' + +'What happens when you strip the cover off a hornet's nest? The raw +fact of life is that mankind is just a little lower than the angels, and +the conventions are based on that fact in order that men may become +angels. But if you begin, as I did, by the convention that men are +angels they will assuredly become bigger beasts than ever.' + +'That,' I said firmly, 'is altogether out-of-date. You should have +brought a larger mentality, a more vital uplift, and--er--all that sort +of thing, to bear on--all that sort of thing, you know.' + +'I did,' said Ahkenaton gloomily. 'It broke me!' And he, too, went dumb +among the ruins. + +There is a valley of rocks and stones in every shade of red and brown, +called the Valley of the Kings, where a little oil-engine coughs behind +its hand all day long, grinding electricity to light the faces of dead +Pharaohs a hundred feet underground. All down the valley, during the +tourist season, stand char-a-bancs and donkeys and sand-carts, with here +and there exhausted couples who have dropped out of the processions and +glisten and fan themselves in some scrap of shade. Along the sides of +the valley are the tombs of the kings neatly numbered, as it might be +mining adits with concrete steps leading up to them, and iron grilles +that lock of nights, and doorkeepers of the Department of Antiquities +demanding the proper tickets. One enters, and from deeps below deeps +hears the voices of dragomans booming through the names and titles of +the illustrious and thrice-puissant dead. Rock-cut steps go down into +hot, still darkness, passages-twist and are led over blind pits which, +men say, the wise builders childishly hoped would be taken for the real +tombs by thieves to come. Up and down these alley-ways clatter all the +races of Europe with a solid backing of the United States. Their +footsteps are suddenly blunted on the floor of a hall paved with +immemorial dust that will never dance in any wind. They peer up at the +blazoned ceilings, stoop down to the minutely decorated walls, crane and +follow the sombre splendours of a cornice, draw in their breaths and +climb up again to the fierce sunshine to re-dive into the next adit on +their programme. What they think proper to say, they say aloud--and some +of it is very interesting. What they feel you can guess from a certain +haste in their movements--something between the shrinking modesty of a +man under fire and the Hadn't-we-better-be-getting-on attitude of +visitors to a mine. After all, it is not natural for man to go +underground except for business or for the last time. He is conscious of +the weight of mother-earth overhead, and when to her expectant bulk is +added the whole beaked, horned, winged, and crowned hierarchy of a lost +faith flaming at every turn of his eye, he naturally wishes to move +away. Even the sight of a very great king indeed, sarcophagused under +electric light in a hall full of most fortifying pictures, does not hold +him too long. + +Some men assert that the crypt of St. Peter's, with only nineteen +centuries bearing down on the groining, and the tombs of early popes and +kings all about, is more impressive than the Valley of the Kings +because it explains how and out of what an existing creed grew. But the +Valley of the Kings explains nothing except that most terrible line in +_Macbeth_: + + To the last syllable of recorded time. + +Earth opens her dry lips and says it. + +In one of the tombs there is a little chamber whose ceiling, probably +because of a fault in the rock, could not be smoothed off like the +others. So the decorator, very cunningly, covered it with a closely +designed cloth-pattern--just such a chintz-like piece of stuff as, in +real life, one would use to underhang a rough roof with. He did it +perfectly, down there in the dark, and went his way. Thousands of years +later, there was born a man of my acquaintance who, for good and +sufficient reason, had an almost insane horror of anything in the nature +of a ceiling-cloth. He used to make excuses for not going into the dry +goods shops at Christmas, when hastily enlarged annexes are hidden, roof +and sides, with embroideries. Perhaps a snake or a lizard had dropped on +his mother from the roof before he was born; perhaps it was the memory +of some hideous fever-bout in a tent. At any rate, that man's idea of +The Torment was a hot, crowded underground room, underhung with +patterned cloths. Once in his life at a city in the far north, where he +had to make a speech, he met that perfect combination. They led him up +and down narrow, crowded, steam-heated passages, till they planted him +at last in a room without visible windows (by which he knew +he was, underground), and directly beneath a warm-patterned +ceiling-cloth--rather like a tent-lining. And there he had to say his +say, while panic terror sat in his throat. The second time was in the +Valley of the Kings, where very similar passages, crowded with people, +led him into a room cut of rock, fathoms underground, with what looked +like a sagging chintz cloth not three feet above his head. The man I'd +like to catch,' he said when he came outside again, 'is that +decorator-man. D'you suppose he meant to produce that effect?' + +Every man has his private terrors, other than those of his own +conscience. From what I saw in the Valley of the Kings, the Egyptians +seem to have known this some time ago. They certainly have impressed it +on most unexpected people. I heard two voices down a passage talking +together as follows: + +_She_. I guess we weren't ever meant to see these old tombs from inside, +anyway. + +_He_. How so? + +_She_. For one thing, they believe so hard in being dead. Of course, +their outlook on spiritual things wasn't as broad as ours. + +_He_. Well, there's no danger of _our_ being led away by it. Did you buy +that alleged scarab off the dragoman this morning? + + + + +VI + + +THE FACE OF THE DESERT + +Going up the Nile is like running the gauntlet before Eternity. Till one +has seen it, one does not realise the amazing thinness of that little +damp trickle of life that steals along undefeated through the jaws of +established death. A rifle-shot would cover the widest limits of +cultivation, a bow-shot would reach the narrower. Once beyond them a man +may carry his next drink with him till he reaches Cape Blanco on the +west (where he may signal for one from a passing Union Castle boat) or +the Karachi Club on the east. Say four thousand dry miles to the left +hand and three thousand to the right. + +The weight of the Desert is on one, every day and every hour. At +morning, when the cavalcade tramps along in the rear of the tulip-like +dragoman, She says: 'I am here----just beyond that ridge of pink sand +that you are admiring. Come along, pretty gentleman, and I'll tell you +your fortune.' But the dragoman says very clearly: 'Please, sar, do not +separate yourself at _all_ from the main body,' which, the Desert knows +well, you had no thought of doing. At noon, when the stewards rummage +out lunch-drinks from the dewy ice-chest, the Desert whines louder than +the well-wheels on the bank: 'I am here, only a quarter of a mile away. +For mercy's sake, pretty gentleman, spare a mouthful of that prickly +whisky-and-soda you are lifting to your lips. There's a white man a few +hundred miles off, dying on my lap of thirst--thirst that you cure with +a rag dipped in lukewarm water while you hold him down with the one +hand, and he thinks he is cursing you aloud, but he isn't, because his +tongue is outside his mouth and he can't get it back. Thank _you_, my +noble captain!' For naturally one tips half the drink over the rail with +the ancient prayer: 'May it reach him who needs it,' and turns one's +back on the pulsing ridges and fluid horizons that are beginning their +mid-day mirage-dance. + +At evening the Desert obtrudes again--tricked out as a Nautch girl in +veils of purple, saffron, gold-tinsel, and grass-green. She postures +shamelessly before the delighted tourists with woven skeins of +homeward-flying pelicans, fringes of wild duck, black spotted on +crimson, and cheap jewellery of opal clouds. 'Notice Me!' She cries, +like any other worthless woman. 'Admire the play of My mobile +features--the revelations of My multi-coloured soul! Observe My +allurements and potentialities. Thrill while I stir you!' So She floats +through all Her changes and retires upstage into the arms of the dusk. +But at midnight She drops all pretence and bears down in Her natural +shape, which depends upon the conscience of the beholder and his +distance from the next white man. + +You will observe in the _Benedicite Omnia Opera_ that the Desert is the +sole thing not enjoined to 'bless the Lord, praise Him and magnify Him +for ever.' This is because when our illustrious father, the Lord Adam, +and his august consort, the Lady Eve, were expelled from Eden, Eblis the +Accursed, fearful lest mankind should return ultimately to the favour of +Allah, set himself to burn and lay waste all the lands east and west of +Eden. + +Oddly enough, the Garden of Eden is almost the exact centre of all the +world's deserts, counting from Gobi to Timbuctoo; and all that land +_qua_ land is 'dismissed from the mercy of God.' Those who use it do so +at their own risk. Consequently the Desert produces her own type of man +exactly as the sea does. I was fortunate enough to meet one sample, aged +perhaps twenty-five. His work took him along the edge of the Red Sea, +where men on swift camels come to smuggle hashish, and sometimes guns, +from dhows that put in to any convenient beach. These smugglers must be +chased on still swifter camels, and since the wells are few and known, +the game is to get ahead of them and occupy their drinking-places. + +But they may skip a well or so, and do several days' march in one. Then +their pursuer must take e'en greater risks and make crueller marches +that the Law may be upheld. The one thing in the Law's favour is that +_hashish_ smells abominably--worse than a heated camel--so, when they +range alongside, no time is lost in listening to lies. It was not told +to me how they navigate themselves across the broken wastes, or by what +arts they keep alive in the dust-storms and heat. That was taken for +granted, and the man who took it so considered himself the most +commonplace of mortals. He was deeply moved by the account of a new +aerial route which the French are laying out somewhere in the Sahara +over a waterless stretch of four hundred miles, where if the aeroplane +is disabled between stations the pilot will most likely die and dry up +beside it. To do the Desert justice, she rarely bothers to wipe out +evidence of a kill. There are places in the Desert, men say, where even +now you come across the dead of old battles, all as light as last year's +wasps' nests, laid down in swaths or strung out in flight, with, here +and there, the little sparkling lines of the emptied cartridge-cases +that dropped them. + +There are valleys and ravines that the craziest smugglers do not care to +refuge in at certain times of the year; as there are rest-houses where +one's native servants will not stay because they are challenged on their +way to the kitchen by sentries of old Soudanese regiments which have +long gone over to Paradise. And of voices and warnings and outcries +behind rocks there is no end. These last arise from the fact that men +very rarely live in a spot so utterly still that they can hear the +murmuring race of the blood over their own ear-drums. Neither ship, +prairie, nor forest gives that silence. I went out to find it once, when +our steamer tied up and the rest of them had gone to see a sight, but I +never dared venture more than a mile from our funnel-smoke. At that +point I came upon a hill honey-combed with graves that held a multitude +of paper-white skulls, all grinning cheerfully like ambassadors of the +Desert. But I did not accept their invitation. They had told me that all +the little devils learn to draw in the Desert, which explains the +elaborate and purposeless detail that fills it. None but devils could +think of etching every rock outcrop with wind-lines, or skinning it down +to its glistening nerves with sand-blasts; of arranging hills in the +likeness of pyramids and sphinxes and wrecked town-suburbs; of covering +the space of half an English county with sepia studies of interlacing +and recrossing ravines, dongas, and nullahs, each an exposition of much +too clever perspective; and of wiping out the half-finished work with a +wash of sand in three tints, only to pick it up again in silver-point on +the horizon's edge. This they do in order to make lost travellers think +they can recognise landmarks and run about identifying them till the +madness comes. The Desert is all devil-device--as you might say 'blasted +cleverness'--crammed with futile works, always promising something fresh +round the next corner, always leading out through heaped decoration and +over-insistent design into equal barrenness. + +There was a morning of mornings when we lay opposite the rock-hewn +Temple of Abu Simbel, where four great figures, each sixty feet high, +sit with their hands on their knees waiting for Judgment Day. At their +feet is a little breadth of blue-green crop; they seem to hold back all +the weight of the Desert behind them, which, none the less, lips over at +one side in a cataract of vividest orange sand. The tourist is +recommended to see the sunrise here, either from within the temple where +it falls on a certain altar erected by Rameses in his own honour, or +from without where another Power takes charge. + +The stars had paled when we began our watch; the river birds were just +whispering over their toilettes in the uncertain purplish light. Then +the river dimmered up like pewter; the line of the ridge behind the +Temple showed itself against a milkiness in the sky; one felt rather +than saw that there were four figures in the pit of gloom below it. +These blocked themselves out, huge enough, but without any special +terror, while the glorious ritual of the Eastern dawn went forward. Some +reed of the bank revealed itself by reflection, black on silver; arched +wings flapped and jarred the still water to splintered glass; the desert +ridge turned to topaz, and the four figures stood clear, yet without +shadowing, from their background. The stronger light flooded them red +from head to foot, and they became alive--as horridly and tensely yet +blindly alive as pinioned men in the death-chair before the current is +switched on. One felt that if by any miracle the dawn could be delayed a +second longer, they would tear themselves free, and leap forth to +heaven knows what sort of vengeance. But that instant the full sun +pinned them in their places--nothing more than statues slashed with +light and shadow--and another day got to work. + +A few yards to the left of the great images, close to the statue of an +Egyptian princess, whose face was the very face of 'She,' there was a +marble slab over the grave of an English officer killed in a fight +against dervishes nearly a generation ago. + +From Abu Simbel to Wady Halfa the river, escaped from the domination of +the Pharaohs, begins to talk about dead white men. Thirty years ago, +young English officers in India lied and intrigued furiously that they +might be attached to expeditions whose bases were sometimes at Suakim, +sometimes quite in the desert air, but all of whose deeds are now quite +forgotten. Occasionally the dragoman, waving a smooth hand east or +south-easterly, will speak of some fight. Then every one murmurs: 'Oh +yes. That was Gordon, of course,' or 'Was that before or after +Omdurman?' But the river is much more precise. As the boat quarters +the falling stream like a puzzled hound, all the old names spurt +up again under the paddle-wheels--'Hicks' army--Val Baker--El +Teb--Tokar--Tamai--Tamanieb and Osman Digna!' Her head swings round +for another slant: '_We cannot land English or Indian troops: if +consulted, recommend abandonment of the Soudan within certain limits._' +That was my Lord Granville chirruping to the advisers of His Highness +the Khedive, and the sentence comes back as crisp as when it first +shocked one in '84. Next--here is a long reach between flooded palm +trees--next, of course, comes Gordon--and a delightfully mad Irish +war correspondent who was locked up with him in Khartoum. +Gordon--Eighty-four--Eighty-five--the Suakim-Berber Railway really begun +and quite as really abandoned. Korti--Abu Klea--the Desert Column--a +steamer called the _Safieh_ not the _Condor_, which rescued two other +steamers wrecked on their way back from a Khartoum in the red hands of +the Mahdi of those days. Then--the smooth glide over deep water +continues--another Suakim expedition with a great deal of Osman Digna +and renewed attempts to build the Suakim-Berber Railway. 'Hashin,' say +the paddle-wheels, slowing all of a sudden--'MacNeill's Zareba--the 15th +Sikhs and another native regiment--Osman Digna in great pride and power, +and Wady Halfa a frontier town. Tamai, once more; another siege of +Suakim: Gemaiza; Handub; Trinkitat, and Tokar--1887.' + +The river recalls the names; the mind at once brings up the face and +every trick of speech of some youth met for a few hours, maybe, in a +train on the way to Egypt of the old days. Both name and face had +utterly vanished from one's memory till then. + +It was another generation that picked up the ball ten years later and +touched down in Khartoum. Several people aboard the Cook boat had been +to that city. They all agreed that the hotel charges were very high, but +that you could buy the most delightful curiosities in the native +bazaar. But I do not like bazaars of the Egyptian kind, since a +discovery I made at Assouan. There was an old man--a Mussulman--who +pressed me to buy some truck or other, but not with the villainous +camaraderie that generations of low-caste tourists have taught the +people, nor yet with the cosmopolitan light-handedness of appeal which +the town-bred Egyptian picks up much too quickly; but with a certain +desperate zeal, foreign to his whole creed and nature. He fingered, he +implored, he fawned with an unsteady eye, and while I wondered I saw +behind him the puffy pink face of a fezzed Jew, watching him as a stoat +watches a rabbit. When he moved the Jew followed and took position at a +commanding angle. The old man glanced from me to him and renewed his +solicitations. So one could imagine an elderly hare thumping wildly on a +tambourine with the stoat behind him. They told me afterwards that Jews +own most of the stalls in Assouan bazaar, the Mussulmans working for +them, since tourists need Oriental colour. Never having seen or imagined +a Jew coercing a Mussulman, this colour was new and displeasing to me. + + + + +VII + + +THE RIDDLE OF EMPIRE + +At Halfa one feels the first breath of a frontier. Here the Egyptian +Government retires into the background, and even the Cook steamer does not +draw up in the exact centre of the postcard. At the telegraph-office, too, +there are traces, diluted but quite recognisable, of military +administration. Nor does the town, in any way or place whatever, +smell--which is proof that it is not looked after on popular lines. There +is nothing to see in it any more than there is in Hulk C. 60, late of her +Majesty's troopship _Himalaya_, now a coal-hulk in the Hamoaze at +Plymouth. A river front, a narrow terraced river-walk of semi-oriental +houses, barracks, a mosque, and half-a-dozen streets at right angles, the +Desert racing up to the end of each, make all the town. A mile or so up +stream under palm trees are bungalows of what must have been cantonments, +some machinery repair-shops, and odds and ends of railway track. It is all +as paltry a collection of whitewashed houses, pitiful gardens, dead walls, +and trodden waste spaces as one would wish to find anywhere; and every bit +of it quivers with the remembered life of armies and river-fleets, as the +finger-bowl rings when the rubbing finger is lifted. The most unlikely men +have done time there; stores by the thousand ton have been rolled and +pushed and hauled up the banks by tens of thousands of scattered hands; +hospitals have pitched themselves there, expanded enormously, shrivelled +up and drifted away with the drifting regiments; railway sidings by the +mile have been laid down and ripped up again, as need changed, and utterly +wiped out by the sands. + +Halfa has been the rail-head, Army Headquarters, and hub of the +universe--the one place where a man could make sure of buying tobacco +and sardines, or could hope for letters for himself and medical +attendance for his friend. Now she is a little shrunken shell of a town +without a proper hotel, where tourists hurry up from the river to buy +complete sets of Soudan stamps at the Post Office. + +I went for a purposeless walk from one end of the place to the other, +and found a crowd of native boys playing football on what might have +been a parade-ground of old days. + +'And what school is that?' I asked in English of a small, eager youth. + +'Madrissah,' said he most intelligently, which being translated means +just 'school.' + +'Yes, but _what_ school?' + +'Yes, Madrissah, school, sir,' and he tagged after to see what else the +imbecile wanted. + +A line of railway track, that must have fed big workshops in its time, +led me between big-roomed houses and offices labelled departmentally, +with here and there a clerk at work. I was directed and re-directed by +polite Egyptian officials (I wished to get at a white officer if +possible, but there wasn't one about); was turned out of a garden which +belonged to an Authority; hung round the gate of a bungalow with an +old-established compound and two white men sitting in chairs on a +verandah; wandered down towards the river under the palm trees, where +the last red light came through; lost myself among rusty boilers and +balks of timber; and at last loafed back in the twilight escorted by the +small boy and an entire brigade of ghosts, not one of whom I had ever +met before, but all of whom I knew most intimately. They said it was the +evenings that used to depress _them_ most, too; so they all came back +after dinner and bore me company, while I went to meet a friend arriving +by the night train from Khartoum. + +She was an hour late, and we spent it, the ghosts and I, in a +brick-walled, tin-roofed shed, warm with the day's heat; a crowd of +natives laughing and talking somewhere behind in the darkness. We knew +each other so well by that time, that we had finished discussing every +conceivable topic of conversation--the whereabouts of the Mahdi's head, +for instance--work, reward, despair, acknowledgment, flat failure, all +the real motives that had driven us to do anything, and all our other +longings. So we sat still and let the stars move, as men must do when +they meet this kind of train. + +Presently I asked: 'What is the name of the next station out from +here?' + +'Station Number One,' said a ghost. + +'And the next?' + +'Station Number Two, and so on to Eight, I think.' + +'And wasn't it worth while to name even _one_ of these stations from +some man, living or dead, who had something to do with making the line?' + +'Well, they didn't, anyhow,' said another ghost. 'I suppose they didn't +think it worth while. Why? What do _you_ think?' + +'I think, I replied, 'it is the sort of snobbery that nations go to +Hades for.' + +Her headlight showed at last, an immense distance off; the economic +electrics were turned up, the ghosts vanished, the dragomans of the +various steamers flowed forward in beautiful garments to meet their +passengers who had booked passages in the Cook boats, and the Khartoum +train decanted a joyous collection of folk, all decorated with horns, +hoofs, skins, hides, knives, and assegais, which they had been buying at +Omdurman. And when the porters laid hold upon their bristling bundles, +it was like MacNeill's Zareba without the camels. + +Two young men in tarboushes were the only people who had no part in the +riot. Said one of them to the other: + +'Hullo?' + +Said the other: 'Hullo!' + +They grunted together for a while. Then one pleasantly: + +'Oh, I'm sorry for _that_! I thought I was going to have you under me +for a bit. Then you'll use the rest-house there?' + +'I suppose so,' said the other. 'Do you happen to know if the roof's +on?' + +Here a woman wailed aloud for her dervish spear which had gone adrift, +and I shall never know, except from the back pages of the Soudan +Almanack, what state that rest-house there is in. + +The Soudan Administration, by the little I heard, is a queer service. It +extends itself in silence from the edges of Abyssinia to the swamps of +the Equator at an average pressure of one white man to several thousand +square miles. It legislates according to the custom of the tribe where +possible, and on the common sense of the moment when there is no +precedent. It is recruited almost wholly from the army, armed chiefly +with binoculars, and enjoys a death-rate a little lower than its own +reputation. It is said to be the only service in which a man taking +leave is explicitly recommended to get out of the country and rest +himself that he may return the more fit to his job. A high standard of +intelligence is required, and lapses are not overlooked. For instance, +one man on leave in London took the wrong train from Boulogne, and +instead of going to Paris, which, of course, he had intended, found +himself at a station called Kirk Kilissie or Adrianople West, where he +stayed for some weeks. It was a mistake that might have happened to any +one on a dark night after a stormy passage, but the authorities would +not believe it, and when I left Egypt were busily engaged in boiling +him in hot oil. They are grossly respectable in the Soudan now. + +Long and long ago, before even the Philippines were taken, a friend of +mine was reprimanded by a British Member of Parliament, first for the +sin of blood-guiltiness because he was by trade a soldier, next for +murder because he had fought in great battles, and lastly, and most +important, because he and his fellow-braves had saddled the British +taxpayer with the expense of the Soudan. My friend explained that all +the Soudan had ever cost the British taxpayer was the price of about one +dozen of regulation Union Jacks--one for each province. 'That,' said the +M.P. triumphantly, 'is all it will ever be worth.' He went on to justify +himself, and the Soudan went on also. To-day it has taken its place as +one of those accepted miracles which are worked without heat or +headlines by men who do the job nearest their hand and seldom fuss about +their reputations. + +But less than sixteen years ago the length and breadth of it was one +crazy hell of murder, torture, and lust, where every man who had a sword +used it till he met a stronger and became a slave. It was--men say who +remember it--a hysteria of blood and fanaticism; and precisely as an +hysterical woman is called to her senses by a dash of cold water, so at +the battle of Omdurman the land was reduced to sanity by applied death +on such a scale as the murderers and the torturers at their most +unbridled could scarcely have dreamed. In a day and a night all who had +power and authority were wiped out and put under till, as the old song +says, no chief remained to ask after any follower. They had all charged +into Paradise. The people who were left looked for renewed massacres of +the sort they had been accustomed to, and when these did not come, they +said helplessly: 'We have nothing. We are nothing. Will you sell us into +slavery among the Egyptians?' The men who remember the old days of the +Reconstruction--which deserves an epic of its own--say that there was +nothing left to build on, not even wreckage. Knowledge, decency, +kinship, property, tide, sense of possession had all gone. The people +were told they were to sit still and obey orders; and they stared and +fumbled like dazed crowds after an explosion. Bit by bit, however, they +were fed and watered and marshalled into some sort of order; set to +tasks they never dreamed to see the end of; and, almost by physical +force, pushed and hauled along the ways of mere life. They came to +understand presently that they might reap what they had sown, and that +man, even a woman, might walk for a day's journey with two goats and a +native bedstead and live undespoiled. But they had to be taught +kindergarten-fashion. + +And little by little, as they realised that the new order was sure and +that their ancient oppressors were quite dead, there returned not only +cultivators, craftsmen, and artisans, but outlandish men of war, scarred +with old wounds and the generous dimples that the Martini-Henry bullet +used to deal--fighting men on the lookout for new employ. They would +hang about, first on one leg, then on the other, proud or uneasily +friendly, till some white officer circulated near by. And at his fourth +or fifth passing, brown and white having approved each other by eye, the +talk--so men say--would run something like this: + +OFFICER (_with air of sudden discovery_). Oh, you by the hut, there, +what is your business? + +WARRIOR (_at 'attention' complicated by attempt to salute_). I am +So-and-So, son of So-and-So, from such and such a place. + +OFFICER. I hear. And ...? + +WARRIOR (_repeating salute_). And a fighting man also. + +OFFICER (_impersonally to horizon_). But they _all_ say that nowadays. + +WARRIOR (_very loudly_). But there is a man in one of your battalions +who can testify to it. He is the grandson of my father's uncle. + +OFFICER (_confidentially to his boots_). Hell is _quite_ full of such +grandsons of just such father's uncles; and how do I know if Private +So-and-So speaks the truth about his family? (_Makes to go._) + +WARRIOR (_swiftly removing necessary garments_). Perhaps. But _these_ +don't lie. Look! I got this ten, twelve years ago when I was quite a +lad, close to the old Border, Yes, Halfa. It was a true Snider bullet. +Feel it! This little one on the leg I got at the big fight that finished +it all last year. But I am not lame (_violent leg-exercise_), not in +the least lame. See! I run. I jump. I kick. Praised be Allah! + +OFFICER. Praised be Allah! And then? + +WARRIOR (_coquettishly_). Then, I shoot. I am not a common spear-man. +(_Lapse into English._) Yeh, dam goo' shot! (_pumps lever of imaginary +Martini_). + +OFFICER (_unmoved_). I see. And then? + +WARRIOR (_indignantly_). _I_ am come here--after many days' marching. +(_Change to childlike wheedle_.) Are _all_ the regiments full? + +At this point the relative, in uniform, generally discovered himself, +and if the officer liked the cut of his jib, another 'old Mahdi's man' +would be added to the machine that made itself as it rolled along. They +dealt with situations in those days by the unclouded light of reason and +a certain high and holy audacity. + +There is a tale of two Sheikhs shortly after the Reconstruction began. +One of them, Abdullah of the River, prudent and the son of a +slave-woman, professed loyalty to the English very early in the day, and +used that loyalty as a cloak to lift camels from another Sheikh, Farid +of the Desert, still at war with the English, but a perfect gentleman, +which Abdullah was not. Naturally, Farid raided back on Abdullah's kine, +Abdullah complained to the authorities, and the Border fermented. To +Farid in his desert camp with a clutch of Abdullah's cattle round him, +entered, alone and unarmed, the officer responsible for the peace of +those parts. After compliments, for they had had dealings with each +other before: 'You've been driving Abdullah's stock again,' said the +Englishman. + +'I should think I had!' was the hot answer. 'He lifts my camels and +scuttles back into your territory, where he knows I can't follow him for +the life; and when I try to get a bit of my own back, he whines to you. +He's a cad--an utter cad.' + +'At any rate, he is loyal. If you'd only come in and be loyal too, you'd +both be on the same footing, and then if he stole from you, he'd catch +it!' + +'He'd never dare to steal except under your protection. Give him what +he'd have got in the Mahdi's time--a first-class flogging. _You_ know he +deserves it!' + +'I'm afraid that isn't allowed. You have to let me shift all those +bullocks of his back again.' + +'And if I don't?' + +'Then, I shall have to ride back and collect all my men and begin war +against you.' + +'But what prevents my cutting your throat where you sit? + +'For one thing, you aren't Abdullah, and----' + +'There! You confess he's a cad!' + +'And for another, the Government would only send another officer who +didn't understand your ways, and then there _would_ be war, and no one +would score except Abdullah. He'd steal your camels and get credit for +it.' + +'So he would, the scoundrel! This is a hard world for honest men. Now, +you admit Abdullah is a cad. Listen to me, and I'll tell you a few more +things about him. He was, etc., etc. He is, etc., etc.' + +'You're perfectly right, Sheikh, but don't you see I can't tell him what +I think of him so long as he's loyal and you're out against us? Now, if +_you_ come in I promise you that I'll give Abdullah a telling-off--yes, +in your presence--that will do you good to listen to.' + +'No! I won't come in! But--I tell you what I will do. I'll accompany you +to-morrow as your guest, understand, to your camp. Then you send for +Abdullah, and _if_ I judge that his fat face has been sufficiently +blackened in my presence, I'll think about coming in later.' + +So it was arranged, and they slept out the rest of the night, side by +side, and in the morning they gathered up and returned all Abdullah's +cattle, and in the evening, in Farid's presence, Abdullah got the +tongue-lashing of his wicked old life, and Farid of the Desert laughed +and came in; and they all lived happy ever afterwards. + +Somewhere or other in the nearer provinces the old heady game must be +going on still, but the Soudan proper has settled to civilisation of the +brick-bungalow and bougainvillea sort, and there is a huge technical +college where the young men are trained to become fitters, surveyors, +draftsmen, and telegraph employees at fabulous wages. In due time, they +will forget how warily their fathers had to walk in the Mahdi's time to +secure even half a bellyful; then, as has happened elsewhere. They will +honestly believe that they themselves originally created and since then +have upheld the easy life into which they were bought at so heavy a +price. Then the demand will go up for 'extension of local government,' +'Soudan for the Soudanese,' and so on till the whole cycle has to be +retrodden. It is a hard law but an old one--Rome died learning it, as +our western civilisation may die--that if you give any man anything that +he has not painfully earned for himself, you infallibly make him or his +descendants your devoted enemies. + + + +THE END + + + + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Letters of Travel (1892-1913), by Rudyard Kipling + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS OF TRAVEL (1892-1913) *** + +***** This file should be named 12089-8.txt or 12089-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/0/8/12089/ + +Produced by Sjaani and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Letters of Travel (1892-1913) + +Author: Rudyard Kipling + +Release Date: April 20, 2004 [EBook #12089] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS OF TRAVEL (1892-1913) *** + + + + +Produced by Sjaani and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<h1>LETTERS OF TRAVEL</h1> +<h3>THE DOMINIONS EDITION</h3> +<h3>LETTERS OF TRAVEL</h3> +<h3>(1892-1913)</h3> +<h2>BY RUDYARD KIPLING</h2> +<h4>MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED<br /> +ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON<br /> +1920</h4> +<h4>The Letters entitled 'FROM TIDEWAY TO TIDEWAY'<br /> +were published originally in <i>The Times</i> ; those<br /> +entitled 'LETTERS TO THE FAMILY' in <i>The Morning<br /> +Post</i> ; and those entitled 'EGYPT OF THE MAGICIANS'<br /> +in <i>Nash's Magazine</i> . </h4> +<h4>COPYRIGHT</h4> +<h4><i>This Edition is intended for circulation only in India<br /> +and the British Dominions over the Seas</i> </h4> + + + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> +<p><strong><a href="#part1">FROM TIDEWAY TO TIDEWAY</a> (1892)—</strong> +<br /> +<a href="#chap1">In Sight of Monadnock</a><br /> +<a href="#chap2">Across a Continent</a><br /> +<a href="#chap3">The Edge of the East</a><br /> +<a href="#chap4">Our Overseas Men</a><br /> +<a href="#chap5">Some Earthquakes</a><br /> +<a href="#chap6">Half-a-Dozen Pictures</a><br /> +<a href="#chap7">'Captains Courageous'</a><br /> +<a href="#chap8">On One Side Only</a><br /> +<a href="#chap9">Leaves from a Winter Note-Book</a> +</p> +<br /> +<p><strong><a href="#part2">LETTERS TO THE FAMILY</a> (1907)—</strong> +<br /> +<a href="#chap10">The Road to Quebec</a><br /> +<a href="#chap11">A People at Home</a><br /> +<a href="#chap12">Cities and Spaces</a><br /> +<a href="#chap13">Newspapers and Democracy</a><br /> +<a href="#chap14">Labour</a><br /> +<a href="#chap15">The Fortunate Towns</a><br /> +<a href="#chap16">Mountains and the Pacific</a><br /> +<a href="#chap17">A Conclusion</a> +</p> +<br /> +<p><strong><a href="#part3">EGYPT OF THE MAGICIANS</a> (1913)—</strong> +<br /> +<a href="#chap18">Sea Travel</a><br /> +<a href="#chap19">A Return to the East</a><br /> +<a href="#chap20">A Serpent of Old Nile</a><br /> +<a href="#chap21">Up the River</a><br /> +<a href="#chap22">Dead Kings</a><br /> +<a href="#chap23">The Face of the Desert</a><br /> +<a href="#chap24">The Riddle of Empire</a> +</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<a name="part1" id="part1"></a> +<h2>FROM TIDEWAY TO TIDEWAY</h2> +<h3>1892-95</h3> + +<p> +<a href="#chap1">IN SIGHT OF MONADNOCK.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap2">ACROSS A CONTINENT.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap3">THE EDGE OF THE EAST.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap4">OUR OVERSEAS MEN.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap5">SOME EARTHQUAKES.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap6">HALF-A-DOZEN PICTURES.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap7">'CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS.'</a><br /> +<a href="#chap8">ON ONE SIDE ONLY.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap9">LEAVES FROM A WINTER NOTE-BOOK.</a></p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<a name="chap1" id="chap1"></a> +<h2>IN SIGHT OF MONADNOCK</h2> + +<p>After the gloom of gray Atlantic weather, our ship came to America in a +flood of winter sunshine that made unaccustomed eyelids blink, and the +New Yorker, who is nothing if not modest, said, 'This isn't a sample of +our really fine days. Wait until such and such times come, or go to such +and a such a quarter of the city.' We were content, and more than +content, to drift aimlessly up and down the brilliant streets, wondering +a little why the finest light should be wasted on the worst pavements in +the world; to walk round and round Madison Square, because that was full +of beautifully dressed babies playing counting-out games, or to gaze +reverently at the broad-shouldered, pug-nosed Irish New York policemen. +Wherever we went there was the sun, lavish and unstinted, working nine +hours a day, with the colour and the clean-cut lines of perspective that +he makes. That any one should dare to call this climate muggy, yea, even +'subtropical,' was a shock. There came such a man, and he said, 'Go +north if you want weather—weather that <i>is</i> weather. Go to New +England.' So New York passed away upon a sunny afternoon, with her roar +and rattle, her complex smells, her triply over-heated rooms, and much +too energetic inhabitants, while the train went north to the lands where +the snow lay. It came in one sweep—almost, it seemed, in one turn of +the wheels—covering the winter-killed grass and turning the frozen +ponds that looked so white under the shadow of lean trees into pools of +ink.</p> + +<p>As the light closed in, a little wooden town, white, cloaked, and dumb, +slid past the windows, and the strong light of the car lamps fell upon a +sleigh (the driver furred and muffled to his nose) turning the corner of +a street. Now the sleigh of a picture-book, however well one knows it, +is altogether different from the thing in real life, a means of +conveyance at a journey's end; but it is well not to be over-curious in +the matter, for the same American who has been telling you at length how +he once followed a kilted Scots soldier from Chelsea to the Tower, out +of pure wonder and curiosity at his bare knees and sporran, will laugh +at your interest in 'just a cutter.'</p> + +<p>The staff of the train—surely the great American nation would be lost +if deprived of the ennobling society of brakeman, conductor, Pullman-car +conductor, negro porter, and newsboy—told pleasant tales, as they +spread themselves at ease in the smoking compartments, of snowings up +the line to Montreal, of desperate attacks—four engines together and a +snow-plough in front—on drifts thirty feet high, and the pleasures of +walking along the tops of goods wagons to brake a train, with the +thermometer thirty below freezing. 'It comes cheaper to kill men that +way than to put air-brakes on freight-cars,' said the brakeman.</p> + +<p>Thirty below freezing! It was inconceivable till one stepped out into it +at midnight, and the first shock of that clear, still air took away the +breath as does a plunge into sea-water. A walrus sitting on a woolpack +was our host in his sleigh, and he wrapped us in hairy goatskin coats, +caps that came down over the ears, buffalo robes and blankets, and yet +more buffalo-robes till we, too, looked like walruses and moved almost +as gracefully. The night was as keen as the edge of a newly-ground +sword; breath froze on the coat-lapels in snow; the nose became without +sensation, and the eyes wept bitterly because the horses were in a hurry +to get home; and whirling through air at zero brings tears. But for the +jingle of the sleigh-bells the ride might have taken place in a dream, +for there was no sound of hoofs upon the snow, the runners sighed a +little now and again as they glided over an inequality, and all the +sheeted hills round about were as dumb as death. Only the Connecticut +River kept up its heart and a lane of black water through the packed +ice; we could hear the stream worrying round the heels of its small +bergs. Elsewhere there was nothing but snow under the moon—snow drifted +to the level of the stone fences or curling over their tops in a lip of +frosted silver; snow banked high on either side of the road, or lying +heavy on the pines and the hemlocks in the woods, where the air seemed, +by comparison, as warm as a conservatory. It was beautiful beyond +expression, Nature's boldest sketch in black and white, done with a +Japanese disregard of perspective, and daringly altered from time to +time by the restless pencils of the moon.</p> + +<p>In the morning the other side of the picture was revealed in the colours +of the sunlight. There was never a cloud in the sky that rested on the +snow-line of the horizon as a sapphire on white velvet. Hills of pure +white, or speckled and furred with woods, rose up above the solid white +levels of the fields, and the sun rioted over their embroideries till +the eyes ached. Here and there on the exposed slopes the day's +warmth—the thermometer was nearly forty degrees—and the night's cold +had made a bald and shining crust upon the snow; but the most part was +soft powdered stuff, ready to catch the light on a thousand crystals and +multiply it sevenfold. Through this magnificence, and thinking nothing +of it, a wood-sledge drawn by two shaggy red steers, the unbarked logs +diamond-dusted with snow, shouldered down the road in a cloud of frosty +breath. It is the mark of inexperience in this section of the country to +confound a sleigh which you use for riding with the sledge that is +devoted to heavy work; and it is, I believe, a still greater sign of +worthlessness to think that oxen are driven, as they are in most places, +by scientific twisting of the tail. The driver with red mittens on his +hands, felt overstockings that come up to his knees, and, perhaps, a +silvery-gray coon-skin coat on his back, walks beside, crying, 'Gee, +haw!' even as is written in American stories. And the speech of the +driver explains many things in regard to the dialect story, which at its +best is an infliction to many. Now that I have heard the long, unhurried +drawl of Vermont, my wonder is, not that the New England tales should be +printed in what, for the sake of argument, we will call English and its +type, but rather that they should not have appeared in Swedish or +Russian. Our alphabet is too limited. This part of the country belongs +by laws unknown to the United States, but which obtain all the world +over, to the New England story and the ladies who write it. You feel +this in the air as soon as you see the white-painted wooden houses left +out in the snow, the austere schoolhouse, and the people—the men of the +farms, the women who work as hard as they with, it may be, less +enjoyment of life—the other houses, well painted and quaintly roofed, +that belong to Judge This, Lawyer That, and Banker Such an one; all +powers in the metropolis of six thousand folk over by the railway +station. More acutely still, do you realise the atmosphere when you read +in the local paper announcements of 'chicken suppers' and 'church +sociables' to be given by such and such a denomination, sandwiched +between paragraphs of genial and friendly interest, showing that the +countryside live (and without slaying each other) on terms of terrifying +intimacy.</p> + +<p>The folk of the old rock, the dwellers in the older houses, born and +raised hereabouts, would not live out of the town for any consideration, +and there are insane people from the South—men and women from Boston +and the like—who actually build houses out in the open country, two, +and even three miles from Main Street which is nearly 400 yards long, +and the centre of life and population. With the strangers, more +particularly if they do not buy their groceries 'in the street,' which +means, and is, the town, the town has little to do; but it knows +everything, and much more also, that goes on among them. Their dresses, +their cattle, their views, the manners of their children, their manner +towards their servants, and every other conceivable thing, is reported, +digested, discussed, and rediscussed up and down Main Street. Now, the +wisdom of Vermont, not being at all times equal to grasping all the +problems of everybody else's life with delicacy, sometimes makes +pathetic mistakes, and the town is set by the ears. You will see, +therefore, that towns of a certain size do not differ materially all the +world over. The talk of the men of the farms is of their +farms—purchase, mortgage, and sale, recorded rights, boundary lines, +and road tax. It was in the middle of New Zealand, on the edge of the +Wild horse plains, that I heard this talk last, when a man and his wife, +twenty miles from the nearest neighbour, sat up half the night +discussing just the same things that the men talked of in Main Street, +Vermont, U.S.A.</p> + +<p>There is one man in the State who is much exercised over this place. He +is a farm-hand, raised in a hamlet fifteen or twenty miles from the +nearest railway, and, greatly daring, he has wandered here. The bustle +and turmoil of Main Street, the new glare of the electric lights and the +five-storeyed brick business block, frighten and distress him much. He +has taken service on a farm well away from these delirious delights, +and, says he, 'I've been offered $25 a month to work in a bakery at New +York. But you don't get me to no New York, I've seen this place an' it +just scares me,' His strength is in the drawing of hay and the feeding +of cattle. Winter life on a farm does not mean the comparative idleness +that is so much written of. Each hour seems to have its sixty minutes of +work; for the cattle are housed and eat eternally; the colts must be +turned out for their drink, and the ice broken for them if necessary; +then ice must be stored for the summer use, and then the real work of +hauling logs for firewood begins. New England depends for its fuel on +the woods. The trees are 'blazed' in the autumn just before the fall of +the leaf, felled later, cut into four-foot lengths, and, as soon as the +friendly snow makes sledging possible, drawn down to the woodhouse. +Afterwards the needs of the farm can be attended to, and a farm, like an +arch, is never at rest. A little later will come maple-sugar time, when +the stately maples are tapped as the sap begins to stir, and be-ringed +with absurd little buckets (a cow being milked into a thimble gives some +idea of the disproportion), which are emptied into cauldrons. +Afterwards (this is the time of the 'sugaring-off parties') you pour the +boiled syrup into tins full of fresh snow, where it hardens, and you +pretend to help and become very sticky and make love, boys and girls +together. Even the introduction of patent sugar evaporators has not +spoiled the love-making.</p> + +<p>There is a certain scarcity of men to make love with; not so much in +towns which have their own manufactories and lie within a lover's +Sabbath-day journey of New York, but in the farms and villages. The men +have gone away—the young men are fighting fortune further West, and the +women remain—remain for ever as women must. On the farms, when the +children depart, the old man and the old woman strive to hold things +together without help, and the woman's portion is work and monotony. +Sometimes she goes mad to an extent which appreciably affects statistics +and is put down in census reports. More often, let us hope, she dies. In +the villages where the necessity for heavy work is not so urgent the +women find consolation in the formation of literary clubs and circles, +and so gather to themselves a great deal of wisdom in their own way. +That way is not altogether lovely. They desire facts and the knowledge +that they are at a certain page in a German or an Italian book before a +certain time, or that they have read the proper books in a proper way. +At any rate, they have something to do that seems as if they were doing +something. It has been said that the New England stories are cramped +and narrow. Even a far-off view of the iron-bound life whence they are +drawn justifies the author. You can carve a nut in a thousand different +ways by reason of the hardness of the shell.</p> + +<p>Twenty or thirty miles across the hills, on the way to the Green +Mountains, lie some finished chapters of pitiful stories—a few score +abandoned farms, started in a lean land, held fiercely so long as there +was any one to work them, and then left on the hill-sides. Beyond this +desolation are woods where the bear and the deer still find peace, and +sometimes even the beaver forgets that he is persecuted and dares to +build his lodge. These things were told me by a man who loved the woods +for their own sake and not for the sake of slaughter—a quiet, +slow-spoken man of the West, who came across the drifts on show-shoes +and refrained from laughing when I borrowed his foot-gear and tried to +walk. The gigantic lawn-tennis bats strung with hide are not easy to +manoeuvre. If you forget to keep the long heels down and trailing in the +snow you turn over and become as a man who fails into deep water with a +life-belt tied to his ankles. If you lose your balance, do not attempt +to recover it, but drop, half-sitting and half-kneeling, over as large +an area as possible. When you have mastered the wolf-step, can slide one +shoe above the other deftly, that is to say, the sensation of paddling +over a ten-foot-deep drift and taking short cuts by buried fences is +worth the ankle-ache. The man from the West interpreted to me the signs +on the snow, showed how a fox (this section of the country is full of +foxes, and men shoot them because riding is impossible) leaves one kind +of spoor, walking with circumspection as becomes a thief, and a dog, who +has nothing to be ashamed of, but widens his four legs and plunges, +another; how coons go to sleep for the winter and squirrels too, and how +the deer on the Canada border trample down deep paths that are called +yards and are caught there by inquisitive men with cameras, who hold +them by their tails when the deer have blundered into deep snow, and so +photograph their frightened dignity. He told me of people also—the +manners and customs of New Englanders here, and how they blossom and +develop in the Far West on the newer railway lines, when matters come +very nearly to civil war between rival companies racing for the same +cañon; how there is a country not very far away called Caledonia, +populated by the Scotch, who can give points to a New Englander in a +bargain, and how these same Scotch-Americans by birth, name their +townships still after the cities of their thrifty race. It was all as +new and delightful as the steady 'scrunch' of the snow-shoes and the +dazzling silence of the hills.</p> + +<p>Beyond the very furthest range, where the pines turn to a faint blue +haze against the one solitary peak—a real mountain and not a +hill—showed like a gigantic thumbnail pointing heavenward.</p> + +<p>'And that's Monadnock,' said the man from the West; 'all the hills have +Indian names. You left Wantastiquet on your right coming out of town,'</p> + +<p>You know how it often happens that a word shuttles in and out of many +years, waking all sorts of incongruous associations. I had met Monadnock +on paper in a shameless parody of Emerson's style, before ever style or +verse had interest for me. But the word stuck because of a rhyme, in +which one was</p> + +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">... crowned coeval With Monadnock's crest, And my wings extended</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Touch the East and West.</span><br /> + +<p>Later the same word, pursued on the same principle as that blessed one +Mesopotamia, led me to and through Emerson, up to his poem on the peak +itself—the wise old giant 'busy with his sky affairs,' who makes us +sane and sober and free from little things if we trust him. So Monadnock +came to mean everything that was helpful, healing, and full of quiet, +and when I saw him half across New Hampshire he did not fail. In that +utter stillness a hemlock bough, overweighted with snow, came down a +foot or two with a tired little sigh; the snow slid off and the little +branch flew nodding back to its fellows.</p> + +<p>For the honour of Monadnock there was made that afternoon an image of +snow of Gautama Buddha, something too squat and not altogether equal on +both sides, but with an imperial and reposeful waist. He faced towards +the mountain, and presently some men in a wood-sledge came up the road +and faced him. Now, the amazed comments of two Vermont farmers on the +nature and properties of a swag-bellied god are worth hearing. They were +not troubled about his race, for he was aggressively white; but rounded +waists seem to be out of fashion in Vermont. At least, they said so, +with rare and curious oaths.</p> + +<p>Next day all the idleness and trifling were drowned in a snowstorm that +filled the hollows of the hills with whirling blue mist, bowed the +branches of the woods till you ducked, but were powdered all the same +when you drove through, and wiped out the sleighing tracks. Mother +Nature is beautifully tidy if you leave her alone. She rounded off every +angle, broke down every scarp, and tucked the white bedclothes, till not +a wrinkle remained, up to the chine of the spruces and the hemlocks that +would not go to sleep.</p> + +<p>'Now,' said the man of the West, as we were driving to the station, and +alas! to New York, 'all my snow-tracks are gone; but when that snow +melts, a week hence or a month hence, they'll all come up again and show +where I've been.'</p> + +<p>Curious idea, is it not? Imagine a murder committed in the lonely woods, +a snowstorm that covers the tracks of the flying man before the avenger +of blood has buried the body, and then, a week later, the withdrawal of +the traitorous snow, revealing step by step the path Cain took—the +six-inch dee-trail of his snow-shoes—each step a dark disk on the +white till the very end.</p> + +<p>There is so much, so very much to write, if it were worth while, about +that queer little town by the railway station, with its life running, to +all outward seeming, as smoothly as the hack-coupés on their sleigh +mounting, and within disturbed by the hatreds and troubles and +jealousies that vex the minds of all but the gods. For instance—no, it +is better to remember the lesson Monadnock, and Emerson has said, 'Zeus +hates busy-bodies and people who do too much.'</p> + +<p>That there are such folk, a long nasal drawl across Main Street attests. +A farmer is unhitching his horses from a post opposite a store. He +stands with the tie-rope in his hand and gives his opinion to his +neighbour and the world generally—'But them there Andersons, they ain't +got no notion of etikwette!'</p> + + +<a name="chap2" id="chap2"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>ACROSS A CONTINENT</h2> + +<p>It is not easy to escape from a big city. An entire continent was +waiting to be traversed, and, for that reason, we lingered in New York +till the city felt so homelike that it seemed wrong to leave it. And +further, the more one studied it, the more grotesquely bad it grew—bad +in its paving, bad in its streets, bad in its street-police, and but for +the kindness of the tides would be worse than bad in its sanitary +arrangements. No one as yet has approached the management of New York in +a proper spirit; that is to say, regarding it as the shiftless outcome +of squalid barbarism and reckless extravagance. No one is likely to do +so, because reflections on the long, narrow pig-trough are construed as +malevolent attacks against the spirit and majesty of the great American +people, and lead to angry comparisons. Yet, if all the streets of London +were permanently up and all the lamps permanently down, this would not +prevent the New York streets taken in a lump from being first cousins to +a Zanzibar foreshore, or kin to the approaches of a Zulu kraal. Gullies, +holes, ruts, cobbles-stones awry, kerbstones rising from two to six +inches above the level of the slatternly pavement; tram-lines from two +to three inches above street level; building materials scattered half +across the street; lime, boards, cut stone, and ash-barrels generally +and generously everywhere; wheeled traffic taking its chances, dray +<i>versus</i> brougham, at cross roads; sway-backed poles whittled and +unpainted; drunken lamp-posts with twisted irons; and, lastly, a +generous scatter of filth and more mixed stinks than the winter wind can +carry away, are matters which can be considered quite apart from the +'Spirit of Democracy' or 'the future of this great and growing country.' +In any other land, they would be held to represent slovenliness, +sordidness, and want of capacity. Here it is explained, not once but +many times, that they show the speed at which the city has grown and the +enviable indifference of her citizens to matters of detail. One of these +days, you are told, everything will be taken in hand and put straight. +The unvirtuous rulers of the city will be swept away by a cyclone, or a +tornado, or something big and booming, of popular indignation; everybody +will unanimously elect the right men, who will justly earn the enormous +salaries that are at present being paid to inadequate aliens for road +sweepings, and all will be well. At the same time the lawlessness +ingrained by governors among the governed during the last thirty, forty, +or it may be fifty years; the brutal levity of the public conscience in +regard to public duty; the toughening and suppling of public morals, and +the reckless disregard for human life, bred by impotent laws and +fostered by familiarity with needless accidents and criminal neglect, +will miraculously disappear. If the laws of cause and effect that +control even the freest people in the world say otherwise, so much the +worse for the laws. America makes her own. Behind her stands the ghost +of the most bloody war of the century caused in a peaceful land by long +temporising with lawlessness, by letting things slide, by shiftlessness +and blind disregard for all save the material need of the hour, till the +hour long conceived and let alone stood up full-armed, and men said, +'Here is an unforeseen crisis,' and killed each other in the name of God +for four years.</p> + +<p>In a heathen land the three things that are supposed to be the pillars +of moderately decent government are regard for human life, justice, +criminal and civil, as far as it lies in man to do justice, and good +roads. In this Christian city they think lightly of the first—their own +papers, their own speech, and their own actions prove it; buy and sell +the second at a price openly and without shame; and are, apparently, +content to do without the third. One would almost expect racial sense of +humour would stay them from expecting only praise—slab, lavish, and +slavish—from the stranger within their gates. But they do not. If he +holds his peace, they forge tributes to their own excellence which they +put into his mouth, thereby treating their own land which they profess +to honour as a quack treats his pills. If he speaks—but you shall see +for yourselves what happens then. And they cannot see that by untruth +and invective it is themselves alone that they injure.</p> + +<p>The blame of their city evils is not altogether with the gentlemen, +chiefly of foreign extraction, who control the city. These find a people +made to their hand—a lawless breed ready to wink at one evasion of the +law if they themselves may profit by another, and in their rare leisure +hours content to smile over the details of a clever fraud. Then, says +the cultured American, 'Give us time. Give us time, and we shall +arrive.' The otherwise American, who is aggressive, straightway proceeds +to thrust a piece of half-hanged municipal botch-work under the nose of +the alien as a sample of perfected effort. There is nothing more +delightful than to sit for a strictly limited time with a child who +tells you what he means to do when he is a man; but when that same +child, loud-voiced, insistent, unblushingly eager for praise, but +thin-skinned as the most morbid of hobbledehoys, stands about all your +ways telling you the same story in the same voice, you begin to yearn +for something made and finished—say Egypt and a completely dead mummy. +It is neither seemly nor safe to hint that the government of the largest +city in the States is a despotism of the alien by the alien for the +alien, tempered with occasional insurrections of the decent folk. Only +the Chinaman washes the dirty linen of other lands.</p> + +<p>St. Paul, Minnesota.</p> + +<p>Yes, it is very good to get away once more and pick up the old and ever +fresh business of the vagrant, loafing through new towns, learned in +the manners of dogs, babies, and perambulators half the world over, and +tracking the seasons by the up-growth of flowers in stranger-people's +gardens. St. Paul, standing at the barn-door of the Dakota and Minnesota +granaries, is all things to all men except to Minneapolis, eleven miles +away, whom she hates and by whom she is patronised. She calls herself +the capital of the North-West, the new North-West, and her citizens +wear, not only the tall silk hat of trade, but the soft slouch of the +West. She talks in another tongue than the New Yorker, and—sure sign +that we are far across the continent—her papers argue with the San +Francisco ones over rate wars and the competition of railway companies. +St. Paul has been established many years, and if one were reckless +enough to go down to the business quarters one would hear all about her +and more also. But the residential parts of the town are the crown of +it. In common with scores of other cities, broad-crowned suburbs—using +the word in the English sense—that make the stranger jealous. You get +here what you do not get in the city—well-paved or asphalted roads, +planted with trees, and trim side-walks, studded with houses of +individuality, not boorishly fenced off from each other, but standing +each on its plot of well-kept turf running down to the pavement. It is +always Sunday in these streets of a morning. The cable-car has taken the +men down town to business, the children are at school, and the big dogs, +three and a third to each absent child, lie nosing the winter-killed +grass and wondering when the shoots will make it possible for a +gentleman to take his spring medicine. In the afternoon, the children on +tricycles stagger up and down the asphalt with due proportion of big +dogs at each wheel; the cable-cars coming up hill begin to drop the men +each at his own door—the door of the house that he builded for himself +(though the architect incited him to that vile little attic tower and +useless loggia), and, naturally enough, twilight brings the lovers +walking two by two along the very quiet ways. You can tell from the +houses almost the exact period at which they were built, whether in the +jig-saw days, when if behoved respectability to use unlovely turned +rails and pierced gable-ends, or during the Colonial craze, which means +white paint and fluted pillars, or in the latest domestic era, a most +pleasant mixture, that is, of stained shingles, hooded dormer-windows, +cunning verandas, and recessed doors. Seeing these things, one begins to +understand why the Americans visiting England are impressed with the old +and not with the new. He is not much more than a hundred years ahead of +the English in design, comfort, and economy, and (this is most +important) labour-saving appliances in his house. From Newport to San +Diego you will find the same thing to-day.</p> + +<p>Last tribute of respect and admiration. One little brown house at the +end of an avenue is shuttered down, and a doctor's buggy stands before +it. On the door a large blue and white label says—' Scarlet Fever.' Oh, +most excellent municipality of St. Paul. It is because of these little +things, and not by rowdying and racketing in public places, that a +nation becomes great and free and honoured. In the cars to-night they +will be talking wheat, girding at Minneapolis, and sneering at Duluth's +demand for twenty feet of water from Duluth to the Atlantic—matters of +no great moment compared with those streets and that label.</p> +<br /> + +<p><i> +A day later</i> .</p> + +<p>'Five days ago there wasn't a foot of earth to see. It was just +naturally covered with snow,' says the conductor standing in the rear +car of the Great Northern train. He speaks as though the snow had hidden +something priceless. Here is the view: One railway track and a line of +staggering telegraph poles ending in a dot and a blur on the horizon. To +the left and right, a sweep as it were of the sea, one huge plain of +corn land waiting for the spring, dotted at rare intervals with wooden +farmhouses, patent self-reapers and binders almost as big as the houses, +ricks left over from last year's abundant harvest, and mottled here and +there with black patches to show that the early ploughing had begun. The +snow lies in a last few streaks and whirls by the track; from sky-line +to sky-line is black loam and prairie grass so dead that it seems as +though no one year's sun would waken it. This is the granary of the land +where the farmer who bears the burdens of the State—and who, therefore, +ascribes last year's bumper crop to the direct action of the McKinley +Bill—has, also, to bear the ghastly monotony of earth and sky. He keeps +his head, having many things to attend to, but his wife sometimes goes +mad as the women do in Vermont. There is little variety in Nature's big +wheat-field. They say that when the corn is in the ear, the wind, +chasing shadows across it for miles on miles, breeds as it were a +vertigo in those who must look and cannot turn their eyes away. And they +tell a nightmare story of a woman who lived with her husband for +fourteen years at an Army post in just such a land as this. Then they +were transferred to West Point, among the hills over the Hudson, and she +came to New York, but the terror of the tall houses grew upon her and +grew till she went down with brain fever, and the dread of her delirium +was that the terrible things would topple down and crush her. That is a +true story.</p> + +<p>They work for harvest with steam-ploughs here. How could mere horses +face the endless furrows? And they attack the earth with toothed, +cogged, and spiked engines that would be monstrous in the shops, but +here are only speckles on the yellow grass. Even the locomotive is +cowed. A train of freight cars is passing along a line that comes out of +the blue and goes on till it meets the blue again. Elsewhere the train +would move off with a joyous, vibrant roar. Here it steals away down the +vista of the telegraph poles with an awed whisper—steals away and sinks +into the soil.</p> + +<p>Then comes a town deep in black mud—a straggly, inch-thick plank town, +with dull red grain elevators. The open country refuses to be subdued +even for a few score rods. Each street ends in the illimitable open, and +it is as though the whole houseless, outside earth were racing through +it. Towards evening, under a gray sky, flies by an unframed picture of +desolation. In the foreground a farm wagon almost axle deep in mud, the +mire dripping from the slow-turning wheels as the man flogs the horses. +Behind him on a knoll of sodden soggy grass, fenced off by raw rails +from the landscape at large, are a knot of utterly uninterested citizens +who have flogged horses and raised wheat in their time, but to-day lie +under chipped and weather-worn wooden headstones. Surely burial here +must be more awful to the newly-made ghost than burial at sea.</p> + +<p>There is more snow as we go north, and Nature is hard at work breaking +up the ground for the spring. The thaw has filled every depression with +a sullen gray-black spate, and out on the levels the water lies six +inches deep, in stretch upon stretch, as far as the eye can reach. Every +culvert is full, and the broken ice clicks against the wooden +pier-guards of the bridges. Somewhere in this flatness there is a +refreshing jingle of spurs along the cars, and a man of the Canadian +Mounted Police swaggers through with his black fur cap and the yellow +tab aside, his well-fitting overalls and his better set-up back. One +wants to shake hands with him because he is clean and does not slouch +nor spit, trims his hair, and walks as a man should. Then a +custom-house officer wants to know too much about cigars, whisky, and +Florida water. Her Majesty the Queen of England and Empress of India has +us in her keeping. Nothing has happened to the landscape, and Winnipeg, +which is, as it were, a centre of distribution for emigrants, stands up +to her knees in the water of the thaw. The year has turned in earnest, +and somebody is talking about the 'first ice-shove' at Montreal, 1300 or +1400 miles east.</p> + +<p>They will not run trains on Sunday at Montreal, and this is Wednesday. +Therefore, the Canadian Pacific makes up a train for Vancouver at +Winnipeg. This is worth remembering, because few people travel in that +train, and you escape any rush of tourists running westward to catch the +Yokohama boat. The car is your own, and with it the service of the +porter. Our porter, seeing things were slack, beguiled himself with a +guitar, which gave a triumphal and festive touch to the journey, +ridiculously out of keeping with the view. For eight-and-twenty long +hours did the bored locomotive trail us through a flat and hairy land, +powdered, ribbed, and speckled with snow, small snow that drives like +dust-shot in the wind—the land of Assiniboia. Now and again, for no +obvious reason to the outside mind, there was a town. Then the towns +gave place to 'section so and so'; then there were trails of the +buffalo, where he once walked in his pride; then there was a mound of +white bones, supposed to belong to the said buffalo, and then the +wilderness took up the tale. Some of it was good ground, but most of it +seemed to have fallen by the wayside, and the tedium of it was eternal.</p> + +<p>At twilight—an unearthly sort of twilight—there came another curious +picture. Thus—a wooden town shut in among low, treeless, rolling +ground, a calling river that ran unseen between scarped banks; barracks +of a detachment of mounted police, a little cemetery where ex-troopers +rested, a painfully formal public garden with pebble paths and foot-high +fir trees, a few lines of railway buildings, white women walking up and +down in the bitter cold with their bonnets off, some Indians in red +blanketing with buffalo horns for sale trailing along the platform, and, +not ten yards from the track, a cinnamon bear and a young grizzly +standing up with extended arms in their pens and begging for food. It +was strange beyond anything that this bald telling can suggest—opening +a door into a new world. The only commonplace thing about the spot was +its name—Medicine Hat, which struck me instantly as the only possible +name such a town could carry. This is that place which later became a +town; but I had seen it three years before when it was even smaller and +was reached by me in a freight-car, ticket unpaid for.</p> + +<p>That next morning brought us the Canadian Pacific Railway as one reads +about it. No pen of man could do justice to the scenery there. The +guide-books struggle desperately with descriptions, adapted for summer +reading, of rushing cascades, lichened rocks, waving pines, and +snow-capped mountains; but in April these things are not there. The +place is locked up—dead as a frozen corpse. The mountain torrent is a +boss of palest emerald ice against the dazzle of the snow; the +pine-stumps are capped and hooded with gigantic mushrooms of snow; the +rocks are overlaid five feet deep; the rocks, the fallen trees, and the +lichens together, and the dumb white lips curl up to the track cut in +the side of the mountain, and grin there fanged with gigantic icicles. +You may listen in vain when the train stops for the least sign of breath +or power among the hills. The snow has smothered the rivers, and the +great looping trestles run over what might be a lather of suds in a huge +wash-tub. The old snow near by is blackened and smirched with the smoke +of locomotives, and its dulness is grateful to aching eyes. But the men +who live upon the line have no consideration for these things. At a +halting-place in a gigantic gorge walled in by the snows, one of them +reels from a tiny saloon into the middle of the track where half-a-dozen +dogs are chasing a pig off the metals. He is beautifully and eloquently +drunk. He sings, waves his hands, and collapses behind a shunting +engine, while four of the loveliest peaks that the Almighty ever moulded +look down upon him. The landslide that should have wiped that saloon +into kindlings has missed its mark and has struck a few miles down the +line. One of the hillsides moved a little in dreaming of the spring and +caught a passing freight train. Our cars grind cautiously by, for the +wrecking engine has only just come through. The deceased engine is +standing on its head in soft earth thirty or forty feet down the slide, +and two long cars loaded with shingles are dropped carelessly atop of +it. It looks so marvellously like a toy train flung aside by a child, +that one cannot realise what it means till a voice cries, 'Any one +killed?' The answer comes back, 'No; all jumped'; and you perceive with +a sense of personal insult that this slovenliness of the mountain is an +affair which may touch your own sacred self. In which case.... But the +train is out on a trestle, into a tunnel, and out on a trestle again. It +was here that every one began to despair of the line when it was under +construction, because there seemed to be no outlet. But a man came, as a +man always will, and put a descent thus and a curve in this manner, and +a trestle so; and behold, the line went on. It is in this place that we +heard the story of the Canadian Pacific Railway told as men tell a +many-times-repeated tale, with exaggerations and omissions, but an +imposing tale, none the less. In the beginning, when they would federate +the Dominion of Canada, it was British Columbia who saw objections to +coming in, and the Prime Minister of those days promised it for a bribe, +an iron band between tidewater and tidewater that should not break. Then +everybody laughed, which seems necessary to the health of most big +enterprises, and while they were laughing, things were being done. The +Canadian Pacific Railway was given a bit of a line here and a bit of a +line there and almost as much land as it wanted, and the laughter was +still going on when the last spike was driven between east and west, at +the very place where the drunken man sprawled behind the engine, and the +iron band ran from tideway to tideway as the Premier said, and people in +England said 'How interesting,' and proceeded to talk about the 'bloated +Army estimates.' Incidentally, the man who told us—he had nothing to do +with the Canadian Pacific Railway—explained how it paid the line to +encourage immigration, and told of the arrival at Winnipeg of a +train-load of Scotch crofters on a Sunday. They wanted to stop then and +there for the Sabbath—they and all the little stock they had brought +with them. It was the Winnipeg agent who had to go among them arguing +(he was Scotch too, and they could not quite understand it) on the +impropriety of dislocating the company's traffic. So their own minister +held a service in the station, and the agent gave them a good dinner, +cheering them in Gaelic, at which they wept, and they went on to settle +at Moosomin, where they lived happily ever afterwards. Of the manager, +the head of the line from Montreal to Vancouver, our companion spoke +with reverence that was almost awe. That manager lived in a palace at +Montreal, but from time to time he would sally forth in his special car +and whirl over his 3000 miles at 50 miles an hour. The regulation pace +is twenty-two, but he sells his neck with his head. Few drivers cared +for the honour of taking him over the road. A mysterious man he was, who +'carried the profile of the line in his head,' and, more than that, knew +intimately the possibilities of back country which he had never seen nor +travelled over. There is always one such man on every line. You can hear +similar tales from drivers on the Great Western in England or Eurasian +stationmasters on the big North-Western in India. Then a +fellow-traveller spoke, as many others had done, on the possibilities of +Canadian union with the United States; and his language was not the +language of Mr. Goldwin Smith. It was brutal in places. Summarised it +came to a pronounced objection to having anything to do with a land +rotten before it was ripe, a land with seven million negroes as yet +unwelded into the population, their race-type unevolved, and rather more +than crude notions on murder, marriage, and honesty. 'We've picked up +their ways of politics,' he said mournfully. 'That comes of living next +door to them; but I don't think we're anxious to mix up with their other +messes. They say they don't want us. They keep on saying it. There's a +nigger on the fence somewhere, or they wouldn't lie about it.'</p> + +<p>'But does it follow that they are lying?'</p> + +<p>'Sure. I've lived among 'em. They can't go straight. There's some dam' +fraud at the back of it.'</p> + +<p>From this belief he would not be shaken. He had lived among +them—perhaps had been bested in trade. Let them keep themselves and +their manners and customs to their own side of the line, he said.</p> + +<p>This is very sad and chilling. It seemed quite otherwise in New York, +where Canada was represented as a ripe plum ready to fell into Uncle +Sam's mouth when he should open it. The Canadian has no special love for +England—the Mother of Colonies has a wonderful gift for alienating the +affections of her own household by neglect—but, perhaps, he loves his +own country. We ran out of the snow through mile upon mile of +snow-sheds, braced with twelve-inch beams, and planked with two-inch +planking. In one place a snow slide had caught just the edge of a shed +and scooped it away as a knife scoops cheese. High up the hills men had +built diverting barriers to turn the drifts, but the drifts had swept +over everything, and lay five deep on the top of the sheds. When we woke +it was on the banks of the muddy Fraser River and the spring was +hurrying to meet us. The snow had gone; the pink blossoms of the wild +currant were open, the budding alders stood misty green against the blue +black of the pines, the brambles on the burnt stumps were in tenderest +leaf, and every moss on every stone was this year's work, fresh from the +hand of the Maker. The land opened into clearings of soft black earth. +At one station a hen had laid an egg and was telling the world about it. +The world answered with a breath of real spring—spring that flooded the +stuffy car and drove us out on the platform to snuff and sing and +rejoice and pluck squashy green marsh-flags and throw them at the +colts, and shout at the wild duck that rose from a jewel-green lakelet. +God be thanked that in travel one can follow the year! This, my spring, +I lost last November in New Zealand. Now I shall hold her fast through +Japan and the summer into New Zealand again.</p> + +<p>Here are the waters of the Pacific, and Vancouver (completely destitute +of any decent defences) grown out of all knowledge in the last three +years. At the railway wharf, with never a gun to protect her, lies the +<i>Empress of India</i> —the Japan boat—and what more auspicious name could +you wish to find at the end of one of the strong chains of empire?</p> + + +<a name="chap3" id="chap3"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>THE EDGE OF THE EAST</h2> + +<p>The mist was clearing off Yokohama harbour and a hundred junks had their +sails hoisted for the morning breeze, so the veiled horizon was +stippled with square blurs of silver. An English man-of-war showed +blue-white on the haze, so new was the daylight, and all the water lay +out as smooth as the inside of an oyster shell. Two children in blue and +white, their tanned limbs pink in the fresh air, sculled a marvellous +boat of lemon-hued wood, and that was our fairy craft to the shore +across the stillness and the mother o' pearl levels.</p> + +<p>There are ways and ways of entering Japan. The best is to descend upon +it from America and the Pacific—from the barbarians and the deep sea. +Coming from the East, the blaze of India and the insolent tropical +vegetation of Singapore dull the eye to half-colours and little tones. +It is at Bombay that the smell of All Asia boards the ship miles off +shore, and holds the passenger's nose till he is clear of Asia again. +That is a violent, and aggressive smell, apt to prejudice the stranger, +but kin none the less to the gentle and insinuating flavour that stole +across the light airs of the daybreak when the fairy boat went to +shore—a smell of very clean new wood; split bamboo, wood-smoke, damp +earth, and the things that people who are not white people eat—a +homelike and comforting smell. Then followed on shore the sound of an +Eastern tongue, that is beautiful or not as you happen to know it. The +Western races have many languages, but a crowd of Europeans heard +through closed doors talk with the Western pitch and cadence. So it is +with the East. A line of jinrickshaw coolies sat in the sun discoursing +to each other, and it was as though they were welcoming a return in +speech that the listener must know as well as English. They talked and +they talked, but the ghosts of familiar words would not grow any clearer +till presently the Smell came down the open streets again, saying that +this was the East where nothing matters, and trifles old as the Tower of +Babel mattered less than nothing, and that there were old acquaintances +waiting at every corner beyond the township. Great is the Smell of the +East! Railways, telegraphs, docks, and gunboats cannot banish it, and it +will endure till the railways are dead. He who has not smelt that smell +has never lived.</p> + +<p>Three years ago Yokohama was sufficiently Europeanised in its shops to +suit the worst and wickedest taste. To-day it is still worse if you keep +to the town limits. Ten steps beyond into the fields all the +civilisation stops exactly as it does in another land a few thousand +miles further West. The globe-trotting, millionaires anxious to spend +money, with a nose on whatever caught their libertine fancies, had +explained to us aboard-ship that they came to Japan in haste, advised by +their guide-books to do so, lest the land should be suddenly civilised +between steamer-sailing and steamer-sailing. When they touched land they +ran away to the curio shops to buy things which are prepared for +them—mauve and magenta and blue-vitriol things. By this time they have +a 'Murray' under one arm and an electric-blue eagle with a copperas beak +and a yellow '<i>E pluribus unum</i> ' embroidered on apple-green silk, under +the other.</p> + +<p>We, being wise, sit in a garden that is not ours, but belongs to a +gentleman in slate-coloured silk, who, solely for the sake of the +picture, condescends to work as a gardener, in which employ he is +sweeping delicately a welt of fallen cherry blossoms from under an +azalea aching to burst into bloom. Steep stone steps, of the colour that +nature ripens through long winters, lead up to this garden by way of +clumps of bamboo grass. You see the Smell was right when it talked of +meeting old friends. Half-a-dozen blue-black pines are standing akimbo +against a real sky—not a fog-blur nor a cloud-bank, nor a gray +dish-clout wrapped round the sun—but a blue sky. A cherry tree on a +slope below them throws up a wave of blossom that breaks all creamy +white against their feet, and a clump of willows trail their palest +green shoots in front of all. The sun sends for an ambassador through +the azalea bushes a lordly swallow-tailed butterfly, and his squire +very like the flitting 'chalk-blue' of the English downs. The warmth of +the East, that goes through, not over, the lazy body, is added to the +light of the East—the splendid lavish light that clears but does not +bewilder the eye. Then the new leaves of the spring wink like fat +emeralds and the loaded branches of cherry-bloom grow transparent and +glow as a hand glows held up against flame. Little, warm sighs come up +from the moist, warm earth, and the fallen petals stir on the ground, +turn over, and go to sleep again. Outside, beyond the foliage, where the +sunlight lies on the slate-coloured roofs, the ridged rice-fields beyond +the roofs, and the hills beyond the rice-fields, is all Japan—only all +Japan; and this that they call the old French Legation is the Garden of +Eden that most naturally dropped down here after the Fall. For some +small hint of the beauties to be shown later there is the roof of a +temple, ridged and fluted with dark tiles, flung out casually beyond the +corner of the bluff on which the garden stands. Any other curve of the +eaves would not have consorted with the sweep of the pine branches; +therefore, this curve was made, and being made, was perfect. The +congregation of the globe-trotters are in the hotel, scuffling for +guides, in order that they may be shown the sights of Japan, which is +all one sight. They must go to Tokio, they must go to Nikko; they must +surely see all that is to be seen and then write home to their barbarian +families that they are getting used to the sight of bare, brown legs. +Before this day is ended, they will all, thank goodness, have splitting +headaches and burnt-out eyes. It is better to lie still and hear the +grass grow—to soak in the heat and the smell and the sounds and the +sights that come unasked.</p> + +<p>Our garden overhangs the harbour, and by pushing aside one branch we +look down upon a heavy-sterned fishing-boat, the straw-gold mats of the +deck-house pushed back to show the perfect order and propriety of the +housekeeping that is going forward. The father-fisher, sitting +frog-fashion, is poking at a tiny box full of charcoal, and the light, +white ash is blown back into the face of a largish Japanese doll, price +two shillings and threepence in Bayswater. The doll wakes, turns into a +Japanese baby something more valuable than money could buy—a baby with +a shaven head and aimless legs. It crawls to the thing in the polished +brown box, is picked up just as it is ready to eat live coals, and is +set down behind a thwart, where it drums upon a bucket, addressing the +firebox from afar. Half-a-dozen cherry blossoms slide off a bough, and +waver down to the water close to the Japanese doll, who in another +minute will be overside in pursuit of these miracles. The father-fisher +has it by the pink hind leg, and this time it is tucked away, all but +the top-knot, out of sight among umber nets and sepia cordage. Being an +Oriental it makes no protest, and the boat scuds out to join the little +fleet in the offing.</p> + +<p>Then two sailors of a man-of-war come along the sea face, lean over the +canal below the garden, spit, and roll away. The sailor in port is the +only superior man. To him all matters rare and curious are either 'them +things' or 'them other things.' He does not hurry himself, he does not +seek Adjectives other than those which custom puts into his mouth for +all occasions; but the beauty of life penetrates his being insensibly +till he gets drunk, falls foul of the local policeman, smites him into +the nearest canal, and disposes of the question of treaty revision with +a hiccup. All the same, Jack says that he has a grievance against the +policeman, who is paid a dollar for every strayed seaman he brings up to +the Consular Courts for overstaying his leave, and so forth. Jack says +that the little fellows deliberately hinder him from getting back to his +ship, and then with devilish art and craft of wrestling tricks—'there +are about a hundred of 'em, and they can throw you with every qualified +one'—carry him to justice. Now when Jack is softened with drink he does +not tell lies. This is his grievance, and he says that them blanketed +consuls ought to know. 'They plays into each other's hands, and stops +you at the Hatoba'—the policemen do. The visitor who is neither a +seaman nor drunk, cannot swear to the truth of this, or indeed anything +else. He moves not only among fascinating scenes and a lovely people +but, as he is sure to find out before he has been a day ashore, between +stormy questions. Three years ago there were no questions that were not +going to be settled off-hand in a blaze of paper lanterns. The +Constitution was new. It has a gray, pale cover with a chrysanthemum at +the back, and a Japanese told me then, 'Now we have Constitution same as +other countries, and <i> +so</i> it is all right. Now we are quite civilised +because of Constitution.'</p> + +<p>[A perfectly irrelevant story comes to mind here. Do you know that in +Madeira once they had a revolution which lasted just long enough for the +national poet to compose a national anthem, and then was put down? All +that is left of the revolt now is the song that you hear on the +twangling <i> +nachettes</i> , the baby-banjoes, of a moonlight night under the +banana fronds at the back of Funchal. And the high-pitched nasal refrain +of it is 'Consti-tuci-<i> +oun</i> !']</p> + +<p>Since that auspicious date it seems that the questions have +impertinently come up, and the first and the last of them is that of +Treaty Revision. Says the Japanese Government, 'Only obey our laws, our +new laws that we have carefully compiled from all the wisdom of the +West, and you shall go up country as you please and trade where you +will, instead of living cooped up in concessions and being judged by +consuls. Treat us as you would treat France or Germany, and we will +treat you as our own subjects.'</p> + +<p>Here, as you know, the matter rests between the two thousand foreigners +and the forty million Japanese—a God-send to all editors of Tokio and +Yokohama, and the despair of the newly arrived in whose nose, remember, +is the smell of the East, One and Indivisible, Immemorial, Eternal, and, +above all, Instructive.</p> + +<p>Indeed, it is only by walking out at least half a mile that you escape +from the aggressive evidences of civilisation, and come out into the +rice-fields at the back of the town. Here men with twists of blue and +white cloth round their heads are working knee deep in the thick black +mud. The largest field may be something less than two tablecloths, while +the smallest is, say, a speck of undercliff, on to which it were hard to +back a 'rickshaw, wrested from the beach and growing its clump of barley +within spray-shot of the waves. The field paths are the trodden tops of +the irrigating cuts, and the main roads as wide as two perambulators +abreast. From the uplands—the beautiful uplands planted in exactly the +proper places with pine and maple—the ground comes down in terraced +pocket on pocket of rich earth to the levels again, and it would seem +that every heavily-thatched farmhouse was chosen with special regard to +the view. If you look closely when the people go to work you will see +that a household spreads itself over plots, maybe, a quarter of a mile +apart. A revenue map of a village shows that this scatteration is +apparently designed, but the reason is not given. One thing at least is +certain. The assessment of these patches can be no light piece of +work—just the thing, in fact, that would give employment to a large +number of small and variegated Government officials, any one of whom, +assuming that he was of an Oriental cast of mind, might make the +cultivator's life interesting. I remember now—a second-time-seen place +brings back things that were altogether buried—seeing three years ago +the pile of Government papers required in the case of one farm. They +were many and systematic, but the interesting thing about them was the +amount of work that they must have furnished to those who were neither +cultivators nor Treasury officials.</p> + +<p>If one knew Japanese, one could collogue with that gentleman in the +straw-hat and the blue loincloth who is chopping within a sixteenth of +an inch of his naked toes with the father and mother of all weed-spuds. +His version of local taxation might be inaccurate, but it would sure to +be picturesque. Failing his evidence, be pleased to accept two or three +things that may or may not be facts of general application. They differ +in a measure from statements in the books. The present land-tax is +nominally 2-1/2 per cent, payable in cash on a three, or as some say a +five, yearly settlement. But, according to certain officials, there has +been no settlement since 1875. Land lying fallow for a season pays the +same tax as land in cultivation, unless it is unproductive through flood +or calamity (read earthquake here). The Government tax is calculated on +the capital value of the land, taking a measure of about 11,000 square +feet or a quarter of an acre as the unit.</p> + +<p>Now, one of the ways of getting at the capital value of the land is to +see what the railways have paid for it. The very best rice land, taking +the Japanese dollar at three shillings, is about £65:10s per acre. +Unirrigated land for vegetable growing is something over £9:12s., and +forest £2:11s. As these are railway rates, they may be fairly held to +cover large areas. In private sales the prices may reasonably be higher.</p> + +<p>It is to be remembered that some of the very best rice land will bear +two crops of rice in the year. Most soil will bear two crops, the first +being millet, rape, vegetables, and so on, sown on dry soil and ripening +at the end of May. Then the ground is at once prepared for the wet crop, +to be harvested in October or thereabouts. Land-tax is payable in two +instalments. Rice land pays between the 1st November and the middle of +December and the 1st January and the last of February. Other land pays +between July and August and September and December. Let us see what the +average yield is. The gentleman in the sun-hat and the loin-cloth would +shriek at the figures, but they are approximately accurate. Rice +naturally fluctuates a good deal, but it may be taken in the rough at +five Japanese dollars (fifteen shillings) per <i> +koku</i> of 330 lbs. Wheat +and maize of the first spring crop is worth about eleven shillings per +<i> +koku</i> . The first crop gives nearly 1-3/4 <i> +koku</i> per <i> +tau</i> (the quarter +acre unit of measurement aforesaid), or eighteen shillings per quarter +acre, or £3:12s. per acre. The rice crop at two <i> +koku</i> or £1:10s. the +quarter acre gives £6 an acre. Total £9:12s. This is not altogether bad +if you reflect that the land in question is not the very best rice land, +but ordinary No. 1, at £25:16s. per acre, capital value.</p> + +<p>A son has the right to inherit his father's land on the father's +assessment, so long as its term runs, or, when the term has expired, has +a prior claim as against any one else. Part of the taxes, it is said, +lies by in the local prefecture's office as a reserve fund against +inundations. Yet, and this seems a little confusing, there are between +five and seven other local, provincial, and municipal taxes which can +reasonably be applied to the same ends. No one of these taxes exceeds a +half of the land-tax, unless it be the local prefecture tax of 2-1/2 per +cent.</p> + +<p>In the old days the people were taxed, or perhaps squeezed would be the +better word, to about one-half of the produce of the land. There are +those who may say that the present system is not so advantageous as it +looks. Beforetime, the farmers, it is true, paid heavily, but only, on +their nominal holdings. They could, and often did, hold more land than +they were assessed on. Today a rigid bureaucracy surveys every foot of +their farms, and upon every foot they have to pay. Somewhat similar +complaints are made still by the simple peasantry of India, for if there +is one thing that the Oriental detests more than another, it is the +damnable Western vice of accuracy. That leads to doing things by rule. +Still, by the look of those terraced fields, where the water is led so +cunningly from level to level, the Japanese cultivator must enjoy at +least one excitement. If the villages up the valley tamper with the +water supply, there must surely be excitement down the valley—argument, +protest, and the breaking of heads.</p> + +<p>The days of romance, therefore, are not all dead.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + + +<p>This that follows happened on the coast twenty miles through the fields +from Yokohama, at Kamakura, that is to say, where the great bronze +Buddha sits facing the sea to hear the centuries go by. He has been +described again and again—his majesty, his aloofness, and every one of +his dimensions, the smoky little shrine within him, and the plumed hill +that makes the background to his throne. For that reason he remains, as +he remained from the beginning, beyond all hope of description—as it +might be, a visible god sitting in the garden of a world made new. They +sell photographs of him with tourists standing on his thumb nail, and, +apparently, any brute of any gender can scrawl his or its ignoble name +over the inside of the massive bronze plates that build him up. Think +for a moment of the indignity and the insult! Imagine the ancient, +orderly gardens with their clipped trees, shorn turf, and silent ponds +smoking in the mist that the hot sun soaks up after rain, and the +green-bronze image of the Teacher of the Law wavering there as it half +seems through incense clouds. The earth is all one censer, and myriads +of frogs are making the haze ring. It is too warm to do more than to sit +on a stone and watch the eyes that, having seen all things, see no +more—the down-dropped eyes, the forward droop of the head, and the +colossal simplicity of the folds of the robe over arm and knee. Thus, +and in no other fashion, did Buddha sit in the-old days when Ananda +asked questions and the dreamer began to dream of the lives that lay +behind him ere the lips moved, and as the Chronicles say: 'He told a +tale.' This would be the way he began, for dreamers in the East tell +something the same sort of tales to-day: 'Long ago when Devadatta was +King of Benares, there lived a virtuous elephant, a reprobate ox, and a +King without understanding.' And the tale would end, after the moral had +been drawn for Ananda's benefit: 'Now, the reprobate ox was such an one, +and the King was such another, but the virtuous elephant was I, myself, +Ananda.' Thus, then, he told the tales in the bamboo grove, and the +bamboo grove is there to-day. Little blue and gray and slate robed +figures pass under its shadow, buy two or three joss-sticks, disappear +into the shrine, that is, the body of the god, come out smiling, and +drift away through the shrubberies. A fat carp in a pond sucks at a +fallen leaf with just the sound of a wicked little worldly kiss. Then +the earth steams, and steams in silence, and a gorgeous butterfly, full +six inches from wing to wing, cuts through the steam in a zigzag of +colour and flickers up to the forehead of the god. And Buddha said that +a man must look on everything as illusion—even light and colour—the +time-worn bronze of metal against blue-green of pine and pale emerald of +bamboo—the lemon sash of the girl in the cinnamon dress, with coral +pins in her hair, leaning against a block of weather-bleached +stone—and, last, the spray of blood-red azalea that stands on the pale +gold mats of the tea-house beneath the honey-coloured thatch. To overcome +desire and covetousness of mere gold, which is often very vilely designed, +that is conceivable; but why must a man give up the delight of the eye, +colour that rejoices, light that cheers, and line that satisfies the +innermost deeps of the heart? Ah, if the Bodhisat had only seen his own +image!</p> + + +<a name="chap4" id="chap4"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>OUR OVERSEAS MEN</h2> + +<p>All things considered, there are only two kinds of men in the +world—those that stay at home and those that do not. The second are the +most interesting. Some day a man will bethink himself and write a book +about the breed in a book called 'The Book of the Overseas Club,' for it +is at the clubhouses all the way from Aden to Yokohama that the life of +the Outside Men is best seen and their talk is best heard. A strong +family likeness runs through both buildings and members, and a large and +careless hospitality is the note. There is always the same open-doored, +high-ceiled house, with matting on the floors; the same come and go of +dark-skinned servants, and the same assembly of men talking horse or +business, in raiment that would fatally scandalise a London committee, +among files of newspapers from a fortnight to five weeks old. The life +of the Outside Men includes plenty of sunshine, and as much air as may +be stirring. At the Cape, where the Dutch housewives distil and sell the +very potent Vanderhum, and the absurd home-made hansom cabs waddle up +and down the yellow dust of Adderley Street, are the members of the big +import and export firms, the shipping and insurance offices, inventors +of mines, and exploiters of new territories with now and then an officer +strayed from India to buy mules for the Government, a Government House +aide-de-camp, a sprinkling of the officers of the garrison, tanned +skippers of the Union and Castle Lines, and naval men from the squadron +at Simon's Town. Here they talk of the sins of Cecil Rhodes, the +insolence of Natal, the beauties or otherwise of the solid Boer vote, +and the dates of the steamers. The <i> +argot</i> is Dutch and Kaffir, and +every one can hum the national anthem that begins 'Pack your kit and +trek, Johnny Bowlegs.' In the stately Hongkong Clubhouse, which is to +the further what the Bengal Club is to the nearer East, you meet much +the same gathering, <i> +minus</i> the mining speculators and <i> +plus</i> men whose +talk is of tea, silk, shortings, and Shanghai ponies. The speech of the +Outside Men at this point becomes fearfully mixed with pidgin-English +and local Chinese terms, rounded with corrupt Portuguese. At Melbourne, +in a long verandah giving on a grass plot, where laughing-jackasses +laugh very horribly, sit wool-kings, premiers, and breeders of horses +after their kind. The older men talk of the days of the Eureka Stockade +and the younger of 'shearing wars' in North Queensland, while the +traveller moves timidly among them wondering what under the world every +third word means. At Wellington, overlooking the harbour (all +right-minded clubs should command the sea), another, and yet a like, +sort of men speak of sheep, the rabbits, the land-courts, and the +ancient heresies of Sir Julius Vogel; and their more expressive +sentences borrow from the Maori. And elsewhere, and elsewhere, and +elsewhere among the Outside Men it is the same—the same mixture of +every trade, calling, and profession under the sun; the same clash of +conflicting interests touching the uttermost parts of the earth; the +same intimate, and sometimes appalling knowledge of your neighbour's +business and shortcomings; the same large-palmed hospitality, and the +same interest on the part of the younger men in the legs of a horse. +Decidedly, it is at the Overseas Club all the world over that you get to +know some little of the life of the community. London is egoistical, and +the world for her ends with the four-mile cab radius. There is no +provincialism like the provincialism of London. That big slack-water +coated with the drift and rubbish of a thousand men's thoughts esteems +itself the open sea because the waves of all the oceans break on her +borders. To those in her midst she is terribly imposing, but they forget +that there is more than one kind of imposition. Look back upon her from +ten thousand miles, when the mail is just in at the Overseas Club, and +she is wondrous tiny. Nine-tenths of her news—so vital, so epoch-making +over there—loses its significance, and the rest is as the scuffling of +ghosts in a back-attic.</p> + +<p>Here in Yokohama the Overseas Club has two mails and four sets of +papers—English, French, German, and American, as suits the variety of +its constitution—and the verandah by the sea, where the big telescope +stands, is a perpetual feast of the Pentecost. The population of the +club changes with each steamer in harbour, for the sea-captains swing +in, are met with 'Hello! where did you come from?' and mix at the bar +and billiard-tables for their appointed time and go to sea again. The +white-painted warships supply their contingent of members also, and +there are wonderful men, mines of most fascinating adventure, who have +an interest in sealing-brigs that go to the Kurile Islands, and somehow +get into trouble with the Russian authorities. Consuls and judges of the +Consular Courts meet men over on leave from the China ports, or it may +be Manila, and they all talk tea, silk, banking, and exchange with its +fixed residents. Everything is always as bad as it can possibly be, and +everybody is on the verge of ruin. That is why, when they have decided +that life is no longer worth living, they go down to the +skittle-alley—to commit suicide. From the outside, when a cool wind +blows among the papers and there is a sound of smashing ice in an inner +apartment, and every third man is talking about the approaching races, +the life seems to be a desirable one. 'What more could a man need to +make him happy?' says the passer-by. A perfect climate, a lovely +country, plenty of pleasant society, and the politest people on earth to +deal with. The resident smiles and invites the passer-by to stay through +July and August. Further, he presses him to do business with the +politest people on earth, and to continue so doing for a term of years. +Thus the traveller perceives beyond doubt that the resident is +prejudiced by the very fact of his residence, and gives it as his +matured opinion that Japan is a faultless land, marred only by the +presence of the foreign community. And yet, let us consider. It is the +foreign community that has made it possible for the traveller to come +and go from hotel to hotel, to get his passport for inland travel, to +telegraph his safe arrival to anxious friends, and generally enjoy +himself much more than he would have been able to do in his own country. +Government and gunboats may open a land, but it is the men of the +Overseas Club that keep it open. Their reward (not alone in Japan) is +the bland patronage or the scarcely-veiled contempt of those who profit +by their labours. It is hopeless to explain to a traveller who has been +'ohayoed' into half-a-dozen shops and 'sayonaraed' out of half-a-dozen +more and politely cheated in each one, that the Japanese is an Oriental, +and, therefore, embarrassingly economical of the truth. 'That's his +politeness,' says the traveller. 'He does not wish to hurt your +feelings. Love him and treat him like a brother, and he'll change.' To +treat one of the most secretive of races on a brotherly basis is not +very easy, and the natural politeness that enters into a signed and +sealed contract and undulates out of it so soon as it does not +sufficiently pay is more than embarrassing. It is almost annoying. The +want of fixity or commercial honour may be due to some natural infirmity +of the artistic temperament, or to the manner in which the climate has +affected, and his ruler has ruled, the man himself for untold centuries.</p> + +<p>Those who know the East know, where the system of 'squeeze,' which is +commission, runs through every transaction of life, from the sale of a +groom's place upward, where the woman walks behind the man in the +streets, and where the peasant gives you for the distance to the next +town as many or as few miles as he thinks you will like, that these +things must be so. Those who do not know will not be persuaded till they +have lived there. The Overseas Club puts up its collective nose +scornfully when it hears of the New and Regenerate Japan sprung to life +since the 'seventies. It grins, with shame be it written, at an Imperial +Diet modelled on the German plan and a Code Napoléon à la Japonaise. It +is so far behind the New Era as to doubt that an Oriental country, +ridden by etiquette of the sternest, and social distinctions almost as +hard as those of caste, can be turned out to Western gauge in the +compass of a very young man's life. And it <i> +must</i> be prejudiced, because +it is daily and hourly in contact with the Japanese, except when it can +do business with the Chinaman whom it prefers. Was there ever so +disgraceful a club!</p> + +<p>Just at present, a crisis, full blown as a chrysanthemum, has developed +in the Imperial Diet. Both Houses accuse the Government of improper +interference—this Japanese for 'plenty stick and some bank-note'—at +the recent elections. They then did what was equivalent to passing a +vote of censure on the Ministry and refusing to vote government +measures. So far the wildest advocate of representative government could +have desired nothing better. Afterwards, things took a distinctly +Oriental turn. The Ministry refused to resign, and the Mikado prorogued +the Diet for a week to think things over. The Japanese papers are now at +issue over the event. Some say that representative government implies +party government, and others swear at large. The Overseas Club says for +the most part—'Skittles!'</p> + +<p>It is a picturesque situation—one that suggests romances and +extravaganzas. Thus, imagine a dreaming Court intrenched behind a triple +line of moats where the lotus blooms in summer—a Court whose outer +fringe is aggressively European, but whose heart is Japan of long ago, +where a dreaming King sits among some wives or other things, amused from +time to time with magic-lantern shows and performing fleas—a holy King +whose sanctity is used to conjure with, and who twice a year gives +garden-parties where every one must come in top-hat and frock coat. +Round this Court, wavering between the splendours of the sleeping and +the variety shows of the Crystal Palace, place in furious but +carefully-veiled antagonism the fragments of newly shattered castes, +their natural Oriental eccentricities overlaid with borrowed Western +notions. Imagine now, a large and hungry bureaucracy, French in its +fretful insistence on detail where detail is of no earthly moment, +Oriental in its stress on etiquette and punctillo, recruited from a +military caste accustomed for ages past to despise alike farmer and +trader. This caste, we will suppose, is more or less imperfectly +controlled by a syndicate of three clans, which supply their own +nominees to the Ministry. These are adroit, versatile, and unscrupulous +men, hampered by no western prejudice in favour of carrying any plan to +completion. Through and at the bidding of these men, the holy Monarch +acts; and the acts are wonderful. To criticise these acts exists a +wild-cat Press, liable to suppression at any moment, as morbidly +sensitive to outside criticism as the American, and almost as childishly +untruthful, fungoid in the swiftness of its growth, and pitiable in its +unseasoned rashness. Backers of this press in its wilder moments, +lawless, ignorant, sensitive and vain, are the student class, educated +in the main at Government expense, and a thorn in the side of the State. +Judges without training handle laws without precedents, and new measures +are passed and abandoned with almost inconceivable levity. Out of the +welter of classes and interests that are not those of the common folk is +evolved the thing called Japanese policy that has the proportion and the +perspective of a Japanese picture.</p> + +<p>Finality and stability are absent from its councils. To-day, for reasons +none can explain, it is pro-foreign to the verge of servility. +To-morrow, for reasons equally obscure, the pendulum swings back, +and—the students are heaving mud at the foreigners in the streets. +Vexatious, irresponsible, incoherent, and, above all, cheaply +mysterious, is the rule of the land—stultified by intrigue and +counter-intrigue, chequered with futile reforms begun on European lines +and light-heartedly thrown aside; studded, as a bower-bird's run is +studded with shells and shining pebbles, with plagiarisms from half the +world—an operetta of administration, wherein the shadow of the King +among his wives, Samurai policemen, doctors who have studied under +Pasteur, kid-gloved cavalry officers from St. Cyr, judges with +University degrees, harlots with fiddles, newspaper correspondents, +masters of the ancient ceremonies of the land, paid members of the Diet, +secret societies that borrow the knife and the dynamite of the Irish, +sons of dispossessed Daimios returned from Europe and waiting for what +may turn up, with ministers of the syndicate who have wrenched Japan +from her repose of twenty years ago, circle, flicker, shift, and reform, +in bewildering rings, round the foreign resident. Is the extravaganza +complete?</p> + +<p>Somewhere in the background of the stage are the people of the land—of +whom a very limited proportion enjoy the privileges of representative +government. Whether in the past few years they have learned what the +thing means, or, learning, have the least intention of making any use of +it, is not clear. Meantime, the game of government goes forward as +merrily as a game of puss-in-the-corner, with the additional joy that +not more than half-a-dozen men know who is controlling it or what in +the wide world it intends to do. In Tokio live the steadily-diminishing +staff of Europeans employed by the Emperor as engineers, railway +experts, professors in the colleges and so forth. Before many years they +will all be dispensed with, and the country will set forth among the +nations alone and on its own responsibility.</p> + +<p>In fifty years then, from the time that the intrusive American first +broke her peace, Japan will experience her new birth and, reorganised +from sandal to top-knot, play the <i> +samisen</i> in the march of modern +progress. This is the great advantage of being born into the New Era, +when individual and community alike can get something for nothing—pay +without work, education without effort, religion without thought, and +free government without slow and bitter toil.</p> + +<p>The Overseas Club, as has been said, is behind the spirit of the age. It +has to work for what it gets, and it does not always get what it works +for. Nor can its members take ship and go home when they please. Imagine +for a little, the contented frame of mind that is bred in a man by the +perpetual contemplation of a harbour full of steamers as a Piccadilly +cab-rank of hansoms. The weather is hot, we will suppose; something has +gone wrong with his work that day, or his children are not looking so +well as might be. Pretty tiled bungalows, bowered in roses and wistaria, +do not console him, and the voices of the politest people on earth jar +sorely. He knows every soul in the club, has thoroughly talked out +every subject of interest, and would give half a year's—oh, five +years'—pay for one lung-filling breath of air that has life in it, one +sniff of the haying grass, or half a mile of muddy London street where +the muffin bell tinkles in the four o'clock fog. Then the big liner +moves out across the staring blue of the bay. So-and-so and such-an-one, +both friends, are going home in her, and some one else goes next week by +the French mail. He, and he alone, it seems to him, must stay on; and it +is so maddeningly easy to go—for every one save himself. The boat's +smoke dies out along the horizon, and he is left alone with the warm +wind and the white dust of the Bund. Now Japan is a good place, a place +that men swear by and live in for thirty years at a stretch. There are +China ports a week's sail to the westward where life is really hard, and +where the sight of the restless shipping hurts very much indeed. +Tourists and you who travel the world over, be very gentle to the men of +the Overseas Clubs. Remember that, unlike yourselves, they have not come +here for the good of their health, and that the return ticket in your +wallet may possibly colour your views of their land. Perhaps it would +not be altogether wise on the strength of much kindness from Japanese +officials to recommend that these your countrymen be handed over lock, +stock, and barrel to a people that are beginning to experiment with +fresh-drafted half-grafted codes which do not include juries, to a +system that does not contemplate a free Press, to a suspicious +absolutism from which there is no appeal. Truly, it might be +interesting, but as surely it would begin in farce and end in tragedy, +that would leave the politest people on earth in no case to play at +civilised government for a long time to come. In his concession, where +he is an apologetic and much sat-upon importation, the foreign resident +does no harm. He does not always sue for money due to him on the part of +a Japanese. Once outside those limits, free to move into the heart of +the country, it would only be a question of time as to where and when +the trouble would begin. And in the long run it would not be the foreign +resident that would suffer. The imaginative eye can see the most +unpleasant possibilities, from a general overrunning of Japan by the +Chinaman, who is far the most important foreign resident, to the +shelling of Tokio by a joyous and bounding Democracy, anxious to +vindicate her national honour and to learn how her newly-made navy +works.</p> + +<p>But there are scores of arguments that would confute and overwhelm this +somewhat gloomy view. The statistics of Japan, for instance, are as +beautiful and fit as neatly as the woodwork of her houses. By these it +would be possible to prove anything.</p> + + +<a name="chap5" id="chap5"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>SOME EARTHQUAKES</h2> + +<p>A Radical Member of Parliament at Tokio has just got into trouble with +his constituents, and they have sent him a priceless letter of reproof. +Among other things they point out that a politician should not be 'a +waterweed which wobbles hither and thither according to the motion of +the stream.' Nor should he 'like a ghost without legs drift along before +the wind.' 'Your conduct,' they say, 'has been both of a waterweed and a +ghost, and we purpose in a little time to give you proof of our true +Japanese spirit.' That member will very likely be mobbed in his +'rickshaw and prodded to inconvenience with sword-sticks; for the +constituencies are most enlightened. But how in the world can a man +under these skies behave except as a waterweed and a ghost? It is in the +air—the wobble and the legless drift An energetic tourist would have +gone to Hakodate, seen Ainos at Sapporo, ridden across the northern +island under the gigantic thistles, caught salmon, looked in at +Vladivostock, and done half a hundred things in the time that one lazy +loafer has wasted watching the barley turn from green to gold, the +azaleas blossom and burn out, and the spring give way to the warm rains +of summer. Now the iris has taken up the blazonry of the year, and the +tide of the tourists ebbs westward.</p> + +<p>The permanent residents are beginning to talk of hill places to go to +for the hot weather, and all the available houses in the resort are let. +In a little while the men from China will be coming over for their +holidays, but just at present we are in the thick of the tea season, and +there is no time to waste on frivolities. 'Packing' is a valid excuse +for anything, from forgetting a dinner to declining a tennis party, and +the tempers of husbands are judged leniently. All along the sea face is +an inspiring smell of the finest new-mown hay, and canals are full of +boats loaded up with the boxes jostling down to the harbour. At the club +men say rude things about the arrivals of the mail. There never was a +post-office yet that did not rejoice in knocking a man's Sabbath into +flinders. A fair office day's work may begin at eight and end at six, +or, if the mail comes in, at midnight. There is no overtime or +eight-hours' baby-talk in tea. Yonder are the ships; here is the stuff, +and behind all is the American market. The rest is your own affair.</p> + +<p>The narrow streets are blocked with the wains bringing down, in boxes of +every shape and size, the up-country rough leaf. Some one must take +delivery of these things, find room for them in the packed warehouse, +and sample them before they are blended and go to the firing.</p> + +<p>More than half the elaborate processes are 'lost work' so far as the +quality of the stuff goes; but the markets insist on a good-looking +leaf, with polish, face and curl to it, and in this, as in other +businesses, the call of the markets is the law. The factory floors are +made slippery with the tread of bare-footed coolies, who shout as the +tea whirls through its transformations. The over-note to the clamour—an +uncanny thing too—is the soft rustle-down of the tea itself—stacked in +heaps, carried in baskets, dumped through chutes, rising and falling in +the long troughs where it is polished, and disappearing at last into the +heart of the firing-machine—always this insistent whisper of moving +dead leaves. Steam-sieves sift it into grades, with jarrings and +thumpings that make the floor quiver, and the thunder of steam-gear is +always at its heels; but it continues to mutter unabashed till it is +riddled down into the big, foil-lined boxes and lies at peace.</p> + +<p>A few days ago the industry suffered a check which, lasting not more +than two minutes, lost several hundred pounds of hand-fired tea. It was +something after this way. Into the stillness of a hot, stuffy morning +came an unpleasant noise as of batteries of artillery charging up all +the roads together, and at least one bewildered sleeper waking saw his +empty boots where they 'sat and played toccatas stately at the +clavicord.' It was the washstand really but the effect was awful. Then a +clock fell and a wall cracked, and heavy hands caught the house by the +roof-pole and shook it furiously. To preserve an equal mind when things +are hard is good, but he who has not fumbled desperately at bolted +jalousies that will not open while a whole room is being tossed in a +blanket does not know how hard it is to find any sort of mind at all. +The end of the terror was inadequate—a rush into the still, heavy +outside air, only to find the servants in the garden giggling (the +Japanese would giggle through the Day of Judgment) and to learn that the +earthquake was over. Then came the news, swift borne from the business +quarters below the hill, that the coolies of certain factories had fled +shrieking at the first shock, and that all the tea in the pans was +burned to a crisp. That, certainly, was some consolation for undignified +panic; and there remained the hope that a few tall chimneys up the line +at Tokio would have collapsed. They stood firm, however, and the local +papers, used to this kind of thing, merely spoke of the shock as +'severe.' Earthquakes are demoralising; but they bring out all the +weaknesses of human nature. First is downright dread; the stage +of—'only let me get into the open and I'll reform,' then the impulse to +send news of the most terrible shock of modern times flying east and +west among the cables. (Did not your own hair stand straight on end, +and, therefore, must not everybody else's have done likewise?) Last, as +fallen humanity picks itself together, comes the cry of the mean little +soul: 'What! Was <i> +that</i> all? I wasn't frightened from the beginning.'</p> + +<p>It is wholesome and tonic to realise the powerlessness of man in the +face of these little accidents. The heir of all the ages, the +annihilator of time and space, who politely doubts the existence of his +Maker, hears the roof-beams crack and strain above him, and scuttles +about like a rabbit in a stoppered warren. If the shock endures for +twenty minutes, the annihilator of time and space must camp out under +the blue and hunt for his dead among the rubbish. Given a violent +convulsion (only just such a slipping of strata as carelessly piled +volumes will accomplish in a book-case) and behold, the heir of all the +ages is stark, raving mad—a brute among the dishevelled hills. Set a +hundred of the world's greatest spirits, men of fixed principles, high +aims, resolute endeavour, enormous experience, and the modesty that +these attributes bring—set them to live through such a catastrophe as +that which wiped out Nagoya last October, and at the end of three days +there would remain few whose souls might be called their own.</p> + +<p>So much for yesterday's shock. To-day there has come another; and a most +comprehensive affair it is. It has broken nothing, unless maybe an old +heart or two cracks later on; and the wise people in the settlement are +saying that they predicted it from the first. None the less as an +earthquake it deserves recording.</p> + +<p>It was a very rainy afternoon; all the streets were full of gruelly mud, +and all the business men were at work in their offices when it began. A +knot of Chinamen were studying a closed door from whose further side +came a most unpleasant sound of bolting and locking up. The notice on +the door was interesting. With deep regret did the manager of the New +Oriental Banking Corporation, Limited (most decidedly limited), announce +that on telegraphic orders from home he had suspended payment. Said one +Chinaman to another in pidgin-Japanese: 'It is shut,' and went away. The +noise of barring up continued, the rain fell, and the notice stared down +the wet street. That was all. There must have been two or three men +passing by to whom the announcement meant the loss of every penny of +their savings—comforting knowledge to digest after tiffin. In London, +of course, the failure would not mean so much; there are many banks in +the City, and people would have had warning. Here banks are few, people +are dependent on them, and this news came out of the sea unheralded, an +evil born with all its teeth.</p> + +<p>After the crash of a bursting shell every one who can picks himself up, +brushes the dirt off his uniform, and tries to make a joke of it. Then +some one whips a handkerchief round his hand—a splinter has torn +it—and another finds warm streaks running down his forehead. Then a +man, overlooked till now and past help, groans to the death. Everybody +perceives with a start that this is no time for laughter, and the dead +and wounded are attended to.</p> + +<p>Even so at the Overseas Club when the men got out of office. The brokers +had told them the news. In filed the English, and Americans, and +Germans, and French, and 'Here's a pretty mess!' they said one and all. +Many of them were hit, but, like good men, they did not say how +severely.</p> + +<p>'Ah!' said a little P. and O. official, wagging his head sagaciously (he +had lost a thousand dollars since noon), 'it's all right <i> +now</i> . They're +trying to make the best of it. In three or four days we shall hear more +about it. I meant to draw my money just before I went down coast, +but——' Curiously enough, it was the same story throughout the Club. +Everybody had intended to withdraw, and nearly everybody had—not done +so. The manager of a bank which had <i> +not</i> failed was explaining how, in +his opinion, the crash had come about. This was also very human. It +helped none. Entered a lean American, throwing back his waterproof all +dripping with the rain; his face was calm and peaceful. 'Boy, whisky and +soda,' he said.</p> + +<p>'How much haf you losd?' said a Teuton bluntly. 'Eight-fifty,' replied +the son of George Washington sweetly. 'Don't see how that prevents me +having a drink. My glass, sirr.' He continued an interrupted whistling +of 'I owe ten dollars to O'Grady' (which he very probably did), and his +countenance departed not from its serenity. If there is anything that +one loves an American for it is the way he stands certain kinds of +punishment. An Englishman and a heavy loser was being chaffed by a +Scotchman whose account at the Japan end of the line had been a trifle +overdrawn. True, he would lose in England, but the thought of the few +dollars saved here cheered him.</p> + +<p>More men entered, sat down by tables, stood in groups, or remained +apart by themselves, thinking with knit brows. One must think quickly +when one's bills are falling due. The murmur of voices thickened, and +there was no rumbling in the skittle alley to interrupt it. Everybody +knows everybody else at the Overseas Club, and everybody sympathises. A +man passed stiffly and some one of a group turned to ask lightly, 'Hit, +old man?' 'Like hell,' he said, and went on biting his unlit cigar. +Another man was telling, slowly and somewhat bitterly, how he had +expected one of his children to join him out here, and how the passage +had been paid with a draft on the O.B.C. But now ... <i> +There</i> , ladies and +gentlemen, is where it hurts, this little suspension out here. It +destroys plans, pretty ones hoped for and prayed over, maybe for years; +it knocks pleasant domestic arrangements galleywest over and above all +the mere ruin that it causes. The curious thing in the talk was that +there was no abuse of the bank. The men were in the Eastern trade +themselves and they knew. It was the Yokohama manager and the clerks +thrown out of employment (connection with a broken bank, by the way, +goes far to ruin a young man's prospects) for whom they were sorry. +'We're doing ourselves well this year,' said a wit grimly. 'One +free-shooting case, one thundering libel case, and a bank smash. Showing +off pretty before the globe-trotters, aren't we?'</p> + +<p>'Gad, think of the chaps at sea with letters of credit. Eh? They'll land +and get the best rooms at the hotels and find they're penniless,' said +another.</p> + +<p>'Never mind the globe-trotters,' said a third. 'Look nearer home. This +does for so-and-so, and so-and-so, and so-and-so, all old men; and every +penny of theirs goes.' Poor devils!'</p> + +<p>'That reminds me of some one else,' said yet another voice, '<i> +His</i> wife's at home, too. Whew!' and he whistled drearily. So did the tide of +voices run on till men got to talking over the chances of a dividend, +'They went to the Bank of England,' drawled an American, 'and the Bank +of England let them down; said their securities weren't good enough.'</p> + +<p>'Great Scott!'—a hand came down on a table to emphasise the remark—'I +sailed half way up the Mediterranean once with a Bank of England +director; wish I'd tipped him over the rail and lowered him a boat on +his own security—if it was good enough.'</p> + +<p>'Baring's goes. The O.B.C. don't,' replied the American, blowing smoke +through his nose. 'This business looks de-ci-ded-ly prob-le-mat-i-cal. +What-at?'</p> + +<p>'Oh, they'll pay the depositors in full. Don't you fret,' said a man who +had lost nothing and was anxious to console.</p> + +<p>'I'm a shareholder,' said the American, and smoked on.</p> + +<p>The rain continued to fall, and the umbrellas dripped in the racks, and +the wet men came and went, circling round the central fact that it was a +bad business, till the day, as was most fit, shut down in drizzling +darkness. There was a refreshing sense of brotherhood in misfortunes in +the little community that had just been electrocuted and did not want +any more shocks. All the pain that in England would be taken home to be +borne in silence and alone was here bulked, as it were, and faced in +line of company. Surely the Christians of old must have fought much +better when they met the lions by fifties at a time.</p> + +<p>At last the men departed; the bachelors to cast up accounts by +themselves (there should be some good ponies for sale shortly) and the +married men to take counsel. May heaven help him whose wife does not +stand by him now! But the women of the Overseas settlements are as +thorough as the men. There will be tears for plans forgone, the changing +of the little ones' schools and elder children's careers, unpleasant +letters to be written home, and more unpleasant ones to be received from +relatives who 'told you so from the first.' There will be pinchings too, +and straits of which the outside world will know nothing, but the women +will pull it through smiling.</p> + +<p>Beautiful indeed are the operations of modern finance—especially when +anything goes wrong with the machine. To-night there will be trouble in +India among the Ceylon planters, the Calcutta jute and the Bombay +cotton-brokers, besides the little households of small banked savings. +In Hongkong, Singapore, and Shanghai there will be trouble too, and +goodness only knows what wreck at Cheltenham, Bath, St. Leonards, +Torquay, and the other camps of the retired Army officers. They are +lucky in England who know what happens when it happens, but here the +people are at the wrong end of the cables, and the situation is not +good. Only one thing seems certain. There is a notice on a shut door, in +the wet, and by virtue of that notice all the money that was theirs +yesterday is gone away, and it may never come back again. So all the +work that won the money must be done over again; but some of the people +are old, and more are tired, and all are disheartened. It is a very +sorrowful little community that goes to bed to-night, and there must be +as sad ones the world over. Let it be written, however, that of the +sections under fire here (and some are cruelly hit) no man whined, or +whimpered, or broke down. There was no chance of fighting. It was bitter +defeat, but they took it standing.</p> + + +<a name="chap6" id="chap6"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>HALF-A-DOZEN PICTURES</h2> + +<p>'Some men when they grow rich, store pictures in a gallery,' Living, +their friends envy them, and after death the genuineness of the +collection is disputed under the dispersing hammer.</p> + +<p>A better way is to spread your picture over all earth; visiting them as +Fate allows. Then none can steal or deface, nor any reverse of fortune +force a sale; sunshine and tempest warm and ventilate the gallery for +nothing, and—in spite of all that has been said of her +crudeness—Nature is not altogether a bad frame-maker. The knowledge +that you may never live to see an especial treasure twice teaches the +eyes to see quickly while the light lasts; and the possession of such a +gallery breeds a very fine contempt for painted shows and the smeary +things that are called pictures.</p> + +<p>In the North Pacific, to the right hand as you go westward, hangs a +small study of no particular value as compared with some others. The +mist is down on an oily stretch of washed-out sea; through the mist the +bats-wings of a sealing schooner are just indicated. In the foreground, +all but leaping out of the frame, an open rowboat, painted the rawest +blue and white, rides up over the shoulder of a swell. A man in +blood-red jersey and long boots, all shining with moisture, stands at +the bows holding up the carcase of a silver-bellied sea-otter from whose +pelt the wet drips in moonstones. Now the artist who could paint the +silver wash of the mist, the wriggling treacly reflection of the boat, +and the raw red wrists of the man would be something of a workman.</p> + +<p>But my gallery is in no danger of being copied at present. Three years +since, I met an artist in the stony bed of a brook, between a line of +300 graven, lichened godlings and a flaming bank of azaleas, swearing +horribly. He had been trying to paint one of my pictures—nothing more +than a big water-worn rock tufted with flowers and a snow-capped hill +for background. Most naturally he failed, because there happened to be +absolutely no perspective in the thing, and he was pulling the lines +about to make some for home consumption. No man can put the contents of +a gallon jar into a pint mug. The protests of all uncomfortably-crowded +mugs since the world began have settled that long ago, and have given us +the working theories, devised by imperfect instruments for imperfect +instruments, which are called Rules of Art.</p> + +<p>Luckily, those who painted my gallery were born before man. Therefore, +my pictures, instead of being boxed up by lumbering bars of gold, are +disposed generously between latitudes, equinoxes, monsoons, and the +like, and, making all allowance for an owner's partiality, they are +really not so bad.</p> + +<p>'Down in the South where the ships never go'—between the heel of New +Zealand and the South Pole, there is a sea-piece showing a steamer +trying to come round in the trough of a big beam sea. The wet light of +the day's end comes more from the water than the sky, and the waves are +colourless through the haze of the rain, all but two or three blind +sea-horses swinging out of the mist on the ship's dripping weather side. +A lamp is lighted in the wheel-house; so one patch of yellow light falls +on the green-painted pistons of the steering gear as they snatch up the +rudder-chains. A big sea has got home. Her stern flies up in the lather +of a freed screw, and her deck from poop to the break of the foc's'le +goes under in gray-green water level as a mill-race except where it +spouts up above the donkey-engine and the stored derrick-booms. Forward +there is nothing but this glare; aft, the interrupted wake drives far to +leeward, a cut kite-string dropped across the seas. The sole thing that +has any rest in the turmoil is the jewelled, unwinking eye of an +albatross, who is beating across wind leisurely and unconcerned, almost +within hand's touch. It is the monstrous egotism of that eye that makes +the picture. By all the rules of art there should be a lighthouse or a +harbour pier in the background to show that everything will end happily. +But there is not, and the red eye does not care whether the thing +beneath its still wings stays or staves.</p> + +<p>The sister-panel hangs in the Indian Ocean and tells a story, but is +none the worse for that. Here you have hot tropical sunlight and a +foreshore clothed in stately palms running out into a still and steamy +sea burnished steel blue. Along the foreshore, questing as a wounded +beast quests for lair, hurries a loaded steamer never built for speed. +Consequently, she tears and threshes the water to pieces, and piles it +under her nose and cannot put it under her cleanly. Coir-coloured cargo +bales are stacked round both masts, and her decks are crammed and +double-crammed with dark-skinned passengers—from the foc's'le where +they interfere with the crew to the stern where they hamper the wheel.</p> + +<p>The funnel is painted blue on yellow, giving her a holiday air, a little +out of keeping with the yellow and black cholera flag at her main. She +dare not stop; she must not communicate with any one. There are leprous +streaks of lime-wash trickling down her plates for a sign of this. So +she threshes on down the glorious coast, she and her swarming +passengers, with the sickness that destroyeth in the noonday eating out +her heart.</p> + +<p>Yet another, the pick of all the East rooms, before we have done with +blue water. Most of the nations of the earth are at issue under a +stretch of white awning above a crowded deck. The cause of the dispute, +a deep copper bowl full of rice and fried onions, is upset in the +foreground. Malays, Lascars, Hindus, Chinese, Japanese, Burmans—the +whole gamut of racetints, from saffron to tar-black—are twisting and +writhing round it, while their vermilion, cobalt, amber, and emerald +turbans and head-cloths are lying underfoot. Pressed against the yellow +ochre of the iron bulwarks to left and right are frightened women and +children in turquoise and isabella-coloured clothes. They are half +protected by mounds of upset bedding, straw mats, red lacquer boxes, and +plaited bamboo trunks, mixed up with tin plates, brass and copper +<i> +hukas</i> , silver opium pipes, Chinese playing cards, and properties +enough to drive half-a-dozen artists wild. In the centre of the crowd of +furious half-naked men, the fat bare back of a Burman, tattooed from +collar-bone to waist-cloth with writhing patterns of red and blue +devils, holds the eye first. It is a wicked back. Beyond it is the +flicker of a Malay <i> +kris</i> . A blue, red, and yellow macaw chained to a +stanchion spreads his wings against the sun in an ecstasy of terror. +Half-a-dozen red-gold pines and bananas have been knocked down from +their ripening-places, and are lying between the feet of the fighters. +One pine has rolled against the long brown fur of a muzzled bear. His +owner, a bushy-bearded Hindu, kneels over the animal, his body-cloth +thrown clear of a hard brown arm, his fingers ready to loose the +muzzle-strap. The ship's cook, in blood-stained white, watches from the +butcher's shop, and a black Zanzibari stoker grins through the bars of +the engine-room-hatch, one ray of sun shining straight into his pink +mouth. The officer of the watch, a red-whiskered man, is kneeling down +on the bridge to peer through the railings, and is shifting a long, thin +black revolver from his left hand to his right. The faithful sunlight +that puts everything into place, gives his whiskers and the hair on the +back of his tanned wrist just the colour of the copper pot, the bear's +fur and the trampled pines. For the rest, there is the blue sea beyond +the awnings.</p> + +<p>Three years' hard work, beside the special knowledge of a lifetime, +would be needed to copy—even to copy—this picture. Mr. So-and-so, +R.A., could undoubtedly draw the bird; Mr. Such-another (equally R.A.) +the bear; and scores of gentlemen the still life; but who would be the +man to pull the whole thing together and make it the riotous, tossing +cataract of colour and life that it is? And when it was done, some +middle-aged person from the provinces, who had never seen a pineapple +out of a plate, or a <i> +kris</i> out of the South Kensington, would say that +it did not remind him of something that it ought to remind him of, and +therefore that it was bad. If the gallery could be bequeathed to the +nation, something might, perhaps, be gained, but the nation would +complain of the draughts and the absence of chairs. But no matter. In +another world we shall see certain gentlemen set to tickle the backs of +Circe's swine through all eternity. Also, they will have to tickle with +their bare hands.</p> + +<p>The Japanese rooms, visited and set in order for the second time, hold +more pictures than could be described in a month; but most of them are +small and, excepting always the light, within human compass. One, +however, might be difficult. It was an unexpected gift, picked up in a +Tokio bye-street after dark. Half the town was out for a walk, and all +the people's clothes were indigo, and so were the shadows, and most of +the paper-lanterns were drops of blood red. By the light of smoking +oil-lamps people were selling flowers and shrubs—wicked little dwarf +pines, stunted peach and plum trees, wisteria bushes clipped and twisted +out of all likeness to wholesome plants, leaning and leering out of +green-glaze pots. In the flickering of the yellow flames, these forced +cripples and the yellow faces above them reeled to and fro fantastically +all together. As the light steadied they would return to the pretence of +being green things till a puff of the warm night wind among the flares +set the whole line off again in a crazy dance of dwergs, their shadows +capering on the house fronts behind them.</p> + +<p>At a corner of a street, some rich men had got together and left +unguarded all the gold, diamonds, and rubies of the East; but when you +came near you saw that this treasure was only a gathering of goldfish in +glass globes—yellow, white, and red fish, with from three to five +forked tails apiece and eyes that bulged far beyond their heads. There +were wooden pans full of tiny ruby fish, and little children with nets +dabbled and shrieked in chase of some special beauty, and the frightened +fish kicked up showers of little pearls with their tails. The children +carried lanterns in the shape of small red paper fish bobbing at the end +of slivers of bamboo, and these drifted through the crowd like a strayed +constellation of baby stars. When the children stood at the edge of a +canal and called down to unseen friends in boats the pink lights were +all reflected orderly below. The light of the thousand small lights in +the street went straight up into the darkness among the interlacing +telegraph wires, and just at the edge of the shining haze, on a sort of +pigeon-trap, forty feet above ground, sat a Japanese fireman, wrapped up +in his cloak, keeping watch against fires. He looked unpleasantly like a +Bulgarian atrocity or a Burmese 'deviation from the laws of humanity,' +being very still and all huddled up in his roost. That was a superb +picture and it arranged itself to admiration. Now, disregarding these +things and others—wonders and miracles all—men are content to sit in +studios and, by light that is not light, to fake subjects from pots and +pans and rags and bricks that are called 'pieces of colour.' Their +collection of rubbish costs in the end quite as much as a ticket, a +first-class one, to new worlds where the 'props' are given away with the +sunshine. To do anything because it is, or may not be, new on the market +is wickedness that carries its own punishment; but surely there must be +things in this world paintable other and beyond those that lie between +the North Cape, say, and Algiers. For the sake of the pictures, putting +aside the dear delight of the gamble, it might be worth while to +venture out a little beyond the regular circle of subjects and—see what +happens. If a man can draw one thing, it has been said, he can draw +anything. At the most he can but fail, and there are several matters in +the world worse than failure. Betting on a certainty, for instance, or +playing with nicked cards is immoral, and secures expulsion from clubs. +Keeping deliberately to one set line of work because you know you can do +it and are certain to get money by so doing is, on the other hand, +counted a virtue, and secures admission to clubs. There must be a middle +way somewhere, as there must be somewhere an unmarried man with no +position, reputation, or other vanity to lose, who most keenly wants to +find out what his palette is set for in this life. He will pack his +steamer-trunk and get into the open to wrestle with effects that he can +never reproduce. All the same his will be a superb failure,</p> + + +<a name="chap7" id="chap7"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>'CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS'</h2> + +<p>From Yokohama to Montreal is a long day's journey, and the forepart is +uninviting. In three voyages out of five, the North Pacific, too big to +lie altogether idle, too idle to get hands about the business of a +storm, sulks and smokes like a chimney; the passengers fresh from Japan +heat wither in the chill, and a clammy dew distils from the rigging. +That gray monotony of sea is not at all homelike, being as yet new and +not used to the procession of keels. It holds a very few pictures and +the best of its stories—those relating to seal-poaching among the +Kuriles and the Russian rookeries—are not exactly fit for publication. +There is a man in Yokohama who in a previous life burned galleons with +Drake. He is a gentleman adventurer of the largest and most +resourceful—by instinct a carver of kingdoms, a ruler of men on the +high seas, and an inveterate gambler against Death. Because he supplies +nothing more than sealskins to the wholesale dealers at home, the fame +of his deeds, his brilliant fights, his more brilliant escapes, and his +most brilliant strategy will be lost among sixty-ton schooners, or told +only in the mouths of drunken seamen whom none believe. Now there sits +a great spirit under the palm trees of the Navigator Group, a thousand +leagues to the south, and he, crowned with roses and laurels, strings +together the pearls of those parts. When he has done with this down +there perhaps he will turn to the Smoky Seas and the Wonderful +Adventures of Captain—. Then there will be a tale to listen to.</p> + +<p>But the first touch of dry land makes the sea and all upon it unreal. +Five minutes after the traveller is on the C.P.R, train at Vancouver +there is no romance of blue water, but another kind—the life of the +train into which he comes to grow as into life aboard ship. A week on +wheels turns a man into a part of the machine. He knows when the train +will stop to water, wait for news of the trestle ahead, drop the +dining-car, slip into a siding to let the West-bound mail go by, or yell +through the thick night for an engine to help push up the bank. The +snort, the snap and whine of the air-brakes have a meaning for him, and +he learns to distinguish between noises—between the rattle of a +loose lamp and the ugly rattle of small stones on a scarped +embankment—between the 'Hoot! toot!' that scares wandering cows from +the line, and the dry roar of the engine at the distance-signal. In +England the railway came late into a settled country fenced round with +the terrors of the law, and it has remained ever since just a little +outside daily life—a thing to be respected. Here it strolls along, with +its hands in its pockets and a straw in its mouth, on the heels of the +rough-hewn trail or log road—a platformless, regulationless necessity; +and it is treated even by sick persons and young children with a +familiarity that sometimes affects the death-rate. There was a small +maiden aged seven, who honoured our smoking compartment with her +presence when other excitements failed, and it was she that said to the +conductor, 'When do we change crews? I want to pick water-lilies—yellow +ones.' A mere halt she knew would not suffice for her needs; but the +regular fifteen-minute stop, when the red-painted tool-chest was taken +off the rear car and a new gang came aboard. The big man bent down to +little Impudence—'Want to pick lilies, eh? What would you do if the +cars went on and took mama away, Sis?' 'Take the, next train,' she +replied, 'and tell the conductor to send me to Brooklyn. I live there.' +'But s'pose he wouldn't?' 'He'd have to,' said Young America. 'I'd be a +lost child.'</p> + +<p>Now, from the province of Alberta to Brooklyn, U.S.A., may be three +thousand miles. A great stretch of that distance is as new as the day +before yesterday, and strewn with townships in every stage of growth +from the city of one round house, two log huts, and a Chinese camp +somewhere in the foot-hills of the Selkirks, to Winnipeg with her +league-long main street and her warring newspapers. Just at present +there is an epidemic of politics in Manitoba, and brass bands and +notices of committee meetings are splashed about the towns. By reason +of their closeness to the Stages they have caught the contagion of +foul-mouthedness, and accusations of bribery, corruption, and +evil-living are many. It is sweet to find a little baby-city, with only +three men in it who can handle type, cursing and swearing across the +illimitable levels for all the world as though it were a grown-up +Christian centre.</p> + +<p>All the new towns have their own wants to consider, and the first of +these is a railway. If the town is on a line already, then a new line to +tap the back country; but at all costs a line. For this it will sell its +corrupted soul, and then be very indignant because the railway before +which it has grovelled rides rough-shod over the place.</p> + +<p>Each new town believes itself to be a possible Winnipeg until the +glamour of the thing is a little worn off, and the local paper, sliding +down the pole of Pride with the hind legs of despair, says defiantly: +'At least, a veterinary surgeon and a drug store would meet with +encouragement in our midst, and it is a fact that five new buildings +have been erected in our midst since the spring.' From a distance +nothing is easier than to smile at this sort of thing, but he must have +a cool head who can keep his pulse level when just such a wildcat +town—ten houses, two churches, and a line of rails—gets 'on the boom,' +The reader at home says, 'Yes, but it's all a lie.' It may be, but—did +men lie about Denver, Leadville, Ballarat, Broken Hill, Portland, or +Winnipeg twenty years ago—or Adelaide when town lots went begging +within the memory of middle-aged men? Did they lie about Vancouver six +years since, or Creede not twenty months gone? Hardly; and it is just +this knowledge that leads the passer-by to give ear to the wildest +statements of the wildest towns. Anything is possible, especially among +the Rockies where the minerals lie over and above the mining towns, the +centres of ranching country, and the supply towns to the farming +districts. There are literally scores upon scores of lakelets in the +hills, buried in woods now, that before twenty years are run will be +crowded summer resorts. You in England have no idea of what 'summering' +means in the States, and less of the amount of money that is spent on +the yearly holiday. People have no more than just begun to discover the +place called the Banff Hot Springs, two days west of Winnipeg.<a name="FNanchor1"></a><a href="#Footnote1">[1]</a> In a +little time they will know half-a-dozen spots not a day's ride from +Montreal, and it is along that line that money will be made. In those +days, too, wheat will be grown for the English market four hundred miles +north of the present fields on the west side; and British Columbia, +perhaps the loveliest land in the world next to New Zealand, will have +her own line of six thousand ton steamers to Australia, and the British +investor will no longer throw away his money on hellicat South American +republics, or give it as a hostage to the States. He will keep it in the +family as a wise man should. Then the towns that are to-day the only +names in the wilderness, yes, and some of those places marked on the map +as Hudson Bay Ports, will be cities, because—but it is hopeless to make +people understand that actually and indeed, we <i> +do</i> possess an Empire of +which Canada is only one portion—an Empire which is not bounded by +election-returns on the North and Eastbourne riots on the South—an +Empire that has not yet been scratched.</p> + +<a name="Footnote1"></a><a href="#FNanchor1">[1]</a> See pp. <a href="#p187">187</a>-<a href="#p188">188</a>. + +<p>Let us return to the new towns. Three times within one year did fortune +come knocking to the door of a man I know. Once at Seattle, when that +town was a gray blur after a fire; once at Tacoma, in the days when the +steam-tram ran off the rails twice a week; and once at Spokane Falls. +But in the roar of the land-boom he did not hear her, and she went away +leaving him only a tenderness akin to weakness for all new towns, and a +desire, mercifully limited by lack of money, to gamble in every one of +them. Of all the excitements that life offers there are few to be +compared with the whirl of a red-hot boom; also it is strictly moral, +because you <i> +do</i> fairly earn your 'unearned increment' by labour and +perspiration and sitting up far into the night—by working like a fiend, +as all pioneers must do. And consider all that is in it! The headlong +stampede to the new place; the money dashed down like counters for +merest daily bread; the arrival of the piled cars whence the raw +material of a city—men, lumber, and shingle—are shot on to the not yet +nailed platform; the slashing out and pegging down of roads across the +blank face of the wilderness; the heaving up amid shouts and yells of +the city's one electric light—a raw sizzling arc atop of an unbarked +pine pole; the sweating, jostling mob at the sale of town-lots; the roar +of 'Let the woman have it!' that stops all bidding when the one other +woman in the place puts her price on a plot; the packed real-estate +offices; the real-estate agents themselves, lost novelists of prodigious +imagination; the gorgeous pink and blue map of the town, hung up in the +bar-room, with every railroad from Portland to Portland meeting in its +heart; the misspelled curse against 'this dam hole in the ground' +scrawled on the flank of a strayed freight-car by some man who had lost +his money and gone away; the conferences at street corners of syndicates +six hours established by men not twenty-five years old; the outspoken +contempt for the next town, also 'on the boom,' and, therefore, utterly +vile; the unceasing tramp of heavy feet on the board pavement, where +stranger sometimes turns on stranger in an agony of conviction, and, +shaking him by the shoulder, shouts in his ear, 'By G—d! Isn't it +grand? Isn't it glorious? 'and last, the sleep of utterly worn-out men, +three in each room of the shanty hotel: 'All meals two dollars. All +drinks thirty-five cents. No washing done here. The manager not +responsible for anything.' Does the bald catalogue of these recitals +leave you cold? It is possible; but it is also possible after three days +in a new town to set the full half of a truck-load of archbishops +fighting for corner lots as they never fought for mitre or crozier. +There is a contagion in a boom as irresistible as that of a panic in a +theatre.</p> + +<p>After a while things settle down, and then the carpenter, who is also an +architect, can lay his bare arms across the bar and sell them to the +highest bidder, for the houses are coming up like toadstools after rain. +The men who do not build cheer those who do, in that building means +backing your belief in your town—yours to you and peculiarly. Confound +all other towns whatsoever. Behind the crowd of business men the weekly +town paper plays as a stockwhip plays on a mob of cattle. There is +honour, heaped, extravagant, imperial for the good—the employer of +labour, the builder of stores, the spender of money; there is abuse, +savage and outrageous, for the bad, the man who 'buys out of the town,' +the man who intends to go, the sitter on the fence; with persuasion and +invitation in prose, verse, and zincograph for all that outside world +which prefers to live in cities other than Ours.</p> + +<p>Now the editor, as often as not, begins as a mercenary and ends as a +patriot. This, too, is all of a piece with human nature. A few years +later, if Providence is good, comes the return for judicious investment. +Perhaps the town has stood the test of boom, and that which was +clapboard is now Milwaukee brick or dressed stone, vile in design but +permanent. The shanty hotel is the Something House, with accommodation +for two hundred guests. The manager who served you in his shirt-sleeves +as his own hotel clerk, is gorgeous in broadcloth, and needs to be +reminded of the first meeting. Suburban villas more or less adorn the +flats, from which the liveliest fancy (and fancy was free in the early +days) hung back. Horse-cars jingle where the prairie schooner used to +stick fast in the mud-hole, scooped to that end, opposite the saloon; +and there is a Belt Electric Service paying fabulous dividends. Then, do +you, feeling older than Methuselah and twice as important, go forth and +patronise things in general, while the manager tells you exactly what +sort of millionaire you would have been if you had 'stayed by the town.'</p> + +<p>Or else—the bottom has tumbled out of the boom, and the town new made +is dead—dead as a young man's corpse laid out in the morning. Success +was not justified by success. Of ten thousand not three hundred remain, +and these live in huts on the outskirts of the brick streets. The hotel, +with its suites of musty rooms, is a big tomb; the factory chimneys are +cold; the villas have no glass in them, and the fire-weed glows in the +centre of the driveways, mocking the arrogant advertisements in the +empty shops. There is nothing to do except to catch trout in the stream +that was to have been defiled by the city sewage. A two-pounder lies +fanning himself just in the cool of the main culvert, where the alders +have crept up to the city wall. You pay your money and, more or less, +you take your choice.</p> + +<p>By the time that man has seen these things and a few others that go +with a boom he may say that he has lived, and talk with his enemies in +the gate. He has heard the Arabian Nights retold and knows the inward +kernel of that romance, which some? little folk say is vanished. Here +they lie in their false teeth, for Cortes is not dead, nor Drake, and +Sir Philip Sidney dies every few months if you know where to look. The +adventurers and captains courageous of old have only changed their dress +a little and altered their employment to suit the world in which they +move. Clive came down from Lobengula's country a few months ago +protesting that there was an empire there, and finding very few that +believed. Hastings studied a map of South Africa in a corrugated iron +hut at Johannesburg ten years ago. Since then he has altered the map +considerably to the advantage of the Empire, but the heart of the Empire +is set on ballot-boxes and small lies. The illustrious Don Quixote +to-day lives on the north coast of Australia where he has found the +treasure of a sunken Spanish galleon. Now and again he destroys black +fellows who hide under his bed to spear him. Young Hawkins, with a still +younger Boscawen for his second, was till last year chasing slave-dhows +round Tajurrah; they have sent him now to the Zanzibar coast to be +grilled into an admiral; and the valorous Sandoval has been holding the +'Republic' of Mexico by the throat any time these fourteen years gone. +The others, big men all and not very much afraid of responsibility, are +selling horses, breaking trails, drinking sangaree, running railways +beyond the timberline, swimming rivers, blowing up tree-stumps, and +making cities where no cities were, in all the five quarters of the +world. Only people will not believe this when you tell them. They are +too near things and a great deal too well fed. So they say of the most +cold-blooded realism: 'This is romance. How interesting!' And of +over-handled, thumb-marked realism: 'This is indeed romance!' It is the +next century that, looking over its own, will see the heroes of our time +clearly.</p> + +<p>Meantime this earth of ours—we hold a fair slice of it so far—is full +of wonders and miracles and mysteries and marvels, and, in default, it +is good to go up and down seeing and hearing tell of them all.</p> + + +<a name="chap8" id="chap8"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>ON ONE SIDE ONLY</h2> + +<p>NEW OXFORD, U.S.A., <i> +June-July</i> 1892.</p> + +<p>'The truth is,' said the man in the train, 'that we live in a tropical +country for three months of the year, only we won't recognise. Look at +this.' He handed over a long list of deaths from heat that enlivened the +newspapers. All the cities where men live at breaking-strain were +sending in their butcher-bills, and the papers of the cities, themselves +apostles of the Gospel of Rush, were beseeching their readers to keep +cool and not to overwork themselves while the hot wave was upon them. +The rivers were patched and barred with sun-dried pebbles; the logs and +loggers were drought-bound somewhere up the Connecticut; and the grass +at the side of the track was burned in a hundred places by the sparks +from locomotives. Men—hatless, coatless, and gasping—lay in the shade +of that station where only a few months ago the glass stood at 30 below +zero. Now the readings were 98 degrees in the shade. Main Street—do you +remember Main Street of a little village locked up in the snow this +spring?<a name="FNanchor2"></a><a href="#Footnote2">[2]</a>—had given up the business of life, and an American flag +with some politician's name printed across the bottom hung down across +the street as stiff as a board. There were men with fans and alpaca +coats curled up in splint chairs in the verandah of the one hotel—among +them an ex-President of the United States. He completed the impression +that the furniture of the entire country had been turned out of doors +for summer cleaning in the absence of all the inhabitants. Nothing looks +so hopelessly 'ex' as a President 'returned to stores,' The stars and +stripes signified that the Presidential Campaign had opened in Main +Street—opened and shut up again. Politics evaporate at summer heat when +all hands are busy with the last of the hay, and, as the formers put it, +'Vermont's bound to go Republican.' The custom of the land is to drag +the scuffle and dust of an election over several months—to the +improvement of business and manners; but the noise of that war comes +faintly up the valley of the Connecticut and is lost among the fiddling +of the locusts. Their music puts, as it were, a knife edge upon the heat +of the day. In truth, it is a tropical country for the time being. +Thunder-storms prowl and growl round the belted hills, spit themselves +away in a few drops of rain, and leave the air more dead than before. In +the woods, where even the faithful springs are beginning to run low, the +pines and balsams have thrown out all their fragrance upon the heat and +wait for the wind to bring news of the rain. The clematis, wild carrot, +and all the gipsy-flowers camped by sufferance between fence line and +road net are masked in white dust, and the golden-rod of the pastures +that are burned to flax-colour burns too like burnished brass. A pillar +of dust on the long hog-back of the road across the hills shows where a +team is lathering between farms, and the roofs of the wooden houses +flicker in the haze of their own heat. Overhead the chicken-hawk is the +only creature at work, and his shrill kite-like call sends the gaping +chickens from the dust-bath in haste to their mothers. The red squirrel +as usual feigns business of importance among the butternuts, but this is +pure priggishness. When the passer-by is gone he ceases chattering and +climbs back to where the little breezes can stir his tail-plumes. From +somewhere under the lazy fold of a meadow comes the drone of a +mowing-machine among the hay—its <i>whurr-oo</i> and the grunt of the tired +horses.</p> + +<a name="Footnote2"></a><a href="#FNanchor2">[2]</a> See 'In Sight of <a href="#chap1">Monadnock.</a>' + +<p>Houses are only meant to eat and sleep in. The rest of life is lived at +full length in the verandah. When traffic is brisk three whole teams +will pass that verandah in one day, and it is necessary to exchange news +about the weather and the prospects for oats. When oats are in there +will be slack time on the farm, and the farmers will seriously think of +doing the hundred things that they have let slide during the summer. +They will undertake this and that, 'when they get around to it.' The +phrase translated is the exact equivalent to the <i>mañana</i> of the +Spaniard, the <i>kul hojaiga</i> of Upper India, the <i>yuroshii</i> of the +Japanese, and the long drawled <i>taihod</i> of the Maori. The only person +who 'gets around' in this weather is the summer boarder—the refugee +from the burning cities of the Plain, and she is generally a woman. She +walks, and botanizes, and kodaks, and strips the bark off the white +birch to make blue-ribboned waste-paper baskets, and the farmer regards +her with wonder. More does he wonder still at the city clerk in a +blazer, who has two weeks' holiday in the year and, apparently, +unlimited money, which he earns in the easiest possible way by 'sitting +at a desk and writing,' The farmer's wife sees the fashions of the +summer boarder, and between them man and woman get a notion of the +beauties of city life for which their children may live to blame them. +The blazer and the town-made gown are innocent recruiting sergeants for +the city brigades; and since one man's profession is ever a mystery to +his fellow, blazer and gown believe that the farmer must be happy and +content. A summer resort is one of the thousand windows whence to watch +the thousand aspects of life in the Atlantic States. Remember that +between June and September it is the desire of all who can to get away +from the big cities—not on account of wantonness, as people leave +London—but because of actual heat. So they get away in their millions +with their millions—the wives of the rich men for five clear months, +the others for as long as they can; and, like drawing like, they make +communities set by set, breed by breed, division by division, over the +length and breadth of the land—from Maine and the upper reaches of the +Saguenay, through the mountains and hot springs of half-a-dozen +interior States, out and away to Sitka in steamers. Then they spend +money on hotel bills, among ten thousand farms, on private companies who +lease and stock land for sporting purposes, on yachts and canoes, +bicycles, rods, châlets, cottages, reading circles, camps, tents, and +all the luxuries they know. But the luxury of rest most of them do not +know; and the telephone and telegraph are faithfully dragged after them, +lest their men-folk should for a moment forget the ball and chain at +foot.</p> + +<p>For sadness with laughter at bottom there are few things to compare with +the sight of a coat-less, muddy-booted, millionaire, his hat adorned +with trout-flies, and a string of small fish in his hand, clawing wildly +at the telephone of some back-of-beyond 'health resort.' Thus:</p> + +<p>'Hello! Hello! Yes. Who's there? Oh, all right. Go ahead. Yes, it's me! +Hey, what? Repeat. Sold for <i>how</i> much? Forty-four and a half? Repeat. +No! I <i>told</i> you to hold on. What? What? <i>Who</i> bought at that? Say, hold +a minute. Cable the other side. No. Hold on. I'll come down. (<i>Business +with watch</i> .) Tell Schaefer I'll see him to-morrow.' (<i>Over his shoulder +to his wife, who wears half-hoop diamond rings at</i> 10 A.M.) 'Lizzie, +where's my grip? I've got to go down.'</p> + +<p>And he goes down to eat in a hotel and sleep in his shut-up house. Men +are as scarce at most of the summer places as they are in Indian +hill-stations in late April. The women tell you that they can't get +away, and if they did they would only be miserable to get back. Now +whether this wholesale abandonment of husbands by wives is wholesome let +those who know the beauties of the Anglo-Indian system settle for +themselves.</p> + +<p>That both men and women need rest very badly a glance at the crowded +hotel tables makes plain—so plain, indeed, that the foreigner who has +not been taught that fuss and worry are in themselves honourable wishes +sometimes he could put the whole unrestful crowd to sleep for seventeen +hours a day. I have inquired of not less than five hundred men and women +in various parts of the States why they broke down and looked so gash. +And the men said: 'If you don't keep up with the procession in America +you are left'; and the women smiled an evil smile and answered that no +outsider yet had discovered the real cause of their worry and strain, or +why their lives were arranged to work with the largest amount of +friction in the shortest given time. Now, the men can be left to their +own folly, but the cause of the women's trouble has been revealed to me. +It is the thing called 'Help' which is no help. In the multitude of +presents that the American man has given to the American woman (for +details see daily papers) he has forgotten or is unable to give her good +servants, and that sordid trouble runs equally through the household of +the millionaire or the flat of the small city man. 'Yes, it's easy +enough to laugh,' said one woman passionately, 'we are worn out, and our +children are worn out too, and we're always worrying, I know it. What +can we do? If you stay here you'll know that this is the land of all +the luxuries and none of the necessities. You'll know and then you won't +laugh. You'll know why women are said to take their husbands to +boarding-houses and never have homes. You'll know what an Irish Catholic +means. The men won't get up and attend to these things, but <i>we</i> would. +If <i>we</i> had female suffrage, we'd shut the door to <i>all</i> the Irish and +throw it open to <i>all</i> the Chinese, and let the women have a little +protection.' It was the cry of a soul worn thin with exasperation, but +it was truth. To-day I do not laugh any more at the race that depends on +inefficient helot races for its inefficient service. When next you, +housekeeping in England, differ with the respectable, amiable, +industrious sixteen-pound maid, who wears a cap and says 'Ma'am,' +remember the pauper labour of America—the wives of the sixty million +kings who have no subjects. No man could get a thorough knowledge of the +problem in one lifetime, but he could guess at the size and the import +of it after he has descended into the arena and wrestled with the Swede +and the Dane and the German and the unspeakable Celt. Then he perceives +how good for the breed it must be that a man should thresh himself to +pieces in naked competition with his neighbour while his wife struggles +unceasingly over primitive savagery in the kitchen. In India sometimes +when a famine is at hand the life of the land starts up before your eyes +in all its bareness and bitter stress. Here, in spite of the trimmings +and the frillings, it refuses to be subdued and the clamour and the +clatter of it are loud above all other sounds—as sometimes the thunder +of disorganised engines stops conversations along the decks of a liner, +and in the inquiring eyes of the passengers you read the question—'This +thing is made and paid to bear us to port quietly. Why does it not do +so?' Only here, the rattle of the badly-put-together machine is always +in the ears, though men and women run about with labour-saving +appliances and gospels of 'power through repose,' tinkering and oiling +and making more noise. The machine is new. Some day it is going to be +the finest machine in the world. To the ranks of the amateur artificers, +therefore, are added men with notebooks tapping at every nut and +bolthead, fiddling with the glands, registering revolutions, and crying +out from time to time that this or that is or is not 'distinctively +American.' Meantime, men and women die unnecessarily in the wheels, and +they are said to have fallen 'in the battle of life.'</p> + +<p>The God Who sees us all die knows that there is far too much of that +battle, but we do not, and so continue worshipping the knife that cuts +and the wheel that breaks us, as blindly as the outcast sweeper worships +Lal-Beg the Glorified Broom that is the incarnation of his craft. But +the sweeper has sense enough not to kill himself, and to be proud of it, +with sweeping.</p> + +<p>A foreigner can do little good by talking of these things; for the same +lean dry blood that breeds the fever of unrest breeds also the savage +parochial pride that squeals under a steady stare or a pointed finger. +Among themselves the people of the Eastern cities admit that they and +their womenfolk overwork grievously and go to pieces very readily, and +that the consequences for the young stock are unpleasant indeed; but +before the stranger they prefer to talk about the future of their mighty +continent (which has nothing to do with the case) and to call aloud on +Baal of the Dollars—to catalogue their lines, mines, telephones, banks, +and cities, and all the other shells, buttons, and counters that they +have made their Gods over them. Now a nation does not progress upon its +brain-pan, as some books would have us believe, but upon its belly as +did the Serpent of old; and in the very long run the work of the brain +comes to be gathered in by a slow-footed breed that have unimaginative +stomachs and the nerves that know their place.</p> + +<p>All this is very consoling from the alien's point of view. He perceives, +with great comfort, that out of strain is bred impatience in the shape +of a young bundle of nerves, who is about as undisciplined an imp as the +earth can show. Out of impatience, grown up, habituated to violent and +ugly talk, and the impatience and recklessness of his neighbours, is +begotten lawlessness, encouraged by laziness and suppressed by violence +when it becomes insupportable. Out of lawlessness is bred rebellion (and +that fruit has been tasted once already), and out of rebellion comes +profit to those who wait. He hears of the power of the People who, +through rank slovenliness, neglect to see that their laws are soberly +enforced from the beginning; and these People, not once or twice in a +year, but many times within a month, go out in the open streets and, with +a maximum waste of power and shouting, strangle other people with ropes. +They are, he is told, law-abiding citizens who have executed 'the will +of the people'; which is as though a man should leave his papers +unsorted for a year and then smash his desk with an axe, crying, 'Am I +not orderly?' He hears lawyers, otherwise sane and matured, defend this +pig-jobbing murder on the grounds that 'the People stand behind the +Law'—the law that they never administered. He sees a right, at present +only half—but still half—conceded to anticipate the law in one's own +interests; and nervous impatience (always nerves) forejudging the +suspect in gaol, the prisoner in the dock, and the award between nation +and nation ere it is declared. He knows that the maxim in London, +Yokohama, and Hongkong in doing business with the pure-bred American is +to keep him waiting, for the reason that forced inaction frets the man +to a lather, as standing in harness frets a half-broken horse. He comes +across a thousand little peculiarities of speech, manner, and +thought—matters of nerve and stomach developed by everlasting +friction—and they are all just the least little bit in the world +lawless. No more so than the restless clicking together of horns in a +herd of restless cattle, but certainly no less. They are all good—good +for those who wait.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, to consider the matter more humanly, there are +thousands of delightful men and women going to pieces for the pitiful +reason that if they do not keep up with the procession, 'they are left.' +And they are left—in clothes that have no back to them, among mounds of +smilax. And young men—chance-met in the streets, talk to you about +their nerves which are things no young man should know anything about; +and the friends of your friends go down with nervous prostration, and +the people overheard in the trains talk about their nerves and the +nerves of their relatives; and the little children must needs have their +nerves attended to ere their milk-teeth are shed, and the middle-aged +women and the middle-aged men have got them too, and the old men lose +the dignity of their age in an indecent restlessness, and the +advertisements in the papers go to show that this sweeping list is no +lie. Atop of the fret and the stampede, the tingling self-consciousness +of a new people makes them take a sort of perverted pride in the futile +racket that sends up the death-rate—a child's delight in the blaze and +the dust of the March of Progress. Is it not 'distinctively American'? +It is, and it is not. If the cities were all America, as they pretend, +fifty years would see the March of Progress brought to a standstill, as +a locomotive is stopped by heated bearings....</p> + +<p>Down in the meadow the mowing-machine has checked, and the horses are +shaking themselves. The last of the sunlight leaves the top of +Monadnock, and four miles away Main Street lights her electric lamps. It +is band-night in Main Street, and the folks from Putney, from +Marlboro', from Guildford, and even New Fane will drive in their +well-filled waggons to hear music and look at the Ex-President. Over the +shoulder of the meadow two men come up very slowly, their hats off and +their arms swinging loosely at their sides. They do not hurry, they have +not hurried, and they never will hurry, for they are of country—bankers +of the flesh and blood of the ever bankrupt cities. Their children may +yet be pale summer boarders; as the boarders, city-bred weeds, may take +over their farms. From the plough to the pavement goes man, but to the +plough he returns at last.</p> + +<p>'Going to supper?'</p> + +<p>'Ye-ep,' very slowly across the wash of the uncut grass.</p> + +<p>'Say, that corncrib wants painting.'</p> + +<p>''Do that when we get around to it.'</p> + +<p>They go off through the dusk, without farewell or salutation steadily as +their own steers. And there are a few millions of them—unhandy men to +cross in their ways, set, silent, indirect in speech, and as +impenetrable as that other Eastern fanner who is the bedrock of another +land. They do not appear in the city papers, they are not much heard in +the streets, and they tell very little in the outsider's estimate of +America.</p> + +<p>And <i>they</i> are the American.</p> + + +<a name="chap9" id="chap9"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>LEAVES FROM A WINTER NOTE-BOOK</h2> +<h3>(1895)</h3> + +<p>We had walked abreast of the year from the very beginning, and that was +when the first blood-root came up between the patches of April snow, +while yet the big drift at the bottom of the meadow held fast. In the +shadow of the woods and under the blown pine-needles, clots of snow lay +till far into May, but neither the season nor the flowers took any note +of them, and, before we were well sure Winter had gone, the lackeys of +my Lord Baltimore in their new liveries came to tell us that Summer was +in the valley, and please might they nest at the bottom of the garden?</p> + +<p>Followed, Summer, angry, fidgety, and nervous, with the corn and tobacco +to ripen in five short months, the pastures to reclothe, and the fallen +leaves to hide away under new carpets. Suddenly, in the middle of her +work, on a stuffy-still July day, she called a wind out of the +Northwest, a wind blown under an arch of steel-bellied clouds, a wicked +bitter wind with a lacing of hail to it, a wind that came and was gone +in less than ten minutes, but blocked the roads with fallen trees, +toppled over a barn, and—blew potatoes out of the ground! When that was +done, a white cloud shaped like a dumb-bell whirled down the valley +across the evening blue, roaring and twisting and twisting and roaring +all alone by itself. A West Indian hurricane could not have been quicker +on its feet than our little cyclone, and when the house rose a-tiptoe, +like a cockerel in act to crow, and a sixty-foot elm went by the board, +and that which had been a dusty road became a roaring torrent all in +three minutes, we felt that the New England summer had creole blood in +her veins. She went away, red-faced and angry to the last, slamming all +the doors of the hills behind her, and Autumn, who is a lady, took +charge.</p> + +<p>No pen can describe the turning of the leaves—the insurrection of the +tree-people against the waning year. A little maple began it, flaming +blood-red of a sudden where he stood against the dark green of a +pine-belt. Next morning there was an answering signal from the swamp +where the sumacs grow. Three days later, the hill-sides as far as the +eye could range were afire, and the roads paved, with crimson and gold. +Then a wet wind blew, and ruined all the uniforms of that gorgeous army; +and the oaks, who had held themselves in reserve, buckled on their dull +and bronzed cuirasses and stood it out stiffly to the last blown leaf, +till nothing remained but pencil-shading of bare boughs, and one could +see into the most private heart of the woods.</p> + +<p>Frost may be looked for till the middle of May and after the middle of +September, so Summer has little time for enamel-work or leaf-embroidery. +Her sisters bring the gifts—Spring, wind-flowers, Solomon's-Seal, +Dutchman's-breeches, Quaker-ladies, and trailing arbutus, that smells as +divinely as the true May. Autumn has golden-rod and all the tribe of +asters, pink, lilac, and creamy white, by the double armful. When these +go the curtain comes down, and whatever Powers shift the scenery behind, +work without noise. In tropic lands you can hear the play of growth and +decay at the back of the night-silences. Even in England the tides of +the winter air have a set and a purpose; but here they are dumb +altogether. The very last piece of bench-work this season was the +trailed end of a blackberry-vine, most daringly conventionalised in +hammered iron, flung down on the frosty grass an instant before people +came to look. The blue bloom of the furnace was still dying along the +central rib, and the side-sprays were cherry red, even as they had been +lifted from the charcoal. It was a detail, evidently, of some invisible +gate in the woods; but we never found that workman, though he had left +the mark of his cloven foot as plainly as any strayed deer. In a week +the heavy frosts with scythes and hammers had slashed and knocked down +all the road-side growth and the kindly bushes that veil the drop off +the unfenced track.</p> + +<p>There the seasons stopped awhile. Autumn was gone, Winter was not. We +had Time dealt out to us—mere, clear, fresh Time—grace-days to enjoy. +The white wooden farm-houses were banked round two feet deep with dried +leaves or earth, and the choppers went out to get ready next year's +stores of wood. Now, chopping is an art, and the chopper in all respects +an artist. He makes his own axe-helve, and for each man there is but one +perfect piece of wood in all the world. This he never finds, but the +likest substitute is trimmed and balanced and poised to that ideal. One +man I know has evolved very nearly the weapon of Umslopogaas. It is +almost straight, lapped at the butt with leather, amazingly springy, and +carries a two-edged blade for splitting and chopping. If his Demon be +with him—and what artist can answer for all his moods?—he will cause a +tree to fall upon any stick or stone that you choose, uphill or down, to +the right or to the left. Artist-like, however, he explains that that is +nothing. Any fool can play with a tree in the open, but it needs the +craftsman to bring a tree down in thick timber and do no harm. To see an +eighty-foot maple, four feet in the butt, dropped, deftly as a fly is +cast, in the only place where it will not outrage the feelings and swipe +off the tops of fifty juniors, is a revelation. White pine, hemlock, and +spruce share this country with maples, black and white birches, and +beech. Maple seems to have few preferences, and the white birches +straggle and shiver on the outskirts of every camp; but the pines hold +together in solid regiments, sending out skirmishers to invade a +neglected pasture on the first opportunity. There is no overcoat warmer +than the pines in a gale when the woods for miles round are singing like +cathedral organs, and the first snow of the year powders the +rock-ledges.</p> + +<p>The mosses and lichens, green, sulphur, and amber, stud the copper floor +of needles, where the feathery ground-pine runs aimlessly to and fro +along the ground, spelling out broken words of half-forgotten charms. +There are checker-berries on the outskirts of the wood, where the +partridge (he is a ruffed grouse really) dines, and by the deserted +logging-roads toadstools of all colours sprout on the decayed stumps. +Wherever a green or blue rock lifts from the hillside, the needles have +been packed and matted round its base, till, when the sunshine catches +them, stone and setting together look no meaner than turquoise in dead +gold. The woods are full of colour, belts and blotches of it, the +colours of the savage—red, yellow, and blue. Yet in their lodges there +is very little life, for the wood-people do not readily go into the +shadows. The squirrels have their business among the beeches and +hickories by the road-side, where they can watch the traffic and talk. +We have no gray ones hereabouts (they are good to eat and suffer for +it), but five reds live in a hickory hard by, and no weather puts them +to sleep. The wood-chuck, a marmot and a strategist, makes his burrow in +the middle of a field, where he must see you ere you see him. Now and +again a dog manages to cut him off his base, and the battle is worth +crossing fields to watch. But the woodchuck turned in long ago, and will +not be out till April. The coon lives—well, no one seems to know +particularly where Brer Coon lives, but when the Hunter's Moon is large +and full he descends into the corn-lands, and men chase him with dogs +for his fur, which makes the finest kind of overcoat, and his flesh, +which tastes like chicken. He cries at night sorrowfully as though a +child were lost.</p> + +<p>They seem to kill, for one reason or other, everything that moves in +this land. Hawks, of course; eagles for their rarity; foxes for their +pelts; red-shouldered blackbirds and Baltimore orioles because they are +pretty, and the other small things for sport—French fashion. You can +get a rifle of a kind for twelve shillings, and if your neighbour be +fool enough to post notices forbidding 'hunting' and fishing, you +naturally seek his woods. So the country is very silent and unalive.</p> + +<p>There are, however, bears within a few miles, as you will see from this +notice, picked up at the local tobacconist's:</p> + +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">JOHNNY GET YOUR GUN! BEAR HUNT!</span><br /> + +<p>As bears are too numerous in the town of Peltyville Corners, Vt., the +hunters of the surrounding towns are invited to participate in a grand +hunt to be held on Blue Mountains in the town of Peltyville Corners, +Vt., Wednesday, Nov. 8th, if pleasant. If not, first fine day. Come one, +come all!</p> + +<p>They went, but it was the bear that would not participate. The notice +was printed at somebody's Electric Print Establishment. Queer mixture, +isn't it?</p> + +<p>The bear does not run large as a rule, but he has a weakness for swine +and calves which brings punishment. Twelve hours' rail and a little +marching take you up to the moose-country; and twenty-odd miles from +here as the crow flies you come to virgin timber, where trappers live, +and where there is a Lost Pond that many have found once but can never +find again.</p> + +<p>Men, who are of one blood with sheep, have followed their friends and +the railway along the river valleys where the towns are. Across the +hills the inhabitants are few, and, outside their State, little known. +They withdraw from society in November if they live on the uplands, +coming down in May as the snow gives leave. Not much more than a +generation ago these farms made their own clothes, soap, and candles, +and killed their own meat thrice a year, beef, veal, and pig, and sat +still between-times. Now they buy shop-made clothes, patent soaps, and +kerosene; and it is among their tents that the huge red and gilt +Biographies of Presidents, and the twenty-pound family Bibles, with +illuminated marriage-registers, mourning-cards, baptismal certificates, +and hundreds of genuine steel-engravings, sell best. Here, too, off the +main-travelled roads, the wandering quack—Patent Electric Pills, nerve +cures, etc.—divides the field with the seed and fruit man and the +seller of cattle-boluses. They dose themselves a good deal, I fancy, +for it is a poor family that does not know all about nervous +prostration. So the quack drives a pair of horses and a gaily-painted +waggon with a hood, and sometimes takes his wife with him. Once only +have I met a pedlar afoot. He was an old man, shaken with palsy, and he +pushed a thing exactly like a pauper's burial-cart, selling pins, tape, +scents, and flavourings. You helped yourself, for his hands had no +direction, and he told a long tale in which the deeding away of a farm +to one of his family was mixed up with pride at the distances he still +could cover daily. As much as six miles sometimes. He was no Lear, as +the gift of the farm might suggest, but sealed of the tribe of the +Wandering Jew—a tremulous old giddy-gaddy. There are many such rovers, +gelders of colts and the like, who work a long beat, south to Virginia +almost, and north to the frontier, paying with talk and gossip for their +entertainment.</p> + +<p>Yet tramps are few, and that is well, for the American article answers +almost exactly to the vagrant and criminal tribes of India, being a +predatory ruffian who knows too much to work. 'Bad place to beg in after +dark—on a farm—very—is Vermont. Gypsies pitch their camp by the river +in the spring, and cooper horses in the manner of their tribe. They have +the gypsy look and some of the old gypsy names, but say that they are +largely mixed with Gentile blood.</p> + +<p>Winter has chased all these really interesting people south, and in a +few weeks, if we have anything of a snow, the back farms will be +unvisited save by the doctor's hooded sleigh. It is no child's play to +hold a practice here through the winter months, when the drifts are +really formed, and a pair can drop in up to their saddle-pads. Four +horses a day some of them use, and use up—for they are good men.</p> + +<p>Now in the big silence of the snow is born, perhaps, not a little of +that New England conscience which her children write about. There is +much time to think, and thinking is a highly dangerous business. +Conscience, fear, undigested reading, and, it may be, not too well +cooked food, have full swing. A man, and more particularly a woman, can +easily hear strange voices—the Word of the Lord rolling between the +dead hills; may see visions and dream dreams; get revelations and an +outpouring of the spirit, and end (such things have been) lamentably +enough in those big houses by the Connecticut River which have been +tenderly christened The Retreat. Hate breeds as well as religion—the +deep, instriking hate between neighbours, that is born of a hundred +little things added up, brooded over, and hatched by the stove when two +or three talk together in the long evenings. It would be very +interesting to get the statistics of revivals and murders, and find how +many of them have been committed in the spring. But for undistracted +people winter is one long delight of the eye. In other lands one knows +the snow as a nuisance that comes and goes, and is sorely man-handled +and messed at the last. Here it lies longer on the ground than any +crop—from November to April sometimes—and for three months life goes +to the tune of sleigh-bells, which are not, as a Southern visitor once +hinted, ostentation, but safeguards. The man who drives without them is +not loved. The snow is a faithful barometer, foretelling good sleighing +or stark confinement to barracks. It is all the manure the stony +pastures receive; it cloaks the ground and prevents the frost bursting +pipes; it is the best—I had almost written the only—road-maker in the +States. On the other side it can rise up in the night and bid the people +sit still as the Egyptians. It can stop mails; wipe out all time-tables; +extinguish the lamps of twenty towns, and kill man within sight of his +own door-step or hearing of his cattle unfed. No one who has been +through even so modified a blizzard as New England can produce talks +lightly of the snow. Imagine eight-and-forty hours of roaring wind, the +thermometer well down towards zero, scooping and gouging across a +hundred miles of newly fallen snow. The air is full of stinging shot, +and at ten yards the trees are invisible. The foot slides on a reef, +polished and black as obsidian, where the wind has skinned an exposed +corner of road down to the dirt ice of early winter. The next step ends +hip-deep and over, for here an unseen wall is banking back the rush of +the singing drifts. A scarped slope rises sheer across the road. The +wind shifts a point or two, and all sinks down, like sand in the +hour-glass, leaving a pot-hole of whirling whiteness. There is a lull, +and you can see the surface of the fields settling furiously in one +direction—a tide that spurts from between the tree-boles. The hollows +of the pasture fill while you watch; empty, fill, and discharge anew. +The rock-ledges show the bare flank of a storm-chased liner for a +moment, and whitening, duck under. Irresponsible snow-devils dance by +the lee of a barn where three gusts meet, or stagger out into the open +till they are cut down by the main wind. At the worst of the storm there +is neither Heaven nor Earth, but only a swizzle into which a man may be +brewed. Distances grow to nightmare scale, and that which in the summer +was no more than a minute's bare-headed run, is half an hour's gasping +struggle, each foot won between the lulls. Then do the heavy-timbered +barns talk like ships in a cross-sea, beam working against beam. The +winter's hay is ribbed over with long lines of snow dust blown between +the boards, and far below in the byre the oxen clash their horns and +moan uneasily.</p> + +<p>The next day is blue, breathless, and most utterly still. The farmers +shovel a way to their beasts, bind with chains their large ploughshares +to their heaviest wood-sled and take of oxen as many as Allah has given +them. These they drive, and the dragging share makes a furrow in which a +horse can walk, and the oxen, by force of repeatedly going in up to +their bellies, presently find foothold. The finished road is a deep +double gutter between three-foot walls of snow, where, by custom, the +heavier vehicle has the right of way. The lighter man when he turns out +must drop waist-deep and haul his unwilling beast into the drift, +leaving Providence to steady the sleigh.</p> + +<p>In the towns, where they choke and sputter and gasp, the big snow turns +to horsepondine. With us it stays still: but wind, sun, and rain get to +work upon it, lest the texture and colour should not change daily. Rain +makes a granulated crust over all, in which white shagreen the trees are +faintly reflected. Heavy mists go up and down, and create a sort of +mirage, till they settle and pack round the iron-tipped hills, and then +you know how the moon must look to an inhabitant of it. At twilight, +again, the beaten-down ridges and laps and folds of the uplands take on +the likeness of wet sand—some huge and melancholy beach at the world's +end—and when day meets night it is all goblin country. To westward; the +last of the spent day—rust-red and pearl, illimitable levels of shore +waiting for the tide to turn again. To eastward, black night among the +valleys, and on the rounded hill slopes a hard glaze that is not so much +light as snail-slime from the moon. Once or twice perhaps in the winter +the Northern Lights come out between the moon and the sun, so that to +the two unearthly lights is added the leap and flare of the Aurora +Borealis.</p> + +<p>In January or February come the great ice-storms, when every branch, +blade, and trunk is coated with frozen rain, so that you can touch +nothing truly. The spikes of the pines are sunk into pear-shaped +crystals, and each fence-post is miraculously hilted with diamonds. If +you bend a twig, the icing cracks like varnish, and a half-inch branch +snaps off at the lightest tap. If wind and sun open the day together, +the eye cannot look steadily at the splendour of this jewelry. The woods +are full of the clatter of arms; the ringing of bucks' horns in flight; +the stampede of mailed feet up and down the glades; and a great dust of +battle is puffed out into the open, till the last of the ice is beaten +away and the cleared branches take up their regular chant.</p> + +<p>Again the mercury drops twenty and more below zero, and the very trees +swoon. The snow turns to French chalk, squeaking under the heel, and +their breath cloaks the oxen in rime. At night a tree's heart will break +in him with a groan. According to the books, the frost has split +something, but it is a fearful sound, this grunt as of a man stunned.</p> + +<p>Winter that is winter in earnest does not allow cattle and horses to +play about the fields, so everything comes home; and since no share can +break ground to any profit for some five months, there would seem to be +very little to do. As a matter of fact, country interests at all seasons +are extensive and peculiar, and the day is not long enough for them when +you take out that time which a self-respecting man needs to turn himself +round in. Consider! The solid undisturbed hours stand about one like +ramparts. At a certain time the sun will rise. At another hour, equally +certain, he will set. This much we know. Why, in the name of Reason, +therefore, should we vex ourselves with vain exertions? An occasional +visitor from the Cities of the Plains comes up panting to do things. He +is set down to listen to the normal beat of his own heart—a sound that +very few men have heard. In a few days, when the lather of impatience +has dried off, he ceases to talk of 'getting there' or 'being left.' He +does not desire to accomplish matters 'right away,' nor does he look at +his watch from force of habit, but keeps it where it should be—in his +stomach. At the last he goes back to his beleaguered city, unwillingly, +partially civilised, soon to be resavaged by the clash of a thousand +wars whose echo does not reach here.</p> + +<p>The air which kills germs dries out the very newspapers. They might be +of to-morrow or a hundred years ago. They have nothing to do with +to-day—the long, full, sunlit to-day. Our interests are not on the same +scale as theirs, perhaps, but much more complex. The movement of a +foreign power—an alien sleigh on this Pontic shore—must be explained +and accounted for, or this public's heart will burst with unsatisfied +curiosity. If it be Buck Davis, with the white mare that he traded his +colt for, and the practically new sleigh-robe that he bought at the +Sewell auction, <i>why</i> does Buck Davis, who lives on the river flats, +cross our hills, unless Murder Hollow be blockaded with snow, or unless +he has turkeys for sale? <i>But</i> Buck Davis with turkeys would surely +have stopped here, unless he were selling a large stock in town. A wail +from the sacking at the back of the sleigh tells the tale. It is a +winter calf, and Buck Davis is going to sell it for one dollar to the +Boston Market where it will be turned into potted chicken. This leaves +the mystery of his change of route unexplained. After two days' sitting +on tenter-hooks it is discovered, obliquely, that Buck went to pay a +door-yard call on Orson Butler, who lives on the saeter where the wind +and the bald granite scaurs fight it out together. Kirk Demming had +brought Orson news of a fox at the back of Black Mountain, and Orson's +eldest son, going to Murder Hollow with wood for the new barn floor that +the widow Amidon is laying down, told Buck that he might as well come +round to talk to his father about the pig. <i>But</i> old man Butler meant +fox-hunting from the first, and what he wanted to do was to borrow +Buck's dog, who had been duly brought over with the calf, and left on +the mountain. No old man Butler did <i>not</i> go hunting alone, but waited +till Buck came back from town. Buck sold the calf for a dollar and a +quarter and not for seventy-five cents as was falsely asserted by +interested parties. <i>Then</i> the two went after the fox together. This +much learned, everybody breathes freely, if life has not been +complicated in the meantime by more strange counter-marchings.</p> + +<p>Five or six sleighs a day we can understand, if we know why they are +abroad; but any metropolitan rush of traffic disturbs and excites.</p> + + +<a name="part2" id="part2"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>LETTERS TO THE FAMILY</h2> +<h3>1908</h3> + +<p>These letters appeared in newspapers during the spring of 1908, after a +trip to Canada undertaken in the autumn of 1907. They are now reprinted +without alteration.</p> + +<p> +<a href="#chap10">THE ROAD TO QUEBEC.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap11">A PEOPLE AT HOME.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap12">CITIES AND SPACES.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap13">NEWSPAPERS AND DEMOCRACY.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap14">LABOUR.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap15">THE FORTUNATE TOWNS.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap16">MOUNTAINS AND THE PACIFIC.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap17">A CONCLUSION.</a></p> + +<a name="chap10" id="chap10"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>THE ROAD TO QUEBEC</h2> +<h3>(1907)</h3> + +<p>It must be hard for those who do not live there to realise the cross +between canker and blight that has settled on England for the last +couple of years. The effects of it are felt throughout the Empire, but +at headquarters we taste the stuff in the very air, just as one tastes +iodoform in the cups and bread-and-butter of a hospital-tea. So far as +one can come at things in the present fog, every form of unfitness, +general or specialised, born or created, during the last generation has +combined in one big trust—a majority of all the minorities—to play the +game of Government. Now that the game ceases to amuse, nine-tenths of +the English who set these folk in power are crying, 'If we had only +known what they were going to do we should never have voted for them!'</p> + +<p>Yet, as the rest of the Empire perceived at the time, these men were +always perfectly explicit as to their emotions and intentions. They said +first, and drove it home by large pictures, that no possible advantage +to the Empire outweighed the cruelty and injustice of charging the +British working man twopence halfpenny a week on some of his provisions. +Incidentally they explained, so that all Earth except England heard it, +that the Army was wicked; much of the Navy unnecessary; that half the +population of one of the Colonies practised slavery, with torture, for +the sake of private gain, and that the mere name of Empire wearied and +sickened them. On these grounds they stood to save England; on these +grounds they were elected, with what seemed like clear orders to destroy +the blood-stained fetish of Empire as soon as possible. The present +mellow condition of Ireland, Egypt, India, and South Africa is proof of +their honesty and obedience. Over and above this, their mere presence in +office produced all along our lines the same moral effect as the +presence of an incompetent master in a classroom. Paper pellets, books, +and ink began to fly; desks were thumped; dirty pens were jabbed into +those trying to work; rats and mice were set free amid squeals of +exaggerated fear; and, as usual, the least desirable characters in the +forms were loudest to profess noble sentiments, and most eloquent grief +at being misjudged. Still, the English are not happy, and the unrest and +slackness increase.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, which is to our advantage, the isolation of the unfit +in one political party has thrown up the extremists in what the Babu +called 'all their naked <i>cui bono</i> .' These last are after satisfying the +two chief desires of primitive man by the very latest gadgets in +scientific legislation. But how to get free food, and free—shall we +say—love? within the four corners of an Act of Parliament without +giving the game away too grossly, worries them a little. It is easy +enough to laugh at this, but we are all so knit together nowadays that a +rot at what is called 'headquarters' may spread like bubonic, with every +steamer. I went across to Canada the other day, for a few weeks, mainly +to escape the Blight, and also to see what our Eldest Sister was doing. +Have you ever noticed that Canada has to deal in the lump with most of +the problems that afflict us others severally? For example, she has the +Double-Language, Double-Law, Double-Politics drawback in a worse form +than South Africa, because, unlike our Dutch, her French cannot well +marry outside their religion, and they take their orders from +Italy—less central, sometimes, than Pretoria or Stellenbosch. She has, +too, something of Australia's labour fuss, minus Australia's isolation, +but plus the open and secret influence of 'Labour' entrenched, with +arms, and high explosives on neighbouring soil. To complete the +parallel, she keeps, tucked away behind mountains, a trifle of land +called British Columbia, which resembles New Zealand; and New Zealanders +who do not find much scope for young enterprise in their own country are +drifting up to British Columbia already.</p> + +<p>Canada has in her time known calamity more serious than floods, frost, +drought, and fire—and has macadamized some stretches of her road toward +nationhood with the broken hearts of two generations. That is why one +can discuss with Canadians of the old stock matters which an Australian +or New Zealander could no more understand than a wealthy child +understands death. Truly we are an odd Family! Australia and New Zealand +(the Maori War not counted) got everything for nothing. South Africa +gave everything and got less than nothing. Canada has given and taken +all along the line for nigh on three hundred years, and in some respects +is the wisest, as she should be the happiest, of us all. She seems to be +curiously unconscious of her position in the Empire, perhaps because she +has lately been talked at, or down to, by her neighbours. You know how +at any gathering of our men from all quarters it is tacitly conceded +that Canada takes the lead in the Imperial game. To put it roughly, she +saw the goal more than ten years ago, and has been working the ball +toward it ever since. That is why her inaction at the last Imperial +Conference made people who were interested in the play wonder why she, +of all of us, chose to brigade herself with General Botha and to block +the forward rush. I, too, asked that question of many. The answer was +something like this: 'We saw that England wasn't taking anything just +then. Why should we have laid ourselves open to be snubbed worse than we +were? We sat still.' Quite reasonable—almost too convincing. There was +really no need that Canada should have done other than she did—except +that she was the Eldest Sister, and more was expected of her. She is a +little too modest.</p> + +<p>We discussed this, first of all, under the lee of a wet deck-house in +mid-Atlantic; man after man cutting in and out of the talk as he sucked +at his damp tobacco. The passengers were nearly all unmixed Canadian, +mostly born in the Maritime Provinces, where their fathers speak of +'Canada' as Sussex speaks of 'England,' but scattered about their +businesses throughout the wide Dominion. They were at ease, too, among +themselves, with that pleasant intimacy that stamps every branch of Our +Family and every boat that it uses on its homeward way. A Cape liner is +all the sub-Continent from the Equator to Simon's Town; an Orient boat +is Australasian throughout, and a C.P.R. steamer cannot be confused with +anything except Canada. It is a pity one may not be born in four places +at once, and then one would understand the half-tones and asides, and +the allusions of all our Family life without waste of precious time. +These big men, smoking in the drizzle, had hope in their eyes, belief in +their tongues, and strength in their hearts. I used to think miserably +of other boats at the South end of this ocean—a quarter full of people +deprived of these things. A young man kindly explained to me how Canada +had suffered through what he called 'the Imperial connection'; how she +had been diversely bedevilled by English statesmen for political +reasons. He did not know his luck, nor would he believe me when I tried +to point it out; but a nice man in a plaid (who knew South Africa) +lurched round the corner and fell on him with facts and imagery which +astonished the patriotic young mind. The plaid finished his outburst +with the uncontradicted statement that the English were mad. All our +talks ended on that note.</p> + +<p>It was an experience to move in the midst of a new contempt. One +understands and accepts the bitter scorn of the Dutch, the hopeless +anger of one's own race in South Africa is also part of the burden; but +the Canadian's profound, sometimes humorous, often bewildered, always +polite contempt of the England of to-day cuts a little. You see, that +late unfashionable war<a name="FNanchor3"></a><a href="#Footnote3">[3]</a> was very real to Canada. She sent several men +to it, and a thinly-populated country is apt to miss her dead more than +a crowded one. When, from her point of view, they have died for no +conceivable advantage, moral or material, her business instincts, or it +may be mere animal love of her children, cause her to remember and +resent quite a long time after the thing should be decently forgotten. I +was shocked at the vehemence with which some men (and women) spoke of +the affair. Some of them went so far as to discuss—on the ship and +elsewhere—whether England would stay in the Family or whether, as some +eminent statesman was said to have asserted in private talk, she would +cut the painter to save expense. One man argued, without any heat, that +she would not so much break out of the Empire in one flurry, as +politically vend her children one by one to the nearest Power that +threatened her comfort; the sale of each case to be preceded by a +steady blast of abuse of the chosen victim. He quoted—really these +people have viciously long memories!—the five-year campaign of abuse +against South Africans as a precedent and a warning.</p> + +<a name="Footnote3"></a><a href="#FNanchor3">[3]</a> Boer 'war' of 1899-1902. + +<p>Our Tobacco Parliament next set itself to consider by what means, if +this happened, Canada could keep her identity unsubmerged; and that led +to one of the most curious talks I have ever heard. It seemed to be +decided that she might—just might—pull through by the skin of her +teeth as a nation—if (but this was doubtful) England did not help +others to hammer her. Now, twenty years ago one would not have heard any +of this sort of thing. If it sounds a little mad, remember that the +Mother Country was throughout considered as a lady in violent hysterics.</p> + +<p>Just at the end of the talk one of our twelve or thirteen hundred +steerage-passengers leaped overboard, ulstered and booted, into a +confused and bitter cold sea. Every horror in the world has its fitting +ritual. For the fifth time—and four times in just such weather—I heard +the screw stop; saw our wake curve like a whiplash as the great township +wrenched herself round; the lifeboat's crew hurry to the boat-deck; the +bare-headed officer race up the shrouds and look for any sign of the +poor head that had valued itself so lightly. A boat amid waves can see +nothing. There was nothing to see from the first. We waited and +quartered the ground back and forth for a long hour, while the rain fell +and the seas slapped along our sides, and the steam fluttered drearily +through the escapes. Then we went ahead.</p> + +<p>The St. Lawrence on the last day of the voyage played up nobly. The +maples along its banks had turned—blood red and splendid as the banners +of lost youth. Even the oak is not more of a national tree than the +maple, and the sight of its welcome made the folks aboard still more +happy. A dry wind brought along all the clean smell of their +Continent-mixed odours of sawn lumber, virgin earth, and wood-smoke; and +they snuffed it, and their eyes softened as they, identified point after +point along their own beloved River—places where they played and fished +and amused themselves in holiday time. It must be pleasant to have a +country of one's very own to show off. Understand, they did not in any +way boast, shout, squeak, or exclaim, these even-voiced returned men and +women. They were simply and unfeignedly glad to see home again, and they +said: 'Isn't it lovely? Don't you think it's beautiful? We love it.'</p> + +<p>At Quebec there is a sort of place, much infested by locomotives, like a +coal-chute, whence rise the heights that Wolfe's men scaled on their way +to the Plains of Abraham. Perhaps of all the tide-marks in all our lands +the affair of Quebec touches the heart and the eye more nearly than any +other. Everything meets there; France, the jealous partner of England's +glory by land and sea for eight hundred years; England, bewildered as +usual, but for a wonder not openly opposing Pitt, who knew; those other +people, destined to break from England as soon as the French peril was +removed; Montcalm himself, doomed and resolute; Wolfe, the inevitable +trained workman appointed for the finish; and somewhere in the +background one James Cook, master of H.M.S. <i>Mercury</i> , making beautiful +and delicate charts of the St. Lawrence River.</p> + +<p>For these reasons the Plains of Abraham are crowned with all sorts of +beautiful things—including a jail and a factory. Montcalm's left wing +is marked by the jail, and Wolfe's right by the factory. There is, +happily, now a movement on foot to abolish these adornments and turn the +battle-field and its surroundings into a park, which by nature and +association would be one of the most beautiful in our world.</p> + +<p>Yet, in spite of jails on the one side and convents on the other and the +thin black wreck of the Quebec Railway Bridge, lying like a dumped +car-load of tin cans in the river, the Eastern Gate to Canada is noble +with a dignity beyond words. We saw it very early, when the under sides +of the clouds turned chilly pink over a high-piled, brooding, +dusky-purple city. Just at the point of dawn, what looked like the +Sultan Harun-al-Raschid's own private shallop, all spangled with +coloured lights, stole across the iron-grey water, and disappeared into +the darkness of a slip. She came out again in three minutes, but the +full day had come too; so she snapped off her masthead, steering and +cabin electrics, and turned into a dingy white ferryboat, full of cold +passengers. I spoke to a Canadian about her. 'Why, she's the old +So-and-So, to Port Levis,' he answered, wondering as the Cockney wonders +when a stranger stares at an Inner Circle train. This was <i>his</i> Inner +Circle—the Zion where he was all at ease. He drew my attention to +stately city and stately river with the same tranquil pride that we each +feel when the visitor steps across our own threshold, whether that be +Southampton Water on a grey, wavy morning; Sydney Harbour with a regatta +in full swing; or Table Mountain, radiant and new-washed after the +Christmas rains. He had, quite rightly, felt personally responsible for +the weather, and every flaming stretch of maple since we had entered the +river. (The North-wester in these parts is equivalent to the +South-easter elsewhere, and may impress a guest unfavourably.)</p> + +<p>Then the autumn sun rose, and the man smiled. Personally and politically +he said he loathed the city—but it was his.</p> + +<p>'Well,' he asked at last, 'what do you think? Not so bad?'</p> + +<p>'Oh no. Not at all so bad,' I answered; and it wasn't till much later +that I realised that we had exchanged the countersign which runs clear +round the Empire.</p> + + +<a name="chap11" id="chap11"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>A PEOPLE AT HOME</h2> + +<p>An up-country proverb says, 'She was bidden to the wedding and set down +to grind corn.' The same fate, reversed, overtook me on my little +excursion. There is a crafty network of organisations of business men +called Canadian Clubs. They catch people who look interesting, assemble +their members during the mid-day lunch-hour, and, tying the victim to a +steak, bid him discourse on anything that he thinks he knows. The idea +might be copied elsewhere, since it takes men out of themselves to +listen to matters not otherwise coming under their notice and, at the +same time, does not hamper their work. It is safely short, too. The +whole affair cannot exceed an hour, of which the lunch fills half. The +Clubs print their speeches annually, and one gets cross-sections of many +interesting questions—from practical forestry to State mints—all set +out by experts.</p> + +<p>Not being an expert, the experience, to me, was very like hard work. +Till then I had thought speech-making was a sort of conversational +whist, that any one could cut in at it. I perceive now that it is an Art +of conventions remote from anything that comes out of an inkpot, and of +colours hard to control. The Canadians seem to like listening to +speeches, and, though this is by no means a national vice, they make +good oratory on occasion. You know the old belief that the white man on +brown, red, or black lands, will throw back in manner and instinct to +the type originally bred there? Thus, a speech in the taal should carry +the deep roll, the direct belly-appeal, the reiterated, cunning +arguments, and the few simple metaphors of the prince of commercial +orators, the Bantu. A New Zealander is said to speak from his diaphragm, +hands clenched at the sides, as the old Maoris used. What we know of +first-class Australian oratory shows us the same alertness, swift +flight, and clean delivery as a thrown boomerang. I had half expected in +Canadian speeches some survival of the Redskin's elaborate appeal to +Suns, Moons, and Mountains—touches of grandiosity and ceremonial +invocations. But nothing that I heard was referable to any primitive +stock. There was a dignity, a restraint, and, above all, a weight in it, +rather curious when one thinks of the influences to which the land lies +open. Red it was not; French it was not; but a thing as much by itself +as the speakers.</p> + +<p>So with the Canadian's few gestures and the bearing of his body. During +the (Boer) war one watched the contingents from every point of view, +and, most likely, drew wrong inferences. It struck me then that the +Canadian, even when tired, slacked off less than the men from the hot +countries, and while resting did not lie on his back or his belly, but +rather on his side, a leg doubled under him, ready to rise in one surge.</p> + +<p>This time while I watched assemblies seated, men in hotels and +passers-by, I fancied that he kept this habit of semi-tenseness at home +among his own; that it was the complement of the man's still +countenance, and his even, lowered voice. Looking at their footmarks on +the ground they seem to throw an almost straight track, neither splayed +nor in-toed, and to set their feet down with a gentle forward pressure, +rather like the Australian's stealthy footfall. Talking among +themselves, or waiting for friends, they did not drum with their +fingers, fiddle with their feet, or feel the hair on their faces. These +things seem trivial enough, but when breeds are in the making everything +is worth while. A man told me once—but I never tried the +experiment—that each of our Four Races light and handle fire in their +own way.</p> + +<p>Small wonder we differ! Here is a people with no people at their backs, +driving the great world-plough which wins the world's bread up and up +over the shoulder of the world—a spectacle, as it might be, out of some +tremendous Norse legend. North of them lies Niflheim's enduring cold, +with the flick and crackle of the Aurora for Bifrost Bridge that Odin +and the Aesir visited. These people also go north year by year, and drag +audacious railways with them. Sometimes they burst into good wheat or +timber land, sometimes into mines of treasure, and all the North is +foil of voices—as South Africa was once—telling discoveries and making +prophecies.</p> + +<p>When their winter comes, over the greater part of this country outside +the cities they must sit still, and eat and drink as the Aesir did. In +summer they cram twelve months' work into six, because between such and +such dates certain far rivers will shut, and, later, certain others, +till, at last, even the Great Eastern Gate at Quebec locks, and men must +go in and out by the side-doors at Halifax and St. John. These are +conditions that make for extreme boldness, but not for extravagant +boastings.</p> + +<p>The maples tell when it is time to finish, and all work in hand is +regulated by their warning signal. Some jobs can be put through before +winter; others must be laid aside ready to jump forward without a lost +minute in spring. Thus, from Quebec to Calgary a note of drive—not +hustle, but drive and finish-up—hummed like the steam-threshers on the +still, autumn air.</p> + +<p>Hunters and sportsmen were coming in from the North; prospectors with +them, their faces foil of mystery, their pockets full of samples, like +prospectors the world over. They had already been wearing wolf and coon +skin coats. In the great cities which work the year round, +carriage—shops exhibited one or two seductive nickel-plated sledges, as +a hint; for the sleigh is 'the chariot at hand here of Love.' In the +country the farmhouses were stacking up their wood-piles within reach of +the kitchen door, and taking down the fly-screens, (One leaves these +on, as a rule, till the double windows are brought up from the cellar, +and one has to hunt all over the house for missing screws.) Sometimes +one saw a few flashing lengths of new stovepipe in a backyard, and +pitied the owner. There is no humour in the old, bitter-true stovepipe +jests of the comic papers.</p> + +<p>But the railways—the wonderful railways—told the winter's tale most +emphatically. The thirty-ton coal cars were moving over three thousand +miles of track. They grunted and lurched against each other in the +switch-yards, or thumped past statelily at midnight on their way to +provident housekeepers of the prairie towns. It was not a clear way +either; for the bacon, the lard, the apples, the butter, and the cheese, +in beautiful whitewood barrels, were rolling eastwards toward the +steamers before the wheat should descend on them. That is the fifth act +of the great Year-Play for which the stage must be cleared. On scores of +congested sidings lay huge girders, rolled beams, limbs, and boxes of +rivets, once intended for the late Quebec Bridge—now so much mere +obstruction—and the victuals had to pick their way through 'em; and +behind the victuals was the lumber—clean wood out of the +mountains—logs, planks, clapboards, and laths, for which we pay such +sinful prices in England—all seeking the sea. There was housing, food, +and fuel for millions, on wheels together, and never a grain yet shifted +of the real staple which men for five hundred miles were threshing out +in heaps as high as fifty-pound villas.</p> + +<p>Add to this, that the railways were concerned for their own new +developments—double-trackings, loops, cutoffs, taps, and feeder lines, +and great swoops out into untouched lands soon to be filled with men. So +the construction, ballast, and material trains, the grading machines, +the wrecking cars with their camel-like sneering cranes—the whole plant +of a new civilisation—had to find room somewhere in the general rally +before Nature cried, 'Lay off!'</p> + +<p>Does any one remember that joyful strong confidence after the war, when +it seemed that, at last, South Africa was to be developed—when men laid +out railways, and gave orders for engines, and fresh rolling-stock, and +labour, and believed gloriously in the future? It is true the hope was +murdered afterward, but—multiply that good hour by a thousand, and you +will have some idea of how it feels to be in Canada—a place which even +an 'Imperial' Government cannot kill. I had the luck to be shown some +things from the inside—to listen to the details of works projected; the +record of works done. Above all, I saw what had actually been achieved +in the fifteen years since I had last come that way. One advantage of a +new land is that it makes you feel older than Time. I met cities where +there had been nothing—literally, absolutely nothing, except, as the +fairy tales say, 'the birds crying, and the grass waving in the wind.' +Villages and hamlets had grown to great towns, and the great towns +themselves had trebled and quadrupled. And the railways rubbed their +hands and cried, like the Afrites of old, 'Shall we make a city where +no city is; or render flourishing a city that is dasolate?' They do it +too, while, across the water, gentlemen, never forced to suffer one +day's physical discomfort in all their lives, pipe up and say, 'How +grossly materialistic!'</p> + +<p>I wonder sometimes whether any eminent novelist, philosopher, dramatist, +or divine of to-day has to exercise half the pure imagination, not to +mention insight, endurance, and self-restraint, which is accepted +without comment in what is called 'the material exploitation' of a new +country. Take only the question of creating a new city at the junction +of two lines—all three in the air. The mere drama of it, the play of +the human virtues, would fill a book. And when the work is finished, +when the city is, when the new lines embrace a new belt of farms, and +the tide of the Wheat has rolled North another unexpected degree, the +men who did it break off, without compliments, to repeat the joke +elsewhere.</p> + +<p>I had some talk with a youngish man whose business it was to train +avalanches to jump clear of his section of the track. Thor went to +Jotunheim only once or twice, and he had his useful hammer Miolnr with +him. This Thor lived in Jotunheim among the green-ice-crowned peaks of +the Selkirks—where if you disturb the giants at certain seasons of the +year, by making noises, they will sit upon you and all your fine +emotions. So Thor watches them glaring under the May sun, or dull and +doubly dangerous beneath the spring rains. He wards off their strokes +with enormous brattices of wood, wing-walls of logs bolted together, and +such other contraptions as experience teaches. He bears the giants no +malice; they do their work, he his. What bothers him a little is that +the wind of their blows sometimes rips pines out of the opposite +hill-sides—explodes, as it were, a whole valley. He thinks, however, he +can fix things so as to split large avalanches into little ones.</p> + +<p>Another man, to whom I did not talk, sticks in my memory. He had for +years and years inspected trains at the head of a heavyish grade in the +mountains—though not half so steep as the Hex<a name="FNanchor4"></a><a href="#Footnote4">[4]</a>—where all brakes are +jammed home, and the cars slither warily for ten miles. Tire-troubles +there would be inconvenient, so he, as the best man, is given the +heaviest job—monotony and responsibility combined. He did me the honour +of wanting to speak to me, but first he inspected his train—on all +fours with a hammer. By the time he was satisfied of the integrity of +the underpinnings it was time for us to go; and all that I got was a +friendly wave of the hand—a master craftsman's sign, you might call it.</p> + +<a name="Footnote4"></a><a href="#FNanchor4">[4]</a> Hex River, South Africa. + +<p>Canada seems full of this class of materialist.</p> + +<p>Which reminds me that the other day I saw the Lady herself in the shape +of a tall woman of twenty-five or six, waiting for her tram on a street +corner. She wore her almost flaxen-gold hair waved, and parted low on +the forehead, beneath a black astrachan toque, with a red enamel +maple-leaf hatpin in one side of it. This was the one touch of colour +except the flicker of a buckle on the shoe. The dark, tailor-made dress +had no trinkets or attachments, but fitted perfectly. She stood for +perhaps a minute without any movement, both hands—right bare, left +gloved—hanging naturally at her sides, the very fingers still, the +weight of the superb body carried evenly on both feet, and the profile, +which was that of Gudrun or Aslauga, thrown out against a dark stone +column. What struck me most, next to the grave, tranquil eyes, was her +slow, unhurried breathing in the hurry about her. She was evidently a +regular fare, for when her tram stopped she smiled at the lucky +conductor; and the last I saw of her was a flash of the sun on the red +maple-leaf, the full face still lighted by that smile, and her hair very +pale gold against the dead black fur. But the power of the mouth, the +wisdom of the brow, the human comprehension of the eyes, and the +outstriking vitality of the creature remained. That is how <i>I</i> would +have my country drawn, were I a Canadian—and hung in Ottawa Parliament +House, for the discouragement of prevaricators.</p> + + +<a name="chap12" id="chap12"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>CITIES AND SPACES</h2> + +<p>What would you do with a magic carpet if one were lent you? I ask +because for a month we had a private car of our very own—a trifling +affair less than seventy foot long and thirty ton weight. 'You may find +her useful,' said the donor casually, 'to knock about the country. Hitch +on to any train you choose and stop off where you choose.'</p> + +<p>So she bore us over the C.P.R. from the Atlantic to the Pacific and +back, and when we had no more need of her, vanished like the mango tree +after the trick.</p> + +<p>A private car, though many books have been written in it, is hardly the +best place from which to study a country, unless it happen that you have +kept house and seen the seasons round under normal conditions on the +same continent. Then you know how the cars look from the houses; which +is not in the least as the houses look from the cars. Then, the very +porter's brush in its nickel clip, the long cathedral-like aisle between +the well-known green seats, the toll of the bell and the deep organ-like +note of the engine wake up memories; and every sight, smell, and sound +outside are like old friends remembering old days together. A piano-top +buggy on a muddy, board-sidewalked street, all cut up by the narrow +tires; the shingling at the corner of a veranda on a new-built house; a +broken snake-fence girdling an old pasture of mulleins and skull-headed +boulders; a wisp of Virginia creeper dying splendidly on the edge of a +patch of corn; half a dozen panels of snow-fence above a cutting, or +even a shameless patent-medicine advertisement, yellow on the black of a +tobacco-barn, can make the heart thump and the eyes fill if the beholder +have only touched the life of which they are part. What must they mean +to the native-born? There was a prairie-bred girl on the train, coming +back after a year on the Continent, for whom the pine-belted hills, with +real mountains behind, the solemn loops of the river, and the intimate +friendly farm had nothing to tell.</p> + +<p>'You can do these landscapes better in Italy,' she explained, and, with +the indescribable gesture of plains folk stifled in broken ground, 'I +want to push these hills away and get into the open again! I'm +Winnipeg.'</p> + +<p>She would have understood that Hanover Road schoolmistress, back from a +visit to Cape Town, whom I once saw drive off into thirty miles of +mirage almost shouting, 'Thank God, here's something like home at last.'</p> + +<p>Other people ricochetted from side to side of the car, reviving this, +rediscovering that, anticipating t'other thing, which, sure enough, slid +round the next curve to meet them, caring nothing if all the world knew +they were home again; and the newly arrived Englishman with his large +wooden packing-cases marked 'Settlers' Effects' had no more part in the +show than a new boy his first day at school. But two years in Canada and +one run home will make him free of the Brotherhood in Canada as it does +anywhere else. He may grumble at certain aspects of the life, lament +certain richnesses only to be found in England, but as surely as he +grumbles so surely he returns to the big skies, and the big chances. The +failures are those who complain that the land 'does not know a gentleman +when it sees him.' They are quite right. The land suspends all judgment +on all men till it has seen them work. Thereafter as may be; but work +they must because there is a very great deal to be done.</p> + +<p>Unluckily the railroads which made the country are bringing in persons +who are particular as to the nature and amenities of their work, and if +so be they do not find precisely what they are looking for, they +complain in print which makes all men seem equal.</p> + +<p>The special joy of our trip lay in having travelled the line when it was +new and, like the Canada of those days, not much believed in, when all +the high and important officials, whose little fingers unhooked cars, +were also small and disregarded. To-day, things, men, and cities were +different, and the story of the line mixed itself up with the story of +the country, the while the car-wheels clicked out, 'John Kino—John +Kino! Nagasaki, Yokohama, Hakodate, Heh!' for we were following in the +wake of the Imperial Limited, all full of Hongkong and Treaty Ports men. +There were old, known, and wonderfully grown cities to be looked at +before we could get away to the new work out west, and, 'What d'you +think of this building and that suburb?' they said, imperiously. 'Come +out and see what has been done in this generation.'</p> + +<p>The impact of a Continent is rather overwhelming till you remind +yourself that it is no more than your own joy and love and pride in your +own patch of garden written a little large over a few more acres. Again, +as always, it was the dignity of the cities that impressed—an austere +Northern dignity of outline, grouping, and perspective, aloof from the +rush of traffic in the streets. Montreal, of the black-frocked priests +and the French notices, had it; and Ottawa, of the grey stone palaces +and the St. Petersburg-like shining water-frontages; and Toronto, +consumingly commercial, carried the same power in the same repose. Men +are always building better than they know, and perhaps this steadfast +architecture is waiting for the race when their first flurry of +newly-realised expansion shall have spent itself, and the present +hurrah's-nest of telephone poles in the streets shall have been +abolished. There are strong objections to any non-fusible, bi-lingual +community within a nation, but however much the French are made to hang +back in the work of development, their withdrawn and unconcerned +cathedrals, schools, and convents, and one aspect of the spirit that +breathes from them, make for good. Says young Canada: 'There are +millions of dollars' worth of church property in the cities which aren't +allowed to be taxed.' On the other hand, the Catholic schools and +universities, though they are reported to keep up the old medieval +mistrust of Greek, teach the classics as lovingly, tenderly, and +intimately as the old Church has always taught them. After all, it must +be worth something to say your prayers in a dialect of the tongue that +Virgil handled; and a certain touch of insolence, more magnificent and +more ancient than the insolence of present materialism, makes a good +blend in a new land.</p> + +<p>I had the good fortune to see the cities through the eyes of an +Englishman out for the first time. 'Have you been to the Bank?' he +cried. 'I've never seen anything like it!' 'What's the matter with the +Bank?' I asked: for the financial situation across the Border was at +that moment more than usual picturesque. 'It's wonderful!' said he; +'marble pillars—acres of mosaic—steel grilles—'might be a cathedral. +No one ever told me.' 'I shouldn't worry over a Bank that pays its +depositors,' I replied soothingly. 'There are several like it in Ottawa +and Toronto.' Next he ran across some pictures in some palaces, and was +downright angry because no one had told him that there were five +priceless private galleries in one city. 'Look here!' he explained. +'I've been seeing Corots, and Greuzes, and Gainsboroughs, and a +Holbein, and—and hundreds of really splendid pictures!' 'Why shouldn't +you?' I said. 'They've given up painting their lodges with vermilion +hereabouts.' 'Yes, but what I mean is, have you seen the equipment of +their schools and colleges—desks, libraries, and lavatories? It's miles +ahead of anything we have and—no one ever told me.' 'What was the good +of telling? You wouldn't have believed. There's a building in one of the +cities, on the lines of the Sheldonian, but better, and if you go as far +as Winnipeg, you'll see the finest hotel in all the world.'</p> + +<p>'Nonsense!' he said. 'You're pulling my leg! Winnipeg's a prairie-town.'</p> + +<p>I left him still lamenting—about a Club and a Gymnasium this time—that +no one had ever told him about; and still doubting all that he had heard +of Wonders to come.</p> + +<p>If we could only manacle four hundred Members of Parliament, like the +Chinese in the election cartoons, and walk them round the Empire, what +an all-comprehending little Empire we should be when the survivors got +home!</p> + +<p>Certainly the Cities have good right to be proud, and I waited for them +to boast; but they were so busy explaining they were only at the +beginning of things that, for the honour of the Family, I had to do the +boasting. In this praiseworthy game I credited Melbourne (rightly, I +hope, but the pace was too good to inquire) with acres of municipal +buildings and leagues of art galleries; enlarged the borders of Sydney +harbour to meet a statement about Toronto's, wharfage; and recommended +folk to see Cape Town Cathedral when it should be finished. But Truth +will out even on a visit. Our Eldest Sister has more of beauty and +strength inside her three cities alone than the rest of Us put together. +Yet it would do her no harm to send a commission through the ten great +cities of the Empire to see what is being done there in the way of +street cleaning, water-supply, and traffic-regulation.</p> + +<p>Here and there the people are infected with the unworthy superstition of +'hustle,' which means half-doing your appointed job and applauding your +own slapdasherie for as long a time as would enable you to finish off +two clean pieces of work. Little congestions of traffic, that an English +rural policeman, in a country town, disentangles automatically, are +allowed to develop into ten-minute blocks, where wagons and men bang, +and back, and blaspheme, for no purpose except to waste time.</p> + +<p>The assembly and dispersal of crowds, purchase of tickets, and a good +deal of the small machinery of life is clogged and hampered by this +unstable, southern spirit which is own brother to Panic. 'Hustle' does +not sit well on the national character any more than falsetto or +fidgeting becomes grown men. 'Drive,' a laudable and necessary quality, +is quite different, and one meets it up the Western Road where the new +country is being made.</p> + +<p>We got clean away from the Three Cities and the close-tilled farming +and orchard districts, into the Land of Little Lakes—a country of +rushing streams, clear-eyed ponds, and boulders among berry-bushes; all +crying 'Trout' and 'Bear.'</p> + +<p>Not so very long ago only a few wise people kept holiday in that part of +the world, and they did not give away their discoveries. Now it has +become a summer playground where people hunt and camp at large. The +names of its further rivers are known in England, and men, otherwise +sane, slip away from London into the birches, and come out again bearded +and smoke-stained, when the ice is thick enough to cut a canoe. +Sometimes they go to look for game; sometimes for minerals—perhaps, +even, oil. No one can prophesy. 'We are only at the beginning of +things.'</p> + +<p>Said an Afrite of the Railway as we passed in our magic carpet: 'You've +no notion of the size of our tourist-traffic. It has all grown up since +the early 'Nineties. The trolley car teaches people in the towns to go +for little picnics. When they get more money they go for long ones. All +this Continent will want playgrounds soon. We're getting them ready.'</p> + +<p>The girl from Winnipeg saw the morning frost lie white on the long grass +at the lake edges, and watched the haze of mellow golden birch leaves as +they dropped. 'Now that's the way trees ought to turn,' she said. 'Don't +you think our Eastern maple is a little violent in colour?' Then we +passed through a country where for many hours the talk in the cars was +of mines and the treatment of ores. Men told one tales—prospectors' +yarns of the sort one used to hear vaguely before Klondike or Nome were +public property. They did not care whether one believed or doubted. +They, too, were only at the beginning of things—silver perhaps, gold +perhaps, nickel perhaps. If a great city did not arise at such a +place—the very name was new since my day—it would assuredly be born +within a few miles of it. The silent men boarded the cars, and dropped +off, and disappeared beyond thickets and hills precisely as the first +widely spaced line of skirmishers fans out and vanishes along the front +of the day's battle.</p> + +<p>One old man sat before me like avenging Time itself, and talked of +prophecies of evil, that had been falsified. '<i>They</i> said there wasn't +nothing here excep' rocks an' snow. <i>They</i> said there never <i>wouldn't</i> be nothing here excep' the railroad. There's them that can't see <i>yit</i> ,' +and he gimleted me with a fierce eye. 'An' all the while, fortunes is +made—piles is made—right under our noses.'</p> + +<p>'Have you made your pile?' I asked.</p> + +<p>He smiled as the artist smiles—all true prospectors have that lofty +smile—'Me? No. I've been a prospector most o' my time, but I haven't +lost anything. I've had my fun out of the game. By God, I've had my fun +out of it!</p> + +<p>I told him how I had once come through when land and timber grants +could have been picked up for half less than nothing.</p> + +<p>'Yes,' he said placidly. 'I reckon if you'd had any kind of an education +you could ha' made a quarter of a million dollars easy in those days. +And it's to be made now if you could see where. How? Can you tell me +what the capital of the Hudson Bay district's goin' to be? You can't. +Nor I. Nor yet where the six next new cities is going to arise, I get +off here, but if I have my health I'll be out next summer +again—prospectin' North.'</p> + +<p>Imagine a country where men prospect till they are seventy, with no fear +of fever, fly, horse-sickness, or trouble from the natives—a country +where food and water always taste good! He told me curious things about +some fabled gold—the Eternal Mother-lode—out in the North, which is +to humble the pride of Nome. And yet, so vast is the Empire, he had +never heard the name of Johannesburg!</p> + +<p>As the train swung round the shores of Lake Superior the talk swung over +to Wheat. Oh yes, men said, there were mines in the country—they were +only at the beginning of mines—but that part of the world existed to +clean and grade and handle and deliver the Wheat by rail and steamer. +The track was being duplicated by a few hundred miles to keep abreast of +the floods of it. By and by it might be a four-track road. They were +only at the beginning. Meantime here was the Wheat sprouting, tender +green, a foot high, among a hundred sidings where it had spilled from +the cars; there were the high-shouldered, tea-caddy grain-elevators to +clean, and the hospitals to doctor the Wheat; here was new, gaily +painted machinery going forward to reap and bind and thresh the Wheat, +and all those car-loads of workmen had been slapping down more sidings +against the year's delivery of the Wheat.</p> + +<p>Two towns stand on the shores of the lake less than a mile apart. What +Lloyd's is to shipping, or the College of Surgeons to medicine, that +they are to the Wheat. Its honour and integrity are in their hands; and +they hate each other with the pure, poisonous, passionate hatred which +makes towns grow. If Providence wiped out one of them, the survivor +would pine away and die—a mateless hate-bird. Some day they must unite, +and the question of the composite name they shall then carry already +vexes them. A man there told me that Lake Superior was 'a useful piece +of water,' in that it lay so handy to the C.P.R. tracks. There is a +quiet horror about the Great Lakes which grows as one revisits them. +Fresh water has no right or call to dip over the horizon, pulling down +and pushing up the hulls of big steamers; no right to tread the slow, +deep-sea dance-step between wrinkled cliffs; nor to roar in on weed and +sand beaches between vast headlands that run out for leagues into haze +and sea-fog. Lake Superior is all the same stuff as what towns pay taxes +for, but it engulfs and wrecks and drives ashore, like a fully +accredited ocean—a hideous thing to find in the heart of a continent. +Some people go sailing on it for pleasure, and it has produced a breed +of sailors who bear the same relation to the salt-water variety as a +snake-charmer does to a lion-tamer.</p> + +<p>Yet it is undoubtedly a useful piece of water.</p> + + +<a name="chap13" id="chap13"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>NEWSPAPERS AND DEMOCRACY</h2> + +<p>Let it be granted that, as the loud-voiced herald hired by the Eolithic +tribe to cry the news of the coming day along the caves, preceded the +chosen Tribal Bard who sang the more picturesque history of the tribe, +so is Journalism senior to Literature, in that Journalism meets the +first tribal need after warmth, food, and women.</p> + +<p>In new countries it shows clear trace of its descent from the Tribal +Herald. A tribe thinly occupying large spaces feels lonely. It desires +to hear the roll-call of its members cried often and loudly; to comfort +itself with the knowledge that there are companions just below the +horizon. It employs, therefore, heralds to name and describe all who +pass. That is why newspapers of new countries seem often so outrageously +personal. The tribe, moreover, needs quick and sure knowledge of +everything that touches on its daily life in the big spaces—earth, air, +and water news which the Older Peoples have put behind them. That is why +its newspapers so often seem so laboriously trivial.</p> + +<p>For example, a red-nosed member of the tribe, Pete O'Halloran, comes in +thirty miles to have his horse shod, and incidentally smashes the +king-bolt of his buckboard at a bad place in the road. The Tribal +Herald—a thin weekly, with a patent inside—connects the red nose and +the breakdown with an innuendo which, to the outsider, is clumsy libel. +But the Tribal Herald understands that two-and-seventy families of the +tribe may use that road weekly. It concerns them to discover whether the +accident was due to Pete being drunk or, as Pete protests, to the +neglected state of the road. Fifteen men happen to know that Pete's nose +is an affliction, not an indication. One of them loafs across and +explains to the Tribal Herald, who, next week, cries aloud that the road +ought to be mended. Meantime Pete, warmed to the marrow at having +focussed the attention of his tribe for a few moments, retires thirty +miles up-stage, pursued by advertisements of buckboards guaranteed not +to break their king-bolts, and later (which is what the tribe were after +all the time) some tribal authority or other mends the road.</p> + +<p>This is only a big-scale diagram, but with a little attention you can +see the tribal instinct of self-preservation quite logically +underrunning all sorts of queer modern developments.</p> + +<p>As the tribe grows, and men do not behold the horizon from edge to +unbroken edge, their desire to know all about the next man weakens a +little—but not much. Outside the cities are still the long distances, +the 'vast, unoccupied areas' of the advertisements; and the men who come +and go yearn to keep touch with and report themselves as of old to +their lodges. A man stepping out of the dark into the circle of the +fires naturally, if he be a true man, holds up his hands and says, 'I, +So-and-So, am here.' You can watch the ritual in full swing at any hotel +when the reporter (<i>pro</i> Tribal Herald) runs his eyes down the list of +arrivals, and before he can turn from the register is met by the +newcomer, who, without special desire for notoriety, explains his +business and intentions. Observe, it is always at evening that the +reporter concerns himself with strangers. By day he follows the +activities of his own city and the doings of nearby chiefs; but when it +is time to close the stockade, to laager the wagons, to draw the +thorn-bush back into the gap, then in all lands he reverts to the Tribal +Herald, who is also the tribal Outer Guard.</p> + +<p>There are countries where a man is indecently pawed over by chattering +heralds who bob their foul torches in his face till he is singed and +smoked at once. In Canada the necessary 'Stand and deliver your +sentiments' goes through with the large decency that stamps all the +Dominion. A stranger's words are passed on to the tribe quite +accurately; no dirt is put into his mouth, and where the heralds judge +that it would be better not to translate certain remarks they +courteously explain why.</p> + +<p>It was always delightful to meet the reporters, for they were men +interested in their land, with the keen, unselfish interest that one +finds in young house-surgeons or civilians. Thanks to the (Boer) war, +many of them had reached out to the ends of our earth, and spoke of the +sister nations as it did one good to hear. Consequently the +interviews—which are as dreary for the reporter as the reported—often +turned into pleasant and unpublished talks. One felt at every turn of +the quick sentences to be dealing with made and trained players of the +game—balanced men who believed in decencies not to be disregarded, +confidences not to be violated, and honour not to be mocked. (This may +explain what men and women have told me—that there is very little of +the brutal domestic terrorism of the Press in Canada, and not much +blackmailing.) They neither spat nor wriggled; they interpolated no +juicy anecdotes of murder or theft among their acquaintance; and not +once between either ocean did they or any other fellow-subjects +volunteer that their country was 'law-abiding.'</p> + +<p>You know the First Sign-post on the Great Main Road? 'When a Woman +advertises that she is virtuous, a Man that he is a gentleman, a +Community that it is loyal, or a Country that it is law-abiding—go the +other way!'</p> + +<p>Yet, while the men's talk was so good and new, their written word seemed +to be cast in conventional, not to say old-fashioned, moulds. A quarter +of a century ago a sub-editor, opening his mail, could identify the +Melbourne <i>Argus</i> , the Sydney <i>Morning Herald</i> , or the Cape <i>Times</i> as +far as he could see them. Even unheaded clippings from them declared +their origin as a piece of hide betrays the beast that wore it. But he +noticed then that Canadian journals left neither spoor nor scent—might +have blown in from anywhere between thirty degrees of latitude—and had +to be carefully identified by hand. To-day, the spacing, the headlines, +the advertising of Canadian papers, the chessboard-like look of the open +page which should be a daily beautiful study in black and white, the +brittle pulp-paper, the machine-set type, are all as standardised as the +railway cars of the Continent. Indeed, looking through a mass of +Canadian journals is like trying to find one's own sleeper in a corridor +train. Newspaper offices are among the most conservative organisations +in the world; but surely after twenty-five years some changes might be +permitted to creep in; some original convention of expression or +assembly might be developed.</p> + +<p>I drew up to this idea cautiously among a knot of fellow-craftsmen. 'You +mean,' said one straight-eyed youth, 'that we are a back-number copying +back-numbers?'</p> + +<p>It was precisely what I did mean, so I made haste to deny it. 'We know +that,' he said cheerfully. 'Remember we haven't the sea all round +us—and the postal rates to England have only just been lowered. It will +all come right.'</p> + +<p>Surely it will; but meantime one hates to think of these splendid people +using second-class words to express first-class emotions.</p> + +<p>And so naturally from Journalism to Democracy. Every country is entitled +to her reservations, and pretences, but the more 'democratic' a land +is, the more make-believes must the stranger respect. Some of the Tribal +Heralds were very good to me in this matter, and, as it were, nudged me +when it was time to duck in the House of Rimmon. During their office +hours they professed an unflinching belief in the blessed word +'Democracy,' which means any crowd on the move—that is to say, the +helpless thing which breaks through floors and falls into cellars; +overturns pleasure-boats by rushing from port to starboard; stamps men +into pulp because it thinks it has lost sixpence, and jams and grills in +the doorways of blazing theatres. Out of office, like every one else, +they relaxed. Many winked, a few were flippant, but they all agreed that +the only drawback to Democracy was Demos—a jealous God of primitive +tastes and despotic tendencies. I received a faithful portrait of him +from a politician who had worshipped him all his life. It was +practically the Epistle of Jeremy—the sixth chapter of Baruch—done +into unquotable English.</p> + +<p>But Canada is not yet an ideal Democracy. For one thing she has had to +work hard among rough-edged surroundings which carry inevitable +consequences. For another, the law in Canada exists and is administered, +not as a surprise, a joke, a favour, a bribe, or a Wrestling Turk +exhibition, but as an integral part of the national character—no more +to be forgotten or talked about than one's trousers. If you kill, you +hang. If you steal, you go to jail. This has worked toward peace, +self-respect, and, I think, the innate dignity of the people. On the +other hand—which is where the trouble will begin—railways and steamers +make it possible nowadays to bring in persons who need never lose touch +of hot and cold water-taps, spread tables, and crockery till they are +turned out, much surprised, into the wilderness. They clean miss the +long weeks of salt-water and the slow passage across the plains which +pickled and tanned the early emigrants. They arrive with soft bodies and +unaired souls. I had this vividly brought home to me by a man on a train +among the Selkirks. He stood on the safely railed rear-platform, looked +at the gigantic pine-furred shoulder round which men at their lives' +risk had led every yard of the track, and chirruped: 'I say, why can't +all this be nationalised?' There was nothing under heaven except the +snows and the steep to prevent him from dropping off the cars and +hunting a mine for himself. Instead of which he went into the +dining-car. That is one type.</p> + +<p>A man told me the old tale of a crowd of Russian immigrants who at a big +fire in a city 'verted to the ancestral type, and blocked the streets +yelling, 'Down with the Czar!' That is another type. A few days later I +was shown a wire stating that a community of Doukhobors—Russians +again—had, not for the first time, undressed themselves, and were +fleeing up the track to meet the Messiah before the snow fell. Police +were pursuing them with warm underclothing, and trains would please +take care not to run over them.</p> + +<p>So there you have three sort of steam-borne unfitness—soft, savage, and +mad. There is a fourth brand, which may be either home-grown or +imported, but democracies do not recognise it, of downright bad +folk—grown, healthy men and women who honestly rejoice in doing evil. +These four classes acting together might conceivably produce a rather +pernicious democracy; alien hysteria, blood-craze, and the like, +reinforcing local ignorance, sloth, and arrogance. For example, I read a +letter in a paper sympathising with these same Doukhobors. The writer +knew a community of excellent people in England (you see where the rot +starts!) who lived barefoot, paid no taxes, ate nuts, and were above +marriage. They were a soulful folk, living pure lives. The Doukhobors +were also pure and soulful, entitled in a free country to live their own +lives, and not to be oppressed, etc. etc. (Imported soft, observe, +playing up to Imported mad.) Meantime, disgusted police were chasing the +Doukhobors into flannels that they might live to produce children fit to +consort with the sons of the man who wrote that letter and the daughters +of the crowd that lost their heads at the fire.</p> + +<p>'All of which,' men and women answered, 'we admit. But what can we do? +We want people.' And they showed vast and well-equipped schools, where +the children of Slav immigrants are taught English and the songs of +Canada. 'When they grow up,' people said, 'you can't tell them from +Canadians.' It was a wonderful work. The teacher holds up pens, reels, +and so forth, giving the name in English; the children repeating Chinese +fashion. Presently when they have enough words they can bridge back to +the knowledge they learned in their own country, so that a boy of +twelve, at, say, the end of a year, will produce a well-written English +account of his journey from Russia, how much his mother paid for food by +the way, and where his father got his first job. He will also lay his +hand on his heart, and say, 'I—am—a—Canadian.' This gratifies the +Canadian, who naturally purrs over an emigrant owing everything to the +land which adopted him and set him on his feet. The Lady Bountiful of an +English village takes the same interest in a child she has helped on in +the world. And the child repays by his gratitude and good behaviour?</p> + +<p>Personally, one cannot care much for those who have renounced their own +country. They may have had good reason, but they have broken the rules +of the game, and ought to be penalised instead of adding to their score. +Nor is it true, as men pretend, that a few full meals and fine clothes +obliterate all taint of alien instinct and reversion. A thousand years +cannot be as yesterday for mankind; and one has only to glance at the +races across the Border to realise how in outlook, manner, expression, +and morale the South and South-east profoundly and fatally affects the +North and North-west. That was why the sight of the beady-eyed, +muddy-skinned, aproned women, with handkerchiefs on their heads and +Oriental bundles in their hands, always distressed one.</p> + +<p>'But <i>why</i> must you get this stuff?' I asked. 'You know it is not your +equal, and it knows that it is not your equal; and that is bad for you +both. What is the matter with the English as immigrants?'</p> + +<p>The answers were explicit: 'Because the English do not work. Because we +are sick of Remittance-men and loafers sent out here. Because the +English are rotten with Socialism. Because the English don't fit with +our life. They kick at our way of doing things. They are always telling +us how things are done in England. They carry frills! Don't you know the +story of the Englishman who lost his way and was found half-dead of +thirst beside a river? When he was asked why he didn't drink, he said, +"How the deuce can I without a glass?"'</p> + +<p>'But,' I argued over three thousand miles of country, 'all these are +excellent reasons for bringing in the Englishman. It is true that in his +own country he is taught to shirk work, because kind, silly people fall +over each other to help and debauch and amuse him. Here, General January +will stiffen him up. Remittance-men are an affliction to every branch of +the Family, but your manners and morals can't be so tender as to suffer +from a few thousand of them among your six millions. As to the +Englishman's Socialism, he is, by nature, the most unsocial animal +alive. What you call Socialism is his intellectual equivalent for +Diabolo and Limerick competitions. As to his criticisms, you surely +wouldn't marry a woman who agreed with you in everything, and you ought +to choose your immigrants on the same lines. You admit that the Canadian +is too busy to kick at anything. The Englishman is a born kicker. ("Yes, +he is all that," they said.) He kicks on principle, and that is what +makes for civilisation. So did your Englishman's instinct about the +glass. Every new country needs—vitally needs—one-half of one per cent +of its population trained to die of thirst rather than drink out of +their hands. You are always talking of the second generation of your +Smyrniotes and Bessarabians. Think what the second generation of the +English are!'</p> + +<p>They thought—quite visibly—but they did not much seem to relish it. +There was a queer stringhalt in their talk—a conversational shy across +the road—when one touched on these subjects. After a while I went to a +Tribal Herald whom I could trust, and demanded of him point-blank where +the trouble really lay, and who was behind it.</p> + +<p>'It is Labour,' he said. 'You had better leave it alone.'</p> + + +<a name="chap14" id="chap14"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>LABOUR</h2> + +<p>One cannot leave a thing alone if it is thrust under the nose at every +turn. I had not quitted the Quebec steamer three minutes when I was +asked point-blank: 'What do you think of the question of Asiatic +Exclusion which is Agitating our Community?'</p> + +<p>The Second Sign-Post on the Great Main Road says: 'If a Community is +agitated by a Question—inquire politely after the health of the +Agitator,' This I did, without success; and had to temporise all across +the Continent till I could find some one to help me to acceptable +answers. The Question appears to be confined to British Columbia. There, +after a while, the men who had their own reasons for not wishing to talk +referred me to others who explained, and on the acutest understanding +that no names were to be published (it is sweet to see engineers afraid +of being hoist by their own petards) one got more or less at something +like facts.</p> + +<p>The Chinaman has always been in the habit of coming to British Columbia, +where he makes, as he does elsewhere, the finest servant in the world. +No one, I was assured on all hands, objects to the biddable Chinaman. +He takes work which no white man in a new country will handle, and when +kicked by the mean white will not grossly retaliate. He has always paid +for the privilege of making his fortune on this wonderful coast, but +with singular forethought and statesmanship, the popular Will, some few +years ago, decided to double the head-tax on his entry. Strange as it +may appear, the Chinaman now charges double for his services, and is +scarce at that. This is said to be one of the reasons why overworked +white women die or go off their heads; and why in new cities you can see +blocks of flats being built to minimise the inconveniences of +housekeeping without help. The birth-rate will fall later in exact +proportion to those flats.</p> + +<p>Since the Russo-Japanese War the Japanese have taken to coming over to +British Columbia. They also do work which no white man will; such as +hauling wet logs for lumber mills out of cold water at from eight to ten +shillings a day. They supply the service in hotels and dining-rooms and +keep small shops. The trouble with them is that they are just a little +too good, and when attacked defend themselves with asperity.</p> + +<p>A fair sprinkling of Punjabis—ex-soldiers, Sikhs, Muzbis, and Jats—are +coming in on the boats. The plague at home seems to have made them +restless, but I could not gather why so many of them come from Shahpur, +Phillour, and Jullundur way. These men do not, of course, offer for +house-service, but work in the lumber mills, and with the least little +care and attention could be made most valuable. Some one ought to tell +them not to bring their old men with them, and better arrangements +should be made for their remitting money home to their villages. They +are not understood, of course; but they are not hated.</p> + +<p>The objection is all against the Japanese. So far—except that they are +said to have captured the local fishing trade at Vancouver, precisely as +the Malays control the Cape Town fish business—they have not yet +competed with the whites; but I was earnestly assured by many men that +there was danger of their lowering the standard of life and wages. The +demand, therefore, in certain quarters is that they go—absolutely and +unconditionally. (You may have noticed that Democracies are strong on +the imperative mood.) An attempt was made to shift them shortly before I +came to Vancouver, but it was not very successful, because the Japanese +barricaded their quarters and flocked out, a broken bottle held by the +neck in either hand, which they jabbed in the faces of the +demonstrators. It is, perhaps, easier to haze and hammer bewildered +Hindus and Tamils, as is being done across the Border, than to stampede +the men of the Yalu and Liaoyang.<a name="FNanchor5"></a><a href="#Footnote5">[5]</a></p> + +<a name="Footnote5"></a><a href="#FNanchor5">[5]</a> Battles in the Russo-Japanese War. + +<p>But when one began to ask questions one got lost in a maze of hints, +reservations, and orations, mostly delivered with constraint, as though +the talkers were saying a piece learned by heart. Here are some +samples:—</p> + +<p>A man penned me in a corner with a single heavily capitalised sentence. +'There is a General Sentiment among Our People that the Japanese Must +Go,' said he.</p> + +<p>'Very good,' said I. 'How d'you propose to set about it?'</p> + +<p>'That is nothing to us. There is a General Sentiment,' etc.</p> + +<p>'Quite so. Sentiment is a beautiful thing, but what are you going to +do?' He did not condescend to particulars, but kept repeating the +sentiment, which, as I promised, I record.</p> + +<p>Another man was a little more explicit. 'We desire,' he said, 'to keep +the Chinaman. But the Japanese must go.'</p> + +<p>'Then who takes their place? Isn't this rather a new country to pitch +people out of?'</p> + +<p>'We must develop our Resources slowly, sir—with an Eye to the Interests +of our Children. We must preserve the Continent for Races which will +assimilate with Ours. We must not be swamped by Aliens.'</p> + +<p>'Then bring in your own races and bring 'em in quick,' I ventured.</p> + +<p>This is the one remark one must not make in certain quarters of the +West; and I lost caste heavily while he explained (exactly as the Dutch +did at the Cape years ago) how British Columbia was by no means so rich +as she appeared; that she was throttled by capitalists and monopolists +of all kinds; that white labour had to be laid off and fed and warmed +during the winter; that living expenses were enormously high; that they +were at the end of a period of prosperity, and were now entering on +lean years; and that whatever steps were necessary for bringing in more +white people should be taken with extreme caution. Then he added that +the railway rates to British Columbia were so high that emigrants were +debarred from coming on there.</p> + +<p>'But haven't the rates been reduced?' I asked.</p> + +<p>'Yes—yes, I believe they have, but immigrants are so much in demand +that they are snapped up before they have got so far West. You must +remember, too, that skilled labour is not like agricultural labour. It +is dependent on so many considerations. And the Japanese must go.'</p> + +<p>'So people have told me. But I heard stories of dairies and fruit-farms +in British Columbia being thrown up because there was no labour to milk +or pick the fruit. Is that true, d'you think?'</p> + +<p>'Well, you can't expect a man with all the chances that our country +offers him to milk cows in a pasture. A Chinaman can do that. We want +races that will assimilate with ours,' etc., etc.</p> + +<p>'But didn't the Salvation Army offer to bring in three or four thousand +English some short time ago? What came of that idea?'</p> + +<p>'It—er—fell through.'</p> + +<p>'Why?'</p> + +<p>'For political reasons, I believe. We do not want People who will lower +the Standard of Living. That is why the Japanese must go.'</p> + +<p>'Then why keep the Chinese?'</p> + +<p>'We can get on with the Chinese. We can't get on without the Chinese. +But we must have Emigration of a Type that will assimilate with Our +People. I hope I have made myself clear?'</p> + +<p>I hoped that he had, too.</p> + +<p>Now hear a wife, a mother, and a housekeeper.</p> + +<p>'We have to pay for this precious state of things with our health and +our children's. Do you know the saying that the Frontier is hard on +women and cattle? This isn't the frontier, but in some respects it's +worse, because we have all the luxuries and appearances—the pretty +glass and silver to put on the table. We have to dust, polish, and +arrange 'em after we've done our housework. I don't suppose that means +anything to you, but—try it for a month! We have no help. A Chinaman +costs fifty or sixty dollars a month now. Our husbands can't always +afford that. How old would you take me for? I'm not thirty. Well thank +God, I stopped my sister coming out West. Oh yes, it's a fine +country—for men.'</p> + +<p>'Can't you import servants from England?'</p> + +<p>'I can't pay a girl's passage in order to have her married in three +months. Besides, she wouldn't work. They won't when they see Chinamen +working.'</p> + +<p>'Do you object to the Japanese, too?'</p> + +<p>'Of course not. No one does. It's only politics. The wives of the men +who earn six and seven dollars a day—skilled labour they call it—have +Chinese and Jap servants. <i>We</i> can't afford it. <i>We</i> have to think of +saving for the future, but those other people live up to every cent they +earn. They know <i>they're</i> all right. They're Labour. They'll be looked +after, whatever happens. You can see how the State looks after me.'</p> + +<p>A little later I had occasion to go through a great and beautiful city +between six and seven of a crisp morning. Milk and fish, vegetables, +etc., were being delivered to the silent houses by Chinese and Japanese. +Not a single white man was visible on that chilly job.</p> + +<p>Later still a man came to see me, without too publicly giving his name. +He was in a small way of business, and told me (others had said much the +same thing) that if I gave him away his business would suffer. He talked +for half an hour on end.</p> + +<p>'Am I to understand, then,' I said, 'that what you call Labour +absolutely dominates this part of the world?'</p> + +<p>He nodded.</p> + +<p>'That it is difficult to get skilled labour into here?'</p> + +<p>'Difficult? My God, if I want to get an extra hand for my business—I +pay Union wages, of course—I have to arrange to get him here secretly. +I have to go out and meet him, accidental-like, down the line, and if +the Unions find out that he is coming, they, like as not, order him back +East, or turn him down across the Border.'</p> + +<p>'Even if he has his Union ticket? Why?'</p> + +<p>'They'll tell him that labour conditions are not good here. He knows +what that means. He'll turn back quick enough. I'm in a small way of +business, and I can't afford to take any chances fighting the Unions.'</p> + +<p>'What would happen if you did?'</p> + +<p>'D'you know what's happening across the Border? Men get blown up +there—with dynamite.'</p> + +<p>'But this isn't across the Border?'</p> + +<p>'It's a damn-sight too near to be pleasant. And witnesses get blown up, +too. You see, the Labour situation ain't run from our side the line. +It's worked from down under. You may have noticed men were rather +careful when they talked about it?'</p> + +<p>'Yes, I noticed all that.'</p> + +<p>'Well, it ain't a pleasant state of affairs. I don't say that the Unions +here would do anything <i>to</i> you—and please understand I'm all for the +rights of Labour myself. Labour has no better friend than me—I've been +a working man, though I've got a business of my own now. Don't run away +with any idea that I'm against Labour—will you?'</p> + +<p>'Not in the least. I can see that. You merely find that Labour's a +little bit—er—inconsiderate, sometimes?'</p> + +<p>'Look what happens across the Border! I suppose they've told you that +little fuss with the Japanese in Vancouver was worked from down under, +haven't they? I don't think our own people 'ud have done it by +themselves.'</p> + +<p>'I've heard that several times. Is it quite sporting, do you think, to +lay the blame on another country?'</p> + +<p>'<i>You</i> don't live here. But as I was saying—if we get rid of the Japs +to-day, we'll be told to get rid of some one else to-morrow. There's no +limit, sir, to what Labour wants. None!'</p> + +<p>'I thought they only want a fair day's wage for a fair day's work?'</p> + +<p>'That may do in the Old Country, but here they mean to boss the country. +They do.'</p> + +<p>'And how does the country like it?'</p> + +<p>'We're about sick of it. It don't matter much in flush +times—employers'll do most anything sooner than stop work—but when we +come to a pinch, you'll hear something. We're a rich land—in spite of +everything they make out—but we're held up at every turn by Labour. +Why, there's businesses on businesses which friends of mine—in a small +way like myself—want to start. Businesses in every direction—if they +was only allowed to start in. But they ain't.'</p> + +<p>'That's a pity. Now, what do you think about the Japanese question?'</p> + +<p>'I don't think. I know. Both political parties are playing up to the +Labour vote—if you understand what that means.'</p> + +<p>I tried to understand.</p> + +<p>'And neither side'll tell the truth—that if the Asiatic goes, this side +of the Continent'll drop out of sight, unless we get free white +immigration. And any party that proposed white immigration on a large +scale 'ud be snowed under next election. I'm telling you what +politicians think. Myself, I believe if a man stood up to Labour—not +that I've any feeling against Labour—and just talked sense, a lot of +people would follow him—quietly, of course. I believe he could even get +white immigration after a while. He'd lose the first election, of +course, but in the long run.... We're about sick of Labour. I wanted you +to know the truth.'</p> + +<p>'Thank you. And you don't think any attempt to bring in white +immigration would succeed?'</p> + +<p>'Not if it didn't suit Labour. You can try it if you like, and see what +happens.'</p> + +<p>On that hint I made an experiment in another city. There were three men +of position, and importance, and affluence, each keenly interested in +the development of their land, each asserting that what the land needed +was white immigrants. And we four talked for two hours on the matter—up +and down and in circles. The one point on which those three men were +unanimous was, that whatever steps were taken to bring people into +British Columbia from England, by private recruiting or otherwise, +should be taken secretly. Otherwise the business of the people concerned +in the scheme would suffer.</p> + +<p>At which point I dropped the Great Question of Asiatic Exclusion which +is Agitating all our Community; and I leave it to you, especially in +Australia and the Cape, to draw your own conclusions.</p> + +<p>Externally, British Columbia appears to be the richest and the loveliest +section of the Continent. Over and above her own resources she has a +fair chance to secure an immense Asiatic trade, which she urgently +desires. Her land, in many places over large areas, is peculiarly fitted +for the small former and fruit-grower, who can send his truck to the +cities. On every hand I heard a demand for labour of all kinds. At the +same time, in no other part of the Continent did I meet so many men who +insistently decried the value and possibilities of their country, or who +dwelt more fluently on the hardships and privations to be endured by the +white immigrant. I believe that one or two gentlemen have gone to +England to explain the drawbacks <i>viva voce</i> . It is possible that they +incur a great responsibility in the present, and even a terrible one for +the future.</p> + + +<a name="chap15" id="chap15"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>THE FORTUNATE TOWNS</h2> + +<p>After Politics, let us return to the Prairie which is the High Veldt, +plus Hope, Activity, and Reward. Winnipeg is the door to it—a great +city in a great plain, comparing herself, innocently enough, to other +cities of her acquaintance, but quite unlike any other city.</p> + +<p>When one meets, in her own house, a woman not seen since girlhood she is +all a stranger till some remembered tone or gesture links up to the +past, and one cries: 'It <i>is</i> you after all.' But, indeed, the child has +gone; the woman with her influences has taken her place. I tried vainly +to recover the gawky, graceless city I had known, so unformed and so +insistent on her shy self. I even ventured to remind a man of it. 'I +remember,' he said, smiling, 'but we were young then. This thing,' +indicating an immense perspective of asphalted avenue that dipped under +thirty railway tracks, 'only came up in the last ten years—practically +the last five. We've had to enlarge all those warehouses yonder by +adding two or three stories to 'em, and we've hardly begun to go ahead +yet. We're just beginning.'</p> + +<p>Warehouses, railway-sidings, and such are only counters in the White +Man's Game, which can be swept up and re-dealt as the play varies. It +was the spirit in the thin dancing air—the new spirit of the new +city—which rejoiced me. Winnipeg has Things in abundance, but has +learned to put them beneath her feet, not on top of her mind, and so is +older than many cities. None the less the Things had to be shown—for +what shopping is to the woman showing off his town is to the +right-minded man. First came the suburbs—miles on miles of the dainty, +clean-outlined, wooden-built houses, where one can be so happy and so +warm, each unjealously divided from its neighbour by the lightest of +boundaries. One could date them by their architecture, year after year, +back to the Early 'Nineties, which is when civilisation began; could +guess within a few score dollars at their cost and the incomes of their +owners, and could ask questions about the new domestic appliances of +to-day.</p> + +<p>'Asphalt streets and concrete sidewalks came up a few years ago,' said +our host as we trotted over miles of it. 'We found it the only way to +fight the prairie mud. Look!' Where the daring road ended, there lay +unsubdued, level with the pale asphalt, the tenacious prairie, over +which civilisation fought her hub-deep way to the West. And with asphalt +and concrete they fight the prairie back every building season. Next +came the show-houses, built by rich men with an eye to the honour and +glory of their city, which is the first obligation of wealth in a new +land.</p> + +<p>We twisted and turned among broad, clean, tree-lined, sunlit boulevards +and avenues, all sluiced down with an air that forbade any thought of +fatigue, and talked of city government and municipal taxation, till, in +a certain silence, we were shown a suburb of uncared-for houses, shops, +and banks, whose sides and corners were rubbed greasy by the shoulders +of loafers. Dirt and tin cans lay about the street. Yet it was not the +squalor of poverty so much as the lack of instinct to keep clean. One +race prefers to inhabit there.</p> + +<p>Next a glimpse of a cold, white cathedral, red-brick schools almost as +big (thank goodness!) as some convents; hospitals, institutions, a mile +or so of shops, and then a most familiar-feeling lunch at a Club which +would have amazed my Englishman at Montreal, where men, not yet old, +talked of Fort Garry as they remembered it, and tales of the founding of +the city, of early administrative shifts and accidents, mingled with the +younger men's prophecies and frivolities.</p> + +<p>There are a few places still left where men can handle big things with a +light touch, and take more for granted in five minutes than an +Englishman at home could puzzle out in a year. But one would not meet +many English at a lunch in a London club who took the contract for +building London Wall or helped bully King John into signing Magna +Charta.</p> + +<p>I had two views of the city—one on a gray day from the roof of a +monster building, whence it seemed to overflow and fill with noises the +whole vast cup of the horizon; and still, all round its edge, jets of +steam and the impatient cries of machinery showed it was eating out into +the Prairie like a smothered fire.</p> + +<p>The other picture was a silhouette of the city's flank, mysterious as a +line of unexplored cliffs, under a sky crimson—barred from the zenith +to the ground, where it lay, pale emerald behind the uneven ramparts. As +our train halted in the last of the dusk, and the rails glowed dull red, +I caught the deep surge of it, and seven miles across the purple levels +saw the low, restless aurora of its lights. It is rather an awesome +thing to listen to a vanguard of civilisation talking to itself in the +night in the same tone as a thousand-year-old city.</p> + +<p>All the country hereabouts is riddled with railways for business and +pleasure undreamed of fifteen years ago, and it was a long time before +we reached the clear prairie of air and space and open land. The air is +different from any air that ever blew; the space is ampler than most +spaces, because it runs back to the unhampered Pole, and the open land +keeps the secret of its magic as closely as the sea or the desert.</p> + +<p>People here do not stumble against each other around corners, but see +largely and tranquilly from a long way off what they desire, or wish to +avoid, and they shape their path accordingly across the waves, and +troughs, and tongues, and dips and fans of the land.</p> + +<p>When mere space and the stoop of the high sky begin to overwhelm, earth +provides little ponds and lakes, lying in soft-flanked hollows, where +people can step down out of the floods of air, and delight themselves +with small and known distances. Most of the women I saw about the houses +were down in the hollows, and most of the men were on the crests and the +flats. Once, while we halted a woman drove straight down at us from the +sky-line, along a golden path between black ploughed lands. When the +horse, who managed affairs, stopped at the cars, she nodded +mysteriously, and showed us a very small baby in the hollow of her arm. +Doubtless she was some exiled Queen flying North to found a dynasty and +establish a country. The Prairie makes everything wonderful.</p> + +<p>They were threshing the wheat on both sides or the track as far as the +eye could see. The smoke of the machines went up in orderly perspective +alongside the mounds of chaff—thus: a machine, a house, a mound of +chaff, a stretch of wheat in stocks—and then repeat the pattern over +the next few degrees of longitude. We ran through strings of nearly +touching little towns, where I remembered an occasional shack; and +through big towns once represented by a name-board, a siding, and two +troopers of the North-West Police. In those days men proved that Wheat +would not grow north of some fool's line, or other, or, if it did, that +no one would grow it. And now the Wheat was marching with us as far as +the eye could reach; the railways were out, two, three hundred miles +north, peopling a new wheat country; and north of that again the Grand +Trunk was laying down a suburban extension of a few thousand miles +across the Continent, with branches perhaps to Dawson City, certainly to +Hudson Bay.</p> + +<p>'Come north and look!' cried the Afrites of the Railway. 'You're only on +the fringe of it here.' I preferred to keep the old road, and to gape at +miracles accomplished since my day. The old, false-fronted, +hollow-stomached Western hotels were gone; their places filled by +five-storey brick or stone ones, with Post Offices to match. +Occasionally some overlooked fragment of the past still cleaved to a +town, and marked it for an old acquaintance, but often one had to get a +mile away and look back on a place—as one holds a palimpsest up against +the light—to identify the long overlaid lines of the beginnings. Each +town supplied the big farming country behind it, and each town school +carried the Union Jack on a flagstaff in its playground. So far as one +could understand, the scholars are taught neither to hate, nor despise, +nor beg from, their own country.</p> + +<p>I whispered to a man that I was a little tired of a three days' tyranny +of Wheat, besides being shocked at farmers who used clean bright straw +for fuel, and made bonfires of their chaff-hills. 'You're 'way behind +the times,' said he. 'There's fruit and dairying and any quantity of +mixed farming going forward all around—let alone irrigation further +West. Wheat's not our only king by a long sight. Wait till you strike +such and such a place.' It was there I met a prophet and a preacher in +the shape of a Commissioner of the Local Board of Trade (all towns have +them), who firmly showed me the vegetables which his district produced. +They <i>were</i> vegetables too—all neatly staged in a little kiosk near the +station.</p> + +<p>I think the pious Thomas Tusser would have loved that man. 'Providence,' +said he, shedding pamphlets at every gesture, 'did not intend +everlasting Wheat in this section. No, sir! Our business is to keep +ahead of Providence—to meet her with mixed farming. Are you interested +in mixed farming? Psha! Too bad you missed our fruit and vegetable show. +It draws people together, mixed farming does. I don't say Wheat is +narrowing to the outlook, but I claim there's more sociability and money +in mixed farming. We've been hypnotised by Wheat and Cattle. Now—the +cars won't start yet awhile—I'll just tell you my ideas.'</p> + +<p>For fifteen glorious minutes he gave me condensed essence of mixed +farming, with excursions into sugar-beet (did you know they are making +sugar in Alberta?), and he talked of farmyard muck, our dark mother of +all things, with proper devotion.</p> + +<p>'What we want now,' he cried in farewell, 'is men—more men. Yes, and +women.'</p> + +<p>They need women sorely for domestic help, to meet the mad rush of work +at harvest time—maids who will help in house, dairy, and chicken-run +till they are married.</p> + +<p>A steady tide sets that way already; one contented settler recruiting +others from England; but if a tenth of that energy wasted on 'social +reform' could be diverted to decently thought out and supervised +emigration work ('Labour' does not yet object to people working on the +land) we might do something worth talking about. The races which work +and do not form Committees are going into the country at least as fast +as ours. It makes one jealous and afraid to watch aliens taking, and +taking honestly, so much of this treasure of good fortune and sane +living.</p> + +<p>There was a town down the road which I had first heard discussed nigh +twenty years ago by a broken-down prospector in a box-car. 'Young +feller,' said he, after he had made a professional prophecy,' you'll +hear of that town if you live. She's born lucky.'</p> + +<p>I saw the town later—it was a siding by a trestle bridge where Indians +sold beadwork—and as years passed I gathered that the old tramp's +prophecy had come true, and that Luck of some kind had struck the little +town by the big river. So, this trip, I stopped to make sure. It was a +beautiful town of six thousand people, and a railway junction, beside a +high-girdered iron bridge; there was a public garden with trees at the +station. A company of joyous men and women, whom that air and that +light, and their own goodwill, made our brothers and sisters, came along +in motors, and gave us such a day as never was.</p> + +<p>'What about the Luck?' I asked.</p> + +<p>'Heavens!' said one. 'Haven't you heard about our natural gas—the +greatest natural gas in the world? Oh, come and see!'</p> + +<p>I was whirled off to a roundhouse full of engines and machinery-shops, +worked by natural gas which comes out of the earth, smelling slightly of +fried onions, at a pressure of six hundred pounds, and by valves and +taps is reduced to four pounds. There was Luck enough to make a +metropolis. Imagine a city's heating and light—to say nothing of +power—laid on at no greater expense than that of piping!</p> + +<p>'Are there any limits to the possibilities of it?' I demanded.</p> + +<p>'Who knows? We're only at the beginning. We'll show you a brick-making +plant, out on the prairie, run by gas. But just now we want to show you +one of our pet farms.'</p> + +<p>Away swooped the motors, like swallows, over roads any width you please, +and up on to what looked like the High Veldt itself. A Major of the +Mounted Police, who had done a year at the (Boer) war, told us how the +ostrich-farm fencing and the little meercats sitting up and racing about +South Africa had made him homesick for the sight of the gophers by the +wayside, and the endless panels of wire fencing along which we rushed. +(The Prairie has nothing to learn from the Veldt about fencing, or +tricky gates.)</p> + +<p>'After all,' said the Major, 'there's no country to touch this. I've had +thirty years of it—from one end to the other.'</p> + +<p>Then they pointed out all the quarters of the horizon—say, fifty miles +wherever you turned—and gave them names.</p> + +<p>The show farmer had taken his folk to church, but we friendly slipped +through his gates and reached the silent, spick-and-span house, with its +trim barn, and a vast mound of copper-coloured wheat, piled in the sun +between two mounds of golden chaff. Every one thumbed a sample of it and +passed judgment—it must have been worth a few hundred golden sovereigns +as it lay, out on the veldt—and we sat around, on the farm machinery, +and, in the hush that a shut-up house always imposes, we seemed to hear +the lavish earth getting ready for new harvests. There was no true wind, +but a push, as it were, of the whole crystal atmosphere.</p> + +<p>'Now for the brickfield!' they cried. It was many miles off. The road +fed by a never-to-be-forgotten drop, to a river broad as the Orange at +Norval's Pont, rustling between mud hills. An old Scotchman, in the very +likeness of Charon, with big hip boots, controlled a pontoon, which +sagged back and forth by current on a wire rope. The reckless motors +bumped on to this ferry through a foot of water, and Charon, who never +relaxed, bore us statelily across the dark, broad river to the further +bank, where we all turned to look at the lucky little town, and discuss +its possibilities.</p> + +<p>'I think you can see it best from here,' said one.</p> + +<p>'No, from here,' said another, and their voices softened on the very +name of it.</p> + +<p>Then for an hour we raced over true prairie, great yellow-green plains +crossed by old buffalo trails, which do not improve motor springs, till +a single chimney broke the horizon like a mast at sea; and thereby were +more light-hearted men and women, a shed and a tent or two for workmen, +the ribs and frames of the brick-making mechanism, a fifteen foot square +shaft sunk, sixty foot down to the clay, and, stark and black, the pipe +of a natural-gas well. The rest was Prairie—the mere curve of the +earth—with little grey birds calling.</p> + +<p>I thought it could not have been simpler, more audacious or more +impressive, till I saw some women in pretty frocks go up and peer at the +hissing gas-valves.</p> + +<p>'We fancied that it might amuse you,' said all those merry people, and +between laughter and digressions they talked over projects for building, +first their own, and next other cities, in brick of all sorts; giving +figures of output and expenses of plant that made one gasp. To the eye +the affair was no more than a novel or delicious picnic. What it +actually meant was a committee to change the material of civilisation +for a hundred miles around. I felt as though I were assisting at the +planning of Nineveh; and whatever of good comes to the little town that +was born lucky I shall always claim a share.</p> + +<p>But there is no space to tell how we fed, with a prairie appetite, in +the men's quarters, on a meal prepared by an artist; how we raced home +at speeds no child could ever hear of, and no grown-up should attempt; +how the motors squattered at the ford, and took pot-shots at the pontoon +till even Charon smiled; how great horses hauled the motors up the +gravelly bank into the town; how there we met people in their Sunday +best, walking and driving, and pulled ourselves together, and looked +virtuous; and how the merry company suddenly and quietly evanished +because they thought that their guests might be tired. I can give you no +notion of the pure, irresponsible frolic of it—of the almost +affectionate kindness, the gay and inventive hospitality that so +delicately controlled the whole affair—any more than I can describe a +certain quiet half-hour in the dusk just before we left, when the +company gathered to say good-bye, while young couples walked in the +street, and the glare of the never-extinguished natural-gas lamps +coloured the leaves of the trees a stage green.</p> + +<p>It was a woman, speaking out of the shadow, who said, what we all felt, +'You see, we just love our town,'</p> + +<p>'So do we,' I said, and it slid behind us.</p> + + +<a name="chap16" id="chap16"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>MOUNTAINS AND THE PACIFIC</h2> + +<p>The Prairie proper ends at Calgary, among the cattle-ranches, mills, +breweries, and three million acre irrigation works. The river that +floats timber to the town from the mountains does not slide nor rustle +like Prairie rivers, but brawls across bars of blue pebbles, and a +greenish tinge in its water hints of the snows.</p> + +<p>What I saw of Calgary was crowded into one lively half-hour (motors were +invented to run about new cities). What I heard I picked up, oddly +enough, weeks later, from a young Dane in the North Sea. He was +qualmish, but his Saga of triumph upheld him.</p> + +<p>'Three years ago I come to Canada by steerage—third class. <i>And</i> I have +the language to learn. Look at me! I have now my own dairy business, in +Calgary, and—look at me!—my own half section, that is, three hundred +and twenty acres. All my land which is mine! And now I come home, first +class, for Christmas here in Denmark, and I shall take out back with me, +some friends of mine which are farmers, to farm on those irrigated lands +near by Calgary. Oh, I tell you there is nothing wrong with Canada for a +man which works.'</p> + +<p>'And will your friends go?' I inquired.</p> + +<p>'You bet they will. It is all arranged already. I bet they get ready to +go now already; and in three years they will come back for Christmas +here in Denmark, first class like me.'</p> + +<p>'Then you think Calgary is going ahead?'</p> + +<p>'You bet! We are only at the beginning of things. Look at me! Chickens? +I raise chickens also in Calgary,' etc., etc.</p> + +<p>After all this pageant of unrelieved material prosperity, it was a rest +to get to the stillness of the big foothills, though they, too, had been +in-spanned for the work of civilisation. The timber off their sides was +ducking and pitch-poling down their swift streams, to be sawn into +house-stuff for all the world. The woodwork of a purely English villa +may come from as many Imperial sources as its owner's income.</p> + +<p>The train crept, whistling to keep its heart up, through the winding +gateways of the hills, till it presented itself, very humbly, before the +true mountains, the not so Little Brothers to the Himalayas. Mountains +of the pine-cloaked, snow-capped breed are unchristian things.</p> + +<p>Men mine into the flanks of some of them, and trust to modern science to +pull them through. Not long ago, a mountain kneeled on a little mining +village as an angry elephant kneels; but it did not get up again, and +the half of that camp was no more seen on earth. The other half still +stands—uninhabited. The 'heathen in his blindness' would have made +arrangements with the Genius of the Place before he ever drove a pick +there. 'As a learned scholar of a little-known university once observed +to an engineer officer on the Himalaya-Tibet Road—'You white men gain +nothing by not noticing what you cannot see. You fall off the road, or +the road falls on you, and you die, and you think it all an accident. +How much wiser it was when we were allowed to sacrifice a man +officially, sir, before making bridges or other public works. Then the +local gods were officially recognised, sir, and did not give any more +trouble, and the local workmen, sir, were much pleased with these +precautions.'</p> + +<p>There are many local gods on the road through the Rockies: old bald +mountains that have parted with every shred of verdure and stand wrapped +in sheets of wrinkled silver rock, over which the sight travels slowly +as in delirium; mad, horned mountains, wreathed with dancing mists; +low-browed and bent-shouldered faquirs of the wayside, sitting in +meditation beneath a burden of glacier-ice that thickens every year; and +mountains of fair aspect on one side, but on the other seamed with +hollow sunless clefts, where last year's snow is blackened with this +year's dirt and smoke of forest-fires. The drip from it seeps away +through slopes of unstable gravel and dirt, till, at the appointed +season, the whole half-mile of undermined talus slips and roars into the +horrified valley.</p> + + +<p>The railway winds in and out among them with little inexplicable +deviations and side-twists, much as a buck walks through a forest-glade, +sidling and crossing uneasily in what appears to be a<a name="p187"></a> plain way. Only +when the track has rounded another shoulder or two, a backward and +upward glance at some menacing slope shows why the train did not take +the easier-looking road on the other side of the gorge.</p> + +<p>From time to time the mountains lean apart, and nurse between them some +golden valley of slow streams, fat pastures, and park-like uplands, with +a little town, and cow bells tinkling among berry bushes; and children +who have never seen the sun rise or set, shouting at the trains; and +real gardens round the houses.</p> + +<p>At Calgary it was a frost, and the dahlias were dead. A day later +nasturtiums bloomed untouched beside the station platforms, and the air +was heavy and liquid with the breath of the Pacific. One felt the spirit +of the land change with the changing outline of the hills till, on the +lower levels by the Fraser, it seemed that even the Sussex Downs must be +nearer at heart to the Prairie than British Columbia. The Prairie people +notice the difference, and the Hill people, unwisely, I think, insist on +it. Perhaps the magic may lie in the scent of strange evergreens and +mosses not known outside the ranges: or it may strike from wall to wall +of timeless rifts and gorges, but it seemed to me to draw out of the +great sea that washes further Asia—the Asia of allied mountains, mines, +and forests.</p> + +<p>We rested one day high up in the Rockies, to visit a lake carved out of +pure jade, whose property is to colour every reflection on its bosom to +its own tint. A belt of brown dead timber on a<a name="p188"></a> gravel scar, showed, +upside down, like sombre cypresses rising from green turf and the +reflected snows were pale green. In summer many tourists go there, but +we saw nothing except the wonderworking lake lying mute in its circle of +forest, where red and orange lichens grew among grey and blue moss, and +we heard nothing except the noise of its outfall hurrying through a jam +of bone-white logs. The thing might have belonged to Tibet or some +unexplored valley behind Kin-chinjunga. It had no concern with the West.</p> + +<p>As we drove along the narrow hill-road a piebald pack-pony with a +china-blue eye came round a bend, followed by two women, black-haired, +bare-headed, wearing beadwork squaw-jackets, and riding straddle. A +string of pack-ponies trotted through the pines behind them.</p> + +<p>'Indians on the move?' said I. 'How characteristic!'</p> + +<p>As the women jolted by, one of them very slightly turned her eyes, and +they were, past any doubt, the comprehending equal eyes of the civilised +white woman which moved in that berry-brown face.</p> + +<p>'Yes,' said our driver, when the cavalcade had navigated the next +curve,' that'll be Mrs. So-and-So and Miss So-and-So. They mostly camp +hereabout for three months every year. I reckon they're coming in to the +railroad before the snow falls.'</p> + +<p>'And whereabout do they go?' I asked.</p> + +<p>'Oh, all about anywheres. If you mean where they come from just +now—that's the trail yonder.'</p> + +<p>He pointed to a hair-crack across the face of a mountain, and I took +his word for it that it was a safe pony-trail. The same evening, at an +hotel of all the luxuries, a slight woman in a very pretty evening frock +was turning over photographs, and the eyes beneath the strictly-arranged +hair were the eyes of the woman in the beadwork jacket who had quirted +the piebald pack-pony past our buggy.</p> + +<p>Praised be Allah for the diversity of His creatures! But do you know any +other country where two women could go out for a three months' trek and +shoot in perfect comfort and safety?</p> + +<p>These mountains are only ten days from London, and people more and more +use them for pleasure-grounds. Other and most unthought-of persons buy +little fruit-farms in British Columbia as an excuse for a yearly visit +to the beautiful land, and they tempt yet more people from England. This +is apart from the regular tide of emigration, and serves to make the +land known. If you asked a State-owned railway to gamble on the chance +of drawing tourists, the Commissioner of Railways would prove to you +that the experiment could never succeed, and that it was wrong to risk +the taxpayers' money in erecting first-class hotels. Yet South Africa +could, even now, be made a tourists' place—if only the railroads and +steamship lines had faith.</p> + +<p>On thinking things over I suspect I was not intended to appreciate the +merits of British Columbia too highly. Maybe I misjudged; maybe she was +purposely misrepresented; but I seemed to hear more about 'problems' +and 'crises' and 'situations' in her borders than anywhere else. So far +as eye or ear could gather, the one urgent problem was to find enough +men and women to do the work in hand.</p> + +<p>Lumber, coal, minerals, fisheries, fit soil for fruit, dairy, and +poultry farms are all there in a superb climate. The natural beauty of +earth and sky match these lavish gifts; to which are added thousands of +miles of safe and sheltered waterways for coastal trade; deep harbours +that need no dredge; the ground-works of immense and ice-free ports—all +the title-deeds to half the trade of Asia. For the people's pleasure and +good disport salmon, trout, quail, and pheasant play in front of and +through the suburbs of her capitals. A little axe-work and +road-metalling gives a city one of the loveliest water-girt parks that +we have outside the tropics. Another town is presented with a hundred +islands, knolls, wooded coves, stretches of beach, and dingles, laid +down as expressly for camp-life, picnics, and boating parties, beneath +skies never too hot and rarely too cold. If they care to lift up their +eyes from their almost subtropical gardens they can behold snowy peaks +across blue bays, which must be good for the soul. Though they face a +sea out of which any portent may arise, they are not forced to protect +or even to police its waters. They are as ignorant of drouth, murrain, +pestilence locusts, and blight, as they are of the true meaning of want +and fear.</p> + +<p>Such a land is good for an energetic man. It is also not so bad for the +loafer. I was, as I have told you, instructed on its, drawbacks. I was +to understand that there was no certainty in any employment; and that a +man who earned immense wages for six months of the year would have to be +kept by the community if he fell out of work for the other six. I was +not to be deceived by golden pictures set before me by interested +parties (that is to say, by almost every one I met), and I was to give +due weight to the difficulties and discouragements that beset the +intending immigrant. Were I an intending immigrant I would risk a good +deal of discomfort to get on to the land in British Columbia; and were I +rich, with no attachments outside England, I would swiftly buy me a farm +or a house in that country for the mere joy of it.</p> + +<p>I forgot those doleful and unhumorous conspirators among people who +fervently believed in the place; but afterwards the memory left a bad +taste in my mouth. Cities, like women, cannot be too careful what sort +of men they allow to talk about them.</p> + +<p>Time had changed Vancouver literally out of all knowledge. From the +station to the suburbs, and back to the wharves, every step was strange, +and where I remembered open spaces and still untouched timber, the +tramcars were fleeting people out to a lacrosse game. Vancouver is an +aged city, for only a few days previous to my arrival the Vancouver +Baby—<i>i.e.</i> the first child born in Vancouver—had been married.</p> + +<p>A steamer—once familiar in Table Bay—had landed a few hundred Sikhs +and Punjabi Jats—to each man his bundle—and the little groups walked +uneasy alone, keeping, for many of them had been soldiers, to the +military step. Yes, they said they had come to this country to get work. +News had reached their villages that work at great wages was to be had +in this country. Their brethren who had gone before had sent them the +news. Yes, and sometimes the money for the passage out. The money would +be paid back from the so-great wages to come. With interest? Assuredly +with interest.. Did men lend money for nothing in <i>any</i> country? They +were waiting for their brethren to come and show them where to eat, and +later, how to work. Meanwhile this was a new country. How could they say +anything about it? No, it was not like Gurgaon or Shahpur or Jullundur. +The Sickness (plague) had come to all these places. It had come into the +Punjab by every road, and many—many—many had died. The crops, too, had +failed in some districts. Hearing the news about these so-great wages +they had taken ship for the belly's sake—for the money's sake—for the +children's sake.</p> + +<p>'Would they go back again?'</p> + +<p>They grinned as they nudged each other. The Sahib had not quite +understood. They had come over for the sake of the money—the rupees, +no, the dollars. The Punjab was their home where their villages lay, +where their people were waiting. Without doubt—without doubt—they +would go back. Then came the brethren already working in the +mills—cosmopolitans dressed in ready-made clothes, and smoking +cigarettes.</p> + +<p>'This way, O you people,' they cried. The bundles were reshouldered and +the turbaned knots melted away. The last words I caught were true Sikh +talk: 'But what about the money, O my brother?'</p> + +<p>Some Punjabis have found out that money can be too dearly bought.</p> + +<p>There was a Sikh in a sawmill, had been driver in a mountain battery at +home. Himself he was from Amritsar. (Oh, pleasant as cold water in a +thirsty land is the sound of a familiar name in a fair country!)</p> + +<p>'But you had your pension. Why did you come here?'</p> + +<p>'Heaven-born, because my sense was little. And there was also the +Sickness at Amritsar.'</p> + +<p>(The historian a hundred years hence will be able to write a book on +economic changes brought about by pestilence. There is a very +interesting study somewhere of the social and commercial effects of the +Black Death in England.)</p> + +<p>On a wharf, waiting for a steamer, some thirty Sikhs, many of them +wearing their old uniforms (which should not be allowed) were talking at +the tops of their voices, so that the shed rang like an Indian railway +station. A suggestion that if they spoke lower life would be easier was +instantly adopted. Then a senior officer with a British India medal +asked hopefully: 'Has the Sahib any orders where we are to go?'</p> + +<p>Alas he had none—nothing but goodwill and greetings for the sons of +the Khalsa, and they tramped off in fours.</p> + +<p>It is said that when the little riot broke out in Vancouver these +'heathen' were invited by other Asiatics to join in defending themselves +against the white man. They refused on the ground that they were +subjects of the King. I wonder what tales they sent back to their +villages, and where, and how fully, every detail of the affair was +talked over. White men forget that no part of the Empire can live or die +to itself.</p> + +<p>Here is a rather comic illustration of this on the material side. The +wonderful waters between Vancouver and Victoria are full of whales, +leaping and rejoicing in the strong blue all about the steamer. There +is, therefore, a whalery on an island near by, and I had the luck to +travel with one of the shareholders.</p> + +<p>'Whales are beautiful beasts,' he said affectionately. 'We've a contract +with a Scotch firm for every barrel of oil we can deliver for years +ahead. It's reckoned the best for harness-dressing.'</p> + +<p>He went on to tell me how a swift ship goes hunting whales with a +bomb-gun and explodes shells into their insides so that they perish at +once.</p> + +<p>'All the old harpoon and boat business would take till the cows come +home. We kill 'em right off.'</p> + +<p>'And how d'you strip 'em?'</p> + +<p>It seemed that the expeditious ship carried also a large air-pump, and +pumped up the carcass to float roundly till she could attend to it. At +the end of her day's kill she would return, towing sometimes as many as +four inflated whales to the whalery, which is a factory full of modern +appliances. The whales are hauled up inclined planes like logs to a +sawmill, and as much of them as will not make oil for the Scotch +leather-dresser, or cannot be dried for the Japanese market, is +converted into potent manure.</p> + +<p>'No manure can touch ours,' said the shareholder. 'It's so rich in bone, +d'you see. The only thing that has beat us up to date is their hides; +but we've fixed up a patent process now for turning 'em into floorcloth. +Yes, they're beautiful beasts. That fellow,' he pointed to a black hump +in a wreath of spray, 'would cut up a miracle.'</p> + +<p>'If you go on like this you won't have any whales left,' I said.</p> + +<p>'That is so. But the concern pays thirty per cent, and—a few years +back, no one believed in it.'</p> + +<p>I forgave him everything for the last sentence.</p> + + +<a name="chap17" id="chap17"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>A CONCLUSION</h2> + +<p>Canada possesses two pillars of Strength and Beauty in Quebec and +Victoria. The former ranks by herself among those Mother-cities of whom +none can say 'This reminds me.' To realise Victoria you must take all +that the eye admires most in Bournemouth, Torquay, the Isle of Wight, +the Happy Valley at Hong-Kong, the Doon, Sorrento, and Camps Bay; add +reminiscences of the Thousand Islands, and arrange the whole round the +Bay of Naples, with some Himalayas for the background.</p> + +<p>Real estate agents recommend it as a little piece of England—the island +on which it stands is about the size of Great Britain—but no England is +set in any such seas or so fully charged with the mystery of the larger +ocean beyond. The high, still twilights along the beaches are out of the +old East just under the curve of the world, and even in October the sun +rises warm from the first. Earth, sky, and water wait outside every +man's door to drag him out to play if he looks up from his work; and, +though some other cities in the Dominion do not quite understand this +immoral mood of Nature, men who have made their money in them go off to +Victoria, and with the zeal of converts preach and preserve its +beauties.</p> + +<p>We went to look at a marine junk-store which had once been Esquimalt, a +station of the British Navy. It was reached through winding roads, +lovelier than English lanes, along watersides and parkways any one of +which would have made the fortune of a town.</p> + +<p>'Most cities,' a man said, suddenly, 'lay out their roads at right +angles. We do in the business quarters. What d'you think?'</p> + +<p>'I fancy some of those big cities will have to spend millions on curved +roads some day for the sake of a change,' I said. 'You've got what no +money can buy.'</p> + +<p>'That's what the men tell us who come to live in Victoria. And they've +had experience.'</p> + +<p>It is pleasant to think of the Western millionaire, hot from some +gridiron of rectangular civilisation, confirming good Victorians in the +policy of changing vistas and restful curves.</p> + +<p>There is a view, when the morning mists peel off the harbour where the +steamers tie up, or the Houses of Parliament on one hand, and a huge +hotel on the other, which as an example of cunningly-fitted-in +water-fronts and facades is worth a very long journey. The hotel was +just being finished. The ladies' drawing-room, perhaps a hundred feet by +forty, carried an arched and superbly enriched plaster ceiling of knops +and arabesques and interlacings, which somehow seemed familiar.</p> + +<p>'We saw a photo of it in <i>Country Life</i> ,' the contractor explained. 'It +seemed just what the room needed, so one of our plasterers, a +Frenchman—that's him—took and copied it. It comes in all right, +doesn't it?'</p> + +<p>About the time the noble original was put up in England Drake might have +been sailing somewhere off this very coast. So, you see, Victoria +lawfully holds the copyright.</p> + +<p>I tried honestly to render something of the colour, the gaiety, and the +graciousness of the town and the island, but only found myself piling up +unbelievable adjectives, and so let it go with a hundred other wonders +and repented that I had wasted my time and yours on the anxious-eyed +gentlemen who talked of 'drawbacks.' A verse cut out of a newspaper +seems to sum up their attitude:</p> + +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">As the Land of Little Leisure Is the place where things are done,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">So the Land of Scanty Pleasure Is the place for lots of fun. In the</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Land of Plenty Trouble People laugh as people should, But there's</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">some one always kicking In the Land of Heap Too Good!</span><br /> + +<p>At every step of my journey people assured me that I had seen nothing of +Canada. Silent mining men from the North; fruit-farmers from the +Okanagan Valley; foremen of railway gangs, not so long from English +public schools; the oldest inhabitant of the town of Villeneuve, aged +twenty-eight; certain English who lived on the prairie and contrived to +get fun and good fellowship as well as money; the single-minded +wheat-growers and cattle-men; election agents; police troopers +expansive in the dusk of wayside halts; officials dependent on the +popular will, who talked as delicately as they walked; and queer souls +who did not speak English, and said so loudly in the dining-car—each, +in his or her own way, gave me to understand this. My excursion bore the +same relation to their country as a 'bus-ride down the Strand bears to +London, so I knew how they felt.</p> + +<p>The excuse is that our own flesh and blood are more interesting than +anybody else, and I held by birth the same right in them and their lives +as they held in any other part of the Empire. Because they had become a +people within the Empire my right was admitted and no word spoken; which +would not have been the case a few years ago. One may mistake many signs +on the road, but there is no mistaking the spirit of sane and realised +nationality, which fills the land from end to end precisely as the +joyous hum of a big dynamo well settled to its load makes a background +to all the other shop noises. For many reasons that Spirit came late, +but since it has come after the day of little things, doubts, and open +or veiled contempts, there is less danger that it will go astray among +the boundless wealth and luxury that await it. The people, the schools, +the churches, the Press in its degree, and, above all, the women, +understand without manifestoes that their land must now as always abide +under the Law in deed and in word and in thought. This is their +caste-mark, the ark of their covenant, their reason for being what they +are. In the big cities, with their village-like lists of police court +offences; in the wide-open little Western towns where the present is as +free as the lives and the future as safe as the property of their +inhabitants; in the coast cities galled and humiliated at their one +night's riot ('It's not our habit, Sir! It's not our habit!'); up among +the mountains where the officers of the law track and carefully bring +into justice the astounded malefactor; and behind the orderly prairies +to the barren grounds, as far as a single white man can walk, the +relentless spirit of the breed follows up, and oversees, and controls. +It does not much express itself in words, but sometimes, in intimate +discussion, one is privileged to catch a glimpse of the inner fires. +They burn hotly.</p> + +<p>'<i>We</i> do not mean to be de-civilised,' said the first man with whom I +talked about it.</p> + +<p>That was the answer throughout—the keynote and the explanation.</p> + +<p>Otherwise the Canadians are as human as the rest of us to evade or deny +a plain issue. The duty of developing their country is always present, +but when it comes to taking thought, better thought, for her defence, +they refuge behind loose words and childish anticipations of +miracles—quite in the best Imperial manner. All admit that Canada is +wealthy; few that she is weak; still fewer that, unsupported, she would +very soon cease to exist as a nation. The anxious inquirer is told that +she does her duty towards England by developing her resources; that +wages are so high a paid army is out of the question; that she is +really maturing splendid defence schemes, but must not be hurried or +dictated to; that a little wise diplomacy is all that will ever be +needed in this so civilised era; that when the evil day comes something +will happen (it certainly will), the whole concluding, very often, with +a fervent essay on the immorality of war, all about as much to the point +as carrying a dove through the streets to allay pestilence.</p> + +<p>The question before Canada is not what she thinks or pays, but what an +enemy may think it necessary to make her pay. If she continues wealthy +and remains weak she will surely be attacked under one pretext or +another. Then she will go under, and her spirit will return to the dust +with her flag as it slides down the halliards.</p> + +<p>'That is absurd,' is always the quick answer. 'In her own interests +England could never permit it. What you speak of presupposes the fall of +England.'</p> + +<p>Not necessarily. Nothing worse than a stumble by the way; but when +England stumbles the Empire shakes. Canada's weakness is lack of men. +England's weakness is an excess of voters who propose to live at the +expense of the State. These loudly resent that any money should be +diverted from themselves; and since money is spent on fleets and armies +to protect the Empire while it is consolidating, they argue that if the +Empire ceased to exist armaments would cease too, and the money so saved +could be spent on their creature comforts. They pride themselves on +being an avowed and organised enemy of the Empire which, as others see +it, waits only to give them health, prosperity, and power beyond +anything their votes could win them in England. But their leaders need +their votes in England, as they need their outcries and discomforts to +help them in their municipal and Parliamentary careers. No engineer +lowers steam in his own boilers.</p> + +<p>So they are told little except evil of the great heritage outside, and +are kept compounded in cities under promise of free rations and +amusements. If the Empire were threatened they would not, in their own +interests, urge England to spend men and money on it. Consequently it +might be well if the nations within the Empire were strong enough to +endure a little battering unaided at the first outset—till such time, +that is, as England were permitted to move to their help.</p> + +<p>For this end an influx of good men is needed more urgently every year +during which peace holds—men loyal, clean, and experienced in +citizenship, with women not ignorant of sacrifice.</p> + +<p>Here the gentlemen who propose to be kept by their neighbours are our +helpful allies. They have succeeded in making uneasy the class +immediately above them, which is the English working class, as yet +undebauched by the temptation of State-aided idleness or +State-guaranteed irresponsibility. England has millions of such silent +careful folk accustomed, even yet, to provide for their own offspring, +to bring them up in a resolute fear of God, and to desire no more than +the reward of their own labours. A few years ago this class would not +have cared to shift; now they feel the general disquiet. They live close +to it. Tea-and-sugar borrowing friends have told them jocularly, or with +threats, of a good time coming when things will go hard with the +uncheerful giver. The prospect appeals neither to their reason nor to +their Savings Bank books. They hear—they do not need to read—the +speeches delivered in their streets on a Sunday morning. It is one of +their pre-occupations to send their children to Sunday School by +roundabout roads, lest they should pick up abominable blasphemies. When +the tills of the little shops are raided, or when the family +ne'er-do-well levies on his women with more than usual brutality, they +know, because they suffer, what principles are being put into practice. +If these people could quietly be shown a quiet way out of it all, very +many of them would call in their savings (they are richer than they +look), and slip quietly away. In the English country, as well as in the +towns, there is a feeling—not yet panic, but the dull edge of it—that +the future will be none too rosy for such as are working, or are in the +habit of working. This is all to our advantage.</p> + +<p>Canada can best serve her own interests and those of the Empire by +systematically exploiting this new recruiting-ground. Now that South +Africa, with the exception of Rhodesia, has been paralysed, and +Australia has not yet learned the things which belong to her peace, +Canada has the chance of the century to attract good men and capital +into the Dominion. But the men are much more important than the money. +They may not at first be as clever with the hoe as the Bessarabian or +the Bokhariot, or whatever the fashionable breed is, but they have +qualities of pluck, good humour, and a certain well-wearing virtue which +are not altogether bad. They will not hold aloof from the life of the +land, nor pray in unknown tongues to Byzantine saints; while the very +tenacity and caution which made them cleave to England this long, help +them to root deeply elsewhere. They are more likely to bring their women +than other classes, and those women will make sacred and individual +homes. A little-regarded Crown Colony has a proverb that no district can +be called settled till there are pots of musk in the house-windows—sure +sign that an English family has come to stay. It is not certain how much +of the present steamer-dumped foreign population has any such idea. We +have seen a financial panic in one country send whole army corps of +aliens kiting back to the lands whose allegiance they forswore. What +would they or their likes do in time of real stress, since no instinct +in their bodies or their souls would call them to stand by till the +storm were over?</p> + +<p>Surely the conclusion of the whole matter throughout the whole Empire +must be men and women of our own stock, habits, language, and hopes +brought in by every possible means under a well-settled policy? Time +will not be allowed us to multiply to unquestionable peace, but by +drawing upon England we can swiftly transfuse what we need of her +strength into her veins, and by that operation bleed her into health and +sanity Meantime, the only serious enemy to the Empire, within or +without, is that very Democracy which depends on the Empire for its +proper comforts, and in whose behalf these things are urged.</p> +<br /> + +<a name="part3" id="part3"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>EGYPT OF THE MAGICIANS</h2> +<h3>1913</h3> + +<p> +<a href="#chap18">SEA TRAVEL.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap19">A RETURN TO THE EAST.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap20">A SERPENT OF OLD NILE.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap21">UP THE RIVER.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap22">DEAD KINGS.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap23">THE FACE OF THE DESERT.</a><br /> +<a href="#chap24">THE RIDDLE OF EMPIRE.</a></p> + +<p><i>And the magicians of Egypt did so with their enchantments</i> .—EXODUS +vii. 22.</p> + + +<a name="chap18" id="chap18"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>I</h2> +<h2>SEA TRAVEL</h2> + +<p>I had left Europe for no reason except to discover the Sun, and there +were rumours that he was to be found in Egypt.</p> + +<p>But I had not realised what more I should find there.</p> + +<p>A P. & O. boat carried us out of Marseilles. A serang of lascars, with +whistle, chain, shawl, and fluttering blue clothes, was at work on the +baggage-hatch. Somebody bungled at the winch. The serang called him a +name unlovely in itself but awakening delightful memories in the hearer.</p> + +<p>'O Serang, is that man a fool?'</p> + +<p>'Very foolish, sahib. He comes from Surat. He only comes for his food's +sake.'</p> + +<p>The serang grinned; the Surtee man grinned; the winch began again, and +the voices that called: 'Lower away! Stop her!' were as familiar as the +friendly whiff from the lascars' galley or the slap of bare feet along +the deck. But for the passage of a few impertinent years, I should have +gone without hesitation to share their rice. Serangs used to be very +kind to little white children below the age of caste. Most familiar of +all was the ship itself. It had slipped my memory, nor was there +anything in the rates charged to remind me, that single-screws still +lingered in the gilt-edged passenger trade.</p> + +<p>Some North Atlantic passengers accustomed to real ships made the +discovery, and were as pleased about it as American tourists at +Stratford-on-Avon.</p> + +<p>'Oh, come and see!' they cried. 'She has <i>one</i> screw—only one screw! +Hear her thump! And <i>have</i> you seen their old barn of a saloon? <i>And</i> the officers' library? It's open for two half-hours a day week-days and +one on Sundays. You pay a dollar and a quarter deposit on each book. We +wouldn't have missed this trip for anything. It's like sailing with +Columbus.'</p> + +<p>They wandered about—voluble, amazed, and happy, for they were getting +off at Port Said.</p> + +<p>I explored, too. From the rough-ironed table-linen, the thick +tooth-glasses for the drinks, the slummocky set-out of victuals at +meals, to the unaccommodating regulations in the curtainless cabin, +where they had not yet arrived at bunk-edge trays for morning tea, time +and progress had stood still with the P. & O. To be just, there were +electric-fan fittings in the cabins, but the fans were charged extra; +and there was a rumour, unverified, that one could eat on deck or in +one's cabin without a medical certificate from the doctor. All the rest +was under the old motto: '<i>Quis separabit</i> '—'This is quite separate +from other lines.'</p> + +<p>'After all,' said an Anglo-Indian, whom I was telling about civilised +ocean travel, 'they don't want you Egyptian trippers. They're sure of +<i>us</i> , because——' and he gave me many strong reasons connected with +leave, finance, the absence of competition, and the ownership of the +Bombay foreshore.</p> + +<p>'But it's absurd,' I insisted. 'The whole concern is out of date. +There's a notice on my deck forbidding smoking and the use of naked +lights, and there's a lascar messing about the hold-hatch outside my +cabin with a candle in a lantern.'</p> + +<p>Meantime, our one-screw tub thumped gingerly toward Port Said, because +we had no mails aboard, and the Mediterranean, exhausted after severe +February hysterics, lay out like oil.</p> + +<p>I had some talk with a Scotch quartermaster who complained that lascars +are not what they used to be, owing to their habit (but it has existed +since the beginning) of signing on as a clan or family—all sorts +together.</p> + +<p>The serang said that, for <i>his</i> part, he had noticed no difference in +twenty years. 'Men are always of many kinds, sahib. And that is because +God makes men this and that. Not all one pattern—not by any means all +one pattern.' He told me, too, that wages were rising, but the price of +ghee, rice, and curry-stuffs was up, too, which was bad for wives and +families at Porbandar. 'And that also is thus, and no talk makes it +otherwise.' After Suez he would have blossomed into thin clothes and +long talks, but the bitter spring chill nipped him, as the thought of +partings just accomplished and work just ahead chilled the Anglo-Indian +contingent. Little by little one came at the outlines of the old +stories—a sick wife left behind here, a boy there, a daughter at +school, a very small daughter trusted to friends or hirelings, certain +separation for so many years and no great hope or delight in the future. +It was not a nice India that the tales hinted at. Here is one that +explains a great deal:</p> + +<p>There was a Pathan, a Mohammedan, in a Hindu village, employed by the +village moneylender as a debt-collector, which is not a popular trade. +He lived alone among Hindus, and—so ran the charge in the lower +court—he wilfully broke the caste of a Hindu villager by forcing on him +forbidden Mussulman food, and when that pious villager would have taken +him before the headman to make reparation, the godless one drew his +Afghan knife and killed the headman, besides wounding a few others. The +evidence ran without flaw, as smoothly as well-arranged cases should, +and the Pathan was condemned to death for wilful murder. He appealed +and, by some arrangement or other, got leave to state his case +personally to the Court of Revision. 'Said, I believe, that he did not +much trust lawyers, but that if the sahibs would give him a hearing, as +man to man, he might have a run for his money.</p> + +<p>Out of the jail, then, he came, and, Pathan-like, not content with his +own good facts, must needs begin by some fairy-tale that he was a secret +agent of the government sent down to spy on that village. Then he warmed +to it. Yes, he <i>was</i> that money-lender's agent—a persuader of the +reluctant, if you like—working for a Hindu employer. Naturally, many +men owed him grudges. A lot of the evidence against him was quite true, +but the prosecution had twisted it abominably. About that knife, for +instance. True, he had a knife in his hand exactly as they had alleged. +But why? Because with that very knife he was cutting up and distributing +a roast sheep which he had given as a feast to the villagers. At that +feast, he sitting in amity with all his world, the village rose up at +the word of command, laid hands on him, and dragged him off to the +headman's house. How could he have broken <i>any</i> man's caste when they +were all eating his sheep? And in the courtyard of the headman's house +they surrounded him with heavy sticks and worked themselves into anger +against him, each man exciting his neighbour. He was a Pathan. He knew +what that sort of talk meant. A man cannot collect debts without making +enemies. So he warned them. Again and again he warned them, saying: +'Leave me alone. Do not lay hands on me.' But the trouble grew worse, +and he saw it was intended that he should be clubbed to death like a +jackal in a drain. Then he said, 'If blows are struck, I strike, and <i>I</i> strike to kill, because I am a Pathan,' But the blows were struck, heavy +ones. Therefore, with the very Afghan knife that had cut up the mutton, +he struck the headman. 'Had you meant to kill the headman?' 'Assuredly! +I am a Pathan. When I strike, I strike to kill. I had warned them again +and again. I think I got him in the liver. He died. And that is all +there is to it, sahibs. It was my life or theirs. They would have taken +mine over my freely given meats. <i>Now</i> , what'll you do with me?'</p> + +<p>In the long run, he got several years for culpable homicide.</p> + +<p>'But,' said I, when the tale had been told, 'whatever made the lower +court accept all that village evidence? It was too good on the face of +it,'</p> + +<p>'The lower court said it could not believe it possible that so many +respectable native gentle could have banded themselves together to tell +a lie.'</p> + +<p>'Oh! Had the lower court been long in the country?'</p> + +<p>'It was a native judge,' was the reply.</p> + +<p>If you think this over in all its bearings, you will see that the lower +court was absolutely sincere. Was not the lower court itself a product +of Western civilisation, and, as such, bound to play up—to pretend to +think along Western lines—translating each grade of Indian village +society into its English equivalent, and ruling as an English judge +would have ruled? Pathans and, incidentally, English officials must look +after themselves.</p> + +<p>There is a fell disease of this century called 'snobbery of the soul.' +Its germ has been virulently developed in modern cultures from the +uncomplex bacillus isolated sixty years ago by the late William +Makepeace Thackeray. Precisely as Major Ponto, with his plated dishes +and stable-boy masquerading as footman, lied to himself and his guests +so—but the <i>Book of Snobs</i> can only be brought up to date by him who +wrote it.</p> + +<p>Then, a man struck in from the Sudan—far and far to the south—with a +story of a discomposed judge and a much too collected prisoner.</p> + +<p>To the great bazaars of Omdurman, where all things are sold, came a +young man from the uttermost deserts of somewhere or other and heard a +gramophone. Life was of no value to him till he had bought the creature. +He took it back to his village, and at twilight set it going among his +ravished friends. His father, sheik of the village, came also, listened +to the loud shoutings without breath, the strong music lacking +musicians, and said, justly enough: 'This thing is a devil. You must not +bring devils into my village. Lock it up.'</p> + +<p>They waited until he had gone away and then began another tune. A second +time the sheik came, repeated the command, and added that if the singing +box was heard again, he would slay the buyer. But their curiosity and +joy defied even this, and for the third time (late at night) they +slipped in pin and record and let the djinn rave. So the sheik, with his +rifle, shot his son as he had promised, and the English judge before +whom he eventually came had all the trouble in the world to save that +earnest gray head from the gallows. Thus:</p> + +<p>'Now, old man, you must say guilty or not guilty.'</p> + +<p>'But I shot him. That is why I am here. I——'</p> + +<p>'Hush! It is a form of words which the law asks. <i>(Sotte voce</i> . Write +down that the old idiot doesn't understand.) Be still now.'</p> + +<p>'But I shot him. What else could I have done? He bought a devil in a +box, and——'</p> + +<p>'Quiet! That comes later. Leave talking.'</p> + +<p>'But I am sheik of the village. One must not bring devils into a +village. I <i>said</i> I would shoot him.'</p> + +<p>'This matter is in the hands of the law. <i>I</i> judge.'</p> + +<p>'What need? I shot him. Suppose that <i>your</i> son had brought a devil in a +box to <i>your</i> village——'</p> + +<p>They explained to him, at last, that under British rule fathers must +hand over devil-dealing children to be shot by the white men (the first +step, you see, on the downward path of State aid), and that he must go +to prison for several months for interfering with a government shoot.</p> + +<p>We are a great race. There was a pious young judge in Nigeria once, who +kept a condemned prisoner waiting very many minutes while he hunted +through the Hausa dictionary, word by word, for, +'May—God—have—mercy—on—your—soul.'</p> + +<p>And I heard another tale—about the Suez Canal this time—a hint of what +may happen some day at Panama. There was a tramp steamer, loaded with +high explosives, on her way to the East, and at the far end of the Canal +one of the sailors very naturally upset a lamp in the fo'c'sle. After a +heated interval the crew took to the desert alongside, while the captain +and the mate opened all cocks and sank her, not in the fairway but up +against a bank, just leaving room for a steamer to squeeze past. Then +the Canal authorities wired to her charterers to know exactly what there +might be in her; and it is said that the reply kept them awake of +nights, for it was their business to blow her up.</p> + +<p>Meantime, traffic had to go through, and a P. & O. steamer came along. +There was the Canal; there was the sunken wreck, marked by one elderly +Arab in a little boat with a red flag, and there was about five foot +clearance on each side for the P. & O. She went through a-tiptoe, +because even fifty tons of dynamite will jar a boat, perceptibly, and +the tramp held more—very much more, not to mention detonators. By some +absurd chance, almost the only passenger who knew about the thing at the +time was an old lady rather proud of the secret.</p> + +<p>'Ah,' she said, in the middle of that agonised glide, 'you may depend +upon it that if everybody knew what, I know, they'd all be on the other +side of the ship.'</p> + +<p>Later on, the authorities blew up the tramp with infinite precautions +from some two miles off, for which reason she neither destroyed the Suez +Canal nor dislocated the Sweet Water Canal alongside, but merely dug out +a hole a hundred feet or a hundred yards deep, and so vanished from +Lloyd's register.</p> + +<p>But no stories could divert one long from the peculiarities of that +amazing line which exists strictly for itself. There was a bathroom +(occupied) at the windy end of an open alleyway. In due time the bather +came out.</p> + +<p>Said the steward, as he swabbed out the tub for his successor: 'That was +the Chief Engineer. 'E's been some time. Must 'ave 'ad a mucky job +below, this mornin'.'</p> + +<p>I have a great admiration for Chief Engineers. They are men in +authority, needing all the comforts and aids that can possibly be given +them—such as bathrooms of their own close to their own cabins, where +they can clean off at leisure.</p> + +<p>It is not fair to mix them up with the ruck of passengers, nor is it +done on real ships. Nor, when a passenger wants a bath in the evening, +do the stewards of real ships roll their eyes like vergers in a +cathedral and say, 'We'll see if it can be managed.' They double down +the alleyway and shout, 'Matcham' or 'Ponting' or 'Guttman,' and in +fifteen seconds one of those swift three has the taps going and the +towels out. Real ships are not annexes of Westminster Abbey or Borstal +Reformatory. They supply decent accommodation in return for good money, +and I imagine that their directors instruct their staffs to look pleased +while at work.</p> + +<p>Some generations back there must have been an idea that the P. & O. was +vastly superior to all lines afloat—a sort of semipontifical show not +to be criticised. How much of the notion was due to its own excellence +and how much to its passenger-traffic monopoly does not matter. To-day, +it neither feeds nor tends its passengers, nor keeps its ships well +enough to put on any airs at all.</p> + +<p>For which reason, human nature being what it is, it surrounds itself +with an ungracious atmosphere of absurd ritual to cover grudged and +inadequate performance.</p> + +<p>What it really needs is to be dropped into a March North Atlantic, +without any lascars, and made to swim for its life between a C.P.R. boat +and a North German Lloyd—till it learns to smile.</p> + + +<a name="chap19" id="chap19"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>II</h2> +<h2>A RETURN TO THE EAST</h2> + +<p>The East is a much larger slice of the world than Europeans care to +admit. Some say it begins at St. Gothard, where the smells of two +continents meet and fight all through that terrible restaurant-car +dinner in the tunnel. Others have found it at Venice on warm April +mornings. But the East is wherever one sees the lateen sail—that +shark's fin of a rig which for hundreds of years has dogged all white +bathers round the Mediterranean. There is still a suggestion of menace, +a hint of piracy, in the blood whenever the lateen goes by, fishing or +fruiting or coasting.</p> + +<p>'This is <i>not</i> my ancestral trade,' she whispers to the accomplice sea. +'If everybody had their rights I should be doing something quite +different; for my father, he was the Junk, and my mother, she was the +Dhow, and between the two of 'em they made Asia.' Then she tacks, +disorderly but deadly quick, and shuffles past the unimaginative +steam-packet with her hat over one eye and a knife, as it were, up her +baggy sleeves.</p> + +<p>Even the stone-boats at Port Said, busied on jetty extensions, show +their untamed descent beneath their loaded clumsiness. They are all +children of the camel-nosed dhow, who is the mother of mischief; but it +was very good to meet them again in raw sunshine, unchanged in any rope +and patch.</p> + +<p>Old Port Said had disappeared beneath acres of new buildings where one +could walk at leisure without being turned back by soldiers.</p> + +<p>Two or three landmarks remained; two or three were reported as still in +existence, and one Face showed itself after many years—ravaged but +respectable—rigidly respectable.</p> + +<p>'Yes,' said the Face, 'I have been here all the time. But I have made +money, and when I die I am going home to be buried.'</p> + +<p>'Why not go home before you are buried, O Face?'</p> + +<p>'Because I have lived here <i>so</i> long. Home is only good to be buried +in.'</p> + +<p>'And what do you do, nowadays?'</p> + +<p>'Nothing now. I live on my <i>rentes</i> —my income.'</p> + +<p>Think of it! To live icily in a perpetual cinematograph show of excited, +uneasy travellers; to watch huge steamers, sliding in and out all day +and all night like railway trucks, unknowing and unsought by a single +soul aboard; to talk five or six tongues indifferently, but to have no +country—no interest in any earth except one reservation in a +Continental cemetery.</p> + +<p>It was a cold evening after heavy rain and the half-flooded streets +reeked. But we undefeated tourists ran about in droves and saw all that +could be seen before train-time. We missed, most of us, the Canal +Company's garden, which happens to mark a certain dreadful and exact +division between East and West.</p> + +<p>Up to that point—it is a fringe of palms, stiff against the sky—the +impetus of home memories and the echo of home interests carry the young +man along very comfortably on his first journey. But at Suez one must +face things. People, generally the most sympathetic, leave the boat +there; the older men who are going on have discovered each other and +begun to talk shop; no newspapers come aboard, only clipped Reuter +telegrams; the world seems cruelly large and self-absorbed. One goes for +a walk and finds this little bit of kept ground, with comfortable +garden-gated houses on either side of the path. Then one begins to +wonder—in the twilight, for choice—when one will see those palms again +from the other side. Then the black hour of homesickness, vain regrets, +foolish promises, and weak despair shuts down with the smell of strange +earth and the cadence of strange tongues.</p> + +<p>Cross-roads and halting-places in the desert are always favoured by +djinns and afrits. The young man will find them waiting for him in the +Canal Company's garden at Port Said.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, if he is fortunate enough to have won the East by +inheritance, as there are families who served her for five or six +generations, he will meet no ghouls in that garden, but a free and a +friendly and an ample welcome from good spirits of the East that awaits +him. The voices of the gardeners and the watchmen will be as the +greetings of his father's servants in his father's house; the evening +smells and the sight of the hibiscus and poinsettia will unlock his +tongue in words and sentences that he thought he had clean forgotten, +and he will go back to the ship (I have seen) as a prince entering on +his kingdom.</p> + +<p>There was a man in our company—a young Englishman—who had just been +granted his heart's desire in the shape of some raw district south of +everything southerly in the Sudan, where, on two-thirds of a member of +Parliament's wage, under conditions of life that would horrify a +self-respecting operative, he will see perhaps some dozen white men in a +year, and will certainly pick up two sorts of fever. He had been moved +to work very hard for this billet by the representations of a friend in +the same service, who said that it was a 'rather decent sort of +service,' and he was all of a heat to reach Khartum, report for duty, +and fall to. If he is lucky, he may get a district where the people are +so virtuous that they do not know how to wear any clothes at all, and so +ignorant that they have never yet come across strong drink.</p> + +<p>The train that took us to Cairo was own sister in looks and fittings to +any South African train—for which I loved her—but she was a trial to +some citizens of the United States, who, being used to the Pullman, did +not understand the side-corridored, solid-compartment idea. The trouble +with a standardised democracy seems to be that, once they break loose +from their standards, they have no props. People are <i>not</i> left behind +and luggage is rarely mislaid on the railroads of the older world. There +is an ordained ritual for the handling of all things, to which if a man +will only conform and keep quiet, he and his will be attended to with +the rest. The people that I watched would not believe this. They charged +about futilely and wasted themselves in trying to get ahead of their +neighbours.</p> + +<p>Here is a fragment from the restaurant-car: 'Look at here! Me and some +friends of mine are going to dine at this table. We don't want to be +separated and—'</p> + +<p>'You 'ave your number for the service, sar?' 'Number? What number? We +want to dine <i>here</i> , I tell you.'</p> + +<p>'You shall get your number, sar, for the first service?'</p> + +<p>'Haow's that? Where in thunder do we <i>get</i> the numbers, anyway?'</p> + +<p>'I will give you the number, sar, at the time—for places at the first +service.'</p> + +<p>'Yes, but we want to dine together here—right <i>now.</i> '</p> + +<p>'The service is not yet ready, sar.'</p> + +<p>And so on—and so on; with marchings and counter-marchings, and every +word nervously italicised. In the end they dined precisely where there +was room for them in that new world which they had strayed into.</p> + +<p>On one side our windows looked out on darkness of the waste; on the +other at the black Canal, all spaced with monstrous headlights of the +night-running steamers. Then came towns, lighted with electricity, +governed by mixed commissions, and dealing in cotton. Such a town, for +instance, as Zagazig, last seen by a very small boy who was lifted out +of a railway-carriage and set down beneath a whitewashed wall under +naked stars in an illimitable emptiness because, they told him, the +train was on fire. Childlike, this did not worry him. What stuck in his +sleepy mind was the absurd name of the place and his father's prophecy +that when he grew up he would 'come that way in a big steamer.'</p> + +<p>So all his life, the word 'Zagazig' carried memories of a brick shed, +the flicker of an oil-lamp's floating wick, a sky full of eyes, and an +engine coughing in a desert at the world's end; which memories returned +in a restaurant-car jolting through what seemed to be miles of +brilliantly lighted streets and factories. No one at the table had even +turned his head for the battlefields of Kassassin and Tel-el-Kebir. +After all, why should they? That work is done, and children are getting +ready to be born who will say: '<i>I</i> can remember Gondokoro (or El-Obeid +or some undreamed of Clapham Junction, Abyssinia-way) before a single +factory was started—before the overhead traffic began. Yes, when there +was a fever—actually fever—in the city itself!'</p> + +<p>The gap is no greater than that between to-day's and t'other day's +Zagazig—between the horsed vans of the Overland Route in Lieutenant +Waghorn's time and the shining motor that flashed us to our Cairo hotel +through what looked like the suburbs of Marseilles or Rome.</p> + +<p>Always keep a new city till morning, 'In the daytime,' as it is written +in the Perspicuous Book,<a name="FNanchor6"></a><a href="#Footnote6">[6]</a> 'thou hast long occupation,' Our window gave +on to the river, but before one moved toward it one heard the thrilling +squeal of the kites—those same thievish Companions of the Road who, at +that hour, were watching every Englishman's breakfast in every compound +and camp from Cairo to Calcutta.</p> + +<a name="Footnote6"></a><a href="#FNanchor6">[6]</a> The Koran. + +<p>Voices rose from below—unintelligible words in maddeningly familiar +accents. A black boy in one blue garment climbed, using his toes as +fingers, the tipped mainyard of a Nile boat and framed himself in the +window. Then, because he felt happy, he sang, all among the wheeling +kites. And beneath our balcony rolled very Nile Himself, golden in +sunshine, wrinkled under strong breezes, with a crowd of creaking +cargo-boats waiting for a bridge to be opened.</p> + +<p>On the cut-stone quay above, a line of cab drivers—a <i>ticca-gharri</i> stand, nothing less—lolled and chaffed and tinkered with their +harnesses in every beautiful attitude of the ungirt East. All the ground +about was spotted with chewed sugarcane—first sign of the hot weather +all the world over.</p> + +<p>Troops with startlingly pink faces (one would not have noticed this +yesterday) rolled over the girder bridge between churning motors and +bubbling camels, and the whole long-coated loose-sleeved Moslem world +was awake and about its business, as befits sensible people who pray at +dawn.</p> + +<p>I made haste to cross the bridge and to hear the palms in the wind on +the far side. They sang as nobly as though they had been true coconuts, +and the thrust of the north wind behind them was almost as open-handed +as the thrust of the Trades. Then came a funeral—the sheeted corpse on +the shallow cot, the brisk-pacing bearers (if he was good, the sooner he +is buried the sooner in heaven; if bad, bury him swiftly for the sake of +the household—either way, as the Prophet says, do not let the mourners +go too long weeping and hungry)—the women behind, tossing their arms +and lamenting, and men and boys chanting low and high.</p> + +<p>They might have come forth from the Taksali Gate in the city of Lahore +on just such a cold weather morning as this, on their way to the +Mohammedan burial-grounds by the river. And the veiled countrywomen, +shuffling side by side, elbow pressed to hip, and eloquent right hand +pivoting round, palm uppermost, to give value to each shrill phrase, +might have been the wives of so many Punjabi cultivators but that they +wore another type of bangle and slipper. A knotty-kneed youth sitting +high on a donkey, both amuleted against the evil eye, chewed three +purplish-feet of sugar-cane, which made one envious as well as +voluptuously homesick, though the sugar-cane of Egypt is not to be +compared with that of Bombay.</p> + +<p>Hans Breitmann writes somewhere:</p> + +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Oh, if you live in Leyden town You'll meet, if troot be told, Der</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">forms of all der freunds dot tied When du werst six years old.</span><br /> + +<p>And they were all there under the chanting palms—saices, orderlies, +pedlars, water-carriers, street-cleaners, chicken-sellers and the +slate-coloured buffalo with the china-blue eyes being talked to by a +little girl with the big stick. Behind the hedges of well-kept gardens +squatted the brown gardener, making trenches indifferently with a hoe or +a toe, and under the municipal lamp-post lounged the bronze policeman—a +touch of Arab about mouth and lean nostril—quite unconcerned with a +ferocious row between two donkey-men. They were fighting across the body +of a Nubian who had chosen to sleep in that place. Presently, one of +them stepped back on the sleeper's stomach. The Nubian grunted, elbowed +himself up, rolled his eyes, and pronounced a few utterly dispassionate +words. The warriors stopped, settled their headgear, and went away as +quickly as the Nubian went to sleep again. This was life, the real, +unpolluted stuff—worth a desert-full of mummies. And right through the +middle of it—hooting and kicking up the Nile—passed a Cook's steamer +all ready to take tourists to Assuan. From the Nubian's point of view +she, and not himself, was the wonder—as great as the Swiss-controlled, +Swiss-staffed hotel behind her, whose lift, maybe, the Nubian helped to +run. Marids, and afrits, guardians of hidden gold, who choke or crush +the rash seeker; encounters with the long-buried dead in a Cairo +back-alley; undreamed-of promotions, and suddenly lit loves are the +stuff of any respectable person's daily life; but the white man from +across the water, arriving in hundreds with his unveiled womenfolk, who +builds himself flying-rooms and talks along wires, who flees up and down +the river, mad to sit upon camels and asses, constrained to throw down +silver from both hands—at once a child and a warlock—this thing must +come to the Nubian sheer out of the <i>Thousand and One Nights</i> . At any +rate, the Nubian was perfectly sane. Having eaten, he slept in God's own +sunlight, and I left him, to visit the fortunate and guarded and +desirable city of Cairo, to whose people, male and female, Allah has +given subtlety in abundance. Their jesters are known to have surpassed +in refinement the jesters of Damascus, as did their twelve police +captains the hardiest and most corrupt of Bagdad in the tolerant days of +Harun-al-Raschid; while their old women, not to mention their young +wives, could deceive the Father of Lies himself. Delhi is a great +place—most bazaar storytellers in India make their villain hail from +there; but when the agony and intrigue are piled highest and the tale +halts till the very last breathless sprinkle of cowries has ceased to +fall on his mat, why then, with wagging head and hooked forefinger, the +storyteller goes on:</p> + +<p>'<i>But</i> there was a man from Cairo, an Egyptian of the Egyptians, +who'—and all the crowd knows that a bit of real metropolitan devilry is +coming.</p> + + +<a name="chap20" id="chap20"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>III</h2> +<h2>A SERPENT OF OLD NILE</h2> + +<p>Modern Cairo is an unkempt place. The streets are dirty and +ill-constructed, the pavements unswept and often broken, the tramways +thrown, rather than laid, down, the gutters neglected. One expects +better than this in a city where the tourist spends so much every +season. Granted that the tourist is a dog, he comes at least with a bone +in his mouth, and a bone that many people pick. He should have a cleaner +kennel. The official answer is that the tourist-traffic is a flea-bite +compared with the cotton industry. Even so, land in Cairo city must be +too valuable to be used for cotton growing. It might just as well be +paved or swept. There is some sort of authority supposed to be in charge +of municipal matters, but its work is crippled by what is called 'The +Capitulations.' It was told to me that every one in Cairo except the +English, who appear to be the mean whites of these parts, has the +privilege of appealing to his consul on every conceivable subject from +the disposal of a garbage-can to that of a corpse. As almost every one +with claims to respectability, and certainly every one without any, +keeps a consul, it follows that there is one consul per superficial +meter, arshin, or cubit of Ezekiel within the city. And since every +consul is zealous for the honour of his country and not at all above +annoying the English on general principles, municipal progress is slow.</p> + +<p>Cairo strikes one as unventilated and unsterilised, even when the sun +and wind are scouring it together. The tourist talks a good deal, as you +may see here, but the permanent European resident does not open his +mouth more than is necessary—sound travels so far across flat water. +Besides, the whole position of things, politically and administratively, +is essentially false.</p> + +<p>Here is a country which is not a country but a longish strip of +market-garden, nominally in charge of a government which is not a +government but the disconnected satrapy of a half-dead empire, +controlled pecksniffingly by a Power which is not a Power but an Agency, +which Agency has been tied up by years, custom, and blackmail into all +sorts of intimate relations with six or seven European Powers, all with +rights and perquisites, none of whose subjects seem directly amenable to +any Power which at first, second, or third hand is supposed to be +responsible. That is the barest outline. To fill in the details (if any +living man knows them) would be as easy as to explain baseball to an +Englishman or the Eton Wall game to a citizen of the United States. But +it is a fascinating play. There are Frenchmen in it, whose logical mind +it offends, and they revenge themselves by printing the finance-reports +and the catalogue of the Bulak Museum in pure French. There are Germans +in it, whose demands must be carefully weighed—not that they can by any +means be satisfied, but they serve to block other people's. There are +Russians in it, who do not very much matter at present but will be heard +from later. There are Italians and Greeks in it (both rather pleased +with themselves just now), full of the higher finance and the finer +emotions. There are Egyptian pashas in it, who come back from Paris at +intervals and ask plaintively to whom they are supposed to belong. There +is His Highness, the Khedive, in it, and <i>he</i> must be considered not a +little, and there are women in it, up to their eyes. And there are great +English cotton and sugar interests, and angry English importers +clamouring to know why they cannot do business on rational lines or get +into the Sudan, which they hold is ripe for development if the +administration there would only see reason. Among these conflicting +interests and amusements sits and perspires the English official, whose +job is irrigating or draining or reclaiming land on behalf of a trifle +of ten million people, and he finds himself tripped up by skeins of +intrigue and bafflement which may ramify through half a dozen harems and +four consulates. All this makes for suavity, toleration, and the blessed +habit of not being surprised at anything whatever.</p> + +<p>Or, so it seemed to me, watching a big dance at one of the hotels. Every +European race and breed, and half of the United States were +represented, but I fancied I could make out three distinct groupings. +The tourists with the steamer-trunk creases still across their dear, +excited backs; the military and the officials sure of their partners +beforehand, and saying clearly what ought to be said; and a third +contingent, lower-voiced, softer-footed, and keener-eyed than the other +two, at ease, as gipsies are on their own ground, flinging half-words in +local <i>argot</i> over shoulders at their friends, understanding on the nod +and moved by springs common to their clan only. For example, a woman was +talking flawless English to her partner, an English officer. Just before +the next dance began, another woman beckoned to her, Eastern fashion, +all four fingers flicking downward. The first woman crossed to a potted +palm; the second moved toward it also, till the two drew, up, not +looking at each other, the plant between them. Then she who had beckoned +spoke in a strange tongue <i>at</i> the palm. The first woman, still looking +away, answered in the same fashion with a rush of words that rattled +like buckshot through the stiff fronds. Her tone had nothing to do with +that in which she greeted her new partner, who came up as the music +began. The one was a delicious drawl; the other had been the guttural +rasp and click of the kitchen and the bazaar. So she moved off, and, in +a little, the second woman disappeared into the crowd. Most likely it +was no more than some question of the programme or dress, but the +prompt, feline stealth and coolness of it, the lightning-quick return to +and from world-apart civilisations stuck in my memory.</p> + +<p>So did the bloodless face of a very old Turk, fresh from some horror of +assassination in Constantinople in which he, too, had been nearly +pistolled, but, they said, he had argued quietly over the body of a late +colleague, as one to whom death was of no moment, until the hysterical +Young Turks were abashed and let him get away—to the lights and music +of this elegantly appointed hotel.</p> + +<p>These modern 'Arabian Nights' are too hectic for quiet folk. I declined +upon a more rational Cairo—the Arab city where everything is as it was +when Maruf the Cobbler fled from Fatima-el-Orra and met the djinn in the +Adelia Musjid. The craftsmen and merchants sat on their shop-boards, a +rich mystery of darkness behind them, and the narrow gullies were +polished to shoulder-height by the mere flux of people. Shod white men, +unless they are agriculturists, touch lightly, with their hands at most, +in passing. Easterns lean and loll and squat and sidle against things as +they daunder along. When the feet are bare, the whole body thinks. +Moreover, it is unseemly to buy or to do aught and be done with it. Only +people with tight-fitting clothes that need no attention have time for +that. So we of the loose skirt and flowing trousers and slack slipper +make full and ample salutations to our friends, and redouble them toward +our ill-wishers, and if it be a question of purchase, the stuff must be +fingered and appraised with a proverb or so, and if it be a +fool-tourist who thinks that he cannot be cheated, O true believers! +draw near and witness how we shall loot him.</p> + +<p>But I bought nothing. The city thrust more treasure upon me than I could +carry away. It came out of dark alleyways on tawny camels loaded with +pots; on pattering asses half buried under nets of cut clover; in the +exquisitely modelled hands of little children scurrying home from the +cookshop with the evening meal, chin pressed against the platter's edge +and eyes round with responsibility above the pile; in the broken lights +from jutting rooms overhead, where the women lie, chin between palms, +looking out of windows not a foot from the floor; in every glimpse into +every courtyard, where the men smoke by the tank; in the heaps of +rubbish and rotten bricks that flanked newly painted houses, waiting to +be built, some day, into houses once more; in the slap and slide or the +heelless red-and-yellow slippers all around, and, above all, in the +mixed delicious smells of frying butter, Mohammedan bread, kababs, +leather, cooking-smoke, assafetida, peppers, and turmeric. Devils cannot +abide the smell of burning turmeric, but the right-minded man loves it. +It stands for evening that brings all home, the evening meal, the +dipping of friendly hands in the dish, the one face, the dropped veil, +and the big, guttering pipe afterward.</p> + +<p>Praised be Allah for the diversity of His creatures and for the Five +Advantages of Travel and for the glories of the Cities of the Earth! +Harun-al-Raschid, in roaring Bagdad of old, never delighted himself to +the limits of such a delight as was mine, that afternoon. It is true +that the call to prayer, the cadence of some of the street-cries, and +the cut of some of the garments differed a little from what I had been +brought up to; but for the rest, the shadow on the dial had turned back +twenty degrees for me, and I found myself saying, as perhaps the dead +say when they have recovered their wits, 'This is my real world again,'</p> + +<p>Some men are Mohammedan by birth, some by training, and some by fate, +but I have never met an Englishman yet who hated Islam and its people as +I have met Englishmen who hated some other faiths. <i>Musalmani awadani</i> , +as the saying goes—where there are Mohammedans, there is a +comprehensible civilisation.</p> + +<p>Then we came upon a deserted mosque of pitted brick colonnades round a +vast courtyard open to the pale sky. It was utterly empty except for its +own proper spirit, and that caught one by the throat as one entered. +Christian churches may compromise with images and side-chapels where the +unworthy or abashed can traffic with accessible saints. Islam has but +one pulpit and one stark affirmation—living or dying, one only—and +where men have repeated that in red-hot belief through centuries, the +air still shakes to it.</p> + +<p>Some say now that Islam is dying and that nobody cares; others that, if +she withers in Europe and Asia, she will renew herself in Africa and +will return—terrible—after certain years, at the head of all the nine +sons of Ham; others dream that the English understand Islam as no one +else does, and, in years to be, Islam will admit this and the world will +be changed. If you go to the mosque Al Azhar—the thousand-year-old +University of Cairo—you will be able to decide for yourself. There is +nothing to see except many courts, cool in hot weather, surrounded by +cliff-like brick walls. Men come and go through dark doorways, giving on +to yet darker cloisters, as freely as though the place was a bazaar. +There are no aggressive educational appliances. The students sit on the +ground, and their teachers instruct them, mostly by word of mouth, in +grammar, syntax, logic; <i>al-hisab</i> , which is arithmetic; <i>al-jab'r w'al +muqabalah</i> , which is algebra; <i>at-tafsir,</i> commentaries on the Koran, +and last and most troublesome, <i>al-ahadis,</i> traditions, and yet more +commentaries on the law of Islam, which leads back, like everything, to +the Koran once again. (For it is written, 'Truly the Quran is none other +than a revelation.') It is a very comprehensive curriculum. No man can +master it entirely, but any can stay there as long as he pleases. The +university provides commons—twenty-five thousand loaves a day, I +believe,—and there is always a place to lie down in for such as do not +desire a shut room and a bed. Nothing could be more simple or, given +certain conditions, more effective. Close upon six hundred professors, +who represent officially or unofficially every school or thought, teach +ten or twelve thousand students, who draw from every Mohammedan +community, west and east between Manila and Morocco, north and south +between Kamchatka and the Malay mosque at Cape Town. These drift off to +become teachers of little schools, preachers at mosques, students of the +Law known to millions (but rarely to Europeans), dreamers, devotees, or +miracle-workers in all the ends of the earth. The man who interested me +most was a red-bearded, sunk-eyed mullah from the Indian frontier, not +likely to be last at any distribution of food, who stood up like a lean +wolfhound among collies in a little assembly at a doorway.</p> + +<p>And there was another mosque, sumptuously carpeted and lighted (which +the Prophet does not approve of), where men prayed in the dull mutter +that, at times, mounts and increases under the domes like the boom of +drums or the surge of a hot hive before the swarm flings out. And round +the corner of it, one almost ran into Our inconspicuous and wholly +detached Private of Infantry, his tunic open, his cigarette alight, +leaning against some railings and considering the city below. Men in +forts and citadels and garrisons all the world over go up at twilight as +automatically as sheep at sundown, to have a last look round. They say +little and return as silently across the crunching gravel, detested by +bare feet, to their whitewashed rooms and regulated lives. One of the +men told me he thought well of Cairo. It was interesting. 'Take it from +me,' he said, 'there's a lot in seeing places, because you can remember +'em afterward.'</p> + +<p>He was very right. The purple and lemon-coloured hazes of dusk and +reflected day spread over the throbbing, twinkling streets, masked the +great outline of the citadel and the desert hills, and conspired to +confuse and suggest and evoke memories, till Cairo the Sorceress cast +her proper shape and danced before me in the heartbreaking likeness of +every city I had known and loved, a little farther up the road.</p> + +<p>It was a cruel double-magic. For in the very hour that my homesick soul +had surrendered itself to the dream of the shadow that had turned back +on the dial, I realised all the desolate days and homesickness of all +the men penned in far-off places among strange sounds and smells.</p> + + +<a name="chap21" id="chap21"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>IV</h2> +<h2>UP THE RIVER</h2> + +<p>Once upon a time there was a murderer who got off with a life-sentence. +What impressed him most, when he had time to think, was the frank +boredom of all who took part in the ritual.</p> + +<p>'It was just like going to a doctor or a dentist,' he explained. '<i>You</i> come to 'em very full of your affairs, and then you discover that it's +only part of their daily work to <i>them</i> . I expect,' he added, 'I should +have found it the same if—er—I'd gone on to the finish.'</p> + +<p>He would have. Break into any new Hell or Heaven and you will be met at +its well-worn threshold by the bored experts in attendance.</p> + +<p>For three weeks we sat on copiously chaired and carpeted decks, +carefully isolated from everything that had anything to do with Egypt, +under chaperonage of a properly orientalised dragoman. Twice or thrice +daily, our steamer drew up at a mud-bank covered with donkeys. Saddles +were hauled out of a hatch in our bows; the donkeys were dressed, dealt +round like cards: we rode off through crops or desert, as the case might +be, were introduced in ringing tones to a temple, and were then duly +returned to our bridge and our Baedekers. For sheer comfort, not to say +padded sloth, the life was unequalled, and since the bulk of our +passengers were citizens of the United States—Egypt in winter ought to +be admitted into the Union as a temporary territory—there was no lack +of interest. They were overwhelmingly women, with here and there a +placid nose-led husband or father, visibly suffering from congestion of +information about his native city. I had the joy of seeing two such men +meet. They turned their backs resolutely on the River, bit and lit +cigars, and for one hour and a quarter ceased not to emit statistics of +the industries, commerce, manufacture, transport, and journalism of +their towns;—Los Angeles, let us say, and Rochester, N.Y. It sounded +like a duel between two cash-registers.</p> + +<p>One forgot, of course, that all the dreary figures were alive to them, +and as Los Angeles spoke Rochester visualised. Next day I met an +Englishman from the Soudan end of things, very full of a little-known +railway which had been laid down in what had looked like raw desert, and +therefore had turned out to be full of paying freight. He was in the +full-tide of it when Los Angeles ranged alongside and cast anchor, +fascinated by the mere roll of numbers.</p> + +<p>'Haow's that?' he cut in sharply at a pause.</p> + +<p>He was told how, and went on to drain my friend dry concerning that +railroad, out of sheer fraternal interest, as he explained, in 'any +darn' thing that's being made anywheres,'</p> + +<p>'So you see,' my friend went on, 'we shall be bringing Abyssinian cattle +into Cairo.'</p> + +<p>'On the hoof?' One quick glance at the Desert ranges.</p> + +<p>'No, no! By rail and River. And after <i>that</i> we're going to grow cotton +between the Blue and the White Nile and knock spots out of the States.'</p> + +<p>'Ha-ow's that?'</p> + +<p>'This way.' The speaker spread his first and second fingers fanwise +under the big, interested beak. 'That's the Blue Nile. And that's the +White. There's a difference of so many feet between 'em, an' in that +fork here, 'tween my fingers, we shall—'</p> + +<p>'<i>I</i> see. Irrigate on the strength of the little difference in the +levels. How many acres?'</p> + +<p>Again Los Angeles was told. He expanded like a frog in a shower. 'An' I +thought,' he murmured, 'Egypt was all mummies and the Bible! <i>I</i> used to +know something about cotton. Now we'll talk.'</p> + +<p>All that day the two paced the deck with the absorbed insolente of +lovers; and, lover-like, each would steal away and tell me what a +splendid soul was his companion.</p> + +<p>That was one type; but there were others—professional men who did not +make or sell things—and these the hand of an all-exacting Democracy +seemed to have run into one mould. They 'were not reticent, but no +matter whence they hailed, their talk was as standardised as the +fittings of a Pullman.</p> + +<p>I hinted something of this to a woman aboard who was learned in their +sermons of either language.</p> + +<p>'I think,' she began, 'that the staleness you complain of—'</p> + +<p>'I never said "staleness,"' I protested.</p> + +<p>'But you thought it. The staleness you noticed is due to our men being +so largely educated by old women—old maids. Practically till he goes to +College, and not always then, a boy can't get away from them.'</p> + +<p>'Then what happens?'</p> + +<p>'The natural result. A man's instinct is to teach a boy to think for +himself. If a woman can't make a boy think <i>as</i> she thinks, she sits +down and cries. A man hasn't any standards. He makes 'em. A woman's the +most standardised being in the world. She has to be. <i>Now</i> d'you see?'</p> + +<p>'Not yet.'</p> + +<p>'Well, our trouble in America is that we're being school-marmed to +death. You can see it in any paper you pick up. What were those men +talking about just now?'</p> + +<p>'Food adulteration, police-reform, and beautifying waste-lots in towns,' +I replied promptly.</p> + +<p>She threw up her hands. 'I knew it!' she cried. 'Our great National +Policy of co-educational housekeeping! Ham-frills and pillow-shams. Did +you ever know a man get a woman's respect by parading around creation +with a dish-clout pinned to his coat-tails?'</p> + +<p>'But if his woman ord——told him to do it?' I suggested.</p> + +<p>'Then she'd despise him the more for doing it. <i>You</i> needn't laugh. +'You're coming to the same sort of thing in England.'</p> + +<p>I returned to the little gathering. A woman was talking to them as one +accustomed to talk from birth. They listened with the rigid attention of +men early trained to listen to, but not to talk with, women. She was, to +put it mildly, the mother of all she-bores, but when she moved on, no +man ventured to say as much.</p> + +<p>'That's what I mean by being school-manned to death,' said my +acquaintance wickedly. 'Why, she bored 'em stiff; but they are so well +brought up, they didn't even know they were bored. Some day the American +Man is going to revolt.'</p> + +<p>'And what'll the American Woman do?'</p> + +<p>'She'll sit and cry—and it'll do her good.'</p> + +<p>Later on, I met a woman from a certain Western State seeing God's great, +happy, inattentive world for the first time, and rather distressed that +it was not like hers. She had always understood that the English were +brutal to their wives—the papers of her State said so. (If you only +knew the papers of her State I) But she had not noticed any scandalous +treatment so far, and Englishwomen, whom she admitted she would never +understand, seemed to enjoy a certain specious liberty and equality; +while Englishmen were distinctly kind to girls in difficulties over +their baggage and tickets on strange railways. Quite a nice people, she +concluded, but without much sense of humour. One day, she showed me +what looked like a fashion-paper print of a dress-stuff—a pretty oval +medallion of stars on a striped grenadine background that somehow seemed +familiar.</p> + +<p>'How nice! What is it?' I asked.</p> + +<p>'Our National Flag,' she replied.</p> + +<p>'Indeed. But it doesn't look quite——'</p> + +<p>'No. This is a new design for arranging the stars so that they shall be +easier to count and more decorative in effect. We're going to take a +vote on it in our State, where <i>we</i> have the franchise. I shall cast my +vote when I get home.'</p> + +<p>'Really! And how will you vote?'</p> + +<p>'I'm just thinking that out.' She spread the picture on her knee and +considered it, head to one side, as though it were indeed dress +material.</p> + +<p>All this while the land of Egypt marched solemnly beside us on either +hand. The river being low, we saw it from the boat as one long plinth, +twelve to twenty feet high of brownish, purplish mud, visibly upheld +every hundred yards or so by glistening copper caryatides in the shape +of naked men baling water up to the crops above. Behind that bright +emerald line ran the fawn-or tiger-coloured background of desert, and a +pale blue sky closed all. There was Egypt even as the Pharaohs, their +engineers and architects, had seen it—land to cultivate, folk and +cattle for the work, and outside that work no distraction nor allurement +of any kind whatever, save when the dead were taken to their place +beyond the limits of cultivation. When the banks grew lower, one looked +across as much as two miles of green-stuff packed like a toy Noah's-ark +with people, camels, sheep, goats, oxen, buffaloes, and an occasional +horse. The beasts stood as still, too, as the toys, because they were +tethered or hobbled each to his own half-circle of clover, and moved +forward when that was eaten. Only the very little kids were loose, and +these played on the flat mud roofs like kittens.</p> + +<p>No wonder 'every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians.' The +dusty, naked-footed field-tracks are cut down to the last centimetre of +grudged width; the main roads are lifted high on the flanks of the +canals, unless the permanent-way of some light railroad can be pressed +to do duty for them. The wheat, the pale ripened tufted sugar-cane, the +millet, the barley, the onions, the fringed castor-oil bushes jostle +each other for foothold, since the Desert will not give them room; and +men chase the falling Nile inch by inch, each dawn, with new furrowed +melon-beds on the still dripping mud-banks.</p> + +<p>Administratively, such a land ought to be a joy. The people do not +emigrate; all their resources are in plain sight; they are as accustomed +as their cattle to being led about. All they desire, and it has been +given them, is freedom from murder and mutilation, rape and robbery. The +rest they can attend to in their silent palm-shaded villages where the +pigeons coo and the little children play in the dust.</p> + +<p>But Western civilisation is a devastating and a selfish game. Like the +young woman from 'our State,' it says in effect: 'I am rich. I've +nothing to do. I <i>must</i> do something. I shall take up social reform.'</p> + +<p>Just now there is a little social reform in Egypt which is rather +amusing. The Egyptian cultivator borrows money; as all farmers must. +This land without hedge or wild-flower is his passion by age-long +inheritance and suffering, by, in and for which he lives. He borrows to +develop it and to buy more at from £30 to £200 per acre, the profit on +which, when all is paid, works out at between £5 to £10 per acre. +Formerly, he borrowed from the local money-lenders, mostly Greeks, at 30 +per cent per annum and over. This rate is not excessive, so long as +public opinion allows the borrower from time to time to slay the lender; +but modern administration calls that riot and murder. Some years ago, +therefore, there was established a State-guaranteed Bank which lent to +the cultivators at eight per cent, and the cultivator zealously availed +himself of that privilege. He did not default more than in reason, but +being a farmer, he naturally did not pay up till threatened with being +sold up. So he prospered and bought more land, which was his heart's +desire. This year—1913—the administration issued sudden orders that no +man owning less than five acres could borrow on security of his land. +The matter interested me directly, because I held five hundred pounds +worth of shares in that State-guaranteed Bank, and more than half our +clients were small men of less than five acres. So I made inquiries in +quarters that seemed to possess information, and was told that the new +law was precisely on all-fours with the Homestead Act or the United +States and France, and the intentions of Divine Providence—or words to +that effect.</p> + +<p>'But,' I asked, 'won't this limitation of credit prevent the men with +less than five acres from borrowing more to buy more land and getting on +in the world?'</p> + +<p>'Yes,' was the answer, 'of course it will. That's just what we want to +prevent. Half these fellows ruin themselves trying to buy more land. +We've got to protect them against themselves.'</p> + +<p>That, alas! is the one enemy against which no law can protect any son of +Adam; since the real reasons that make or break a man are too absurd or +too obscene to be reached from outside. Then I cast about in other +quarters to discover what the cultivator was going to do about it.</p> + +<p>'Oh, him?' said one of my many informants. '<i>He's</i> all right. There are +about six ways of evading the Act that, <i>I</i> know of. The fellah probably +knows another six. He has been trained to look after himself since the +days of Rameses. He can forge land-transfers for one thing; borrow land +enough to make his holding more than five acres for as long as it takes +to register a loan; get money from his own women (yes, that's one result +of modern progress in this land!) or go back to his old friend the Greek +at 30 per cent.'</p> + +<p>'Then the Greek will sell him up, and that will be against the law, +won't it?' I said.</p> + +<p>'Don't you worry about the Greek. He can get through any law ever made +if there's five piastres on the other side of it.'</p> + +<p>'Maybe; but <i>was</i> the Agricultural Bank selling the cultivators up too +much?'</p> + +<p>'Not in the least. The number of small holdings is on the increase, if +anything. Most cultivators won't pay a loan until you point a +judgment-summons at their head. They think that shows they're men of +consequence. This swells the number of judgment-summonses issued, but it +doesn't mean a land-sale for each summons. Another fact is that in real +life some men don't get on as well as others. Either they don't farm +well enough, or they take to hashish, or go crazy about a girl and +borrow money for her, or—er—something of that kind, and they are sold +up. You may have noticed that.'</p> + +<p>'I have. And meantime, what is the fellah doing?'</p> + +<p>'Meantime, the fellah has misread the Act—as usual. He thinks it's +retrospective, and that he needn't pay past debts. They may make +trouble, but I fancy your Bank will keep quiet.'</p> + +<p>'Keep quiet! With the bottom knocked out of two-thirds of its business +and—and my five hundred pounds involved!'</p> + +<p>'Is that your trouble? I don't think your shares will rise in a hurry; +but if you want some fun, go and talk to the French about it,'</p> + +<p>This seemed as good a way as any of getting a little interest. The +Frenchman that I went to spoke with a certain knowledge of finance and +politics and the natural malice of a logical race against an illogical +horde.</p> + +<p>'Yes,' he said. 'The idea of limiting credit under these circumstances +is absurd. But that is not all. People are not frightened, business is +not upset by one absurd idea, but by the possibilities of more,'</p> + +<p>'Are there any more ideas, then, that are going to be tried on this +country?'</p> + +<p>'Two or three,' he replied placidly. 'They are all generous; but they +are all ridiculous. Egypt is not a place where one should promulgate +ridiculous ideas.'</p> + +<p>'But my shares—my shares!' I cried. 'They have already dropped several +points.'</p> + +<p>'It is possible. They will drop more. Then they will rise.'</p> + +<p>'Thank you. But why?'</p> + +<p>'Because the idea is fundamentally absurd. That will never be admitted +by your people, but there will be arrangements, accommodations, +adjustments, till it is all the same as it used to be. It will be the +concern of the Permanent Official—poor devil!—to pull it straight. It +is always his concern. Meantime, prices will rise for all things.'</p> + +<p>'Why?'</p> + +<p>'Because the land is the chief security in Egypt. If a man cannot borrow +on that security, the rates of interest will increase on whatever other +security he offers. That will affect all work and wages and Government +contracts.'</p> + +<p>He put it so convincingly and with so many historical illustrations +that I saw whole perspectives of the old energetic Pharaohs, masters of +life and death along the River, checked in mid-career by cold-blooded +accountants chanting that not even the Gods themselves can make two plus +two more than four. And the vision ran down through the ages to one +little earnest head on a Cook's steamer, bent sideways over the vital +problem of rearranging 'our National Flag' so that it should be 'easier +to count the stars.'</p> + +<p>For the thousandth time: Praised be Allah for the diversity of His +creatures!</p> + + +<a name="chap22" id="chap22"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>V</h2> +<h2>DEAD KINGS</h2> + +<p>The Swiss are the only people who have taken the trouble to master the +art of hotel-keeping. Consequently, in the things that really +matter—beds, baths, and victuals—they control Egypt; and since every +land always throws back to its aboriginal life (which is why the United +States delight in telling aged stories), any ancient Egyptian would at +once understand and join in with the life that roars through the +nickel-plumbed tourist-barracks on the river, where all the world +frolics in the sunshine. At first sight, the show lends itself to cheap +moralising, till one recalls that one only sees busy folk when they are +idle, and rich folk when they have made their money. A citizen of the +United States—his first trip abroad—pointed out a middle-aged +Anglo-Saxon who was relaxing after the manner of several school-boys.</p> + +<p>'There's a sample!' said the Son of Hustle scornfully. 'Tell me, <i>he</i> ever did anything in his life?' Unluckily he had pitched upon one who, +when he is in collar, reckons thirteen and a half hours a fairish day's +work.</p> + +<p>Among this assembly were men and women burned to an even blue-black +tint—civilised people with bleached hair and sparkling eyes. They +explained themselves as 'diggers'—just diggers—and opened me a new +world. Granted that all Egypt is one big undertaker's emporium, what +could be more fascinating than to get Government leave to rummage in a +corner of it, to form a little company and spend the cold weather trying +to pay dividends in the shape of amethyst necklaces, lapis-lazuli +scarabs, pots of pure gold, and priceless bits of statuary? Or, if one +is rich, what better fun than to grub-stake an expedition on the +supposed site of a dead city and see what turns up? There was a big-game +hunter who had used most of the Continent, quite carried away by this +sport.</p> + +<p>'I'm going to take shares in a city next year, and watch the digging +myself,' he said. 'It beats elephants to pieces. In <i>this</i> game you're +digging up dead things and making them alive. Aren't you going to have a +flutter?'</p> + +<p>He showed me a seductive little prospectus. Myself, I would sooner not +lay hands on a dead man's kit or equipment, especially when he has gone +to his grave in the belief that the trinkets guarantee salvation. Of +course, there is the other argument, put forward by sceptics, that the +Egyptian was a blatant self-advertiser, and that nothing would please +him more than the thought that he was being looked at and admired after +all these years. Still, one might rob some shrinking soul who didn't see +it in that light.</p> + +<p>At the end of spring the diggers flock back out of the Desert and +exchange chaff and flews in the gorgeous verandahs. For example, A's +company has made a find of priceless stuff, Heaven knows how old, and +is—not too meek about it. Company B, less fortunate, hints that if only +A knew to what extent their native diggers had been stealing and +disposing of the thefts, under their very archaeological noses, they +would not be so happy.</p> + +<p>'Nonsense,' says Company A. 'Our diggers are above suspicion. Besides, +we watched 'em.'</p> + +<p>'<i>Are</i> they?' is the reply. 'Well, next time you are in Berlin, go to +the Museum and you'll see what the Germans have got hold of. It must +have come out of your ground. The Dynasty proves it.' So A's cup is +poisoned—till next year.</p> + +<p>No collector or curator of a museum should have any moral scruples +whatever; and I have never met one who had; though I have been informed +by deeply-shocked informants of four nationalities that the Germans are +the most flagrant pirates of all.</p> + +<p>The business of exploration is about as romantic as earth-work on Indian +railways. There are the same narrow-gauge trams and donkeys, the same +shining gangs in the borrow-pits and the same skirling dark-blue crowds +of women and children with the little earth-baskets. But the hoes are +not driven in, nor the clods jerked aside at random, and when the work +fringes along the base of some mighty wall, men use their hands +carefully. A white man—or he was white at breakfast-time—patrols +through the continually renewed dust-haze. Weeks may pass without a +single bead, but anything may turn up at any moment, and it is his to +answer the shout of discovery.</p> + +<p>We had the good fortune to stay a while at the Headquarters of the +Metropolitan Museum (New York) in a valley riddled like a rabbit-warren +with tombs. Their stables, store-houses, and servants' quarters are old +tombs; their talk is of tombs, and their dream (the diggers' dream +always) is to discover a virgin tomb where the untouched dead lie with +their jewels upon them. Four miles away are the wide-winged, rampant +hotels. Here is nothing whatever but the rubbish of death that died +thousands of years ago, on whose grave no green thing has ever grown. +Villages, expert in two hundred generations of grave-robbing, cower +among the mounds of wastage, and whoop at the daily tourist. Paths made +by bare feet run from one half-tomb, half-mud-heap to the next, not much +more distinct than snail smears, but they have been used since....</p> + +<p>Time is a dangerous thing to play with. That morning the concierge had +toiled for us among steamer-sailings to see if we could save three days. +That evening we sat with folk for whom Time had stood still since the +Ptolemies. I wondered, at first, how it concerned them or any man if +such and such a Pharaoh had used to his own glory the plinths and +columns of such another Pharaoh before or after Melchizedek. Their +whole background was too inconceivably remote for the mind to work on. +But the next morning we were taken to the painted tomb of a noble—a +Minister of Agriculture—who died four or five thousand years ago. He +said to me, in so many words: 'Observe I was very like your friend, the +late Mr. Samuel Pepys, of your Admiralty. I took an enormous interest in +life, which I most thoroughly enjoyed, on its human and on its spiritual +side. I do not think you will find many departments of State better +managed than mine, or a better-kept house, or a nicer set of young +people ... My daughters! The eldest, as you can see, takes after her +mother. The youngest, my favourite, is supposed to favour me. Now I will +show you all the things that I did, and delighted in, till it was time +for me to present my accounts elsewhere.' And he showed me, detail by +detail, in colour and in drawing, his cattle, his horses, his crops, his +tours in the district, his accountants presenting the revenue returns, +and he himself, busiest of the busy, in the good day.</p> + +<p>But when we left that broad, gay ante-room and came to the narrower +passage where once his body had lain and where all his doom was +portrayed, I could not follow him so well. I did not see how he, so +experienced in life, could be cowed by friezes of brute-headed +apparitions or satisfied by files of repeated figures. He explained, +something to this effect:</p> + +<p>'We live on the River—a line without breadth or thickness. Behind us +is the Desert, which nothing can affect; wither no man goes till he is +dead, (One does not use good agricultural ground for cemeteries.) +Practically, then, we only move in two dimensions—up stream or down. +Take away the Desert, which we don't consider any more than a healthy +man considers death, and you will see that we have no background +whatever. Our world is all one straight bar of brown or green earth, +and, for some months, mere sky-reflecting water that wipes out +everything You have only to look at the Colossi to realise how +enormously and extravagantly man and his works must scale in such a +country. Remember too, that our crops are sure, and our life is very, +very easy. Above all, we have no neighbours That is to say, we must give +out, for we cannot take in. Now, I put it to you, what is left for a +priest with imagination, except to develop ritual and multiply gods on +friezes? Unlimited leisure, limited space of two dimensions, divided by +the hypnotising line of the River, and bounded by visible, unalterable +death—must, <i>ipso facto</i> ——'</p> + +<p>'Even so,' I interrupted. 'I do not comprehend your Gods—your direct +worship of beasts, for instance?'</p> + +<p>'You prefer the indirect? The worship of Humanity with a capital H? My +Gods, or what I saw in them, contented me.'</p> + +<p>'What did you see in your Gods as affecting belief and conduct?'</p> + +<p>'You know the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx?'</p> + +<p>'No,' I murmured. 'What is it?'</p> + +<p>'"All sensible men are of the same religion, but no sensible man ever +tells,"' he replied. With that I had to be content, for the passage +ended in solid rock.</p> + +<p>There were other tombs in the valley, but the owners were dumb, except +one Pharaoh, who from the highest motives had broken with the creeds and +instincts of his country, and so had all but wrecked it. One of his +discoveries was an artist, who saw men not on one plane but modelled +full or three-quarter face, with limbs suited to their loads and +postures. His vividly realised stuff leaped to the eye out of the +acreage of low-relief in the old convention, and I applauded as a +properly brought-up tourist should.</p> + +<p>'Mine was a fatal mistake,' Pharaoh Ahkenaton sighed in my ear,' I +mistook the conventions of life for the realities.'</p> + +<p>'Ah, those soul-crippling conventions!' I cried.</p> + +<p>'You mistake <i>me</i> ,' he answered more stiffly. 'I was so sure of their +reality that I thought that they were really lies, whereas they were +only invented to cover the raw facts of life.'</p> + +<p>'Ah, those raw facts of life!' I cried, still louder; for it is not +often that one has a chance of impressing a Pharaoh.' We must face them +with open eyes and an open mind! Did <i>you</i> ?'</p> + +<p>'I had no opportunity of avoiding them,' he replied. 'I broke every +convention in my land.'</p> + +<p>'Oh, noble! And what happened?'</p> + +<p>'What happens when you strip the cover off a hornet's nest? The raw +fact of life is that mankind is just a little lower than the angels, and +the conventions are based on that fact in order that men may become +angels. But if you begin, as I did, by the convention that men are +angels they will assuredly become bigger beasts than ever.'</p> + +<p>'That,' I said firmly, 'is altogether out-of-date. You should have +brought a larger mentality, a more vital uplift, and—er—all that sort +of thing, to bear on—all that sort of thing, you know.'</p> + +<p>'I did,' said Ahkenaton gloomily. 'It broke me!' And he, too, went dumb +among the ruins.</p> + +<p>There is a valley of rocks and stones in every shade of red and brown, +called the Valley of the Kings, where a little oil-engine coughs behind +its hand all day long, grinding electricity to light the faces of dead +Pharaohs a hundred feet underground. All down the valley, during the +tourist season, stand char-a-bancs and donkeys and sand-carts, with here +and there exhausted couples who have dropped out of the processions and +glisten and fan themselves in some scrap of shade. Along the sides of +the valley are the tombs of the kings neatly numbered, as it might be +mining adits with concrete steps leading up to them, and iron grilles +that lock of nights, and doorkeepers of the Department of Antiquities +demanding the proper tickets. One enters, and from deeps below deeps +hears the voices of dragomans booming through the names and titles of +the illustrious and thrice-puissant dead. Rock-cut steps go down into +hot, still darkness, passages-twist and are led over blind pits which, +men say, the wise builders childishly hoped would be taken for the real +tombs by thieves to come. Up and down these alley-ways clatter all the +races of Europe with a solid backing of the United States. Their +footsteps are suddenly blunted on the floor of a hall paved with +immemorial dust that will never dance in any wind. They peer up at the +blazoned ceilings, stoop down to the minutely decorated walls, crane and +follow the sombre splendours of a cornice, draw in their breaths and +climb up again to the fierce sunshine to re-dive into the next adit on +their programme. What they think proper to say, they say aloud—and some +of it is very interesting. What they feel you can guess from a certain +haste in their movements—something between the shrinking modesty of a +man under fire and the Hadn't-we-better-be-getting-on attitude of +visitors to a mine. After all, it is not natural for man to go +underground except for business or for the last time. He is conscious of +the weight of mother-earth overhead, and when to her expectant bulk is +added the whole beaked, horned, winged, and crowned hierarchy of a lost +faith flaming at every turn of his eye, he naturally wishes to move +away. Even the sight of a very great king indeed, sarcophagused under +electric light in a hall full of most fortifying pictures, does not hold +him too long.</p> + +<p>Some men assert that the crypt of St. Peter's, with only nineteen +centuries bearing down on the groining, and the tombs of early popes and +kings all about, is more impressive than the Valley of the Kings +because it explains how and out of what an existing creed grew. But the +Valley of the Kings explains nothing except that most terrible line in +<i>Macbeth</i> :</p> + +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">To the last syllable of recorded time.</span><br /> + +<p>Earth opens her dry lips and says it.</p> + +<p>In one of the tombs there is a little chamber whose ceiling, probably +because of a fault in the rock, could not be smoothed off like the +others. So the decorator, very cunningly, covered it with a closely +designed cloth-pattern—just such a chintz-like piece of stuff as, in +real life, one would use to underhang a rough roof with. He did it +perfectly, down there in the dark, and went his way. Thousands of years +later, there was born a man of my acquaintance who, for good and +sufficient reason, had an almost insane horror of anything in the nature +of a ceiling-cloth. He used to make excuses for not going into the dry +goods shops at Christmas, when hastily enlarged annexes are hidden, roof +and sides, with embroideries. Perhaps a snake or a lizard had dropped on +his mother from the roof before he was born; perhaps it was the memory +of some hideous fever-bout in a tent. At any rate, that man's idea of +The Torment was a hot, crowded underground room, underhung with +patterned cloths. Once in his life at a city in the far north, where he +had to make a speech, he met that perfect combination. They led him up +and down narrow, crowded, steam-heated passages, till they planted him +at last in a room without visible windows (by which he knew +he was, underground), and directly beneath a warm-patterned +ceiling-cloth—rather like a tent-lining. And there he had to say his +say, while panic terror sat in his throat. The second time was in the +Valley of the Kings, where very similar passages, crowded with people, +led him into a room cut of rock, fathoms underground, with what looked +like a sagging chintz cloth not three feet above his head. The man I'd +like to catch,' he said when he came outside again, 'is that +decorator-man. D'you suppose he meant to produce that effect?'</p> + +<p>Every man has his private terrors, other than those of his own +conscience. From what I saw in the Valley of the Kings, the Egyptians +seem to have known this some time ago. They certainly have impressed it +on most unexpected people. I heard two voices down a passage talking +together as follows:</p> + +<p><i>She</i> . I guess we weren't ever meant to see these old tombs from inside, +anyway.</p> + +<p><i>He</i> . How so?</p> + +<p><i>She</i> . For one thing, they believe so hard in being dead. Of course, +their outlook on spiritual things wasn't as broad as ours.</p> + +<p><i>He</i> . Well, there's no danger of <i>our</i> being led away by it. Did you buy +that alleged scarab off the dragoman this morning?</p> + + +<a name="chap23" id="chap23"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>VI</h2> +<h2>THE FACE OF THE DESERT</h2> + +<p>Going up the Nile is like running the gauntlet before Eternity. Till one +has seen it, one does not realise the amazing thinness of that little +damp trickle of life that steals along undefeated through the jaws of +established death. A rifle-shot would cover the widest limits of +cultivation, a bow-shot would reach the narrower. Once beyond them a man +may carry his next drink with him till he reaches Cape Blanco on the +west (where he may signal for one from a passing Union Castle boat) or +the Karachi Club on the east. Say four thousand dry miles to the left +hand and three thousand to the right.</p> + +<p>The weight of the Desert is on one, every day and every hour. At +morning, when the cavalcade tramps along in the rear of the tulip-like +dragoman, She says: 'I am here——just beyond that ridge of pink sand +that you are admiring. Come along, pretty gentleman, and I'll tell you +your fortune.' But the dragoman says very clearly: 'Please, sar, do not +separate yourself at <i>all</i> from the main body,' which, the Desert knows +well, you had no thought of doing. At noon, when the stewards rummage +out lunch-drinks from the dewy ice-chest, the Desert whines louder than +the well-wheels on the bank: 'I am here, only a quarter of a mile away. +For mercy's sake, pretty gentleman, spare a mouthful of that prickly +whisky-and-soda you are lifting to your lips. There's a white man a few +hundred miles off, dying on my lap of thirst—thirst that you cure with +a rag dipped in lukewarm water while you hold him down with the one +hand, and he thinks he is cursing you aloud, but he isn't, because his +tongue is outside his mouth and he can't get it back. Thank <i>you</i> , my +noble captain!' For naturally one tips half the drink over the rail with +the ancient prayer: 'May it reach him who needs it,' and turns one's +back on the pulsing ridges and fluid horizons that are beginning their +mid-day mirage-dance.</p> + +<p>At evening the Desert obtrudes again—tricked out as a Nautch girl in +veils of purple, saffron, gold-tinsel, and grass-green. She postures +shamelessly before the delighted tourists with woven skeins of +homeward-flying pelicans, fringes of wild duck, black spotted on +crimson, and cheap jewellery of opal clouds. 'Notice Me!' She cries, +like any other worthless woman. 'Admire the play of My mobile +features—the revelations of My multi-coloured soul! Observe My +allurements and potentialities. Thrill while I stir you!' So She floats +through all Her changes and retires upstage into the arms of the dusk. +But at midnight She drops all pretence and bears down in Her natural +shape, which depends upon the conscience of the beholder and his +distance from the next white man.</p> + +<p>You will observe in the <i>Benedicite Omnia Opera</i> that the Desert is the +sole thing not enjoined to 'bless the Lord, praise Him and magnify Him +for ever.' This is because when our illustrious father, the Lord Adam, +and his august consort, the Lady Eve, were expelled from Eden, Eblis the +Accursed, fearful lest mankind should return ultimately to the favour of +Allah, set himself to burn and lay waste all the lands east and west of +Eden.</p> + +<p>Oddly enough, the Garden of Eden is almost the exact centre of all the +world's deserts, counting from Gobi to Timbuctoo; and all that land +<i>qua</i> land is 'dismissed from the mercy of God.' Those who use it do so +at their own risk. Consequently the Desert produces her own type of man +exactly as the sea does. I was fortunate enough to meet one sample, aged +perhaps twenty-five. His work took him along the edge of the Red Sea, +where men on swift camels come to smuggle hashish, and sometimes guns, +from dhows that put in to any convenient beach. These smugglers must be +chased on still swifter camels, and since the wells are few and known, +the game is to get ahead of them and occupy their drinking-places.</p> + +<p>But they may skip a well or so, and do several days' march in one. Then +their pursuer must take e'en greater risks and make crueller marches +that the Law may be upheld. The one thing in the Law's favour is that +<i>hashish</i> smells abominably—worse than a heated camel—so, when they +range alongside, no time is lost in listening to lies. It was not told +to me how they navigate themselves across the broken wastes, or by what +arts they keep alive in the dust-storms and heat. That was taken for +granted, and the man who took it so considered himself the most +commonplace of mortals. He was deeply moved by the account of a new +aerial route which the French are laying out somewhere in the Sahara +over a waterless stretch of four hundred miles, where if the aeroplane +is disabled between stations the pilot will most likely die and dry up +beside it. To do the Desert justice, she rarely bothers to wipe out +evidence of a kill. There are places in the Desert, men say, where even +now you come across the dead of old battles, all as light as last year's +wasps' nests, laid down in swaths or strung out in flight, with, here +and there, the little sparkling lines of the emptied cartridge-cases +that dropped them.</p> + +<p>There are valleys and ravines that the craziest smugglers do not care to +refuge in at certain times of the year; as there are rest-houses where +one's native servants will not stay because they are challenged on their +way to the kitchen by sentries of old Soudanese regiments which have +long gone over to Paradise. And of voices and warnings and outcries +behind rocks there is no end. These last arise from the fact that men +very rarely live in a spot so utterly still that they can hear the +murmuring race of the blood over their own ear-drums. Neither ship, +prairie, nor forest gives that silence. I went out to find it once, when +our steamer tied up and the rest of them had gone to see a sight, but I +never dared venture more than a mile from our funnel-smoke. At that +point I came upon a hill honey-combed with graves that held a multitude +of paper-white skulls, all grinning cheerfully like ambassadors of the +Desert. But I did not accept their invitation. They had told me that all +the little devils learn to draw in the Desert, which explains the +elaborate and purposeless detail that fills it. None but devils could +think of etching every rock outcrop with wind-lines, or skinning it down +to its glistening nerves with sand-blasts; of arranging hills in the +likeness of pyramids and sphinxes and wrecked town-suburbs; of covering +the space of half an English county with sepia studies of interlacing +and recrossing ravines, dongas, and nullahs, each an exposition of much +too clever perspective; and of wiping out the half-finished work with a +wash of sand in three tints, only to pick it up again in silver-point on +the horizon's edge. This they do in order to make lost travellers think +they can recognise landmarks and run about identifying them till the +madness comes. The Desert is all devil-device—as you might say 'blasted +cleverness'—crammed with futile works, always promising something fresh +round the next corner, always leading out through heaped decoration and +over-insistent design into equal barrenness.</p> + +<p>There was a morning of mornings when we lay opposite the rock-hewn +Temple of Abu Simbel, where four great figures, each sixty feet high, +sit with their hands on their knees waiting for Judgment Day. At their +feet is a little breadth of blue-green crop; they seem to hold back all +the weight of the Desert behind them, which, none the less, lips over at +one side in a cataract of vividest orange sand. The tourist is +recommended to see the sunrise here, either from within the temple where +it falls on a certain altar erected by Rameses in his own honour, or +from without where another Power takes charge.</p> + +<p>The stars had paled when we began our watch; the river birds were just +whispering over their toilettes in the uncertain purplish light. Then +the river dimmered up like pewter; the line of the ridge behind the +Temple showed itself against a milkiness in the sky; one felt rather +than saw that there were four figures in the pit of gloom below it. +These blocked themselves out, huge enough, but without any special +terror, while the glorious ritual of the Eastern dawn went forward. Some +reed of the bank revealed itself by reflection, black on silver; arched +wings flapped and jarred the still water to splintered glass; the desert +ridge turned to topaz, and the four figures stood clear, yet without +shadowing, from their background. The stronger light flooded them red +from head to foot, and they became alive—as horridly and tensely yet +blindly alive as pinioned men in the death-chair before the current is +switched on. One felt that if by any miracle the dawn could be delayed a +second longer, they would tear themselves free, and leap forth to +heaven knows what sort of vengeance. But that instant the full sun +pinned them in their places—nothing more than statues slashed with +light and shadow—and another day got to work.</p> + +<p>A few yards to the left of the great images, close to the statue of an +Egyptian princess, whose face was the very face of 'She,' there was a +marble slab over the grave of an English officer killed in a fight +against dervishes nearly a generation ago.</p> + +<p>From Abu Simbel to Wady Halfa the river, escaped from the domination of +the Pharaohs, begins to talk about dead white men. Thirty years ago, +young English officers in India lied and intrigued furiously that they +might be attached to expeditions whose bases were sometimes at Suakim, +sometimes quite in the desert air, but all of whose deeds are now quite +forgotten. Occasionally the dragoman, waving a smooth hand east or +south-easterly, will speak of some fight. Then every one murmurs: 'Oh +yes. That was Gordon, of course,' or 'Was that before or after +Omdurman?' But the river is much more precise. As the boat quarters +the falling stream like a puzzled hound, all the old names spurt +up again under the paddle-wheels—'Hicks' army—Val Baker—El +Teb—Tokar—Tamai—Tamanieb and Osman Digna!' Her head swings round for +another slant: '<i>We cannot land English or Indian troops: if consulted, +recommend abandonment of the Soudan within certain limits.</i> ' That was my +Lord Granville chirruping to the advisers of His Highness the Khedive, +and the sentence comes back as crisp as when it first shocked one in +'84. Next—here is a long reach between flooded palm trees—next, of +course, comes Gordon—and a delightfully mad Irish war correspondent +who was locked up with him in Khartoum. +Gordon—Eighty-four—Eighty-five—the Suakim-Berber Railway really begun +and quite as really abandoned. Korti—Abu Klea—the Desert Column—a +steamer called the <i>Safieh</i> > not the <i>Condor</i> , which rescued two other +steamers wrecked on their way back from a Khartoum in the red hands of +the Mahdi of those days. Then—the smooth glide over deep water +continues—another Suakim expedition with a great deal of Osman Digna +and renewed attempts to build the Suakim-Berber Railway. 'Hashin,' say +the paddle-wheels, slowing all of a sudden—'MacNeill's Zareba—the 15th +Sikhs and another native regiment—Osman Digna in great pride and power, +and Wady Halfa a frontier town. Tamai, once more; another siege of +Suakim: Gemaiza; Handub; Trinkitat, and Tokar—1887.'</p> + +<p>The river recalls the names; the mind at once brings up the face and +every trick of speech of some youth met for a few hours, maybe, in a +train on the way to Egypt of the old days. Both name and face had +utterly vanished from one's memory till then.</p> + +<p>It was another generation that picked up the ball ten years later and +touched down in Khartoum. Several people aboard the Cook boat had been +to that city. They all agreed that the hotel charges were very high, but +that you could buy the most delightful curiosities in the native +bazaar. But I do not like bazaars of the Egyptian kind, since a +discovery I made at Assouan. There was an old man—a Mussulman—who +pressed me to buy some truck or other, but not with the villainous +camaraderie that generations of low-caste tourists have taught the +people, nor yet with the cosmopolitan light-handedness of appeal which +the town-bred Egyptian picks up much too quickly; but with a certain +desperate zeal, foreign to his whole creed and nature. He fingered, he +implored, he fawned with an unsteady eye, and while I wondered I saw +behind him the puffy pink face of a fezzed Jew, watching him as a stoat +watches a rabbit. When he moved the Jew followed and took position at a +commanding angle. The old man glanced from me to him and renewed his +solicitations. So one could imagine an elderly hare thumping wildly on a +tambourine with the stoat behind him. They told me afterwards that Jews +own most of the stalls in Assouan bazaar, the Mussulmans working for +them, since tourists need Oriental colour. Never having seen or imagined +a Jew coercing a Mussulman, this colour was new and displeasing to me.</p> + +<a name="chap24" id="chap24"></a> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>VII</h2> +<h2>THE RIDDLE OF EMPIRE</h2> + +<p>At Halfa one feels the first breath of a frontier. Here the Egyptian +Government retires into the background, and even the Cook steamer does not +draw up in the exact centre of the postcard. At the telegraph-office, too, +there are traces, diluted but quite recognisable, of military +administration. Nor does the town, in any way or place whatever, +smell—which is proof that it is not looked after on popular lines. There +is nothing to see in it any more than there is in Hulk C. 60, late of her +Majesty's troopship <i>Himalaya</i> , now a coal-hulk in the Hamoaze at +Plymouth. A river front, a narrow terraced river-walk of semi-oriental +houses, barracks, a mosque, and half-a-dozen streets at right angles, the +Desert racing up to the end of each, make all the town. A mile or so up +stream under palm trees are bungalows of what must have been cantonments, +some machinery repair-shops, and odds and ends of railway track. It is all +as paltry a collection of whitewashed houses, pitiful gardens, dead walls, +and trodden waste spaces as one would wish to find anywhere; and every bit +of it quivers with the remembered life of armies and river-fleets, as the +finger-bowl rings when the rubbing finger is lifted. The most unlikely men +have done time there; stores by the thousand ton have been rolled and +pushed and hauled up the banks by tens of thousands of scattered hands; +hospitals have pitched themselves there, expanded enormously, shrivelled +up and drifted away with the drifting regiments; railway sidings by the +mile have been laid down and ripped up again, as need changed, and utterly +wiped out by the sands.</p> + +<p>Halfa has been the rail-head, Army Headquarters, and hub of the +universe—the one place where a man could make sure of buying tobacco +and sardines, or could hope for letters for himself and medical +attendance for his friend. Now she is a little shrunken shell of a town +without a proper hotel, where tourists hurry up from the river to buy +complete sets of Soudan stamps at the Post Office.</p> + +<p>I went for a purposeless walk from one end of the place to the other, +and found a crowd of native boys playing football on what might have +been a parade-ground of old days.</p> + +<p>'And what school is that?' I asked in English of a small, eager youth.</p> + +<p>'Madrissah,' said he most intelligently, which being translated means +just 'school.'</p> + +<p>'Yes, but <i>what</i> school?'</p> + +<p>'Yes, Madrissah, school, sir,' and he tagged after to see what else the +imbecile wanted.</p> + +<p>A line of railway track, that must have fed big workshops in its time, +led me between big-roomed houses and offices labelled departmentally, +with here and there a clerk at work. I was directed and re-directed by +polite Egyptian officials (I wished to get at a white officer if +possible, but there wasn't one about); was turned out of a garden which +belonged to an Authority; hung round the gate of a bungalow with an +old-established compound and two white men sitting in chairs on a +verandah; wandered down towards the river under the palm trees, where +the last red light came through; lost myself among rusty boilers and +balks of timber; and at last loafed back in the twilight escorted by the +small boy and an entire brigade of ghosts, not one of whom I had ever +met before, but all of whom I knew most intimately. They said it was the +evenings that used to depress <i>them</i> most, too; so they all came back +after dinner and bore me company, while I went to meet a friend arriving +by the night train from Khartoum.</p> + +<p>She was an hour late, and we spent it, the ghosts and I, in a +brick-walled, tin-roofed shed, warm with the day's heat; a crowd of +natives laughing and talking somewhere behind in the darkness. We knew +each other so well by that time, that we had finished discussing every +conceivable topic of conversation—the whereabouts of the Mahdi's head, +for instance—work, reward, despair, acknowledgment, flat failure, all +the real motives that had driven us to do anything, and all our other +longings. So we sat still and let the stars move, as men must do when +they meet this kind of train.</p> + +<p>Presently I asked: 'What is the name of the next station out from +here?'</p> + +<p>'Station Number One,' said a ghost.</p> + +<p>'And the next?'</p> + +<p>'Station Number Two, and so on to Eight, I think.'</p> + +<p>'And wasn't it worth while to name even <i>one</i> of these stations from +some man, living or dead, who had something to do with making the line?'</p> + +<p>'Well, they didn't, anyhow,' said another ghost. 'I suppose they didn't +think it worth while. Why? What do <i>you</i> think?'</p> + +<p>'I think, I replied, 'it is the sort of snobbery that nations go to +Hades for.'</p> + +<p>Her headlight showed at last, an immense distance off; the economic +electrics were turned up, the ghosts vanished, the dragomans of the +various steamers flowed forward in beautiful garments to meet their +passengers who had booked passages in the Cook boats, and the Khartoum +train decanted a joyous collection of folk, all decorated with horns, +hoofs, skins, hides, knives, and assegais, which they had been buying at +Omdurman. And when the porters laid hold upon their bristling bundles, +it was like MacNeill's Zareba without the camels.</p> + +<p>Two young men in tarboushes were the only people who had no part in the +riot. Said one of them to the other:</p> + +<p>'Hullo?'</p> + +<p>Said the other: 'Hullo!'</p> + +<p>They grunted together for a while. Then one pleasantly:</p> + +<p>'Oh, I'm sorry for <i>that</i> ! I thought I was going to have you under me +for a bit. Then you'll use the rest-house there?'</p> + +<p>'I suppose so,' said the other. 'Do you happen to know if the roof's +on?'</p> + +<p>Here a woman wailed aloud for her dervish spear which had gone adrift, +and I shall never know, except from the back pages of the Soudan +Almanack, what state that rest-house there is in.</p> + +<p>The Soudan Administration, by the little I heard, is a queer service. It +extends itself in silence from the edges of Abyssinia to the swamps of +the Equator at an average pressure of one white man to several thousand +square miles. It legislates according to the custom of the tribe where +possible, and on the common sense of the moment when there is no +precedent. It is recruited almost wholly from the army, armed chiefly +with binoculars, and enjoys a death-rate a little lower than its own +reputation. It is said to be the only service in which a man taking +leave is explicitly recommended to get out of the country and rest +himself that he may return the more fit to his job. A high standard of +intelligence is required, and lapses are not overlooked. For instance, +one man on leave in London took the wrong train from Boulogne, and +instead of going to Paris, which, of course, he had intended, found +himself at a station called Kirk Kilissie or Adrianople West, where he +stayed for some weeks. It was a mistake that might have happened to any +one on a dark night after a stormy passage, but the authorities would +not believe it, and when I left Egypt were busily engaged in boiling +him in hot oil. They are grossly respectable in the Soudan now.</p> + +<p>Long and long ago, before even the Philippines were taken, a friend of +mine was reprimanded by a British Member of Parliament, first for the +sin of blood-guiltiness because he was by trade a soldier, next for +murder because he had fought in great battles, and lastly, and most +important, because he and his fellow-braves had saddled the British +taxpayer with the expense of the Soudan. My friend explained that all +the Soudan had ever cost the British taxpayer was the price of about one +dozen of regulation Union Jacks—one for each province. 'That,' said the +M.P. triumphantly, 'is all it will ever be worth.' He went on to justify +himself, and the Soudan went on also. To-day it has taken its place as +one of those accepted miracles which are worked without heat or +headlines by men who do the job nearest their hand and seldom fuss about +their reputations.</p> + +<p>But less than sixteen years ago the length and breadth of it was one +crazy hell of murder, torture, and lust, where every man who had a sword +used it till he met a stronger and became a slave. It was—men say who +remember it—a hysteria of blood and fanaticism; and precisely as an +hysterical woman is called to her senses by a dash of cold water, so at +the battle of Omdurman the land was reduced to sanity by applied death +on such a scale as the murderers and the torturers at their most +unbridled could scarcely have dreamed. In a day and a night all who had +power and authority were wiped out and put under till, as the old song +says, no chief remained to ask after any follower. They had all charged +into Paradise. The people who were left looked for renewed massacres of +the sort they had been accustomed to, and when these did not come, they +said helplessly: 'We have nothing. We are nothing. Will you sell us into +slavery among the Egyptians?' The men who remember the old days of the +Reconstruction—which deserves an epic of its own—say that there was +nothing left to build on, not even wreckage. Knowledge, decency, +kinship, property, tide, sense of possession had all gone. The people +were told they were to sit still and obey orders; and they stared and +fumbled like dazed crowds after an explosion. Bit by bit, however, they +were fed and watered and marshalled into some sort of order; set to +tasks they never dreamed to see the end of; and, almost by physical +force, pushed and hauled along the ways of mere life. They came to +understand presently that they might reap what they had sown, and that +man, even a woman, might walk for a day's journey with two goats and a +native bedstead and live undespoiled. But they had to be taught +kindergarten-fashion.</p> + +<p>And little by little, as they realised that the new order was sure and +that their ancient oppressors were quite dead, there returned not only +cultivators, craftsmen, and artisans, but outlandish men of war, scarred +with old wounds and the generous dimples that the Martini-Henry bullet +used to deal—fighting men on the lookout for new employ. They would +hang about, first on one leg, then on the other, proud or uneasily +friendly, till some white officer circulated near by. And at his fourth +or fifth passing, brown and white having approved each other by eye, the +talk—so men say—would run something like this:</p> + +<p>OFFICER (<i>with air of sudden discovery</i> ). Oh, you by the hut, there, +what is your business?</p> + +<p>WARRIOR (<i>at 'attention' complicated by attempt to salute</i> ). I am +So-and-So, son of So-and-So, from such and such a place.</p> + +<p>OFFICER. I hear. And ...?</p> + +<p>WARRIOR (<i>repeating salute</i> ). And a fighting man also.</p> + +<p>OFFICER (<i>impersonally to horizon</i> ). But they <i>all</i> say that nowadays.</p> + +<p>WARRIOR (<i>very loudly</i> ). But there is a man in one of your battalions +who can testify to it. He is the grandson of my father's uncle.</p> + +<p>OFFICER (<i>confidentially to his boots</i> ). Hell is <i>quite</i> full of such +grandsons of just such father's uncles; and how do I know if Private +So-and-So speaks the truth about his family? (<i>Makes to go.</i> )</p> + +<p>WARRIOR (<i>swiftly removing necessary garments</i> ). Perhaps. But <i>these</i> don't lie. Look! I got this ten, twelve years ago when I was quite a +lad, close to the old Border, Yes, Halfa. It was a true Snider bullet. +Feel it! This little one on the leg I got at the big fight that finished +it all last year. But I am not lame (<i>violent leg-exercise</i> ), not in +the least lame. See! I run. I jump. I kick. Praised be Allah!</p> + +<p>OFFICER. Praised be Allah! And then?</p> + +<p>WARRIOR (<i>coquettishly</i> ). Then, I shoot. I am not a common spear-man. +(<i>Lapse into English.</i> ) Yeh, dam goo' shot! (<i>pumps lever of imaginary +Martini</i> ).</p> + +<p>OFFICER (<i>unmoved</i> ). I see. And then?</p> + +<p>WARRIOR (<i>indignantly</i> ). <i>I</i> am come here—after many days' marching. +(<i>Change to childlike wheedle</i> .) Are <i>all</i> the regiments full?</p> + +<p>At this point the relative, in uniform, generally discovered himself, +and if the officer liked the cut of his jib, another 'old Mahdi's man' +would be added to the machine that made itself as it rolled along. They +dealt with situations in those days by the unclouded light of reason and +a certain high and holy audacity.</p> + +<p>There is a tale of two Sheikhs shortly after the Reconstruction began. +One of them, Abdullah of the River, prudent and the son of a +slave-woman, professed loyalty to the English very early in the day, and +used that loyalty as a cloak to lift camels from another Sheikh, Farid +of the Desert, still at war with the English, but a perfect gentleman, +which Abdullah was not. Naturally, Farid raided back on Abdullah's kine, +Abdullah complained to the authorities, and the Border fermented. To +Farid in his desert camp with a clutch of Abdullah's cattle round him, +entered, alone and unarmed, the officer responsible for the peace of +those parts. After compliments, for they had had dealings with each +other before: 'You've been driving Abdullah's stock again,' said the +Englishman.</p> + +<p>'I should think I had!' was the hot answer. 'He lifts my camels and +scuttles back into your territory, where he knows I can't follow him for +the life; and when I try to get a bit of my own back, he whines to you. +He's a cad—an utter cad.'</p> + +<p>'At any rate, he is loyal. If you'd only come in and be loyal too, you'd +both be on the same footing, and then if he stole from you, he'd catch +it!'</p> + +<p>'He'd never dare to steal except under your protection. Give him what +he'd have got in the Mahdi's time—a first-class flogging. <i>You</i> know he +deserves it!'</p> + +<p>'I'm afraid that isn't allowed. You have to let me shift all those +bullocks of his back again.'</p> + +<p>'And if I don't?'</p> + +<p>'Then, I shall have to ride back and collect all my men and begin war +against you.'</p> + +<p>'But what prevents my cutting your throat where you sit?</p> + +<p>'For one thing, you aren't Abdullah, and——'</p> + +<p>'There! You confess he's a cad!'</p> + +<p>'And for another, the Government would only send another officer who +didn't understand your ways, and then there <i>would</i> be war, and no one +would score except Abdullah. He'd steal your camels and get credit for +it.'</p> + +<p>'So he would, the scoundrel! This is a hard world for honest men. Now, +you admit Abdullah is a cad. Listen to me, and I'll tell you a few more +things about him. He was, etc., etc. He is, etc., etc.'</p> + +<p>'You're perfectly right, Sheikh, but don't you see I can't tell him what +I think of him so long as he's loyal and you're out against us? Now, if +<i>you</i> come in I promise you that I'll give Abdullah a telling-off—yes, +in your presence—that will do you good to listen to.'</p> + +<p>'No! I won't come in! But—I tell you what I will do. I'll accompany you +to-morrow as your guest, understand, to your camp. Then you send for +Abdullah, and <i>if</i> I judge that his fat face has been sufficiently +blackened in my presence, I'll think about coming in later.'</p> + +<p>So it was arranged, and they slept out the rest of the night, side by +side, and in the morning they gathered up and returned all Abdullah's +cattle, and in the evening, in Farid's presence, Abdullah got the +tongue-lashing of his wicked old life, and Farid of the Desert laughed +and came in; and they all lived happy ever afterwards.</p> + +<p>Somewhere or other in the nearer provinces the old heady game must be +going on still, but the Soudan proper has settled to civilisation of the +brick-bungalow and bougainvillea sort, and there is a huge technical +college where the young men are trained to become fitters, surveyors, +draftsmen, and telegraph employees at fabulous wages. In due time, they +will forget how warily their fathers had to walk in the Mahdi's time to +secure even half a bellyful; then, as has happened elsewhere. They will +honestly believe that they themselves originally created and since then +have upheld the easy life into which they were bought at so heavy a +price. Then the demand will go up for 'extension of local government,' +'Soudan for the Soudanese,' and so on till the whole cycle has to be +retrodden. It is a hard law but an old one—Rome died learning it, as +our western civilisation may die—that if you give any man anything that +he has not painfully earned for himself, you infallibly make him or his +descendants your devoted enemies.</p> + +<br /> + +<p>THE END</p> + + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Letters of Travel (1892-1913), by Rudyard Kipling + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS OF TRAVEL (1892-1913) *** + +***** This file should be named 12089-h.htm or 12089-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/0/8/12089/ + +Produced by Sjaani and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Letters of Travel (1892-1913) + +Author: Rudyard Kipling + +Release Date: April 20, 2004 [EBook #12089] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS OF TRAVEL (1892-1913) *** + + + + +Produced by Sjaani and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + +LETTERS OF TRAVEL + +THE DOMINIONS EDITION + +LETTERS OF TRAVEL + +(1892-1913) + +BY RUDYARD KIPLING + + +MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED +ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON +1920 + +The Letters entitled 'FROM TIDEWAY TO TIDEWAY' were published +originally in _The Times_; those entitled 'LETTERS TO THE FAMILY' in +_The Morning Post_; and those entitled 'EGYPT OF THE MAGICIANS' in +_Nash's Magazine_. + +COPYRIGHT + +_This Edition is intended for circulation only in India +and the British Dominions over the Seas_ + + + + +CONTENTS + + +FROM TIDEWAY TO TIDEWAY (1892)-- + +In Sight of Monadnock +Across a Continent +The Edge of the East +Our Overseas Men +Some Earthquakes +Half-a-Dozen Pictures +'Captains Courageous' +On One Side Only +Leaves from a Winter Note-Book + + +LETTERS TO THE FAMILY (1907)-- + +The Road to Quebec +A People at Home +Cities and Spaces +Newspapers and Democracy +Labour +The Fortunate Towns +Mountains and the Pacific +A Conclusion + + +EGYPT OF THE MAGICIANS (1913)-- + +Sea Travel +A Return to the East +A Serpent of Old Nile +Up the River +Dead Kings +The Face of the Desert +The Riddle of Empire + + * * * * * + +FROM TIDEWAY TO TIDEWAY + +1892-95 + +IN SIGHT OF MONADNOCK. +ACROSS A CONTINENT. +THE EDGE OF THE EAST. +OUR OVERSEAS MEN. +SOME EARTHQUAKES. +HALF-A-DOZEN PICTURES. +'CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS.' +ON ONE SIDE ONLY. +LEAVES FROM A WINTER NOTE-BOOK. + + * * * * * + +IN SIGHT OF MONADNOCK + +After the gloom of gray Atlantic weather, our ship came to America in a +flood of winter sunshine that made unaccustomed eyelids blink, and the +New Yorker, who is nothing if not modest, said, 'This isn't a sample of +our really fine days. Wait until such and such times come, or go to such +and a such a quarter of the city.' We were content, and more than +content, to drift aimlessly up and down the brilliant streets, wondering +a little why the finest light should be wasted on the worst pavements in +the world; to walk round and round Madison Square, because that was full +of beautifully dressed babies playing counting-out games, or to gaze +reverently at the broad-shouldered, pug-nosed Irish New York policemen. +Wherever we went there was the sun, lavish and unstinted, working nine +hours a day, with the colour and the clean-cut lines of perspective that +he makes. That any one should dare to call this climate muggy, yea, even +'subtropical,' was a shock. There came such a man, and he said, 'Go +north if you want weather--weather that _is_ weather. Go to New +England.' So New York passed away upon a sunny afternoon, with her roar +and rattle, her complex smells, her triply over-heated rooms, and much +too energetic inhabitants, while the train went north to the lands where +the snow lay. It came in one sweep--almost, it seemed, in one turn of +the wheels--covering the winter-killed grass and turning the frozen +ponds that looked so white under the shadow of lean trees into pools of +ink. + +As the light closed in, a little wooden town, white, cloaked, and dumb, +slid past the windows, and the strong light of the car lamps fell upon a +sleigh (the driver furred and muffled to his nose) turning the corner of +a street. Now the sleigh of a picture-book, however well one knows it, +is altogether different from the thing in real life, a means of +conveyance at a journey's end; but it is well not to be over-curious in +the matter, for the same American who has been telling you at length how +he once followed a kilted Scots soldier from Chelsea to the Tower, out +of pure wonder and curiosity at his bare knees and sporran, will laugh +at your interest in 'just a cutter.' + +The staff of the train--surely the great American nation would be lost +if deprived of the ennobling society of brakeman, conductor, Pullman-car +conductor, negro porter, and newsboy--told pleasant tales, as they +spread themselves at ease in the smoking compartments, of snowings up +the line to Montreal, of desperate attacks--four engines together and a +snow-plough in front--on drifts thirty feet high, and the pleasures of +walking along the tops of goods wagons to brake a train, with the +thermometer thirty below freezing. 'It comes cheaper to kill men that +way than to put air-brakes on freight-cars,' said the brakeman. + +Thirty below freezing! It was inconceivable till one stepped out into it +at midnight, and the first shock of that clear, still air took away the +breath as does a plunge into sea-water. A walrus sitting on a woolpack +was our host in his sleigh, and he wrapped us in hairy goatskin coats, +caps that came down over the ears, buffalo robes and blankets, and yet +more buffalo-robes till we, too, looked like walruses and moved almost +as gracefully. The night was as keen as the edge of a newly-ground +sword; breath froze on the coat-lapels in snow; the nose became without +sensation, and the eyes wept bitterly because the horses were in a hurry +to get home; and whirling through air at zero brings tears. But for the +jingle of the sleigh-bells the ride might have taken place in a dream, +for there was no sound of hoofs upon the snow, the runners sighed a +little now and again as they glided over an inequality, and all the +sheeted hills round about were as dumb as death. Only the Connecticut +River kept up its heart and a lane of black water through the packed +ice; we could hear the stream worrying round the heels of its small +bergs. Elsewhere there was nothing but snow under the moon--snow drifted +to the level of the stone fences or curling over their tops in a lip of +frosted silver; snow banked high on either side of the road, or lying +heavy on the pines and the hemlocks in the woods, where the air seemed, +by comparison, as warm as a conservatory. It was beautiful beyond +expression, Nature's boldest sketch in black and white, done with a +Japanese disregard of perspective, and daringly altered from time to +time by the restless pencils of the moon. + +In the morning the other side of the picture was revealed in the colours +of the sunlight. There was never a cloud in the sky that rested on the +snow-line of the horizon as a sapphire on white velvet. Hills of pure +white, or speckled and furred with woods, rose up above the solid white +levels of the fields, and the sun rioted over their embroideries till +the eyes ached. Here and there on the exposed slopes the day's +warmth--the thermometer was nearly forty degrees--and the night's cold +had made a bald and shining crust upon the snow; but the most part was +soft powdered stuff, ready to catch the light on a thousand crystals and +multiply it sevenfold. Through this magnificence, and thinking nothing +of it, a wood-sledge drawn by two shaggy red steers, the unbarked logs +diamond-dusted with snow, shouldered down the road in a cloud of frosty +breath. It is the mark of inexperience in this section of the country to +confound a sleigh which you use for riding with the sledge that is +devoted to heavy work; and it is, I believe, a still greater sign of +worthlessness to think that oxen are driven, as they are in most places, +by scientific twisting of the tail. The driver with red mittens on his +hands, felt overstockings that come up to his knees, and, perhaps, a +silvery-gray coon-skin coat on his back, walks beside, crying, 'Gee, +haw!' even as is written in American stories. And the speech of the +driver explains many things in regard to the dialect story, which at its +best is an infliction to many. Now that I have heard the long, unhurried +drawl of Vermont, my wonder is, not that the New England tales should be +printed in what, for the sake of argument, we will call English and its +type, but rather that they should not have appeared in Swedish or +Russian. Our alphabet is too limited. This part of the country belongs +by laws unknown to the United States, but which obtain all the world +over, to the New England story and the ladies who write it. You feel +this in the air as soon as you see the white-painted wooden houses left +out in the snow, the austere schoolhouse, and the people--the men of the +farms, the women who work as hard as they with, it may be, less +enjoyment of life--the other houses, well painted and quaintly roofed, +that belong to Judge This, Lawyer That, and Banker Such an one; all +powers in the metropolis of six thousand folk over by the railway +station. More acutely still, do you realise the atmosphere when you read +in the local paper announcements of 'chicken suppers' and 'church +sociables' to be given by such and such a denomination, sandwiched +between paragraphs of genial and friendly interest, showing that the +countryside live (and without slaying each other) on terms of terrifying +intimacy. + +The folk of the old rock, the dwellers in the older houses, born and +raised hereabouts, would not live out of the town for any consideration, +and there are insane people from the South--men and women from Boston +and the like--who actually build houses out in the open country, two, +and even three miles from Main Street which is nearly 400 yards long, +and the centre of life and population. With the strangers, more +particularly if they do not buy their groceries 'in the street,' which +means, and is, the town, the town has little to do; but it knows +everything, and much more also, that goes on among them. Their dresses, +their cattle, their views, the manners of their children, their manner +towards their servants, and every other conceivable thing, is reported, +digested, discussed, and rediscussed up and down Main Street. Now, the +wisdom of Vermont, not being at all times equal to grasping all the +problems of everybody else's life with delicacy, sometimes makes +pathetic mistakes, and the town is set by the ears. You will see, +therefore, that towns of a certain size do not differ materially all the +world over. The talk of the men of the farms is of their +farms--purchase, mortgage, and sale, recorded rights, boundary lines, +and road tax. It was in the middle of New Zealand, on the edge of the +Wild horse plains, that I heard this talk last, when a man and his wife, +twenty miles from the nearest neighbour, sat up half the night +discussing just the same things that the men talked of in Main Street, +Vermont, U.S.A. + +There is one man in the State who is much exercised over this place. He +is a farm-hand, raised in a hamlet fifteen or twenty miles from the +nearest railway, and, greatly daring, he has wandered here. The bustle +and turmoil of Main Street, the new glare of the electric lights and the +five-storeyed brick business block, frighten and distress him much. He +has taken service on a farm well away from these delirious delights, +and, says he, 'I've been offered $25 a month to work in a bakery at New +York. But you don't get me to no New York, I've seen this place an' it +just scares me,' His strength is in the drawing of hay and the feeding +of cattle. Winter life on a farm does not mean the comparative idleness +that is so much written of. Each hour seems to have its sixty minutes of +work; for the cattle are housed and eat eternally; the colts must be +turned out for their drink, and the ice broken for them if necessary; +then ice must be stored for the summer use, and then the real work of +hauling logs for firewood begins. New England depends for its fuel on +the woods. The trees are 'blazed' in the autumn just before the fall of +the leaf, felled later, cut into four-foot lengths, and, as soon as the +friendly snow makes sledging possible, drawn down to the woodhouse. +Afterwards the needs of the farm can be attended to, and a farm, like an +arch, is never at rest. A little later will come maple-sugar time, when +the stately maples are tapped as the sap begins to stir, and be-ringed +with absurd little buckets (a cow being milked into a thimble gives some +idea of the disproportion), which are emptied into cauldrons. +Afterwards (this is the time of the 'sugaring-off parties') you pour the +boiled syrup into tins full of fresh snow, where it hardens, and you +pretend to help and become very sticky and make love, boys and girls +together. Even the introduction of patent sugar evaporators has not +spoiled the love-making. + +There is a certain scarcity of men to make love with; not so much in +towns which have their own manufactories and lie within a lover's +Sabbath-day journey of New York, but in the farms and villages. The men +have gone away--the young men are fighting fortune further West, and the +women remain--remain for ever as women must. On the farms, when the +children depart, the old man and the old woman strive to hold things +together without help, and the woman's portion is work and monotony. +Sometimes she goes mad to an extent which appreciably affects statistics +and is put down in census reports. More often, let us hope, she dies. In +the villages where the necessity for heavy work is not so urgent the +women find consolation in the formation of literary clubs and circles, +and so gather to themselves a great deal of wisdom in their own way. +That way is not altogether lovely. They desire facts and the knowledge +that they are at a certain page in a German or an Italian book before a +certain time, or that they have read the proper books in a proper way. +At any rate, they have something to do that seems as if they were doing +something. It has been said that the New England stories are cramped +and narrow. Even a far-off view of the iron-bound life whence they are +drawn justifies the author. You can carve a nut in a thousand different +ways by reason of the hardness of the shell. + +Twenty or thirty miles across the hills, on the way to the Green +Mountains, lie some finished chapters of pitiful stories--a few score +abandoned farms, started in a lean land, held fiercely so long as there +was any one to work them, and then left on the hill-sides. Beyond this +desolation are woods where the bear and the deer still find peace, and +sometimes even the beaver forgets that he is persecuted and dares to +build his lodge. These things were told me by a man who loved the woods +for their own sake and not for the sake of slaughter--a quiet, +slow-spoken man of the West, who came across the drifts on show-shoes +and refrained from laughing when I borrowed his foot-gear and tried to +walk. The gigantic lawn-tennis bats strung with hide are not easy to +manoeuvre. If you forget to keep the long heels down and trailing in the +snow you turn over and become as a man who fails into deep water with a +life-belt tied to his ankles. If you lose your balance, do not attempt +to recover it, but drop, half-sitting and half-kneeling, over as large +an area as possible. When you have mastered the wolf-step, can slide one +shoe above the other deftly, that is to say, the sensation of paddling +over a ten-foot-deep drift and taking short cuts by buried fences is +worth the ankle-ache. The man from the West interpreted to me the signs +on the snow, showed how a fox (this section of the country is full of +foxes, and men shoot them because riding is impossible) leaves one kind +of spoor, walking with circumspection as becomes a thief, and a dog, who +has nothing to be ashamed of, but widens his four legs and plunges, +another; how coons go to sleep for the winter and squirrels too, and how +the deer on the Canada border trample down deep paths that are called +yards and are caught there by inquisitive men with cameras, who hold +them by their tails when the deer have blundered into deep snow, and so +photograph their frightened dignity. He told me of people also--the +manners and customs of New Englanders here, and how they blossom and +develop in the Far West on the newer railway lines, when matters come +very nearly to civil war between rival companies racing for the same +canon; how there is a country not very far away called Caledonia, +populated by the Scotch, who can give points to a New Englander in a +bargain, and how these same Scotch-Americans by birth, name their +townships still after the cities of their thrifty race. It was all as +new and delightful as the steady 'scrunch' of the snow-shoes and the +dazzling silence of the hills. + +Beyond the very furthest range, where the pines turn to a faint blue +haze against the one solitary peak--a real mountain and not a +hill--showed like a gigantic thumbnail pointing heavenward. + +'And that's Monadnock,' said the man from the West; 'all the hills have +Indian names. You left Wantastiquet on your right coming out of town,' + +You know how it often happens that a word shuttles in and out of many +years, waking all sorts of incongruous associations. I had met Monadnock +on paper in a shameless parody of Emerson's style, before ever style or +verse had interest for me. But the word stuck because of a rhyme, in +which one was + + ... crowned coeval + With Monadnock's crest, + And my wings extended + Touch the East and West. + +Later the same word, pursued on the same principle as that blessed one +Mesopotamia, led me to and through Emerson, up to his poem on the peak +itself--the wise old giant 'busy with his sky affairs,' who makes us +sane and sober and free from little things if we trust him. So Monadnock +came to mean everything that was helpful, healing, and full of quiet, +and when I saw him half across New Hampshire he did not fail. In that +utter stillness a hemlock bough, overweighted with snow, came down a +foot or two with a tired little sigh; the snow slid off and the little +branch flew nodding back to its fellows. + +For the honour of Monadnock there was made that afternoon an image of +snow of Gautama Buddha, something too squat and not altogether equal on +both sides, but with an imperial and reposeful waist. He faced towards +the mountain, and presently some men in a wood-sledge came up the road +and faced him. Now, the amazed comments of two Vermont farmers on the +nature and properties of a swag-bellied god are worth hearing. They were +not troubled about his race, for he was aggressively white; but rounded +waists seem to be out of fashion in Vermont. At least, they said so, +with rare and curious oaths. + +Next day all the idleness and trifling were drowned in a snowstorm that +filled the hollows of the hills with whirling blue mist, bowed the +branches of the woods till you ducked, but were powdered all the same +when you drove through, and wiped out the sleighing tracks. Mother +Nature is beautifully tidy if you leave her alone. She rounded off every +angle, broke down every scarp, and tucked the white bedclothes, till not +a wrinkle remained, up to the chine of the spruces and the hemlocks that +would not go to sleep. + +'Now,' said the man of the West, as we were driving to the station, and +alas! to New York, 'all my snow-tracks are gone; but when that snow +melts, a week hence or a month hence, they'll all come up again and show +where I've been.' + +Curious idea, is it not? Imagine a murder committed in the lonely woods, +a snowstorm that covers the tracks of the flying man before the avenger +of blood has buried the body, and then, a week later, the withdrawal of +the traitorous snow, revealing step by step the path Cain took--the +six-inch dee-trail of his snow-shoes--each step a dark disk on the +white till the very end. + +There is so much, so very much to write, if it were worth while, about +that queer little town by the railway station, with its life running, to +all outward seeming, as smoothly as the hack-coupes on their sleigh +mounting, and within disturbed by the hatreds and troubles and +jealousies that vex the minds of all but the gods. For instance--no, it +is better to remember the lesson Monadnock, and Emerson has said, 'Zeus +hates busy-bodies and people who do too much.' + +That there are such folk, a long nasal drawl across Main Street attests. +A farmer is unhitching his horses from a post opposite a store. He +stands with the tie-rope in his hand and gives his opinion to his +neighbour and the world generally--'But them there Andersons, they ain't +got no notion of etikwette!' + + + + +ACROSS A CONTINENT + + +It is not easy to escape from a big city. An entire continent was +waiting to be traversed, and, for that reason, we lingered in New York +till the city felt so homelike that it seemed wrong to leave it. And +further, the more one studied it, the more grotesquely bad it grew--bad +in its paving, bad in its streets, bad in its street-police, and but for +the kindness of the tides would be worse than bad in its sanitary +arrangements. No one as yet has approached the management of New York in +a proper spirit; that is to say, regarding it as the shiftless outcome +of squalid barbarism and reckless extravagance. No one is likely to do +so, because reflections on the long, narrow pig-trough are construed as +malevolent attacks against the spirit and majesty of the great American +people, and lead to angry comparisons. Yet, if all the streets of London +were permanently up and all the lamps permanently down, this would not +prevent the New York streets taken in a lump from being first cousins to +a Zanzibar foreshore, or kin to the approaches of a Zulu kraal. Gullies, +holes, ruts, cobbles-stones awry, kerbstones rising from two to six +inches above the level of the slatternly pavement; tram-lines from two +to three inches above street level; building materials scattered half +across the street; lime, boards, cut stone, and ash-barrels generally +and generously everywhere; wheeled traffic taking its chances, dray +_versus_ brougham, at cross roads; sway-backed poles whittled and +unpainted; drunken lamp-posts with twisted irons; and, lastly, a +generous scatter of filth and more mixed stinks than the winter wind can +carry away, are matters which can be considered quite apart from the +'Spirit of Democracy' or 'the future of this great and growing country.' +In any other land, they would be held to represent slovenliness, +sordidness, and want of capacity. Here it is explained, not once but +many times, that they show the speed at which the city has grown and the +enviable indifference of her citizens to matters of detail. One of these +days, you are told, everything will be taken in hand and put straight. +The unvirtuous rulers of the city will be swept away by a cyclone, or a +tornado, or something big and booming, of popular indignation; everybody +will unanimously elect the right men, who will justly earn the enormous +salaries that are at present being paid to inadequate aliens for road +sweepings, and all will be well. At the same time the lawlessness +ingrained by governors among the governed during the last thirty, forty, +or it may be fifty years; the brutal levity of the public conscience in +regard to public duty; the toughening and suppling of public morals, and +the reckless disregard for human life, bred by impotent laws and +fostered by familiarity with needless accidents and criminal neglect, +will miraculously disappear. If the laws of cause and effect that +control even the freest people in the world say otherwise, so much the +worse for the laws. America makes her own. Behind her stands the ghost +of the most bloody war of the century caused in a peaceful land by long +temporising with lawlessness, by letting things slide, by shiftlessness +and blind disregard for all save the material need of the hour, till the +hour long conceived and let alone stood up full-armed, and men said, +'Here is an unforeseen crisis,' and killed each other in the name of God +for four years. + +In a heathen land the three things that are supposed to be the pillars +of moderately decent government are regard for human life, justice, +criminal and civil, as far as it lies in man to do justice, and good +roads. In this Christian city they think lightly of the first--their own +papers, their own speech, and their own actions prove it; buy and sell +the second at a price openly and without shame; and are, apparently, +content to do without the third. One would almost expect racial sense of +humour would stay them from expecting only praise--slab, lavish, and +slavish--from the stranger within their gates. But they do not. If he +holds his peace, they forge tributes to their own excellence which they +put into his mouth, thereby treating their own land which they profess +to honour as a quack treats his pills. If he speaks--but you shall see +for yourselves what happens then. And they cannot see that by untruth +and invective it is themselves alone that they injure. + +The blame of their city evils is not altogether with the gentlemen, +chiefly of foreign extraction, who control the city. These find a people +made to their hand--a lawless breed ready to wink at one evasion of the +law if they themselves may profit by another, and in their rare leisure +hours content to smile over the details of a clever fraud. Then, says +the cultured American, 'Give us time. Give us time, and we shall +arrive.' The otherwise American, who is aggressive, straightway proceeds +to thrust a piece of half-hanged municipal botch-work under the nose of +the alien as a sample of perfected effort. There is nothing more +delightful than to sit for a strictly limited time with a child who +tells you what he means to do when he is a man; but when that same +child, loud-voiced, insistent, unblushingly eager for praise, but +thin-skinned as the most morbid of hobbledehoys, stands about all your +ways telling you the same story in the same voice, you begin to yearn +for something made and finished--say Egypt and a completely dead mummy. +It is neither seemly nor safe to hint that the government of the largest +city in the States is a despotism of the alien by the alien for the +alien, tempered with occasional insurrections of the decent folk. Only +the Chinaman washes the dirty linen of other lands. + +St. Paul, Minnesota. + +Yes, it is very good to get away once more and pick up the old and ever +fresh business of the vagrant, loafing through new towns, learned in +the manners of dogs, babies, and perambulators half the world over, and +tracking the seasons by the up-growth of flowers in stranger-people's +gardens. St. Paul, standing at the barn-door of the Dakota and Minnesota +granaries, is all things to all men except to Minneapolis, eleven miles +away, whom she hates and by whom she is patronised. She calls herself +the capital of the North-West, the new North-West, and her citizens +wear, not only the tall silk hat of trade, but the soft slouch of the +West. She talks in another tongue than the New Yorker, and--sure sign +that we are far across the continent--her papers argue with the San +Francisco ones over rate wars and the competition of railway companies. +St. Paul has been established many years, and if one were reckless +enough to go down to the business quarters one would hear all about her +and more also. But the residential parts of the town are the crown of +it. In common with scores of other cities, broad-crowned suburbs--using +the word in the English sense--that make the stranger jealous. You get +here what you do not get in the city--well-paved or asphalted roads, +planted with trees, and trim side-walks, studded with houses of +individuality, not boorishly fenced off from each other, but standing +each on its plot of well-kept turf running down to the pavement. It is +always Sunday in these streets of a morning. The cable-car has taken the +men down town to business, the children are at school, and the big dogs, +three and a third to each absent child, lie nosing the winter-killed +grass and wondering when the shoots will make it possible for a +gentleman to take his spring medicine. In the afternoon, the children on +tricycles stagger up and down the asphalt with due proportion of big +dogs at each wheel; the cable-cars coming up hill begin to drop the men +each at his own door--the door of the house that he builded for himself +(though the architect incited him to that vile little attic tower and +useless loggia), and, naturally enough, twilight brings the lovers +walking two by two along the very quiet ways. You can tell from the +houses almost the exact period at which they were built, whether in the +jig-saw days, when if behoved respectability to use unlovely turned +rails and pierced gable-ends, or during the Colonial craze, which means +white paint and fluted pillars, or in the latest domestic era, a most +pleasant mixture, that is, of stained shingles, hooded dormer-windows, +cunning verandas, and recessed doors. Seeing these things, one begins to +understand why the Americans visiting England are impressed with the old +and not with the new. He is not much more than a hundred years ahead of +the English in design, comfort, and economy, and (this is most +important) labour-saving appliances in his house. From Newport to San +Diego you will find the same thing to-day. + +Last tribute of respect and admiration. One little brown house at the +end of an avenue is shuttered down, and a doctor's buggy stands before +it. On the door a large blue and white label says--' Scarlet Fever.' Oh, +most excellent municipality of St. Paul. It is because of these little +things, and not by rowdying and racketing in public places, that a +nation becomes great and free and honoured. In the cars to-night they +will be talking wheat, girding at Minneapolis, and sneering at Duluth's +demand for twenty feet of water from Duluth to the Atlantic--matters of +no great moment compared with those streets and that label. + + +_A day later_. + +'Five days ago there wasn't a foot of earth to see. It was just +naturally covered with snow,' says the conductor standing in the rear +car of the Great Northern train. He speaks as though the snow had hidden +something priceless. Here is the view: One railway track and a line of +staggering telegraph poles ending in a dot and a blur on the horizon. To +the left and right, a sweep as it were of the sea, one huge plain of +corn land waiting for the spring, dotted at rare intervals with wooden +farmhouses, patent self-reapers and binders almost as big as the houses, +ricks left over from last year's abundant harvest, and mottled here and +there with black patches to show that the early ploughing had begun. The +snow lies in a last few streaks and whirls by the track; from sky-line +to sky-line is black loam and prairie grass so dead that it seems as +though no one year's sun would waken it. This is the granary of the land +where the farmer who bears the burdens of the State--and who, therefore, +ascribes last year's bumper crop to the direct action of the McKinley +Bill--has, also, to bear the ghastly monotony of earth and sky. He keeps +his head, having many things to attend to, but his wife sometimes goes +mad as the women do in Vermont. There is little variety in Nature's big +wheat-field. They say that when the corn is in the ear, the wind, +chasing shadows across it for miles on miles, breeds as it were a +vertigo in those who must look and cannot turn their eyes away. And they +tell a nightmare story of a woman who lived with her husband for +fourteen years at an Army post in just such a land as this. Then they +were transferred to West Point, among the hills over the Hudson, and she +came to New York, but the terror of the tall houses grew upon her and +grew till she went down with brain fever, and the dread of her delirium +was that the terrible things would topple down and crush her. That is a +true story. + +They work for harvest with steam-ploughs here. How could mere horses +face the endless furrows? And they attack the earth with toothed, +cogged, and spiked engines that would be monstrous in the shops, but +here are only speckles on the yellow grass. Even the locomotive is +cowed. A train of freight cars is passing along a line that comes out of +the blue and goes on till it meets the blue again. Elsewhere the train +would move off with a joyous, vibrant roar. Here it steals away down the +vista of the telegraph poles with an awed whisper--steals away and sinks +into the soil. + +Then comes a town deep in black mud--a straggly, inch-thick plank town, +with dull red grain elevators. The open country refuses to be subdued +even for a few score rods. Each street ends in the illimitable open, and +it is as though the whole houseless, outside earth were racing through +it. Towards evening, under a gray sky, flies by an unframed picture of +desolation. In the foreground a farm wagon almost axle deep in mud, the +mire dripping from the slow-turning wheels as the man flogs the horses. +Behind him on a knoll of sodden soggy grass, fenced off by raw rails +from the landscape at large, are a knot of utterly uninterested citizens +who have flogged horses and raised wheat in their time, but to-day lie +under chipped and weather-worn wooden headstones. Surely burial here +must be more awful to the newly-made ghost than burial at sea. + +There is more snow as we go north, and Nature is hard at work breaking +up the ground for the spring. The thaw has filled every depression with +a sullen gray-black spate, and out on the levels the water lies six +inches deep, in stretch upon stretch, as far as the eye can reach. Every +culvert is full, and the broken ice clicks against the wooden +pier-guards of the bridges. Somewhere in this flatness there is a +refreshing jingle of spurs along the cars, and a man of the Canadian +Mounted Police swaggers through with his black fur cap and the yellow +tab aside, his well-fitting overalls and his better set-up back. One +wants to shake hands with him because he is clean and does not slouch +nor spit, trims his hair, and walks as a man should. Then a +custom-house officer wants to know too much about cigars, whisky, and +Florida water. Her Majesty the Queen of England and Empress of India has +us in her keeping. Nothing has happened to the landscape, and Winnipeg, +which is, as it were, a centre of distribution for emigrants, stands up +to her knees in the water of the thaw. The year has turned in earnest, +and somebody is talking about the 'first ice-shove' at Montreal, 1300 or +1400 miles east. + +They will not run trains on Sunday at Montreal, and this is Wednesday. +Therefore, the Canadian Pacific makes up a train for Vancouver at +Winnipeg. This is worth remembering, because few people travel in that +train, and you escape any rush of tourists running westward to catch the +Yokohama boat. The car is your own, and with it the service of the +porter. Our porter, seeing things were slack, beguiled himself with a +guitar, which gave a triumphal and festive touch to the journey, +ridiculously out of keeping with the view. For eight-and-twenty long +hours did the bored locomotive trail us through a flat and hairy land, +powdered, ribbed, and speckled with snow, small snow that drives like +dust-shot in the wind--the land of Assiniboia. Now and again, for no +obvious reason to the outside mind, there was a town. Then the towns +gave place to 'section so and so'; then there were trails of the +buffalo, where he once walked in his pride; then there was a mound of +white bones, supposed to belong to the said buffalo, and then the +wilderness took up the tale. Some of it was good ground, but most of it +seemed to have fallen by the wayside, and the tedium of it was eternal. + +At twilight--an unearthly sort of twilight--there came another curious +picture. Thus--a wooden town shut in among low, treeless, rolling +ground, a calling river that ran unseen between scarped banks; barracks +of a detachment of mounted police, a little cemetery where ex-troopers +rested, a painfully formal public garden with pebble paths and foot-high +fir trees, a few lines of railway buildings, white women walking up and +down in the bitter cold with their bonnets off, some Indians in red +blanketing with buffalo horns for sale trailing along the platform, and, +not ten yards from the track, a cinnamon bear and a young grizzly +standing up with extended arms in their pens and begging for food. It +was strange beyond anything that this bald telling can suggest--opening +a door into a new world. The only commonplace thing about the spot was +its name--Medicine Hat, which struck me instantly as the only possible +name such a town could carry. This is that place which later became a +town; but I had seen it three years before when it was even smaller and +was reached by me in a freight-car, ticket unpaid for. + +That next morning brought us the Canadian Pacific Railway as one reads +about it. No pen of man could do justice to the scenery there. The +guide-books struggle desperately with descriptions, adapted for summer +reading, of rushing cascades, lichened rocks, waving pines, and +snow-capped mountains; but in April these things are not there. The +place is locked up--dead as a frozen corpse. The mountain torrent is a +boss of palest emerald ice against the dazzle of the snow; the +pine-stumps are capped and hooded with gigantic mushrooms of snow; the +rocks are overlaid five feet deep; the rocks, the fallen trees, and the +lichens together, and the dumb white lips curl up to the track cut in +the side of the mountain, and grin there fanged with gigantic icicles. +You may listen in vain when the train stops for the least sign of breath +or power among the hills. The snow has smothered the rivers, and the +great looping trestles run over what might be a lather of suds in a huge +wash-tub. The old snow near by is blackened and smirched with the smoke +of locomotives, and its dulness is grateful to aching eyes. But the men +who live upon the line have no consideration for these things. At a +halting-place in a gigantic gorge walled in by the snows, one of them +reels from a tiny saloon into the middle of the track where half-a-dozen +dogs are chasing a pig off the metals. He is beautifully and eloquently +drunk. He sings, waves his hands, and collapses behind a shunting +engine, while four of the loveliest peaks that the Almighty ever moulded +look down upon him. The landslide that should have wiped that saloon +into kindlings has missed its mark and has struck a few miles down the +line. One of the hillsides moved a little in dreaming of the spring and +caught a passing freight train. Our cars grind cautiously by, for the +wrecking engine has only just come through. The deceased engine is +standing on its head in soft earth thirty or forty feet down the slide, +and two long cars loaded with shingles are dropped carelessly atop of +it. It looks so marvellously like a toy train flung aside by a child, +that one cannot realise what it means till a voice cries, 'Any one +killed?' The answer comes back, 'No; all jumped'; and you perceive with +a sense of personal insult that this slovenliness of the mountain is an +affair which may touch your own sacred self. In which case.... But the +train is out on a trestle, into a tunnel, and out on a trestle again. It +was here that every one began to despair of the line when it was under +construction, because there seemed to be no outlet. But a man came, as a +man always will, and put a descent thus and a curve in this manner, and +a trestle so; and behold, the line went on. It is in this place that we +heard the story of the Canadian Pacific Railway told as men tell a +many-times-repeated tale, with exaggerations and omissions, but an +imposing tale, none the less. In the beginning, when they would federate +the Dominion of Canada, it was British Columbia who saw objections to +coming in, and the Prime Minister of those days promised it for a bribe, +an iron band between tidewater and tidewater that should not break. Then +everybody laughed, which seems necessary to the health of most big +enterprises, and while they were laughing, things were being done. The +Canadian Pacific Railway was given a bit of a line here and a bit of a +line there and almost as much land as it wanted, and the laughter was +still going on when the last spike was driven between east and west, at +the very place where the drunken man sprawled behind the engine, and the +iron band ran from tideway to tideway as the Premier said, and people in +England said 'How interesting,' and proceeded to talk about the 'bloated +Army estimates.' Incidentally, the man who told us--he had nothing to do +with the Canadian Pacific Railway--explained how it paid the line to +encourage immigration, and told of the arrival at Winnipeg of a +train-load of Scotch crofters on a Sunday. They wanted to stop then and +there for the Sabbath--they and all the little stock they had brought +with them. It was the Winnipeg agent who had to go among them arguing +(he was Scotch too, and they could not quite understand it) on the +impropriety of dislocating the company's traffic. So their own minister +held a service in the station, and the agent gave them a good dinner, +cheering them in Gaelic, at which they wept, and they went on to settle +at Moosomin, where they lived happily ever afterwards. Of the manager, +the head of the line from Montreal to Vancouver, our companion spoke +with reverence that was almost awe. That manager lived in a palace at +Montreal, but from time to time he would sally forth in his special car +and whirl over his 3000 miles at 50 miles an hour. The regulation pace +is twenty-two, but he sells his neck with his head. Few drivers cared +for the honour of taking him over the road. A mysterious man he was, who +'carried the profile of the line in his head,' and, more than that, knew +intimately the possibilities of back country which he had never seen nor +travelled over. There is always one such man on every line. You can hear +similar tales from drivers on the Great Western in England or Eurasian +stationmasters on the big North-Western in India. Then a +fellow-traveller spoke, as many others had done, on the possibilities of +Canadian union with the United States; and his language was not the +language of Mr. Goldwin Smith. It was brutal in places. Summarised it +came to a pronounced objection to having anything to do with a land +rotten before it was ripe, a land with seven million negroes as yet +unwelded into the population, their race-type unevolved, and rather more +than crude notions on murder, marriage, and honesty. 'We've picked up +their ways of politics,' he said mournfully. 'That comes of living next +door to them; but I don't think we're anxious to mix up with their other +messes. They say they don't want us. They keep on saying it. There's a +nigger on the fence somewhere, or they wouldn't lie about it.' + +'But does it follow that they are lying?' + +'Sure. I've lived among 'em. They can't go straight. There's some dam' +fraud at the back of it.' + +From this belief he would not be shaken. He had lived among +them--perhaps had been bested in trade. Let them keep themselves and +their manners and customs to their own side of the line, he said. + +This is very sad and chilling. It seemed quite otherwise in New York, +where Canada was represented as a ripe plum ready to fell into Uncle +Sam's mouth when he should open it. The Canadian has no special love for +England--the Mother of Colonies has a wonderful gift for alienating the +affections of her own household by neglect--but, perhaps, he loves his +own country. We ran out of the snow through mile upon mile of +snow-sheds, braced with twelve-inch beams, and planked with two-inch +planking. In one place a snow slide had caught just the edge of a shed +and scooped it away as a knife scoops cheese. High up the hills men had +built diverting barriers to turn the drifts, but the drifts had swept +over everything, and lay five deep on the top of the sheds. When we woke +it was on the banks of the muddy Fraser River and the spring was +hurrying to meet us. The snow had gone; the pink blossoms of the wild +currant were open, the budding alders stood misty green against the blue +black of the pines, the brambles on the burnt stumps were in tenderest +leaf, and every moss on every stone was this year's work, fresh from the +hand of the Maker. The land opened into clearings of soft black earth. +At one station a hen had laid an egg and was telling the world about it. +The world answered with a breath of real spring--spring that flooded the +stuffy car and drove us out on the platform to snuff and sing and +rejoice and pluck squashy green marsh-flags and throw them at the +colts, and shout at the wild duck that rose from a jewel-green lakelet. +God be thanked that in travel one can follow the year! This, my spring, +I lost last November in New Zealand. Now I shall hold her fast through +Japan and the summer into New Zealand again. + +Here are the waters of the Pacific, and Vancouver (completely destitute +of any decent defences) grown out of all knowledge in the last three +years. At the railway wharf, with never a gun to protect her, lies the +_Empress of India_--the Japan boat--and what more auspicious name could +you wish to find at the end of one of the strong chains of empire? + + + + +THE EDGE OF THE EAST + + +The mist was clearing off Yokohama harbour and a hundred junks had their +sails hoisted for the morning breeze, so that the veiled horizon was +stippled with square blurs of silver. An English man-of-war showed +blue-white on the haze, so new was the daylight, and all the water lay +out as smooth as the inside of an oyster shell. Two children in blue and +white, their tanned limbs pink in the fresh air, sculled a marvellous +boat of lemon-hued wood, and that was our fairy craft to the shore +across the stillness and the mother o' pearl levels. + +There are ways and ways of entering Japan. The best is to descend upon +it from America and the Pacific--from the barbarians and the deep sea. +Coming from the East, the blaze of India and the insolent tropical +vegetation of Singapore dull the eye to half-colours and little tones. +It is at Bombay that the smell of All Asia boards the ship miles off +shore, and holds the passenger's nose till he is clear of Asia again. +That is a violent, and aggressive smell, apt to prejudice the stranger, +but kin none the less to the gentle and insinuating flavour that stole +across the light airs of the daybreak when the fairy boat went to +shore--a smell of very clean new wood; split bamboo, wood-smoke, damp +earth, and the things that people who are not white people eat--a +homelike and comforting smell. Then followed on shore the sound of an +Eastern tongue, that is beautiful or not as you happen to know it. The +Western races have many languages, but a crowd of Europeans heard +through closed doors talk with the Western pitch and cadence. So it is +with the East. A line of jinrickshaw coolies sat in the sun discoursing +to each other, and it was as though they were welcoming a return in +speech that the listener must know as well as English. They talked and +they talked, but the ghosts of familiar words would not grow any clearer +till presently the Smell came down the open streets again, saying that +this was the East where nothing matters, and trifles old as the Tower of +Babel mattered less than nothing, and that there were old acquaintances +waiting at every corner beyond the township. Great is the Smell of the +East! Railways, telegraphs, docks, and gunboats cannot banish it, and it +will endure till the railways are dead. He who has not smelt that smell +has never lived. + +Three years ago Yokohama was sufficiently Europeanised in its shops to +suit the worst and wickedest taste. To-day it is still worse if you keep +to the town limits. Ten steps beyond into the fields all the +civilisation stops exactly as it does in another land a few thousand +miles further West. The globe-trotting, millionaires anxious to spend +money, with a nose on whatever caught their libertine fancies, had +explained to us aboard-ship that they came to Japan in haste, advised by +their guide-books to do so, lest the land should be suddenly civilised +between steamer-sailing and steamer-sailing. When they touched land they +ran away to the curio shops to buy things which are prepared for +them--mauve and magenta and blue-vitriol things. By this time they have +a 'Murray' under one arm and an electric-blue eagle with a copperas beak +and a yellow '_E pluribus unum_' embroidered on apple-green silk, under +the other. + +We, being wise, sit in a garden that is not ours, but belongs to a +gentleman in slate-coloured silk, who, solely for the sake of the +picture, condescends to work as a gardener, in which employ he is +sweeping delicately a welt of fallen cherry blossoms from under an +azalea aching to burst into bloom. Steep stone steps, of the colour that +nature ripens through long winters, lead up to this garden by way of +clumps of bamboo grass. You see the Smell was right when it talked of +meeting old friends. Half-a-dozen blue-black pines are standing akimbo +against a real sky--not a fog-blur nor a cloud-bank, nor a gray +dish-clout wrapped round the sun--but a blue sky. A cherry tree on a +slope below them throws up a wave of blossom that breaks all creamy +white against their feet, and a clump of willows trail their palest +green shoots in front of all. The sun sends for an ambassador through +the azalea bushes a lordly swallow-tailed butterfly, and his squire +very like the flitting 'chalk-blue' of the English downs. The warmth of +the East, that goes through, not over, the lazy body, is added to the +light of the East--the splendid lavish light that clears but does not +bewilder the eye. Then the new leaves of the spring wink like fat +emeralds and the loaded branches of cherry-bloom grow transparent and +glow as a hand glows held up against flame. Little, warm sighs come up +from the moist, warm earth, and the fallen petals stir on the ground, +turn over, and go to sleep again. Outside, beyond the foliage, where the +sunlight lies on the slate-coloured roofs, the ridged rice-fields beyond +the roofs, and the hills beyond the rice-fields, is all Japan--only all +Japan; and this that they call the old French Legation is the Garden of +Eden that most naturally dropped down here after the Fall. For some +small hint of the beauties to be shown later there is the roof of a +temple, ridged and fluted with dark tiles, flung out casually beyond the +corner of the bluff on which the garden stands. Any other curve of the +eaves would not have consorted with the sweep of the pine branches; +therefore, this curve was made, and being made, was perfect. The +congregation of the globe-trotters are in the hotel, scuffling for +guides, in order that they may be shown the sights of Japan, which is +all one sight. They must go to Tokio, they must go to Nikko; they must +surely see all that is to be seen and then write home to their barbarian +families that they are getting used to the sight of bare, brown legs. +Before this day is ended, they will all, thank goodness, have splitting +headaches and burnt-out eyes. It is better to lie still and hear the +grass grow--to soak in the heat and the smell and the sounds and the +sights that come unasked. + +Our garden overhangs the harbour, and by pushing aside one branch we +look down upon a heavy-sterned fishing-boat, the straw-gold mats of the +deck-house pushed back to show the perfect order and propriety of the +housekeeping that is going forward. The father-fisher, sitting +frog-fashion, is poking at a tiny box full of charcoal, and the light, +white ash is blown back into the face of a largish Japanese doll, price +two shillings and threepence in Bayswater. The doll wakes, turns into a +Japanese baby something more valuable than money could buy--a baby with +a shaven head and aimless legs. It crawls to the thing in the polished +brown box, is picked up just as it is ready to eat live coals, and is +set down behind a thwart, where it drums upon a bucket, addressing the +firebox from afar. Half-a-dozen cherry blossoms slide off a bough, and +waver down to the water close to the Japanese doll, who in another +minute will be overside in pursuit of these miracles. The father-fisher +has it by the pink hind leg, and this time it is tucked away, all but +the top-knot, out of sight among umber nets and sepia cordage. Being an +Oriental it makes no protest, and the boat scuds out to join the little +fleet in the offing. + +Then two sailors of a man-of-war come along the sea face, lean over the +canal below the garden, spit, and roll away. The sailor in port is the +only superior man. To him all matters rare and curious are either 'them +things' or 'them other things.' He does not hurry himself, he does not +seek Adjectives other than those which custom puts into his mouth for +all occasions; but the beauty of life penetrates his being insensibly +till he gets drunk, falls foul of the local policeman, smites him into +the nearest canal, and disposes of the question of treaty revision with +a hiccup. All the same, Jack says that he has a grievance against the +policeman, who is paid a dollar for every strayed seaman he brings up to +the Consular Courts for overstaying his leave, and so forth. Jack says +that the little fellows deliberately hinder him from getting back to his +ship, and then with devilish art and craft of wrestling tricks--'there +are about a hundred of 'em, and they can throw you with every qualified +one'--carry him to justice. Now when Jack is softened with drink he does +not tell lies. This is his grievance, and he says that them blanketed +consuls ought to know. 'They plays into each other's hands, and stops +you at the Hatoba'--the policemen do. The visitor who is neither a +seaman nor drunk, cannot swear to the truth of this, or indeed anything +else. He moves not only among fascinating scenes and a lovely people +but, as he is sure to find out before he has been a day ashore, between +stormy questions. Three years ago there were no questions that were not +going to be settled off-hand in a blaze of paper lanterns. The +Constitution was new. It has a gray, pale cover with a chrysanthemum at +the back, and a Japanese told me then, 'Now we have Constitution same as +other countries, and _so_ it is all right. Now we are quite civilised +because of Constitution.' + +[A perfectly irrelevant story comes to mind here. Do you know that in +Madeira once they had a revolution which lasted just long enough for the +national poet to compose a national anthem, and then was put down? All +that is left of the revolt now is the song that you hear on the +twangling _nachettes_, the baby-banjoes, of a moonlight night under the +banana fronds at the back of Funchal. And the high-pitched nasal refrain +of it is 'Consti-tuci-_oun_!'] + +Since that auspicious date it seems that the questions have +impertinently come up, and the first and the last of them is that of +Treaty Revision. Says the Japanese Government, 'Only obey our laws, our +new laws that we have carefully compiled from all the wisdom of the +West, and you shall go up country as you please and trade where you +will, instead of living cooped up in concessions and being judged by +consuls. Treat us as you would treat France or Germany, and we will +treat you as our own subjects.' + +Here, as you know, the matter rests between the two thousand foreigners +and the forty million Japanese--a God-send to all editors of Tokio and +Yokohama, and the despair of the newly arrived in whose nose, remember, +is the smell of the East, One and Indivisible, Immemorial, Eternal, and, +above all, Instructive. + +Indeed, it is only by walking out at least half a mile that you escape +from the aggressive evidences of civilisation, and come out into the +rice-fields at the back of the town. Here men with twists of blue and +white cloth round their heads are working knee deep in the thick black +mud. The largest field may be something less than two tablecloths, while +the smallest is, say, a speck of undercliff, on to which it were hard to +back a 'rickshaw, wrested from the beach and growing its clump of barley +within spray-shot of the waves. The field paths are the trodden tops of +the irrigating cuts, and the main roads as wide as two perambulators +abreast. From the uplands--the beautiful uplands planted in exactly the +proper places with pine and maple--the ground comes down in terraced +pocket on pocket of rich earth to the levels again, and it would seem +that every heavily-thatched farmhouse was chosen with special regard to +the view. If you look closely when the people go to work you will see +that a household spreads itself over plots, maybe, a quarter of a mile +apart. A revenue map of a village shows that this scatteration is +apparently designed, but the reason is not given. One thing at least is +certain. The assessment of these patches can be no light piece of +work--just the thing, in fact, that would give employment to a large +number of small and variegated Government officials, any one of whom, +assuming that he was of an Oriental cast of mind, might make the +cultivator's life interesting. I remember now--a second-time-seen place +brings back things that were altogether buried--seeing three years ago +the pile of Government papers required in the case of one farm. They +were many and systematic, but the interesting thing about them was the +amount of work that they must have furnished to those who were neither +cultivators nor Treasury officials. + +If one knew Japanese, one could collogue with that gentleman in the +straw-hat and the blue loincloth who is chopping within a sixteenth of +an inch of his naked toes with the father and mother of all weed-spuds. +His version of local taxation might be inaccurate, but it would sure to +be picturesque. Failing his evidence, be pleased to accept two or three +things that may or may not be facts of general application. They differ +in a measure from statements in the books. The present land-tax is +nominally 2-1/2 per cent, payable in cash on a three, or as some say a +five, yearly settlement. But, according to certain officials, there has +been no settlement since 1875. Land lying fallow for a season pays the +same tax as land in cultivation, unless it is unproductive through flood +or calamity (read earthquake here). The Government tax is calculated on +the capital value of the land, taking a measure of about 11,000 square +feet or a quarter of an acre as the unit. + +Now, one of the ways of getting at the capital value of the land is to +see what the railways have paid for it. The very best rice land, taking +the Japanese dollar at three shillings, is about L65:10s per acre. +Unirrigated land for vegetable growing is something over L9:12s., and +forest L2:11s. As these are railway rates, they may be fairly held to +cover large areas. In private sales the prices may reasonably be higher. + +It is to be remembered that some of the very best rice land will bear +two crops of rice in the year. Most soil will bear two crops, the first +being millet, rape, vegetables, and so on, sown on dry soil and ripening +at the end of May. Then the ground is at once prepared for the wet crop, +to be harvested in October or thereabouts. Land-tax is payable in two +instalments. Rice land pays between the 1st November and the middle of +December and the 1st January and the last of February. Other land pays +between July and August and September and December. Let us see what the +average yield is. The gentleman in the sun-hat and the loin-cloth would +shriek at the figures, but they are approximately accurate. Rice +naturally fluctuates a good deal, but it may be taken in the rough at +five Japanese dollars (fifteen shillings) per _koku_ of 330 lbs. Wheat +and maize of the first spring crop is worth about eleven shillings per +_koku_. The first crop gives nearly 1-3/4 _koku_ per _tau_ (the quarter +acre unit of measurement aforesaid), or eighteen shillings per quarter +acre, or L3:12s. per acre. The rice crop at two _koku_ or L1:10s. the +quarter acre gives L6 an acre. Total L9:12s. This is not altogether bad +if you reflect that the land in question is not the very best rice land, +but ordinary No. 1, at L25:16s. per acre, capital value. + +A son has the right to inherit his father's land on the father's +assessment, so long as its term runs, or, when the term has expired, has +a prior claim as against any one else. Part of the taxes, it is said, +lies by in the local prefecture's office as a reserve fund against +inundations. Yet, and this seems a little confusing, there are between +five and seven other local, provincial, and municipal taxes which can +reasonably be applied to the same ends. No one of these taxes exceeds a +half of the land-tax, unless it be the local prefecture tax of 2-1/2 per +cent. + +In the old days the people were taxed, or perhaps squeezed would be the +better word, to about one-half of the produce of the land. There are +those who may say that the present system is not so advantageous as it +looks. Beforetime, the farmers, it is true, paid heavily, but only, on +their nominal holdings. They could, and often did, hold more land than +they were assessed on. Today a rigid bureaucracy surveys every foot of +their farms, and upon every foot they have to pay. Somewhat similar +complaints are made still by the simple peasantry of India, for if there +is one thing that the Oriental detests more than another, it is the +damnable Western vice of accuracy. That leads to doing things by rule. +Still, by the look of those terraced fields, where the water is led so +cunningly from level to level, the Japanese cultivator must enjoy at +least one excitement. If the villages up the valley tamper with the +water supply, there must surely be excitement down the valley--argument, +protest, and the breaking of heads. + +The days of romance, therefore, are not all dead. + + * * * * * + +This that follows happened on the coast twenty miles through the fields +from Yokohama, at Kamakura, that is to say, where the great bronze +Buddha sits facing the sea to hear the centuries go by. He has been +described again and again--his majesty, his aloofness, and every one of +his dimensions, the smoky little shrine within him, and the plumed hill +that makes the background to his throne. For that reason he remains, as +he remained from the beginning, beyond all hope of description--as it +might be, a visible god sitting in the garden of a world made new. They +sell photographs of him with tourists standing on his thumb nail, and, +apparently, any brute of any gender can scrawl his or its ignoble name +over the inside of the massive bronze plates that build him up. Think +for a moment of the indignity and the insult! Imagine the ancient, +orderly gardens with their clipped trees, shorn turf, and silent ponds +smoking in the mist that the hot sun soaks up after rain, and the +green-bronze image of the Teacher of the Law wavering there as it half +seems through incense clouds. The earth is all one censer, and myriads +of frogs are making the haze ring. It is too warm to do more than to sit +on a stone and watch the eyes that, having seen all things, see no +more--the down-dropped eyes, the forward droop of the head, and the +colossal simplicity of the folds of the robe over arm and knee. Thus, +and in no other fashion, did Buddha sit in the-old days when Ananda +asked questions and the dreamer began to dream of the lives that lay +behind him ere the lips moved, and as the Chronicles say: 'He told a +tale.' This would be the way he began, for dreamers in the East tell +something the same sort of tales to-day: 'Long ago when Devadatta was +King of Benares, there lived a virtuous elephant, a reprobate ox, and a +King without understanding.' And the tale would end, after the moral had +been drawn for Ananda's benefit: 'Now, the reprobate ox was such an one, +and the King was such another, but the virtuous elephant was I, myself, +Ananda.' Thus, then, he told the tales in the bamboo grove, and the +bamboo grove is there to-day. Little blue and gray and slate robed +figures pass under its shadow, buy two or three joss-sticks, disappear +into the shrine, that is, the body of the god, come out smiling, and +drift away through the shrubberies. A fat carp in a pond sucks at a +fallen leaf with just the sound of a wicked little worldly kiss. Then +the earth steams, and steams in silence, and a gorgeous butterfly, full +six inches from wing to wing, cuts through the steam in a zigzag of +colour and flickers up to the forehead of the god. And Buddha said that +a man must look on everything as illusion--even light and colour--the +time-worn bronze of metal against blue-green of pine and pale emerald of +bamboo--the lemon sash of the girl in the cinnamon dress, with coral +pins in her hair, leaning against a block of weather-bleached +stone--and, last, the spray of blood-red azalea that stands on the pale +gold mats of the tea-house beneath the honey-coloured thatch. To overcome +desire and covetousness of mere gold, which is often very vilely designed, +that is conceivable; but why must a man give up the delight of the eye, +colour that rejoices, light that cheers, and line that satisfies the +innermost deeps of the heart? Ah, if the Bodhisat had only seen his own +image! + + + + +OUR OVERSEAS MEN + + +All things considered, there are only two kinds of men in the +world--those that stay at home and those that do not. The second are the +most interesting. Some day a man will bethink himself and write a book +about the breed in a book called 'The Book of the Overseas Club,' for it +is at the clubhouses all the way from Aden to Yokohama that the life of +the Outside Men is best seen and their talk is best heard. A strong +family likeness runs through both buildings and members, and a large and +careless hospitality is the note. There is always the same open-doored, +high-ceiled house, with matting on the floors; the same come and go of +dark-skinned servants, and the same assembly of men talking horse or +business, in raiment that would fatally scandalise a London committee, +among files of newspapers from a fortnight to five weeks old. The life +of the Outside Men includes plenty of sunshine, and as much air as may +be stirring. At the Cape, where the Dutch housewives distil and sell the +very potent Vanderhum, and the absurd home-made hansom cabs waddle up +and down the yellow dust of Adderley Street, are the members of the big +import and export firms, the shipping and insurance offices, inventors +of mines, and exploiters of new territories with now and then an officer +strayed from India to buy mules for the Government, a Government House +aide-de-camp, a sprinkling of the officers of the garrison, tanned +skippers of the Union and Castle Lines, and naval men from the squadron +at Simon's Town. Here they talk of the sins of Cecil Rhodes, the +insolence of Natal, the beauties or otherwise of the solid Boer vote, +and the dates of the steamers. The _argot_ is Dutch and Kaffir, and +every one can hum the national anthem that begins 'Pack your kit and +trek, Johnny Bowlegs.' In the stately Hongkong Clubhouse, which is to +the further what the Bengal Club is to the nearer East, you meet much +the same gathering, _minus_ the mining speculators and _plus_ men whose +talk is of tea, silk, shortings, and Shanghai ponies. The speech of the +Outside Men at this point becomes fearfully mixed with pidgin-English +and local Chinese terms, rounded with corrupt Portuguese. At Melbourne, +in a long verandah giving on a grass plot, where laughing-jackasses +laugh very horribly, sit wool-kings, premiers, and breeders of horses +after their kind. The older men talk of the days of the Eureka Stockade +and the younger of 'shearing wars' in North Queensland, while the +traveller moves timidly among them wondering what under the world every +third word means. At Wellington, overlooking the harbour (all +right-minded clubs should command the sea), another, and yet a like, +sort of men speak of sheep, the rabbits, the land-courts, and the +ancient heresies of Sir Julius Vogel; and their more expressive +sentences borrow from the Maori. And elsewhere, and elsewhere, and +elsewhere among the Outside Men it is the same--the same mixture of +every trade, calling, and profession under the sun; the same clash of +conflicting interests touching the uttermost parts of the earth; the +same intimate, and sometimes appalling knowledge of your neighbour's +business and shortcomings; the same large-palmed hospitality, and the +same interest on the part of the younger men in the legs of a horse. +Decidedly, it is at the Overseas Club all the world over that you get to +know some little of the life of the community. London is egoistical, and +the world for her ends with the four-mile cab radius. There is no +provincialism like the provincialism of London. That big slack-water +coated with the drift and rubbish of a thousand men's thoughts esteems +itself the open sea because the waves of all the oceans break on her +borders. To those in her midst she is terribly imposing, but they forget +that there is more than one kind of imposition. Look back upon her from +ten thousand miles, when the mail is just in at the Overseas Club, and +she is wondrous tiny. Nine-tenths of her news--so vital, so epoch-making +over there--loses its significance, and the rest is as the scuffling of +ghosts in a back-attic. + +Here in Yokohama the Overseas Club has two mails and four sets of +papers--English, French, German, and American, as suits the variety of +its constitution--and the verandah by the sea, where the big telescope +stands, is a perpetual feast of the Pentecost. The population of the +club changes with each steamer in harbour, for the sea-captains swing +in, are met with 'Hello! where did you come from?' and mix at the bar +and billiard-tables for their appointed time and go to sea again. The +white-painted warships supply their contingent of members also, and +there are wonderful men, mines of most fascinating adventure, who have +an interest in sealing-brigs that go to the Kurile Islands, and somehow +get into trouble with the Russian authorities. Consuls and judges of the +Consular Courts meet men over on leave from the China ports, or it may +be Manila, and they all talk tea, silk, banking, and exchange with its +fixed residents. Everything is always as bad as it can possibly be, and +everybody is on the verge of ruin. That is why, when they have decided +that life is no longer worth living, they go down to the +skittle-alley--to commit suicide. From the outside, when a cool wind +blows among the papers and there is a sound of smashing ice in an inner +apartment, and every third man is talking about the approaching races, +the life seems to be a desirable one. 'What more could a man need to +make him happy?' says the passer-by. A perfect climate, a lovely +country, plenty of pleasant society, and the politest people on earth to +deal with. The resident smiles and invites the passer-by to stay through +July and August. Further, he presses him to do business with the +politest people on earth, and to continue so doing for a term of years. +Thus the traveller perceives beyond doubt that the resident is +prejudiced by the very fact of his residence, and gives it as his +matured opinion that Japan is a faultless land, marred only by the +presence of the foreign community. And yet, let us consider. It is the +foreign community that has made it possible for the traveller to come +and go from hotel to hotel, to get his passport for inland travel, to +telegraph his safe arrival to anxious friends, and generally enjoy +himself much more than he would have been able to do in his own country. +Government and gunboats may open a land, but it is the men of the +Overseas Club that keep it open. Their reward (not alone in Japan) is +the bland patronage or the scarcely-veiled contempt of those who profit +by their labours. It is hopeless to explain to a traveller who has been +'ohayoed' into half-a-dozen shops and 'sayonaraed' out of half-a-dozen +more and politely cheated in each one, that the Japanese is an Oriental, +and, therefore, embarrassingly economical of the truth. 'That's his +politeness,' says the traveller. 'He does not wish to hurt your +feelings. Love him and treat him like a brother, and he'll change.' To +treat one of the most secretive of races on a brotherly basis is not +very easy, and the natural politeness that enters into a signed and +sealed contract and undulates out of it so soon as it does not +sufficiently pay is more than embarrassing. It is almost annoying. The +want of fixity or commercial honour may be due to some natural infirmity +of the artistic temperament, or to the manner in which the climate has +affected, and his ruler has ruled, the man himself for untold centuries. + +Those who know the East know, where the system of 'squeeze,' which is +commission, runs through every transaction of life, from the sale of a +groom's place upward, where the woman walks behind the man in the +streets, and where the peasant gives you for the distance to the next +town as many or as few miles as he thinks you will like, that these +things must be so. Those who do not know will not be persuaded till they +have lived there. The Overseas Club puts up its collective nose +scornfully when it hears of the New and Regenerate Japan sprung to life +since the 'seventies. It grins, with shame be it written, at an Imperial +Diet modelled on the German plan and a Code Napoleon a la Japonaise. It +is so far behind the New Era as to doubt that an Oriental country, +ridden by etiquette of the sternest, and social distinctions almost as +hard as those of caste, can be turned out to Western gauge in the +compass of a very young man's life. And it _must_ be prejudiced, because +it is daily and hourly in contact with the Japanese, except when it can +do business with the Chinaman whom it prefers. Was there ever so +disgraceful a club! + +Just at present, a crisis, full blown as a chrysanthemum, has developed +in the Imperial Diet. Both Houses accuse the Government of improper +interference--this Japanese for 'plenty stick and some bank-note'--at +the recent elections. They then did what was equivalent to passing a +vote of censure on the Ministry and refusing to vote government +measures. So far the wildest advocate of representative government could +have desired nothing better. Afterwards, things took a distinctly +Oriental turn. The Ministry refused to resign, and the Mikado prorogued +the Diet for a week to think things over. The Japanese papers are now at +issue over the event. Some say that representative government implies +party government, and others swear at large. The Overseas Club says for +the most part--'Skittles!' + +It is a picturesque situation--one that suggests romances and +extravaganzas. Thus, imagine a dreaming Court intrenched behind a triple +line of moats where the lotus blooms in summer--a Court whose outer +fringe is aggressively European, but whose heart is Japan of long ago, +where a dreaming King sits among some wives or other things, amused from +time to time with magic-lantern shows and performing fleas--a holy King +whose sanctity is used to conjure with, and who twice a year gives +garden-parties where every one must come in top-hat and frock coat. +Round this Court, wavering between the splendours of the sleeping and +the variety shows of the Crystal Palace, place in furious but +carefully-veiled antagonism the fragments of newly shattered castes, +their natural Oriental eccentricities overlaid with borrowed Western +notions. Imagine now, a large and hungry bureaucracy, French in its +fretful insistence on detail where detail is of no earthly moment, +Oriental in its stress on etiquette and punctillo, recruited from a +military caste accustomed for ages past to despise alike farmer and +trader. This caste, we will suppose, is more or less imperfectly +controlled by a syndicate of three clans, which supply their own +nominees to the Ministry. These are adroit, versatile, and unscrupulous +men, hampered by no western prejudice in favour of carrying any plan to +completion. Through and at the bidding of these men, the holy Monarch +acts; and the acts are wonderful. To criticise these acts exists a +wild-cat Press, liable to suppression at any moment, as morbidly +sensitive to outside criticism as the American, and almost as childishly +untruthful, fungoid in the swiftness of its growth, and pitiable in its +unseasoned rashness. Backers of this press in its wilder moments, +lawless, ignorant, sensitive and vain, are the student class, educated +in the main at Government expense, and a thorn in the side of the State. +Judges without training handle laws without precedents, and new measures +are passed and abandoned with almost inconceivable levity. Out of the +welter of classes and interests that are not those of the common folk is +evolved the thing called Japanese policy that has the proportion and the +perspective of a Japanese picture. + +Finality and stability are absent from its councils. To-day, for reasons +none can explain, it is pro-foreign to the verge of servility. +To-morrow, for reasons equally obscure, the pendulum swings back, +and--the students are heaving mud at the foreigners in the streets. +Vexatious, irresponsible, incoherent, and, above all, cheaply +mysterious, is the rule of the land--stultified by intrigue and +counter-intrigue, chequered with futile reforms begun on European lines +and light-heartedly thrown aside; studded, as a bower-bird's run is +studded with shells and shining pebbles, with plagiarisms from half the +world--an operetta of administration, wherein the shadow of the King +among his wives, Samurai policemen, doctors who have studied under +Pasteur, kid-gloved cavalry officers from St. Cyr, judges with +University degrees, harlots with fiddles, newspaper correspondents, +masters of the ancient ceremonies of the land, paid members of the Diet, +secret societies that borrow the knife and the dynamite of the Irish, +sons of dispossessed Daimios returned from Europe and waiting for what +may turn up, with ministers of the syndicate who have wrenched Japan +from her repose of twenty years ago, circle, flicker, shift, and reform, +in bewildering rings, round the foreign resident. Is the extravaganza +complete? + +Somewhere in the background of the stage are the people of the land--of +whom a very limited proportion enjoy the privileges of representative +government. Whether in the past few years they have learned what the +thing means, or, learning, have the least intention of making any use of +it, is not clear. Meantime, the game of government goes forward as +merrily as a game of puss-in-the-corner, with the additional joy that +not more than half-a-dozen men know who is controlling it or what in +the wide world it intends to do. In Tokio live the steadily-diminishing +staff of Europeans employed by the Emperor as engineers, railway +experts, professors in the colleges and so forth. Before many years they +will all be dispensed with, and the country will set forth among the +nations alone and on its own responsibility. + +In fifty years then, from the time that the intrusive American first +broke her peace, Japan will experience her new birth and, reorganised +from sandal to top-knot, play the _samisen_ in the march of modern +progress. This is the great advantage of being born into the New Era, +when individual and community alike can get something for nothing--pay +without work, education without effort, religion without thought, and +free government without slow and bitter toil. + +The Overseas Club, as has been said, is behind the spirit of the age. It +has to work for what it gets, and it does not always get what it works +for. Nor can its members take ship and go home when they please. Imagine +for a little, the contented frame of mind that is bred in a man by the +perpetual contemplation of a harbour full of steamers as a Piccadilly +cab-rank of hansoms. The weather is hot, we will suppose; something has +gone wrong with his work that day, or his children are not looking so +well as might be. Pretty tiled bungalows, bowered in roses and wistaria, +do not console him, and the voices of the politest people on earth jar +sorely. He knows every soul in the club, has thoroughly talked out +every subject of interest, and would give half a year's--oh, five +years'--pay for one lung-filling breath of air that has life in it, one +sniff of the haying grass, or half a mile of muddy London street where +the muffin bell tinkles in the four o'clock fog. Then the big liner +moves out across the staring blue of the bay. So-and-so and such-an-one, +both friends, are going home in her, and some one else goes next week by +the French mail. He, and he alone, it seems to him, must stay on; and it +is so maddeningly easy to go--for every one save himself. The boat's +smoke dies out along the horizon, and he is left alone with the warm +wind and the white dust of the Bund. Now Japan is a good place, a place +that men swear by and live in for thirty years at a stretch. There are +China ports a week's sail to the westward where life is really hard, and +where the sight of the restless shipping hurts very much indeed. +Tourists and you who travel the world over, be very gentle to the men of +the Overseas Clubs. Remember that, unlike yourselves, they have not come +here for the good of their health, and that the return ticket in your +wallet may possibly colour your views of their land. Perhaps it would +not be altogether wise on the strength of much kindness from Japanese +officials to recommend that these your countrymen be handed over lock, +stock, and barrel to a people that are beginning to experiment with +fresh-drafted half-grafted codes which do not include juries, to a +system that does not contemplate a free Press, to a suspicious +absolutism from which there is no appeal. Truly, it might be +interesting, but as surely it would begin in farce and end in tragedy, +that would leave the politest people on earth in no case to play at +civilised government for a long time to come. In his concession, where +he is an apologetic and much sat-upon importation, the foreign resident +does no harm. He does not always sue for money due to him on the part of +a Japanese. Once outside those limits, free to move into the heart of +the country, it would only be a question of time as to where and when +the trouble would begin. And in the long run it would not be the foreign +resident that would suffer. The imaginative eye can see the most +unpleasant possibilities, from a general overrunning of Japan by the +Chinaman, who is far the most important foreign resident, to the +shelling of Tokio by a joyous and bounding Democracy, anxious to +vindicate her national honour and to learn how her newly-made navy +works. + +But there are scores of arguments that would confute and overwhelm this +somewhat gloomy view. The statistics of Japan, for instance, are as +beautiful and fit as neatly as the woodwork of her houses. By these it +would be possible to prove anything. + + + + +SOME EARTHQUAKES + + +A Radical Member of Parliament at Tokio has just got into trouble with +his constituents, and they have sent him a priceless letter of reproof. +Among other things they point out that a politician should not be 'a +waterweed which wobbles hither and thither according to the motion of +the stream.' Nor should he 'like a ghost without legs drift along before +the wind.' 'Your conduct,' they say, 'has been both of a waterweed and a +ghost, and we purpose in a little time to give you proof of our true +Japanese spirit.' That member will very likely be mobbed in his +'rickshaw and prodded to inconvenience with sword-sticks; for the +constituencies are most enlightened. But how in the world can a man +under these skies behave except as a waterweed and a ghost? It is in the +air--the wobble and the legless drift An energetic tourist would have +gone to Hakodate, seen Ainos at Sapporo, ridden across the northern +island under the gigantic thistles, caught salmon, looked in at +Vladivostock, and done half a hundred things in the time that one lazy +loafer has wasted watching the barley turn from green to gold, the +azaleas blossom and burn out, and the spring give way to the warm rains +of summer. Now the iris has taken up the blazonry of the year, and the +tide of the tourists ebbs westward. + +The permanent residents are beginning to talk of hill places to go to +for the hot weather, and all the available houses in the resort are let. +In a little while the men from China will be coming over for their +holidays, but just at present we are in the thick of the tea season, and +there is no time to waste on frivolities. 'Packing' is a valid excuse +for anything, from forgetting a dinner to declining a tennis party, and +the tempers of husbands are judged leniently. All along the sea face is +an inspiring smell of the finest new-mown hay, and canals are full of +boats loaded up with the boxes jostling down to the harbour. At the club +men say rude things about the arrivals of the mail. There never was a +post-office yet that did not rejoice in knocking a man's Sabbath into +flinders. A fair office day's work may begin at eight and end at six, +or, if the mail comes in, at midnight. There is no overtime or +eight-hours' baby-talk in tea. Yonder are the ships; here is the stuff, +and behind all is the American market. The rest is your own affair. + +The narrow streets are blocked with the wains bringing down, in boxes of +every shape and size, the up-country rough leaf. Some one must take +delivery of these things, find room for them in the packed warehouse, +and sample them before they are blended and go to the firing. + +More than half the elaborate processes are 'lost work' so far as the +quality of the stuff goes; but the markets insist on a good-looking +leaf, with polish, face and curl to it, and in this, as in other +businesses, the call of the markets is the law. The factory floors are +made slippery with the tread of bare-footed coolies, who shout as the +tea whirls through its transformations. The over-note to the clamour--an +uncanny thing too--is the soft rustle-down of the tea itself--stacked in +heaps, carried in baskets, dumped through chutes, rising and falling in +the long troughs where it is polished, and disappearing at last into the +heart of the firing-machine--always this insistent whisper of moving +dead leaves. Steam-sieves sift it into grades, with jarrings and +thumpings that make the floor quiver, and the thunder of steam-gear is +always at its heels; but it continues to mutter unabashed till it is +riddled down into the big, foil-lined boxes and lies at peace. + +A few days ago the industry suffered a check which, lasting not more +than two minutes, lost several hundred pounds of hand-fired tea. It was +something after this way. Into the stillness of a hot, stuffy morning +came an unpleasant noise as of batteries of artillery charging up all +the roads together, and at least one bewildered sleeper waking saw his +empty boots where they 'sat and played toccatas stately at the +clavicord.' It was the washstand really but the effect was awful. Then a +clock fell and a wall cracked, and heavy hands caught the house by the +roof-pole and shook it furiously. To preserve an equal mind when things +are hard is good, but he who has not fumbled desperately at bolted +jalousies that will not open while a whole room is being tossed in a +blanket does not know how hard it is to find any sort of mind at all. +The end of the terror was inadequate--a rush into the still, heavy +outside air, only to find the servants in the garden giggling (the +Japanese would giggle through the Day of Judgment) and to learn that the +earthquake was over. Then came the news, swift borne from the business +quarters below the hill, that the coolies of certain factories had fled +shrieking at the first shock, and that all the tea in the pans was +burned to a crisp. That, certainly, was some consolation for undignified +panic; and there remained the hope that a few tall chimneys up the line +at Tokio would have collapsed. They stood firm, however, and the local +papers, used to this kind of thing, merely spoke of the shock as +'severe.' Earthquakes are demoralising; but they bring out all the +weaknesses of human nature. First is downright dread; the stage +of--'only let me get into the open and I'll reform,' then the impulse to +send news of the most terrible shock of modern times flying east and +west among the cables. (Did not your own hair stand straight on end, +and, therefore, must not everybody else's have done likewise?) Last, as +fallen humanity picks itself together, comes the cry of the mean little +soul: 'What! Was _that_ all? I wasn't frightened from the beginning.' + +It is wholesome and tonic to realise the powerlessness of man in the +face of these little accidents. The heir of all the ages, the +annihilator of time and space, who politely doubts the existence of his +Maker, hears the roof-beams crack and strain above him, and scuttles +about like a rabbit in a stoppered warren. If the shock endures for +twenty minutes, the annihilator of time and space must camp out under +the blue and hunt for his dead among the rubbish. Given a violent +convulsion (only just such a slipping of strata as carelessly piled +volumes will accomplish in a book-case) and behold, the heir of all the +ages is stark, raving mad--a brute among the dishevelled hills. Set a +hundred of the world's greatest spirits, men of fixed principles, high +aims, resolute endeavour, enormous experience, and the modesty that +these attributes bring--set them to live through such a catastrophe as +that which wiped out Nagoya last October, and at the end of three days +there would remain few whose souls might be called their own. + +So much for yesterday's shock. To-day there has come another; and a most +comprehensive affair it is. It has broken nothing, unless maybe an old +heart or two cracks later on; and the wise people in the settlement are +saying that they predicted it from the first. None the less as an +earthquake it deserves recording. + +It was a very rainy afternoon; all the streets were full of gruelly mud, +and all the business men were at work in their offices when it began. A +knot of Chinamen were studying a closed door from whose further side +came a most unpleasant sound of bolting and locking up. The notice on +the door was interesting. With deep regret did the manager of the New +Oriental Banking Corporation, Limited (most decidedly limited), announce +that on telegraphic orders from home he had suspended payment. Said one +Chinaman to another in pidgin-Japanese: 'It is shut,' and went away. The +noise of barring up continued, the rain fell, and the notice stared down +the wet street. That was all. There must have been two or three men +passing by to whom the announcement meant the loss of every penny of +their savings--comforting knowledge to digest after tiffin. In London, +of course, the failure would not mean so much; there are many banks in +the City, and people would have had warning. Here banks are few, people +are dependent on them, and this news came out of the sea unheralded, an +evil born with all its teeth. + +After the crash of a bursting shell every one who can picks himself up, +brushes the dirt off his uniform, and tries to make a joke of it. Then +some one whips a handkerchief round his hand--a splinter has torn +it--and another finds warm streaks running down his forehead. Then a +man, overlooked till now and past help, groans to the death. Everybody +perceives with a start that this is no time for laughter, and the dead +and wounded are attended to. + +Even so at the Overseas Club when the men got out of office. The brokers +had told them the news. In filed the English, and Americans, and +Germans, and French, and 'Here's a pretty mess!' they said one and all. +Many of them were hit, but, like good men, they did not say how +severely. + +'Ah!' said a little P. and O. official, wagging his head sagaciously (he +had lost a thousand dollars since noon), 'it's all right _now_. They're +trying to make the best of it. In three or four days we shall hear more +about it. I meant to draw my money just before I went down coast, +but----' Curiously enough, it was the same story throughout the Club. +Everybody had intended to withdraw, and nearly everybody had--not done +so. The manager of a bank which had _not_ failed was explaining how, in +his opinion, the crash had come about. This was also very human. It +helped none. Entered a lean American, throwing back his waterproof all +dripping with the rain; his face was calm and peaceful. 'Boy, whisky and +soda,' he said. + +'How much haf you losd?' said a Teuton bluntly. 'Eight-fifty,' replied +the son of George Washington sweetly. 'Don't see how that prevents me +having a drink. My glass, sirr.' He continued an interrupted whistling +of 'I owe ten dollars to O'Grady' (which he very probably did), and his +countenance departed not from its serenity. If there is anything that +one loves an American for it is the way he stands certain kinds of +punishment. An Englishman and a heavy loser was being chaffed by a +Scotchman whose account at the Japan end of the line had been a trifle +overdrawn. True, he would lose in England, but the thought of the few +dollars saved here cheered him. + +More men entered, sat down by tables, stood in groups, or remained +apart by themselves, thinking with knit brows. One must think quickly +when one's bills are falling due. The murmur of voices thickened, and +there was no rumbling in the skittle alley to interrupt it. Everybody +knows everybody else at the Overseas Club, and everybody sympathises. A +man passed stiffly and some one of a group turned to ask lightly, 'Hit, +old man?' 'Like hell,' he said, and went on biting his unlit cigar. +Another man was telling, slowly and somewhat bitterly, how he had +expected one of his children to join him out here, and how the passage +had been paid with a draft on the O.B.C. But now ... _There_, ladies and +gentlemen, is where it hurts, this little suspension out here. It +destroys plans, pretty ones hoped for and prayed over, maybe for years; +it knocks pleasant domestic arrangements galleywest over and above all +the mere ruin that it causes. The curious thing in the talk was that +there was no abuse of the bank. The men were in the Eastern trade +themselves and they knew. It was the Yokohama manager and the clerks +thrown out of employment (connection with a broken bank, by the way, +goes far to ruin a young man's prospects) for whom they were sorry. +'We're doing ourselves well this year,' said a wit grimly. 'One +free-shooting case, one thundering libel case, and a bank smash. Showing +off pretty before the globe-trotters, aren't we?' + +'Gad, think of the chaps at sea with letters of credit. Eh? They'll land +and get the best rooms at the hotels and find they're penniless,' said +another. + +'Never mind the globe-trotters,' said a third. 'Look nearer home. This +does for so-and-so, and so-and-so, and so-and-so, all old men; and every +penny of theirs goes.' Poor devils!' + +'That reminds me of some one else,' said yet another voice, '_His_ +wife's at home, too. Whew!' and he whistled drearily. So did the tide of +voices run on till men got to talking over the chances of a dividend, +'They went to the Bank of England,' drawled an American, 'and the Bank +of England let them down; said their securities weren't good enough.' + +'Great Scott!'--a hand came down on a table to emphasise the remark--'I +sailed half way up the Mediterranean once with a Bank of England +director; wish I'd tipped him over the rail and lowered him a boat on +his own security--if it was good enough.' + +'Baring's goes. The O.B.C. don't,' replied the American, blowing smoke +through his nose. 'This business looks de-ci-ded-ly prob-le-mat-i-cal. +What-at?' + +'Oh, they'll pay the depositors in full. Don't you fret,' said a man who +had lost nothing and was anxious to console. + +'I'm a shareholder,' said the American, and smoked on. + +The rain continued to fall, and the umbrellas dripped in the racks, and +the wet men came and went, circling round the central fact that it was a +bad business, till the day, as was most fit, shut down in drizzling +darkness. There was a refreshing sense of brotherhood in misfortunes in +the little community that had just been electrocuted and did not want +any more shocks. All the pain that in England would be taken home to be +borne in silence and alone was here bulked, as it were, and faced in +line of company. Surely the Christians of old must have fought much +better when they met the lions by fifties at a time. + +At last the men departed; the bachelors to cast up accounts by +themselves (there should be some good ponies for sale shortly) and the +married men to take counsel. May heaven help him whose wife does not +stand by him now! But the women of the Overseas settlements are as +thorough as the men. There will be tears for plans forgone, the changing +of the little ones' schools and elder children's careers, unpleasant +letters to be written home, and more unpleasant ones to be received from +relatives who 'told you so from the first.' There will be pinchings too, +and straits of which the outside world will know nothing, but the women +will pull it through smiling. + +Beautiful indeed are the operations of modern finance--especially when +anything goes wrong with the machine. To-night there will be trouble in +India among the Ceylon planters, the Calcutta jute and the Bombay +cotton-brokers, besides the little households of small banked savings. +In Hongkong, Singapore, and Shanghai there will be trouble too, and +goodness only knows what wreck at Cheltenham, Bath, St. Leonards, +Torquay, and the other camps of the retired Army officers. They are +lucky in England who know what happens when it happens, but here the +people are at the wrong end of the cables, and the situation is not +good. Only one thing seems certain. There is a notice on a shut door, in +the wet, and by virtue of that notice all the money that was theirs +yesterday is gone away, and it may never come back again. So all the +work that won the money must be done over again; but some of the people +are old, and more are tired, and all are disheartened. It is a very +sorrowful little community that goes to bed to-night, and there must be +as sad ones the world over. Let it be written, however, that of the +sections under fire here (and some are cruelly hit) no man whined, or +whimpered, or broke down. There was no chance of fighting. It was bitter +defeat, but they took it standing. + + + + +HALF-A-DOZEN PICTURES + + +'Some men when they grow rich, store pictures in a gallery,' Living, +their friends envy them, and after death the genuineness of the +collection is disputed under the dispersing hammer. + +A better way is to spread your picture over all earth; visiting them as +Fate allows. Then none can steal or deface, nor any reverse of fortune +force a sale; sunshine and tempest warm and ventilate the gallery for +nothing, and--in spite of all that has been said of her +crudeness--Nature is not altogether a bad frame-maker. The knowledge +that you may never live to see an especial treasure twice teaches the +eyes to see quickly while the light lasts; and the possession of such a +gallery breeds a very fine contempt for painted shows and the smeary +things that are called pictures. + +In the North Pacific, to the right hand as you go westward, hangs a +small study of no particular value as compared with some others. The +mist is down on an oily stretch of washed-out sea; through the mist the +bats-wings of a sealing schooner are just indicated. In the foreground, +all but leaping out of the frame, an open rowboat, painted the rawest +blue and white, rides up over the shoulder of a swell. A man in +blood-red jersey and long boots, all shining with moisture, stands at +the bows holding up the carcase of a silver-bellied sea-otter from whose +pelt the wet drips in moonstones. Now the artist who could paint the +silver wash of the mist, the wriggling treacly reflection of the boat, +and the raw red wrists of the man would be something of a workman. + +But my gallery is in no danger of being copied at present. Three years +since, I met an artist in the stony bed of a brook, between a line of +300 graven, lichened godlings and a flaming bank of azaleas, swearing +horribly. He had been trying to paint one of my pictures--nothing more +than a big water-worn rock tufted with flowers and a snow-capped hill +for background. Most naturally he failed, because there happened to be +absolutely no perspective in the thing, and he was pulling the lines +about to make some for home consumption. No man can put the contents of +a gallon jar into a pint mug. The protests of all uncomfortably-crowded +mugs since the world began have settled that long ago, and have given us +the working theories, devised by imperfect instruments for imperfect +instruments, which are called Rules of Art. + +Luckily, those who painted my gallery were born before man. Therefore, +my pictures, instead of being boxed up by lumbering bars of gold, are +disposed generously between latitudes, equinoxes, monsoons, and the +like, and, making all allowance for an owner's partiality, they are +really not so bad. + +'Down in the South where the ships never go'--between the heel of New +Zealand and the South Pole, there is a sea-piece showing a steamer +trying to come round in the trough of a big beam sea. The wet light of +the day's end comes more from the water than the sky, and the waves are +colourless through the haze of the rain, all but two or three blind +sea-horses swinging out of the mist on the ship's dripping weather side. +A lamp is lighted in the wheel-house; so one patch of yellow light falls +on the green-painted pistons of the steering gear as they snatch up the +rudder-chains. A big sea has got home. Her stern flies up in the lather +of a freed screw, and her deck from poop to the break of the foc's'le +goes under in gray-green water level as a mill-race except where it +spouts up above the donkey-engine and the stored derrick-booms. Forward +there is nothing but this glare; aft, the interrupted wake drives far to +leeward, a cut kite-string dropped across the seas. The sole thing that +has any rest in the turmoil is the jewelled, unwinking eye of an +albatross, who is beating across wind leisurely and unconcerned, almost +within hand's touch. It is the monstrous egotism of that eye that makes +the picture. By all the rules of art there should be a lighthouse or a +harbour pier in the background to show that everything will end happily. +But there is not, and the red eye does not care whether the thing +beneath its still wings stays or staves. + +The sister-panel hangs in the Indian Ocean and tells a story, but is +none the worse for that. Here you have hot tropical sunlight and a +foreshore clothed in stately palms running out into a still and steamy +sea burnished steel blue. Along the foreshore, questing as a wounded +beast quests for lair, hurries a loaded steamer never built for speed. +Consequently, she tears and threshes the water to pieces, and piles it +under her nose and cannot put it under her cleanly. Coir-coloured cargo +bales are stacked round both masts, and her decks are crammed and +double-crammed with dark-skinned passengers--from the foc's'le where +they interfere with the crew to the stern where they hamper the wheel. + +The funnel is painted blue on yellow, giving her a holiday air, a little +out of keeping with the yellow and black cholera flag at her main. She +dare not stop; she must not communicate with any one. There are leprous +streaks of lime-wash trickling down her plates for a sign of this. So +she threshes on down the glorious coast, she and her swarming +passengers, with the sickness that destroyeth in the noonday eating out +her heart. + +Yet another, the pick of all the East rooms, before we have done with +blue water. Most of the nations of the earth are at issue under a +stretch of white awning above a crowded deck. The cause of the dispute, +a deep copper bowl full of rice and fried onions, is upset in the +foreground. Malays, Lascars, Hindus, Chinese, Japanese, Burmans--the +whole gamut of racetints, from saffron to tar-black--are twisting and +writhing round it, while their vermilion, cobalt, amber, and emerald +turbans and head-cloths are lying underfoot. Pressed against the yellow +ochre of the iron bulwarks to left and right are frightened women and +children in turquoise and isabella-coloured clothes. They are half +protected by mounds of upset bedding, straw mats, red lacquer boxes, and +plaited bamboo trunks, mixed up with tin plates, brass and copper +_hukas_, silver opium pipes, Chinese playing cards, and properties +enough to drive half-a-dozen artists wild. In the centre of the crowd of +furious half-naked men, the fat bare back of a Burman, tattooed from +collar-bone to waist-cloth with writhing patterns of red and blue +devils, holds the eye first. It is a wicked back. Beyond it is the +flicker of a Malay _kris_. A blue, red, and yellow macaw chained to a +stanchion spreads his wings against the sun in an ecstasy of terror. +Half-a-dozen red-gold pines and bananas have been knocked down from +their ripening-places, and are lying between the feet of the fighters. +One pine has rolled against the long brown fur of a muzzled bear. His +owner, a bushy-bearded Hindu, kneels over the animal, his body-cloth +thrown clear of a hard brown arm, his fingers ready to loose the +muzzle-strap. The ship's cook, in blood-stained white, watches from the +butcher's shop, and a black Zanzibari stoker grins through the bars of +the engine-room-hatch, one ray of sun shining straight into his pink +mouth. The officer of the watch, a red-whiskered man, is kneeling down +on the bridge to peer through the railings, and is shifting a long, thin +black revolver from his left hand to his right. The faithful sunlight +that puts everything into place, gives his whiskers and the hair on the +back of his tanned wrist just the colour of the copper pot, the bear's +fur and the trampled pines. For the rest, there is the blue sea beyond +the awnings. + +Three years' hard work, beside the special knowledge of a lifetime, +would be needed to copy--even to copy--this picture. Mr. So-and-so, +R.A., could undoubtedly draw the bird; Mr. Such-another (equally R.A.) +the bear; and scores of gentlemen the still life; but who would be the +man to pull the whole thing together and make it the riotous, tossing +cataract of colour and life that it is? And when it was done, some +middle-aged person from the provinces, who had never seen a pineapple +out of a plate, or a _kris_ out of the South Kensington, would say that +it did not remind him of something that it ought to remind him of, and +therefore that it was bad. If the gallery could be bequeathed to the +nation, something might, perhaps, be gained, but the nation would +complain of the draughts and the absence of chairs. But no matter. In +another world we shall see certain gentlemen set to tickle the backs of +Circe's swine through all eternity. Also, they will have to tickle with +their bare hands. + +The Japanese rooms, visited and set in order for the second time, hold +more pictures than could be described in a month; but most of them are +small and, excepting always the light, within human compass. One, +however, might be difficult. It was an unexpected gift, picked up in a +Tokio bye-street after dark. Half the town was out for a walk, and all +the people's clothes were indigo, and so were the shadows, and most of +the paper-lanterns were drops of blood red. By the light of smoking +oil-lamps people were selling flowers and shrubs--wicked little dwarf +pines, stunted peach and plum trees, wisteria bushes clipped and twisted +out of all likeness to wholesome plants, leaning and leering out of +green-glaze pots. In the flickering of the yellow flames, these forced +cripples and the yellow faces above them reeled to and fro fantastically +all together. As the light steadied they would return to the pretence of +being green things till a puff of the warm night wind among the flares +set the whole line off again in a crazy dance of dwergs, their shadows +capering on the house fronts behind them. + +At a corner of a street, some rich men had got together and left +unguarded all the gold, diamonds, and rubies of the East; but when you +came near you saw that this treasure was only a gathering of goldfish in +glass globes--yellow, white, and red fish, with from three to five +forked tails apiece and eyes that bulged far beyond their heads. There +were wooden pans full of tiny ruby fish, and little children with nets +dabbled and shrieked in chase of some special beauty, and the frightened +fish kicked up showers of little pearls with their tails. The children +carried lanterns in the shape of small red paper fish bobbing at the end +of slivers of bamboo, and these drifted through the crowd like a strayed +constellation of baby stars. When the children stood at the edge of a +canal and called down to unseen friends in boats the pink lights were +all reflected orderly below. The light of the thousand small lights in +the street went straight up into the darkness among the interlacing +telegraph wires, and just at the edge of the shining haze, on a sort of +pigeon-trap, forty feet above ground, sat a Japanese fireman, wrapped up +in his cloak, keeping watch against fires. He looked unpleasantly like a +Bulgarian atrocity or a Burmese 'deviation from the laws of humanity,' +being very still and all huddled up in his roost. That was a superb +picture and it arranged itself to admiration. Now, disregarding these +things and others--wonders and miracles all--men are content to sit in +studios and, by light that is not light, to fake subjects from pots and +pans and rags and bricks that are called 'pieces of colour.' Their +collection of rubbish costs in the end quite as much as a ticket, a +first-class one, to new worlds where the 'props' are given away with the +sunshine. To do anything because it is, or may not be, new on the market +is wickedness that carries its own punishment; but surely there must be +things in this world paintable other and beyond those that lie between +the North Cape, say, and Algiers. For the sake of the pictures, putting +aside the dear delight of the gamble, it might be worth while to +venture out a little beyond the regular circle of subjects and--see what +happens. If a man can draw one thing, it has been said, he can draw +anything. At the most he can but fail, and there are several matters in +the world worse than failure. Betting on a certainty, for instance, or +playing with nicked cards is immoral, and secures expulsion from clubs. +Keeping deliberately to one set line of work because you know you can do +it and are certain to get money by so doing is, on the other hand, +counted a virtue, and secures admission to clubs. There must be a middle +way somewhere, as there must be somewhere an unmarried man with no +position, reputation, or other vanity to lose, who most keenly wants to +find out what his palette is set for in this life. He will pack his +steamer-trunk and get into the open to wrestle with effects that he can +never reproduce. All the same his will be a superb failure. + + + + +'CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS' + +From Yokohama to Montreal is a long day's journey, and the forepart is +uninviting. In three voyages out of five, the North Pacific, too big to +lie altogether idle, too idle to get hands about the business of a +storm, sulks and smokes like a chimney; the passengers fresh from Japan +heat wither in the chill, and a clammy dew distils from the rigging. +That gray monotony of sea is not at all homelike, being as yet new and +not used to the procession of keels. It holds a very few pictures and +the best of its stories--those relating to seal-poaching among the +Kuriles and the Russian rookeries--are not exactly fit for publication. +There is a man in Yokohama who in a previous life burned galleons with +Drake. He is a gentleman adventurer of the largest and most +resourceful--by instinct a carver of kingdoms, a ruler of men on the +high seas, and an inveterate gambler against Death. Because he supplies +nothing more than sealskins to the wholesale dealers at home, the fame +of his deeds, his brilliant fights, his more brilliant escapes, and his +most brilliant strategy will be lost among sixty-ton schooners, or told +only in the mouths of drunken seamen whom none believe. Now there sits +a great spirit under the palm trees of the Navigator Group, a thousand +leagues to the south, and he, crowned with roses and laurels, strings +together the pearls of those parts. When he has done with this down +there perhaps he will turn to the Smoky Seas and the Wonderful +Adventures of Captain--. Then there will be a tale to listen to. + +But the first touch of dry land makes the sea and all upon it unreal. +Five minutes after the traveller is on the C.P.R, train at Vancouver +there is no romance of blue water, but another kind--the life of the +train into which he comes to grow as into life aboard ship. A week on +wheels turns a man into a part of the machine. He knows when the train +will stop to water, wait for news of the trestle ahead, drop the +dining-car, slip into a siding to let the West-bound mail go by, or yell +through the thick night for an engine to help push up the bank. The +snort, the snap and whine of the air-brakes have a meaning for him, and +he learns to distinguish between noises--between the rattle of a +loose lamp and the ugly rattle of small stones on a scarped +embankment--between the 'Hoot! toot!' that scares wandering cows from +the line, and the dry roar of the engine at the distance-signal. In +England the railway came late into a settled country fenced round with +the terrors of the law, and it has remained ever since just a little +outside daily life--a thing to be respected. Here it strolls along, with +its hands in its pockets and a straw in its mouth, on the heels of the +rough-hewn trail or log road--a platformless, regulationless necessity; +and it is treated even by sick persons and young children with a +familiarity that sometimes affects the death-rate. There was a small +maiden aged seven, who honoured our smoking compartment with her +presence when other excitements failed, and it was she that said to the +conductor, 'When do we change crews? I want to pick water-lilies--yellow +ones.' A mere halt she knew would not suffice for her needs; but the +regular fifteen-minute stop, when the red-painted tool-chest was taken +off the rear car and a new gang came aboard. The big man bent down to +little Impudence--'Want to pick lilies, eh? What would you do if the +cars went on and took mama away, Sis?' 'Take the, next train,' she +replied, 'and tell the conductor to send me to Brooklyn. I live there.' +'But s'pose he wouldn't?' 'He'd have to,' said Young America. 'I'd be a +lost child.' + +Now, from the province of Alberta to Brooklyn, U.S.A., may be three +thousand miles. A great stretch of that distance is as new as the day +before yesterday, and strewn with townships in every stage of growth +from the city of one round house, two log huts, and a Chinese camp +somewhere in the foot-hills of the Selkirks, to Winnipeg with her +league-long main street and her warring newspapers. Just at present +there is an epidemic of politics in Manitoba, and brass bands and +notices of committee meetings are splashed about the towns. By reason +of their closeness to the Stages they have caught the contagion of +foul-mouthedness, and accusations of bribery, corruption, and +evil-living are many. It is sweet to find a little baby-city, with only +three men in it who can handle type, cursing and swearing across the +illimitable levels for all the world as though it were a grown-up +Christian centre. + +All the new towns have their own wants to consider, and the first of +these is a railway. If the town is on a line already, then a new line to +tap the back country; but at all costs a line. For this it will sell its +corrupted soul, and then be very indignant because the railway before +which it has grovelled rides rough-shod over the place. + +Each new town believes itself to be a possible Winnipeg until the +glamour of the thing is a little worn off, and the local paper, sliding +down the pole of Pride with the hind legs of despair, says defiantly: +'At least, a veterinary surgeon and a drug store would meet with +encouragement in our midst, and it is a fact that five new buildings +have been erected in our midst since the spring.' From a distance +nothing is easier than to smile at this sort of thing, but he must have +a cool head who can keep his pulse level when just such a wildcat +town--ten houses, two churches, and a line of rails--gets 'on the boom,' +The reader at home says, 'Yes, but it's all a lie.' It may be, but--did +men lie about Denver, Leadville, Ballarat, Broken Hill, Portland, or +Winnipeg twenty years ago--or Adelaide when town lots went begging +within the memory of middle-aged men? Did they lie about Vancouver six +years since, or Creede not twenty months gone? Hardly; and it is just +this knowledge that leads the passer-by to give ear to the wildest +statements of the wildest towns. Anything is possible, especially among +the Rockies where the minerals lie over and above the mining towns, the +centres of ranching country, and the supply towns to the farming +districts. There are literally scores upon scores of lakelets in the +hills, buried in woods now, that before twenty years are run will be +crowded summer resorts. You in England have no idea of what 'summering' +means in the States, and less of the amount of money that is spent on +the yearly holiday. People have no more than just begun to discover the +place called the Banff Hot Springs, two days west of Winnipeg.[1] In a +little time they will know half-a-dozen spots not a day's ride from +Montreal, and it is along that line that money will be made. In those +days, too, wheat will be grown for the English market four hundred miles +north of the present fields on the west side; and British Columbia, +perhaps the loveliest land in the world next to New Zealand, will have +her own line of six thousand ton steamers to Australia, and the British +investor will no longer throw away his money on hellicat South American +republics, or give it as a hostage to the States. He will keep it in the +family as a wise man should. Then the towns that are to-day the only +names in the wilderness, yes, and some of those places marked on the map +as Hudson Bay Ports, will be cities, because--but it is hopeless to make +people understand that actually and indeed, we _do_ possess an Empire of +which Canada is only one portion--an Empire which is not bounded by +election-returns on the North and Eastbourne riots on the South--an +Empire that has not yet been scratched. + +[Footnote 1: See pp. 187-188.] + +Let us return to the new towns. Three times within one year did fortune +come knocking to the door of a man I know. Once at Seattle, when that +town was a gray blur after a fire; once at Tacoma, in the days when the +steam-tram ran off the rails twice a week; and once at Spokane Falls. +But in the roar of the land-boom he did not hear her, and she went away +leaving him only a tenderness akin to weakness for all new towns, and a +desire, mercifully limited by lack of money, to gamble in every one of +them. Of all the excitements that life offers there are few to be +compared with the whirl of a red-hot boom; also it is strictly moral, +because you _do_ fairly earn your 'unearned increment' by labour and +perspiration and sitting up far into the night--by working like a fiend, +as all pioneers must do. And consider all that is in it! The headlong +stampede to the new place; the money dashed down like counters for +merest daily bread; the arrival of the piled cars whence the raw +material of a city--men, lumber, and shingle--are shot on to the not yet +nailed platform; the slashing out and pegging down of roads across the +blank face of the wilderness; the heaving up amid shouts and yells of +the city's one electric light--a raw sizzling arc atop of an unbarked +pine pole; the sweating, jostling mob at the sale of town-lots; the roar +of 'Let the woman have it!' that stops all bidding when the one other +woman in the place puts her price on a plot; the packed real-estate +offices; the real-estate agents themselves, lost novelists of prodigious +imagination; the gorgeous pink and blue map of the town, hung up in the +bar-room, with every railroad from Portland to Portland meeting in its +heart; the misspelled curse against 'this dam hole in the ground' +scrawled on the flank of a strayed freight-car by some man who had lost +his money and gone away; the conferences at street corners of syndicates +six hours established by men not twenty-five years old; the outspoken +contempt for the next town, also 'on the boom,' and, therefore, utterly +vile; the unceasing tramp of heavy feet on the board pavement, where +stranger sometimes turns on stranger in an agony of conviction, and, +shaking him by the shoulder, shouts in his ear, 'By G--d! Isn't it +grand? Isn't it glorious? 'and last, the sleep of utterly worn-out men, +three in each room of the shanty hotel: 'All meals two dollars. All +drinks thirty-five cents. No washing done here. The manager not +responsible for anything.' Does the bald catalogue of these recitals +leave you cold? It is possible; but it is also possible after three days +in a new town to set the full half of a truck-load of archbishops +fighting for corner lots as they never fought for mitre or crozier. +There is a contagion in a boom as irresistible as that of a panic in a +theatre. + +After a while things settle down, and then the carpenter, who is also an +architect, can lay his bare arms across the bar and sell them to the +highest bidder, for the houses are coming up like toadstools after rain. +The men who do not build cheer those who do, in that building means +backing your belief in your town--yours to you and peculiarly. Confound +all other towns whatsoever. Behind the crowd of business men the weekly +town paper plays as a stockwhip plays on a mob of cattle. There is +honour, heaped, extravagant, imperial for the good--the employer of +labour, the builder of stores, the spender of money; there is abuse, +savage and outrageous, for the bad, the man who 'buys out of the town,' +the man who intends to go, the sitter on the fence; with persuasion and +invitation in prose, verse, and zincograph for all that outside world +which prefers to live in cities other than Ours. + +Now the editor, as often as not, begins as a mercenary and ends as a +patriot. This, too, is all of a piece with human nature. A few years +later, if Providence is good, comes the return for judicious investment. +Perhaps the town has stood the test of boom, and that which was +clapboard is now Milwaukee brick or dressed stone, vile in design but +permanent. The shanty hotel is the Something House, with accommodation +for two hundred guests. The manager who served you in his shirt-sleeves +as his own hotel clerk, is gorgeous in broadcloth, and needs to be +reminded of the first meeting. Suburban villas more or less adorn the +flats, from which the liveliest fancy (and fancy was free in the early +days) hung back. Horse-cars jingle where the prairie schooner used to +stick fast in the mud-hole, scooped to that end, opposite the saloon; +and there is a Belt Electric Service paying fabulous dividends. Then, do +you, feeling older than Methuselah and twice as important, go forth and +patronise things in general, while the manager tells you exactly what +sort of millionaire you would have been if you had 'stayed by the town.' + +Or else--the bottom has tumbled out of the boom, and the town new made +is dead--dead as a young man's corpse laid out in the morning. Success +was not justified by success. Of ten thousand not three hundred remain, +and these live in huts on the outskirts of the brick streets. The hotel, +with its suites of musty rooms, is a big tomb; the factory chimneys are +cold; the villas have no glass in them, and the fire-weed glows in the +centre of the driveways, mocking the arrogant advertisements in the +empty shops. There is nothing to do except to catch trout in the stream +that was to have been defiled by the city sewage. A two-pounder lies +fanning himself just in the cool of the main culvert, where the alders +have crept up to the city wall. You pay your money and, more or less, +you take your choice. + +By the time that man has seen these things and a few others that go +with a boom he may say that he has lived, and talk with his enemies in +the gate. He has heard the Arabian Nights retold and knows the inward +kernel of that romance, which some? little folk say is vanished. Here +they lie in their false teeth, for Cortes is not dead, nor Drake, and +Sir Philip Sidney dies every few months if you know where to look. The +adventurers and captains courageous of old have only changed their dress +a little and altered their employment to suit the world in which they +move. Clive came down from Lobengula's country a few months ago +protesting that there was an empire there, and finding very few that +believed. Hastings studied a map of South Africa in a corrugated iron +hut at Johannesburg ten years ago. Since then he has altered the map +considerably to the advantage of the Empire, but the heart of the Empire +is set on ballot-boxes and small lies. The illustrious Don Quixote +to-day lives on the north coast of Australia where he has found the +treasure of a sunken Spanish galleon. Now and again he destroys black +fellows who hide under his bed to spear him. Young Hawkins, with a still +younger Boscawen for his second, was till last year chasing slave-dhows +round Tajurrah; they have sent him now to the Zanzibar coast to be +grilled into an admiral; and the valorous Sandoval has been holding the +'Republic' of Mexico by the throat any time these fourteen years gone. +The others, big men all and not very much afraid of responsibility, are +selling horses, breaking trails, drinking sangaree, running railways +beyond the timberline, swimming rivers, blowing up tree-stumps, and +making cities where no cities were, in all the five quarters of the +world. Only people will not believe this when you tell them. They are +too near things and a great deal too well fed. So they say of the most +cold-blooded realism: 'This is romance. How interesting!' And of +over-handled, thumb-marked realism: 'This is indeed romance!' It is the +next century that, looking over its own, will see the heroes of our time +clearly. + +Meantime this earth of ours--we hold a fair slice of it so far--is full +of wonders and miracles and mysteries and marvels, and, in default, it +is good to go up and down seeing and hearing tell of them all. + + + + +ON ONE SIDE ONLY + + +NEW OXFORD, U.S.A., _June-July_ 1892. + +'The truth is,' said the man in the train, 'that we live in a tropical +country for three months of the year, only we won't recognise. Look at +this.' He handed over a long list of deaths from heat that enlivened the +newspapers. All the cities where men live at breaking-strain were +sending in their butcher-bills, and the papers of the cities, themselves +apostles of the Gospel of Rush, were beseeching their readers to keep +cool and not to overwork themselves while the hot wave was upon them. +The rivers were patched and barred with sun-dried pebbles; the logs and +loggers were drought-bound somewhere up the Connecticut; and the grass +at the side of the track was burned in a hundred places by the sparks +from locomotives. Men--hatless, coatless, and gasping--lay in the shade +of that station where only a few months ago the glass stood at 30 below +zero. Now the readings were 98 degrees in the shade. Main Street--do you +remember Main Street of a little village locked up in the snow this +spring?[2]--had given up the business of life, and an American flag +with some politician's name printed across the bottom hung down across +the street as stiff as a board. There were men with fans and alpaca +coats curled up in splint chairs in the verandah of the one hotel--among +them an ex-President of the United States. He completed the impression +that the furniture of the entire country had been turned out of doors +for summer cleaning in the absence of all the inhabitants. Nothing looks +so hopelessly 'ex' as a President 'returned to stores,' The stars and +stripes signified that the Presidential Campaign had opened in Main +Street--opened and shut up again. Politics evaporate at summer heat when +all hands are busy with the last of the hay, and, as the formers put it, +'Vermont's bound to go Republican.' The custom of the land is to drag +the scuffle and dust of an election over several months--to the +improvement of business and manners; but the noise of that war comes +faintly up the valley of the Connecticut and is lost among the fiddling +of the locusts. Their music puts, as it were, a knife edge upon the heat +of the day. In truth, it is a tropical country for the time being. +Thunder-storms prowl and growl round the belted hills, spit themselves +away in a few drops of rain, and leave the air more dead than before. In +the woods, where even the faithful springs are beginning to run low, the +pines and balsams have thrown out all their fragrance upon the heat and +wait for the wind to bring news of the rain. The clematis, wild carrot, +and all the gipsy-flowers camped by sufferance between fence line and +road net are masked in white dust, and the golden-rod of the pastures +that are burned to flax-colour burns too like burnished brass. A pillar +of dust on the long hog-back of the road across the hills shows where a +team is lathering between farms, and the roofs of the wooden houses +flicker in the haze of their own heat. Overhead the chicken-hawk is the +only creature at work, and his shrill kite-like call sends the gaping +chickens from the dust-bath in haste to their mothers. The red squirrel +as usual feigns business of importance among the butternuts, but this is +pure priggishness. When the passer-by is gone he ceases chattering and +climbs back to where the little breezes can stir his tail-plumes. From +somewhere under the lazy fold of a meadow comes the drone of a +mowing-machine among the hay--its _whurr-oo_ and the grunt of the tired +horses. + +[Footnote 2: See 'In Sight of Monadnock.'] + +Houses are only meant to eat and sleep in. The rest of life is lived at +full length in the verandah. When traffic is brisk three whole teams +will pass that verandah in one day, and it is necessary to exchange news +about the weather and the prospects for oats. When oats are in there +will be slack time on the farm, and the farmers will seriously think of +doing the hundred things that they have let slide during the summer. +They will undertake this and that, 'when they get around to it.' The +phrase translated is the exact equivalent to the _manana_ of the +Spaniard, the _kul hojaiga_ of Upper India, the _yuroshii_ of the +Japanese, and the long drawled _taihod_ of the Maori. The only person +who 'gets around' in this weather is the summer boarder--the refugee +from the burning cities of the Plain, and she is generally a woman. She +walks, and botanizes, and kodaks, and strips the bark off the white +birch to make blue-ribboned waste-paper baskets, and the farmer regards +her with wonder. More does he wonder still at the city clerk in a +blazer, who has two weeks' holiday in the year and, apparently, +unlimited money, which he earns in the easiest possible way by 'sitting +at a desk and writing,' The farmer's wife sees the fashions of the +summer boarder, and between them man and woman get a notion of the +beauties of city life for which their children may live to blame them. +The blazer and the town-made gown are innocent recruiting sergeants for +the city brigades; and since one man's profession is ever a mystery to +his fellow, blazer and gown believe that the farmer must be happy and +content. A summer resort is one of the thousand windows whence to watch +the thousand aspects of life in the Atlantic States. Remember that +between June and September it is the desire of all who can to get away +from the big cities--not on account of wantonness, as people leave +London--but because of actual heat. So they get away in their millions +with their millions--the wives of the rich men for five clear months, +the others for as long as they can; and, like drawing like, they make +communities set by set, breed by breed, division by division, over the +length and breadth of the land--from Maine and the upper reaches of the +Saguenay, through the mountains and hot springs of half-a-dozen +interior States, out and away to Sitka in steamers. Then they spend +money on hotel bills, among ten thousand farms, on private companies who +lease and stock land for sporting purposes, on yachts and canoes, +bicycles, rods, chalets, cottages, reading circles, camps, tents, and +all the luxuries they know. But the luxury of rest most of them do not +know; and the telephone and telegraph are faithfully dragged after them, +lest their men-folk should for a moment forget the ball and chain at +foot. + +For sadness with laughter at bottom there are few things to compare with +the sight of a coat-less, muddy-booted, millionaire, his hat adorned +with trout-flies, and a string of small fish in his hand, clawing wildly +at the telephone of some back-of-beyond 'health resort.' Thus: + +'Hello! Hello! Yes. Who's there? Oh, all right. Go ahead. Yes, it's me! +Hey, what? Repeat. Sold for _how_ much? Forty-four and a half? Repeat. +No! I _told_ you to hold on. What? What? _Who_ bought at that? Say, hold +a minute. Cable the other side. No. Hold on. I'll come down. (_Business +with watch_.) Tell Schaefer I'll see him to-morrow.' (_Over his shoulder +to his wife, who wears half-hoop diamond rings at_ 10 A.M.) 'Lizzie, +where's my grip? I've got to go down.' + +And he goes down to eat in a hotel and sleep in his shut-up house. Men +are as scarce at most of the summer places as they are in Indian +hill-stations in late April. The women tell you that they can't get +away, and if they did they would only be miserable to get back. Now +whether this wholesale abandonment of husbands by wives is wholesome let +those who know the beauties of the Anglo-Indian system settle for +themselves. + +That both men and women need rest very badly a glance at the crowded +hotel tables makes plain--so plain, indeed, that the foreigner who has +not been taught that fuss and worry are in themselves honourable wishes +sometimes he could put the whole unrestful crowd to sleep for seventeen +hours a day. I have inquired of not less than five hundred men and women +in various parts of the States why they broke down and looked so gash. +And the men said: 'If you don't keep up with the procession in America +you are left'; and the women smiled an evil smile and answered that no +outsider yet had discovered the real cause of their worry and strain, or +why their lives were arranged to work with the largest amount of +friction in the shortest given time. Now, the men can be left to their +own folly, but the cause of the women's trouble has been revealed to me. +It is the thing called 'Help' which is no help. In the multitude of +presents that the American man has given to the American woman (for +details see daily papers) he has forgotten or is unable to give her good +servants, and that sordid trouble runs equally through the household of +the millionaire or the flat of the small city man. 'Yes, it's easy +enough to laugh,' said one woman passionately, 'we are worn out, and our +children are worn out too, and we're always worrying, I know it. What +can we do? If you stay here you'll know that this is the land of all +the luxuries and none of the necessities. You'll know and then you won't +laugh. You'll know why women are said to take their husbands to +boarding-houses and never have homes. You'll know what an Irish Catholic +means. The men won't get up and attend to these things, but _we_ would. +If _we_ had female suffrage, we'd shut the door to _all_ the Irish and +throw it open to _all_ the Chinese, and let the women have a little +protection.' It was the cry of a soul worn thin with exasperation, but +it was truth. To-day I do not laugh any more at the race that depends on +inefficient helot races for its inefficient service. When next you, +housekeeping in England, differ with the respectable, amiable, +industrious sixteen-pound maid, who wears a cap and says 'Ma'am,' +remember the pauper labour of America--the wives of the sixty million +kings who have no subjects. No man could get a thorough knowledge of the +problem in one lifetime, but he could guess at the size and the import +of it after he has descended into the arena and wrestled with the Swede +and the Dane and the German and the unspeakable Celt. Then he perceives +how good for the breed it must be that a man should thresh himself to +pieces in naked competition with his neighbour while his wife struggles +unceasingly over primitive savagery in the kitchen. In India sometimes +when a famine is at hand the life of the land starts up before your eyes +in all its bareness and bitter stress. Here, in spite of the trimmings +and the frillings, it refuses to be subdued and the clamour and the +clatter of it are loud above all other sounds--as sometimes the thunder +of disorganised engines stops conversations along the decks of a liner, +and in the inquiring eyes of the passengers you read the question--'This +thing is made and paid to bear us to port quietly. Why does it not do +so?' Only here, the rattle of the badly-put-together machine is always +in the ears, though men and women run about with labour-saving +appliances and gospels of 'power through repose,' tinkering and oiling +and making more noise. The machine is new. Some day it is going to be +the finest machine in the world. To the ranks of the amateur artificers, +therefore, are added men with notebooks tapping at every nut and +bolthead, fiddling with the glands, registering revolutions, and crying +out from time to time that this or that is or is not 'distinctively +American.' Meantime, men and women die unnecessarily in the wheels, and +they are said to have fallen 'in the battle of life.' + +The God Who sees us all die knows that there is far too much of that +battle, but we do not, and so continue worshipping the knife that cuts +and the wheel that breaks us, as blindly as the outcast sweeper worships +Lal-Beg the Glorified Broom that is the incarnation of his craft. But +the sweeper has sense enough not to kill himself, and to be proud of it, +with sweeping. + +A foreigner can do little good by talking of these things; for the same +lean dry blood that breeds the fever of unrest breeds also the savage +parochial pride that squeals under a steady stare or a pointed finger. +Among themselves the people of the Eastern cities admit that they and +their womenfolk overwork grievously and go to pieces very readily, and +that the consequences for the young stock are unpleasant indeed; but +before the stranger they prefer to talk about the future of their mighty +continent (which has nothing to do with the case) and to call aloud on +Baal of the Dollars--to catalogue their lines, mines, telephones, banks, +and cities, and all the other shells, buttons, and counters that they +have made their Gods over them. Now a nation does not progress upon its +brain-pan, as some books would have us believe, but upon its belly as +did the Serpent of old; and in the very long run the work of the brain +comes to be gathered in by a slow-footed breed that have unimaginative +stomachs and the nerves that know their place. + +All this is very consoling from the alien's point of view. He perceives, +with great comfort, that out of strain is bred impatience in the shape +of a young bundle of nerves, who is about as undisciplined an imp as the +earth can show. Out of impatience, grown up, habituated to violent and +ugly talk, and the impatience and recklessness of his neighbours, is +begotten lawlessness, encouraged by laziness and suppressed by violence +when it becomes insupportable. Out of lawlessness is bred rebellion (and +that fruit has been tasted once already), and out of rebellion comes +profit to those who wait. He hears of the power of the People who, +through rank slovenliness, neglect to see that their laws are soberly +enforced from the beginning; and these People, not once or twice in a +year, but many times within a month, go out in the open streets and, with +a maximum waste of power and shouting, strangle other people with ropes. +They are, he is told, law-abiding citizens who have executed 'the will +of the people'; which is as though a man should leave his papers +unsorted for a year and then smash his desk with an axe, crying, 'Am I +not orderly?' He hears lawyers, otherwise sane and matured, defend this +pig-jobbing murder on the grounds that 'the People stand behind the +Law'--the law that they never administered. He sees a right, at present +only half--but still half--conceded to anticipate the law in one's own +interests; and nervous impatience (always nerves) forejudging the +suspect in gaol, the prisoner in the dock, and the award between nation +and nation ere it is declared. He knows that the maxim in London, +Yokohama, and Hongkong in doing business with the pure-bred American is +to keep him waiting, for the reason that forced inaction frets the man +to a lather, as standing in harness frets a half-broken horse. He comes +across a thousand little peculiarities of speech, manner, and +thought--matters of nerve and stomach developed by everlasting +friction--and they are all just the least little bit in the world +lawless. No more so than the restless clicking together of horns in a +herd of restless cattle, but certainly no less. They are all good--good +for those who wait. + +On the other hand, to consider the matter more humanly, there are +thousands of delightful men and women going to pieces for the pitiful +reason that if they do not keep up with the procession, 'they are left.' +And they are left--in clothes that have no back to them, among mounds of +smilax. And young men--chance-met in the streets, talk to you about +their nerves which are things no young man should know anything about; +and the friends of your friends go down with nervous prostration, and +the people overheard in the trains talk about their nerves and the +nerves of their relatives; and the little children must needs have their +nerves attended to ere their milk-teeth are shed, and the middle-aged +women and the middle-aged men have got them too, and the old men lose +the dignity of their age in an indecent restlessness, and the +advertisements in the papers go to show that this sweeping list is no +lie. Atop of the fret and the stampede, the tingling self-consciousness +of a new people makes them take a sort of perverted pride in the futile +racket that sends up the death-rate--a child's delight in the blaze and +the dust of the March of Progress. Is it not 'distinctively American'? +It is, and it is not. If the cities were all America, as they pretend, +fifty years would see the March of Progress brought to a standstill, as +a locomotive is stopped by heated bearings.... + +Down in the meadow the mowing-machine has checked, and the horses are +shaking themselves. The last of the sunlight leaves the top of +Monadnock, and four miles away Main Street lights her electric lamps. It +is band-night in Main Street, and the folks from Putney, from +Marlboro', from Guildford, and even New Fane will drive in their +well-filled waggons to hear music and look at the Ex-President. Over the +shoulder of the meadow two men come up very slowly, their hats off and +their arms swinging loosely at their sides. They do not hurry, they have +not hurried, and they never will hurry, for they are of country--bankers +of the flesh and blood of the ever bankrupt cities. Their children may +yet be pale summer boarders; as the boarders, city-bred weeds, may take +over their farms. From the plough to the pavement goes man, but to the +plough he returns at last. + +'Going to supper?' + +'Ye-ep,' very slowly across the wash of the uncut grass. + +'Say, that corncrib wants painting.' + +''Do that when we get around to it.' + +They go off through the dusk, without farewell or salutation steadily as +their own steers. And there are a few millions of them--unhandy men to +cross in their ways, set, silent, indirect in speech, and as +impenetrable as that other Eastern fanner who is the bedrock of another +land. They do not appear in the city papers, they are not much heard in +the streets, and they tell very little in the outsider's estimate of +America. + +And _they_ are the American. + + + + +LEAVES FROM A WINTER NOTE-BOOK + +(1895) + + +We had walked abreast of the year from the very beginning, and that was +when the first blood-root came up between the patches of April snow, +while yet the big drift at the bottom of the meadow held fast. In the +shadow of the woods and under the blown pine-needles, clots of snow lay +till far into May, but neither the season nor the flowers took any note +of them, and, before we were well sure Winter had gone, the lackeys of +my Lord Baltimore in their new liveries came to tell us that Summer was +in the valley, and please might they nest at the bottom of the garden? + +Followed, Summer, angry, fidgety, and nervous, with the corn and tobacco +to ripen in five short months, the pastures to reclothe, and the fallen +leaves to hide away under new carpets. Suddenly, in the middle of her +work, on a stuffy-still July day, she called a wind out of the +Northwest, a wind blown under an arch of steel-bellied clouds, a wicked +bitter wind with a lacing of hail to it, a wind that came and was gone +in less than ten minutes, but blocked the roads with fallen trees, +toppled over a barn, and--blew potatoes out of the ground! When that was +done, a white cloud shaped like a dumb-bell whirled down the valley +across the evening blue, roaring and twisting and twisting and roaring +all alone by itself. A West Indian hurricane could not have been quicker +on its feet than our little cyclone, and when the house rose a-tiptoe, +like a cockerel in act to crow, and a sixty-foot elm went by the board, +and that which had been a dusty road became a roaring torrent all in +three minutes, we felt that the New England summer had creole blood in +her veins. She went away, red-faced and angry to the last, slamming all +the doors of the hills behind her, and Autumn, who is a lady, took +charge. + +No pen can describe the turning of the leaves--the insurrection of the +tree-people against the waning year. A little maple began it, flaming +blood-red of a sudden where he stood against the dark green of a +pine-belt. Next morning there was an answering signal from the swamp +where the sumacs grow. Three days later, the hill-sides as far as the +eye could range were afire, and the roads paved, with crimson and gold. +Then a wet wind blew, and ruined all the uniforms of that gorgeous army; +and the oaks, who had held themselves in reserve, buckled on their dull +and bronzed cuirasses and stood it out stiffly to the last blown leaf, +till nothing remained but pencil-shading of bare boughs, and one could +see into the most private heart of the woods. + +Frost may be looked for till the middle of May and after the middle of +September, so Summer has little time for enamel-work or leaf-embroidery. +Her sisters bring the gifts--Spring, wind-flowers, Solomon's-Seal, +Dutchman's-breeches, Quaker-ladies, and trailing arbutus, that smells as +divinely as the true May. Autumn has golden-rod and all the tribe of +asters, pink, lilac, and creamy white, by the double armful. When these +go the curtain comes down, and whatever Powers shift the scenery behind, +work without noise. In tropic lands you can hear the play of growth and +decay at the back of the night-silences. Even in England the tides of +the winter air have a set and a purpose; but here they are dumb +altogether. The very last piece of bench-work this season was the +trailed end of a blackberry-vine, most daringly conventionalised in +hammered iron, flung down on the frosty grass an instant before people +came to look. The blue bloom of the furnace was still dying along the +central rib, and the side-sprays were cherry red, even as they had been +lifted from the charcoal. It was a detail, evidently, of some invisible +gate in the woods; but we never found that workman, though he had left +the mark of his cloven foot as plainly as any strayed deer. In a week +the heavy frosts with scythes and hammers had slashed and knocked down +all the road-side growth and the kindly bushes that veil the drop off +the unfenced track. + +There the seasons stopped awhile. Autumn was gone, Winter was not. We +had Time dealt out to us--mere, clear, fresh Time--grace-days to enjoy. +The white wooden farm-houses were banked round two feet deep with dried +leaves or earth, and the choppers went out to get ready next year's +stores of wood. Now, chopping is an art, and the chopper in all respects +an artist. He makes his own axe-helve, and for each man there is but one +perfect piece of wood in all the world. This he never finds, but the +likest substitute is trimmed and balanced and poised to that ideal. One +man I know has evolved very nearly the weapon of Umslopogaas. It is +almost straight, lapped at the butt with leather, amazingly springy, and +carries a two-edged blade for splitting and chopping. If his Demon be +with him--and what artist can answer for all his moods?--he will cause a +tree to fall upon any stick or stone that you choose, uphill or down, to +the right or to the left. Artist-like, however, he explains that that is +nothing. Any fool can play with a tree in the open, but it needs the +craftsman to bring a tree down in thick timber and do no harm. To see an +eighty-foot maple, four feet in the butt, dropped, deftly as a fly is +cast, in the only place where it will not outrage the feelings and swipe +off the tops of fifty juniors, is a revelation. White pine, hemlock, and +spruce share this country with maples, black and white birches, and +beech. Maple seems to have few preferences, and the white birches +straggle and shiver on the outskirts of every camp; but the pines hold +together in solid regiments, sending out skirmishers to invade a +neglected pasture on the first opportunity. There is no overcoat warmer +than the pines in a gale when the woods for miles round are singing like +cathedral organs, and the first snow of the year powders the +rock-ledges. + +The mosses and lichens, green, sulphur, and amber, stud the copper floor +of needles, where the feathery ground-pine runs aimlessly to and fro +along the ground, spelling out broken words of half-forgotten charms. +There are checker-berries on the outskirts of the wood, where the +partridge (he is a ruffed grouse really) dines, and by the deserted +logging-roads toadstools of all colours sprout on the decayed stumps. +Wherever a green or blue rock lifts from the hillside, the needles have +been packed and matted round its base, till, when the sunshine catches +them, stone and setting together look no meaner than turquoise in dead +gold. The woods are full of colour, belts and blotches of it, the +colours of the savage--red, yellow, and blue. Yet in their lodges there +is very little life, for the wood-people do not readily go into the +shadows. The squirrels have their business among the beeches and +hickories by the road-side, where they can watch the traffic and talk. +We have no gray ones hereabouts (they are good to eat and suffer for +it), but five reds live in a hickory hard by, and no weather puts them +to sleep. The wood-chuck, a marmot and a strategist, makes his burrow in +the middle of a field, where he must see you ere you see him. Now and +again a dog manages to cut him off his base, and the battle is worth +crossing fields to watch. But the woodchuck turned in long ago, and will +not be out till April. The coon lives--well, no one seems to know +particularly where Brer Coon lives, but when the Hunter's Moon is large +and full he descends into the corn-lands, and men chase him with dogs +for his fur, which makes the finest kind of overcoat, and his flesh, +which tastes like chicken. He cries at night sorrowfully as though a +child were lost. + +They seem to kill, for one reason or other, everything that moves in +this land. Hawks, of course; eagles for their rarity; foxes for their +pelts; red-shouldered blackbirds and Baltimore orioles because they are +pretty, and the other small things for sport--French fashion. You can +get a rifle of a kind for twelve shillings, and if your neighbour be +fool enough to post notices forbidding 'hunting' and fishing, you +naturally seek his woods. So the country is very silent and unalive. + +There are, however, bears within a few miles, as you will see from this +notice, picked up at the local tobacconist's: + + JOHNNY GET YOUR GUN! BEAR HUNT! + +As bears are too numerous in the town of Peltyville Corners, Vt., the +hunters of the surrounding towns are invited to participate in a grand +hunt to be held on Blue Mountains in the town of Peltyville Corners, +Vt., Wednesday, Nov. 8th, if pleasant. If not, first fine day. Come one, +come all! + +They went, but it was the bear that would not participate. The notice +was printed at somebody's Electric Print Establishment. Queer mixture, +isn't it? + +The bear does not run large as a rule, but he has a weakness for swine +and calves which brings punishment. Twelve hours' rail and a little +marching take you up to the moose-country; and twenty-odd miles from +here as the crow flies you come to virgin timber, where trappers live, +and where there is a Lost Pond that many have found once but can never +find again. + +Men, who are of one blood with sheep, have followed their friends and +the railway along the river valleys where the towns are. Across the +hills the inhabitants are few, and, outside their State, little known. +They withdraw from society in November if they live on the uplands, +coming down in May as the snow gives leave. Not much more than a +generation ago these farms made their own clothes, soap, and candles, +and killed their own meat thrice a year, beef, veal, and pig, and sat +still between-times. Now they buy shop-made clothes, patent soaps, and +kerosene; and it is among their tents that the huge red and gilt +Biographies of Presidents, and the twenty-pound family Bibles, with +illuminated marriage-registers, mourning-cards, baptismal certificates, +and hundreds of genuine steel-engravings, sell best. Here, too, off the +main-travelled roads, the wandering quack--Patent Electric Pills, nerve +cures, etc.--divides the field with the seed and fruit man and the +seller of cattle-boluses. They dose themselves a good deal, I fancy, +for it is a poor family that does not know all about nervous +prostration. So the quack drives a pair of horses and a gaily-painted +waggon with a hood, and sometimes takes his wife with him. Once only +have I met a pedlar afoot. He was an old man, shaken with palsy, and he +pushed a thing exactly like a pauper's burial-cart, selling pins, tape, +scents, and flavourings. You helped yourself, for his hands had no +direction, and he told a long tale in which the deeding away of a farm +to one of his family was mixed up with pride at the distances he still +could cover daily. As much as six miles sometimes. He was no Lear, as +the gift of the farm might suggest, but sealed of the tribe of the +Wandering Jew--a tremulous old giddy-gaddy. There are many such rovers, +gelders of colts and the like, who work a long beat, south to Virginia +almost, and north to the frontier, paying with talk and gossip for their +entertainment. + +Yet tramps are few, and that is well, for the American article answers +almost exactly to the vagrant and criminal tribes of India, being a +predatory ruffian who knows too much to work. 'Bad place to beg in after +dark--on a farm--very--is Vermont. Gypsies pitch their camp by the river +in the spring, and cooper horses in the manner of their tribe. They have +the gypsy look and some of the old gypsy names, but say that they are +largely mixed with Gentile blood. + +Winter has chased all these really interesting people south, and in a +few weeks, if we have anything of a snow, the back farms will be +unvisited save by the doctor's hooded sleigh. It is no child's play to +hold a practice here through the winter months, when the drifts are +really formed, and a pair can drop in up to their saddle-pads. Four +horses a day some of them use, and use up--for they are good men. + +Now in the big silence of the snow is born, perhaps, not a little of +that New England conscience which her children write about. There is +much time to think, and thinking is a highly dangerous business. +Conscience, fear, undigested reading, and, it may be, not too well +cooked food, have full swing. A man, and more particularly a woman, can +easily hear strange voices--the Word of the Lord rolling between the +dead hills; may see visions and dream dreams; get revelations and an +outpouring of the spirit, and end (such things have been) lamentably +enough in those big houses by the Connecticut River which have been +tenderly christened The Retreat. Hate breeds as well as religion--the +deep, instriking hate between neighbours, that is born of a hundred +little things added up, brooded over, and hatched by the stove when two +or three talk together in the long evenings. It would be very +interesting to get the statistics of revivals and murders, and find how +many of them have been committed in the spring. But for undistracted +people winter is one long delight of the eye. In other lands one knows +the snow as a nuisance that comes and goes, and is sorely man-handled +and messed at the last. Here it lies longer on the ground than any +crop--from November to April sometimes--and for three months life goes +to the tune of sleigh-bells, which are not, as a Southern visitor once +hinted, ostentation, but safeguards. The man who drives without them is +not loved. The snow is a faithful barometer, foretelling good sleighing +or stark confinement to barracks. It is all the manure the stony +pastures receive; it cloaks the ground and prevents the frost bursting +pipes; it is the best--I had almost written the only--road-maker in the +States. On the other side it can rise up in the night and bid the people +sit still as the Egyptians. It can stop mails; wipe out all time-tables; +extinguish the lamps of twenty towns, and kill man within sight of his +own door-step or hearing of his cattle unfed. No one who has been +through even so modified a blizzard as New England can produce talks +lightly of the snow. Imagine eight-and-forty hours of roaring wind, the +thermometer well down towards zero, scooping and gouging across a +hundred miles of newly fallen snow. The air is full of stinging shot, +and at ten yards the trees are invisible. The foot slides on a reef, +polished and black as obsidian, where the wind has skinned an exposed +corner of road down to the dirt ice of early winter. The next step ends +hip-deep and over, for here an unseen wall is banking back the rush of +the singing drifts. A scarped slope rises sheer across the road. The +wind shifts a point or two, and all sinks down, like sand in the +hour-glass, leaving a pot-hole of whirling whiteness. There is a lull, +and you can see the surface of the fields settling furiously in one +direction--a tide that spurts from between the tree-boles. The hollows +of the pasture fill while you watch; empty, fill, and discharge anew. +The rock-ledges show the bare flank of a storm-chased liner for a +moment, and whitening, duck under. Irresponsible snow-devils dance by +the lee of a barn where three gusts meet, or stagger out into the open +till they are cut down by the main wind. At the worst of the storm there +is neither Heaven nor Earth, but only a swizzle into which a man may be +brewed. Distances grow to nightmare scale, and that which in the summer +was no more than a minute's bare-headed run, is half an hour's gasping +struggle, each foot won between the lulls. Then do the heavy-timbered +barns talk like ships in a cross-sea, beam working against beam. The +winter's hay is ribbed over with long lines of snow dust blown between +the boards, and far below in the byre the oxen clash their horns and +moan uneasily. + +The next day is blue, breathless, and most utterly still. The farmers +shovel a way to their beasts, bind with chains their large ploughshares +to their heaviest wood-sled and take of oxen as many as Allah has given +them. These they drive, and the dragging share makes a furrow in which a +horse can walk, and the oxen, by force of repeatedly going in up to +their bellies, presently find foothold. The finished road is a deep +double gutter between three-foot walls of snow, where, by custom, the +heavier vehicle has the right of way. The lighter man when he turns out +must drop waist-deep and haul his unwilling beast into the drift, +leaving Providence to steady the sleigh. + +In the towns, where they choke and sputter and gasp, the big snow turns +to horsepondine. With us it stays still: but wind, sun, and rain get to +work upon it, lest the texture and colour should not change daily. Rain +makes a granulated crust over all, in which white shagreen the trees are +faintly reflected. Heavy mists go up and down, and create a sort of +mirage, till they settle and pack round the iron-tipped hills, and then +you know how the moon must look to an inhabitant of it. At twilight, +again, the beaten-down ridges and laps and folds of the uplands take on +the likeness of wet sand--some huge and melancholy beach at the world's +end--and when day meets night it is all goblin country. To westward; the +last of the spent day--rust-red and pearl, illimitable levels of shore +waiting for the tide to turn again. To eastward, black night among the +valleys, and on the rounded hill slopes a hard glaze that is not so much +light as snail-slime from the moon. Once or twice perhaps in the winter +the Northern Lights come out between the moon and the sun, so that to +the two unearthly lights is added the leap and flare of the Aurora +Borealis. + +In January or February come the great ice-storms, when every branch, +blade, and trunk is coated with frozen rain, so that you can touch +nothing truly. The spikes of the pines are sunk into pear-shaped +crystals, and each fence-post is miraculously hilted with diamonds. If +you bend a twig, the icing cracks like varnish, and a half-inch branch +snaps off at the lightest tap. If wind and sun open the day together, +the eye cannot look steadily at the splendour of this jewelry. The woods +are full of the clatter of arms; the ringing of bucks' horns in flight; +the stampede of mailed feet up and down the glades; and a great dust of +battle is puffed out into the open, till the last of the ice is beaten +away and the cleared branches take up their regular chant. + +Again the mercury drops twenty and more below zero, and the very trees +swoon. The snow turns to French chalk, squeaking under the heel, and +their breath cloaks the oxen in rime. At night a tree's heart will break +in him with a groan. According to the books, the frost has split +something, but it is a fearful sound, this grunt as of a man stunned. + +Winter that is winter in earnest does not allow cattle and horses to +play about the fields, so everything comes home; and since no share can +break ground to any profit for some five months, there would seem to be +very little to do. As a matter of fact, country interests at all seasons +are extensive and peculiar, and the day is not long enough for them when +you take out that time which a self-respecting man needs to turn himself +round in. Consider! The solid undisturbed hours stand about one like +ramparts. At a certain time the sun will rise. At another hour, equally +certain, he will set. This much we know. Why, in the name of Reason, +therefore, should we vex ourselves with vain exertions? An occasional +visitor from the Cities of the Plains comes up panting to do things. He +is set down to listen to the normal beat of his own heart--a sound that +very few men have heard. In a few days, when the lather of impatience +has dried off, he ceases to talk of 'getting there' or 'being left.' He +does not desire to accomplish matters 'right away,' nor does he look at +his watch from force of habit, but keeps it where it should be--in his +stomach. At the last he goes back to his beleaguered city, unwillingly, +partially civilised, soon to be resavaged by the clash of a thousand +wars whose echo does not reach here. + +The air which kills germs dries out the very newspapers. They might be +of to-morrow or a hundred years ago. They have nothing to do with +to-day--the long, full, sunlit to-day. Our interests are not on the same +scale as theirs, perhaps, but much more complex. The movement of a +foreign power--an alien sleigh on this Pontic shore--must be explained +and accounted for, or this public's heart will burst with unsatisfied +curiosity. If it be Buck Davis, with the white mare that he traded his +colt for, and the practically new sleigh-robe that he bought at the +Sewell auction, _why_ does Buck Davis, who lives on the river flats, +cross our hills, unless Murder Hollow be blockaded with snow, or unless +he has turkeys for sale? _But_ Buck Davis with turkeys would surely +have stopped here, unless he were selling a large stock in town. A wail +from the sacking at the back of the sleigh tells the tale. It is a +winter calf, and Buck Davis is going to sell it for one dollar to the +Boston Market where it will be turned into potted chicken. This leaves +the mystery of his change of route unexplained. After two days' sitting +on tenter-hooks it is discovered, obliquely, that Buck went to pay a +door-yard call on Orson Butler, who lives on the saeter where the wind +and the bald granite scaurs fight it out together. Kirk Demming had +brought Orson news of a fox at the back of Black Mountain, and Orson's +eldest son, going to Murder Hollow with wood for the new barn floor that +the widow Amidon is laying down, told Buck that he might as well come +round to talk to his father about the pig. _But_ old man Butler meant +fox-hunting from the first, and what he wanted to do was to borrow +Buck's dog, who had been duly brought over with the calf, and left on +the mountain. No old man Butler did _not_ go hunting alone, but waited +till Buck came back from town. Buck sold the calf for a dollar and a +quarter and not for seventy-five cents as was falsely asserted by +interested parties. _Then_ the two went after the fox together. This +much learned, everybody breathes freely, if life has not been +complicated in the meantime by more strange counter-marchings. + +Five or six sleighs a day we can understand, if we know why they are +abroad; but any metropolitan rush of traffic disturbs and excites. + + + + +LETTERS TO THE FAMILY + + +1908 + +These letters appeared in newspapers during the spring of 1908, after a +trip to Canada undertaken in the autumn of 1907. They are now reprinted +without alteration. + +THE ROAD TO QUEBEC. +A PEOPLE AT HOME. +CITIES AND SPACES. +NEWSPAPERS AND DEMOCRACY. +LABOUR. +THE FORTUNATE TOWNS. +MOUNTAINS AND THE PACIFIC. +A CONCLUSION. + + * * * * * + +THE ROAD TO QUEBEC + +(1907) + + +It must be hard for those who do not live there to realise the cross +between canker and blight that has settled on England for the last +couple of years. The effects of it are felt throughout the Empire, but +at headquarters we taste the stuff in the very air, just as one tastes +iodoform in the cups and bread-and-butter of a hospital-tea. So far as +one can come at things in the present fog, every form of unfitness, +general or specialised, born or created, during the last generation has +combined in one big trust--a majority of all the minorities--to play the +game of Government. Now that the game ceases to amuse, nine-tenths of +the English who set these folk in power are crying, 'If we had only +known what they were going to do we should never have voted for them!' + +Yet, as the rest of the Empire perceived at the time, these men were +always perfectly explicit as to their emotions and intentions. They said +first, and drove it home by large pictures, that no possible advantage +to the Empire outweighed the cruelty and injustice of charging the +British working man twopence halfpenny a week on some of his provisions. +Incidentally they explained, so that all Earth except England heard it, +that the Army was wicked; much of the Navy unnecessary; that half the +population of one of the Colonies practised slavery, with torture, for +the sake of private gain, and that the mere name of Empire wearied and +sickened them. On these grounds they stood to save England; on these +grounds they were elected, with what seemed like clear orders to destroy +the blood-stained fetish of Empire as soon as possible. The present +mellow condition of Ireland, Egypt, India, and South Africa is proof of +their honesty and obedience. Over and above this, their mere presence in +office produced all along our lines the same moral effect as the +presence of an incompetent master in a classroom. Paper pellets, books, +and ink began to fly; desks were thumped; dirty pens were jabbed into +those trying to work; rats and mice were set free amid squeals of +exaggerated fear; and, as usual, the least desirable characters in the +forms were loudest to profess noble sentiments, and most eloquent grief +at being misjudged. Still, the English are not happy, and the unrest and +slackness increase. + +On the other hand, which is to our advantage, the isolation of the unfit +in one political party has thrown up the extremists in what the Babu +called 'all their naked _cui bono_.' These last are after satisfying the +two chief desires of primitive man by the very latest gadgets in +scientific legislation. But how to get free food, and free--shall we +say--love? within the four corners of an Act of Parliament without +giving the game away too grossly, worries them a little. It is easy +enough to laugh at this, but we are all so knit together nowadays that a +rot at what is called 'headquarters' may spread like bubonic, with every +steamer. I went across to Canada the other day, for a few weeks, mainly +to escape the Blight, and also to see what our Eldest Sister was doing. +Have you ever noticed that Canada has to deal in the lump with most of +the problems that afflict us others severally? For example, she has the +Double-Language, Double-Law, Double-Politics drawback in a worse form +than South Africa, because, unlike our Dutch, her French cannot well +marry outside their religion, and they take their orders from +Italy--less central, sometimes, than Pretoria or Stellenbosch. She has, +too, something of Australia's labour fuss, minus Australia's isolation, +but plus the open and secret influence of 'Labour' entrenched, with +arms, and high explosives on neighbouring soil. To complete the +parallel, she keeps, tucked away behind mountains, a trifle of land +called British Columbia, which resembles New Zealand; and New Zealanders +who do not find much scope for young enterprise in their own country are +drifting up to British Columbia already. + +Canada has in her time known calamity more serious than floods, frost, +drought, and fire--and has macadamized some stretches of her road toward +nationhood with the broken hearts of two generations. That is why one +can discuss with Canadians of the old stock matters which an Australian +or New Zealander could no more understand than a wealthy child +understands death. Truly we are an odd Family! Australia and New Zealand +(the Maori War not counted) got everything for nothing. South Africa +gave everything and got less than nothing. Canada has given and taken +all along the line for nigh on three hundred years, and in some respects +is the wisest, as she should be the happiest, of us all. She seems to be +curiously unconscious of her position in the Empire, perhaps because she +has lately been talked at, or down to, by her neighbours. You know how +at any gathering of our men from all quarters it is tacitly conceded +that Canada takes the lead in the Imperial game. To put it roughly, she +saw the goal more than ten years ago, and has been working the ball +toward it ever since. That is why her inaction at the last Imperial +Conference made people who were interested in the play wonder why she, +of all of us, chose to brigade herself with General Botha and to block +the forward rush. I, too, asked that question of many. The answer was +something like this: 'We saw that England wasn't taking anything just +then. Why should we have laid ourselves open to be snubbed worse than we +were? We sat still.' Quite reasonable--almost too convincing. There was +really no need that Canada should have done other than she did--except +that she was the Eldest Sister, and more was expected of her. She is a +little too modest. + +We discussed this, first of all, under the lee of a wet deck-house in +mid-Atlantic; man after man cutting in and out of the talk as he sucked +at his damp tobacco. The passengers were nearly all unmixed Canadian, +mostly born in the Maritime Provinces, where their fathers speak of +'Canada' as Sussex speaks of 'England,' but scattered about their +businesses throughout the wide Dominion. They were at ease, too, among +themselves, with that pleasant intimacy that stamps every branch of Our +Family and every boat that it uses on its homeward way. A Cape liner is +all the sub-Continent from the Equator to Simon's Town; an Orient boat +is Australasian throughout, and a C.P.R. steamer cannot be confused with +anything except Canada. It is a pity one may not be born in four places +at once, and then one would understand the half-tones and asides, and +the allusions of all our Family life without waste of precious time. +These big men, smoking in the drizzle, had hope in their eyes, belief in +their tongues, and strength in their hearts. I used to think miserably +of other boats at the South end of this ocean--a quarter full of people +deprived of these things. A young man kindly explained to me how Canada +had suffered through what he called 'the Imperial connection'; how she +had been diversely bedevilled by English statesmen for political +reasons. He did not know his luck, nor would he believe me when I tried +to point it out; but a nice man in a plaid (who knew South Africa) +lurched round the corner and fell on him with facts and imagery which +astonished the patriotic young mind. The plaid finished his outburst +with the uncontradicted statement that the English were mad. All our +talks ended on that note. + +It was an experience to move in the midst of a new contempt. One +understands and accepts the bitter scorn of the Dutch, the hopeless +anger of one's own race in South Africa is also part of the burden; but +the Canadian's profound, sometimes humorous, often bewildered, always +polite contempt of the England of to-day cuts a little. You see, that +late unfashionable war[3] was very real to Canada. She sent several men +to it, and a thinly-populated country is apt to miss her dead more than +a crowded one. When, from her point of view, they have died for no +conceivable advantage, moral or material, her business instincts, or it +may be mere animal love of her children, cause her to remember and +resent quite a long time after the thing should be decently forgotten. I +was shocked at the vehemence with which some men (and women) spoke of +the affair. Some of them went so far as to discuss--on the ship and +elsewhere--whether England would stay in the Family or whether, as some +eminent statesman was said to have asserted in private talk, she would +cut the painter to save expense. One man argued, without any heat, that +she would not so much break out of the Empire in one flurry, as +politically vend her children one by one to the nearest Power that +threatened her comfort; the sale of each case to be preceded by a +steady blast of abuse of the chosen victim. He quoted--really these +people have viciously long memories!--the five-year campaign of abuse +against South Africans as a precedent and a warning. + +[Footnote 3: Boer 'war' of 1899-1902.] + +Our Tobacco Parliament next set itself to consider by what means, if +this happened, Canada could keep her identity unsubmerged; and that led +to one of the most curious talks I have ever heard. It seemed to be +decided that she might--just might--pull through by the skin of her +teeth as a nation--if (but this was doubtful) England did not help +others to hammer her. Now, twenty years ago one would not have heard any +of this sort of thing. If it sounds a little mad, remember that the +Mother Country was throughout considered as a lady in violent hysterics. + +Just at the end of the talk one of our twelve or thirteen hundred +steerage-passengers leaped overboard, ulstered and booted, into a +confused and bitter cold sea. Every horror in the world has its fitting +ritual. For the fifth time--and four times in just such weather--I heard +the screw stop; saw our wake curve like a whiplash as the great township +wrenched herself round; the lifeboat's crew hurry to the boat-deck; the +bare-headed officer race up the shrouds and look for any sign of the +poor head that had valued itself so lightly. A boat amid waves can see +nothing. There was nothing to see from the first. We waited and +quartered the ground back and forth for a long hour, while the rain fell +and the seas slapped along our sides, and the steam fluttered drearily +through the escapes. Then we went ahead. + +The St. Lawrence on the last day of the voyage played up nobly. The +maples along its banks had turned--blood red and splendid as the banners +of lost youth. Even the oak is not more of a national tree than the +maple, and the sight of its welcome made the folks aboard still more +happy. A dry wind brought along all the clean smell of their +Continent-mixed odours of sawn lumber, virgin earth, and wood-smoke; and +they snuffed it, and their eyes softened as they, identified point after +point along their own beloved River--places where they played and fished +and amused themselves in holiday time. It must be pleasant to have a +country of one's very own to show off. Understand, they did not in any +way boast, shout, squeak, or exclaim, these even-voiced returned men and +women. They were simply and unfeignedly glad to see home again, and they +said: 'Isn't it lovely? Don't you think it's beautiful? We love it.' + +At Quebec there is a sort of place, much infested by locomotives, like a +coal-chute, whence rise the heights that Wolfe's men scaled on their way +to the Plains of Abraham. Perhaps of all the tide-marks in all our lands +the affair of Quebec touches the heart and the eye more nearly than any +other. Everything meets there; France, the jealous partner of England's +glory by land and sea for eight hundred years; England, bewildered as +usual, but for a wonder not openly opposing Pitt, who knew; those other +people, destined to break from England as soon as the French peril was +removed; Montcalm himself, doomed and resolute; Wolfe, the inevitable +trained workman appointed for the finish; and somewhere in the +background one James Cook, master of H.M.S. _Mercury_, making beautiful +and delicate charts of the St. Lawrence River. + +For these reasons the Plains of Abraham are crowned with all sorts of +beautiful things--including a jail and a factory. Montcalm's left wing +is marked by the jail, and Wolfe's right by the factory. There is, +happily, now a movement on foot to abolish these adornments and turn the +battle-field and its surroundings into a park, which by nature and +association would be one of the most beautiful in our world. + +Yet, in spite of jails on the one side and convents on the other and the +thin black wreck of the Quebec Railway Bridge, lying like a dumped +car-load of tin cans in the river, the Eastern Gate to Canada is noble +with a dignity beyond words. We saw it very early, when the under sides +of the clouds turned chilly pink over a high-piled, brooding, +dusky-purple city. Just at the point of dawn, what looked like the +Sultan Harun-al-Raschid's own private shallop, all spangled with +coloured lights, stole across the iron-grey water, and disappeared into +the darkness of a slip. She came out again in three minutes, but the +full day had come too; so she snapped off her masthead, steering and +cabin electrics, and turned into a dingy white ferryboat, full of cold +passengers. I spoke to a Canadian about her. 'Why, she's the old +So-and-So, to Port Levis,' he answered, wondering as the Cockney wonders +when a stranger stares at an Inner Circle train. This was _his_ Inner +Circle--the Zion where he was all at ease. He drew my attention to +stately city and stately river with the same tranquil pride that we each +feel when the visitor steps across our own threshold, whether that be +Southampton Water on a grey, wavy morning; Sydney Harbour with a regatta +in full swing; or Table Mountain, radiant and new-washed after the +Christmas rains. He had, quite rightly, felt personally responsible for +the weather, and every flaming stretch of maple since we had entered the +river. (The North-wester in these parts is equivalent to the +South-easter elsewhere, and may impress a guest unfavourably.) + +Then the autumn sun rose, and the man smiled. Personally and politically +he said he loathed the city--but it was his. + +'Well,' he asked at last, 'what do you think? Not so bad?' + +'Oh no. Not at all so bad,' I answered; and it wasn't till much later +that I realised that we had exchanged the countersign which runs clear +round the Empire. + + + + +A PEOPLE AT HOME + + +An up-country proverb says, 'She was bidden to the wedding and set down +to grind corn.' The same fate, reversed, overtook me on my little +excursion. There is a crafty network of organisations of business men +called Canadian Clubs. They catch people who look interesting, assemble +their members during the mid-day lunch-hour, and, tying the victim to a +steak, bid him discourse on anything that he thinks he knows. The idea +might be copied elsewhere, since it takes men out of themselves to +listen to matters not otherwise coming under their notice and, at the +same time, does not hamper their work. It is safely short, too. The +whole affair cannot exceed an hour, of which the lunch fills half. The +Clubs print their speeches annually, and one gets cross-sections of many +interesting questions--from practical forestry to State mints--all set +out by experts. + +Not being an expert, the experience, to me, was very like hard work. +Till then I had thought speech-making was a sort of conversational +whist, that any one could cut in at it. I perceive now that it is an Art +of conventions remote from anything that comes out of an inkpot, and of +colours hard to control. The Canadians seem to like listening to +speeches, and, though this is by no means a national vice, they make +good oratory on occasion. You know the old belief that the white man on +brown, red, or black lands, will throw back in manner and instinct to +the type originally bred there? Thus, a speech in the taal should carry +the deep roll, the direct belly-appeal, the reiterated, cunning +arguments, and the few simple metaphors of the prince of commercial +orators, the Bantu. A New Zealander is said to speak from his diaphragm, +hands clenched at the sides, as the old Maoris used. What we know of +first-class Australian oratory shows us the same alertness, swift +flight, and clean delivery as a thrown boomerang. I had half expected in +Canadian speeches some survival of the Redskin's elaborate appeal to +Suns, Moons, and Mountains--touches of grandiosity and ceremonial +invocations. But nothing that I heard was referable to any primitive +stock. There was a dignity, a restraint, and, above all, a weight in it, +rather curious when one thinks of the influences to which the land lies +open. Red it was not; French it was not; but a thing as much by itself +as the speakers. + +So with the Canadian's few gestures and the bearing of his body. During +the (Boer) war one watched the contingents from every point of view, +and, most likely, drew wrong inferences. It struck me then that the +Canadian, even when tired, slacked off less than the men from the hot +countries, and while resting did not lie on his back or his belly, but +rather on his side, a leg doubled under him, ready to rise in one surge. + +This time while I watched assemblies seated, men in hotels and +passers-by, I fancied that he kept this habit of semi-tenseness at home +among his own; that it was the complement of the man's still +countenance, and his even, lowered voice. Looking at their footmarks on +the ground they seem to throw an almost straight track, neither splayed +nor in-toed, and to set their feet down with a gentle forward pressure, +rather like the Australian's stealthy footfall. Talking among +themselves, or waiting for friends, they did not drum with their +fingers, fiddle with their feet, or feel the hair on their faces. These +things seem trivial enough, but when breeds are in the making everything +is worth while. A man told me once--but I never tried the +experiment--that each of our Four Races light and handle fire in their +own way. + +Small wonder we differ! Here is a people with no people at their backs, +driving the great world-plough which wins the world's bread up and up +over the shoulder of the world--a spectacle, as it might be, out of some +tremendous Norse legend. North of them lies Niflheim's enduring cold, +with the flick and crackle of the Aurora for Bifrost Bridge that Odin +and the Aesir visited. These people also go north year by year, and drag +audacious railways with them. Sometimes they burst into good wheat or +timber land, sometimes into mines of treasure, and all the North is +foil of voices--as South Africa was once--telling discoveries and making +prophecies. + +When their winter comes, over the greater part of this country outside +the cities they must sit still, and eat and drink as the Aesir did. In +summer they cram twelve months' work into six, because between such and +such dates certain far rivers will shut, and, later, certain others, +till, at last, even the Great Eastern Gate at Quebec locks, and men must +go in and out by the side-doors at Halifax and St. John. These are +conditions that make for extreme boldness, but not for extravagant +boastings. + +The maples tell when it is time to finish, and all work in hand is +regulated by their warning signal. Some jobs can be put through before +winter; others must be laid aside ready to jump forward without a lost +minute in spring. Thus, from Quebec to Calgary a note of drive--not +hustle, but drive and finish-up--hummed like the steam-threshers on the +still, autumn air. + +Hunters and sportsmen were coming in from the North; prospectors with +them, their faces foil of mystery, their pockets full of samples, like +prospectors the world over. They had already been wearing wolf and coon +skin coats. In the great cities which work the year round, +carriage--shops exhibited one or two seductive nickel-plated sledges, as +a hint; for the sleigh is 'the chariot at hand here of Love.' In the +country the farmhouses were stacking up their wood-piles within reach of +the kitchen door, and taking down the fly-screens, (One leaves these +on, as a rule, till the double windows are brought up from the cellar, +and one has to hunt all over the house for missing screws.) Sometimes +one saw a few flashing lengths of new stovepipe in a backyard, and +pitied the owner. There is no humour in the old, bitter-true stovepipe +jests of the comic papers. + +But the railways--the wonderful railways--told the winter's tale most +emphatically. The thirty-ton coal cars were moving over three thousand +miles of track. They grunted and lurched against each other in the +switch-yards, or thumped past statelily at midnight on their way to +provident housekeepers of the prairie towns. It was not a clear way +either; for the bacon, the lard, the apples, the butter, and the cheese, +in beautiful whitewood barrels, were rolling eastwards toward the +steamers before the wheat should descend on them. That is the fifth act +of the great Year-Play for which the stage must be cleared. On scores of +congested sidings lay huge girders, rolled beams, limbs, and boxes of +rivets, once intended for the late Quebec Bridge--now so much mere +obstruction--and the victuals had to pick their way through 'em; and +behind the victuals was the lumber--clean wood out of the +mountains--logs, planks, clapboards, and laths, for which we pay such +sinful prices in England--all seeking the sea. There was housing, food, +and fuel for millions, on wheels together, and never a grain yet shifted +of the real staple which men for five hundred miles were threshing out +in heaps as high as fifty-pound villas. + +Add to this, that the railways were concerned for their own new +developments--double-trackings, loops, cutoffs, taps, and feeder lines, +and great swoops out into untouched lands soon to be filled with men. So +the construction, ballast, and material trains, the grading machines, +the wrecking cars with their camel-like sneering cranes--the whole plant +of a new civilisation--had to find room somewhere in the general rally +before Nature cried, 'Lay off!' + +Does any one remember that joyful strong confidence after the war, when +it seemed that, at last, South Africa was to be developed--when men laid +out railways, and gave orders for engines, and fresh rolling-stock, and +labour, and believed gloriously in the future? It is true the hope was +murdered afterward, but--multiply that good hour by a thousand, and you +will have some idea of how it feels to be in Canada--a place which even +an 'Imperial' Government cannot kill. I had the luck to be shown some +things from the inside--to listen to the details of works projected; the +record of works done. Above all, I saw what had actually been achieved +in the fifteen years since I had last come that way. One advantage of a +new land is that it makes you feel older than Time. I met cities where +there had been nothing--literally, absolutely nothing, except, as the +fairy tales say, 'the birds crying, and the grass waving in the wind.' +Villages and hamlets had grown to great towns, and the great towns +themselves had trebled and quadrupled. And the railways rubbed their +hands and cried, like the Afrites of old, 'Shall we make a city where +no city is; or render flourishing a city that is dasolate?' They do it +too, while, across the water, gentlemen, never forced to suffer one +day's physical discomfort in all their lives, pipe up and say, 'How +grossly materialistic!' + +I wonder sometimes whether any eminent novelist, philosopher, dramatist, +or divine of to-day has to exercise half the pure imagination, not to +mention insight, endurance, and self-restraint, which is accepted +without comment in what is called 'the material exploitation' of a new +country. Take only the question of creating a new city at the junction +of two lines--all three in the air. The mere drama of it, the play of +the human virtues, would fill a book. And when the work is finished, +when the city is, when the new lines embrace a new belt of farms, and +the tide of the Wheat has rolled North another unexpected degree, the +men who did it break off, without compliments, to repeat the joke +elsewhere. + +I had some talk with a youngish man whose business it was to train +avalanches to jump clear of his section of the track. Thor went to +Jotunheim only once or twice, and he had his useful hammer Miolnr with +him. This Thor lived in Jotunheim among the green-ice-crowned peaks of +the Selkirks--where if you disturb the giants at certain seasons of the +year, by making noises, they will sit upon you and all your fine +emotions. So Thor watches them glaring under the May sun, or dull and +doubly dangerous beneath the spring rains. He wards off their strokes +with enormous brattices of wood, wing-walls of logs bolted together, and +such other contraptions as experience teaches. He bears the giants no +malice; they do their work, he his. What bothers him a little is that +the wind of their blows sometimes rips pines out of the opposite +hill-sides--explodes, as it were, a whole valley. He thinks, however, he +can fix things so as to split large avalanches into little ones. + +Another man, to whom I did not talk, sticks in my memory. He had for +years and years inspected trains at the head of a heavyish grade in the +mountains--though not half so steep as the Hex[4]--where all brakes are +jammed home, and the cars slither warily for ten miles. Tire-troubles +there would be inconvenient, so he, as the best man, is given the +heaviest job--monotony and responsibility combined. He did me the honour +of wanting to speak to me, but first he inspected his train--on all +fours with a hammer. By the time he was satisfied of the integrity of +the underpinnings it was time for us to go; and all that I got was a +friendly wave of the hand--a master craftsman's sign, you might call it. + +[Footnote 4: Hex River, South Africa.] + +Canada seems full of this class of materialist. + +Which reminds me that the other day I saw the Lady herself in the shape +of a tall woman of twenty-five or six, waiting for her tram on a street +corner. She wore her almost flaxen-gold hair waved, and parted low on +the forehead, beneath a black astrachan toque, with a red enamel +maple-leaf hatpin in one side of it. This was the one touch of colour +except the flicker of a buckle on the shoe. The dark, tailor-made dress +had no trinkets or attachments, but fitted perfectly. She stood for +perhaps a minute without any movement, both hands--right bare, left +gloved--hanging naturally at her sides, the very fingers still, the +weight of the superb body carried evenly on both feet, and the profile, +which was that of Gudrun or Aslauga, thrown out against a dark stone +column. What struck me most, next to the grave, tranquil eyes, was her +slow, unhurried breathing in the hurry about her. She was evidently a +regular fare, for when her tram stopped she smiled at the lucky +conductor; and the last I saw of her was a flash of the sun on the red +maple-leaf, the full face still lighted by that smile, and her hair very +pale gold against the dead black fur. But the power of the mouth, the +wisdom of the brow, the human comprehension of the eyes, and the +outstriking vitality of the creature remained. That is how _I_ would +have my country drawn, were I a Canadian--and hung in Ottawa Parliament +House, for the discouragement of prevaricators. + + + + +CITIES AND SPACES + +What would you do with a magic carpet if one were lent you? I ask +because for a month we had a private car of our very own--a trifling +affair less than seventy foot long and thirty ton weight. 'You may find +her useful,' said the donor casually, 'to knock about the country. Hitch +on to any train you choose and stop off where you choose.' + +So she bore us over the C.P.R. from the Atlantic to the Pacific and +back, and when we had no more need of her, vanished like the mango tree +after the trick. + +A private car, though many books have been written in it, is hardly the +best place from which to study a country, unless it happen that you have +kept house and seen the seasons round under normal conditions on the +same continent. Then you know how the cars look from the houses; which +is not in the least as the houses look from the cars. Then, the very +porter's brush in its nickel clip, the long cathedral-like aisle between +the well-known green seats, the toll of the bell and the deep organ-like +note of the engine wake up memories; and every sight, smell, and sound +outside are like old friends remembering old days together. A piano-top +buggy on a muddy, board-sidewalked street, all cut up by the narrow +tires; the shingling at the corner of a veranda on a new-built house; a +broken snake-fence girdling an old pasture of mulleins and skull-headed +boulders; a wisp of Virginia creeper dying splendidly on the edge of a +patch of corn; half a dozen panels of snow-fence above a cutting, or +even a shameless patent-medicine advertisement, yellow on the black of a +tobacco-barn, can make the heart thump and the eyes fill if the beholder +have only touched the life of which they are part. What must they mean +to the native-born? There was a prairie-bred girl on the train, coming +back after a year on the Continent, for whom the pine-belted hills, with +real mountains behind, the solemn loops of the river, and the intimate +friendly farm had nothing to tell. + +'You can do these landscapes better in Italy,' she explained, and, with +the indescribable gesture of plains folk stifled in broken ground, 'I +want to push these hills away and get into the open again! I'm +Winnipeg.' + +She would have understood that Hanover Road schoolmistress, back from a +visit to Cape Town, whom I once saw drive off into thirty miles of +mirage almost shouting, 'Thank God, here's something like home at last.' + +Other people ricochetted from side to side of the car, reviving this, +rediscovering that, anticipating t'other thing, which, sure enough, slid +round the next curve to meet them, caring nothing if all the world knew +they were home again; and the newly arrived Englishman with his large +wooden packing-cases marked 'Settlers' Effects' had no more part in the +show than a new boy his first day at school. But two years in Canada and +one run home will make him free of the Brotherhood in Canada as it does +anywhere else. He may grumble at certain aspects of the life, lament +certain richnesses only to be found in England, but as surely as he +grumbles so surely he returns to the big skies, and the big chances. The +failures are those who complain that the land 'does not know a gentleman +when it sees him.' They are quite right. The land suspends all judgment +on all men till it has seen them work. Thereafter as may be; but work +they must because there is a very great deal to be done. + +Unluckily the railroads which made the country are bringing in persons +who are particular as to the nature and amenities of their work, and if +so be they do not find precisely what they are looking for, they +complain in print which makes all men seem equal. + +The special joy of our trip lay in having travelled the line when it was +new and, like the Canada of those days, not much believed in, when all +the high and important officials, whose little fingers unhooked cars, +were also small and disregarded. To-day, things, men, and cities were +different, and the story of the line mixed itself up with the story of +the country, the while the car-wheels clicked out, 'John Kino--John +Kino! Nagasaki, Yokohama, Hakodate, Heh!' for we were following in the +wake of the Imperial Limited, all full of Hongkong and Treaty Ports men. +There were old, known, and wonderfully grown cities to be looked at +before we could get away to the new work out west, and, 'What d'you +think of this building and that suburb?' they said, imperiously. 'Come +out and see what has been done in this generation.' + +The impact of a Continent is rather overwhelming till you remind +yourself that it is no more than your own joy and love and pride in your +own patch of garden written a little large over a few more acres. Again, +as always, it was the dignity of the cities that impressed--an austere +Northern dignity of outline, grouping, and perspective, aloof from the +rush of traffic in the streets. Montreal, of the black-frocked priests +and the French notices, had it; and Ottawa, of the grey stone palaces +and the St. Petersburg-like shining water-frontages; and Toronto, +consumingly commercial, carried the same power in the same repose. Men +are always building better than they know, and perhaps this steadfast +architecture is waiting for the race when their first flurry of +newly-realised expansion shall have spent itself, and the present +hurrah's-nest of telephone poles in the streets shall have been +abolished. There are strong objections to any non-fusible, bi-lingual +community within a nation, but however much the French are made to hang +back in the work of development, their withdrawn and unconcerned +cathedrals, schools, and convents, and one aspect of the spirit that +breathes from them, make for good. Says young Canada: 'There are +millions of dollars' worth of church property in the cities which aren't +allowed to be taxed.' On the other hand, the Catholic schools and +universities, though they are reported to keep up the old medieval +mistrust of Greek, teach the classics as lovingly, tenderly, and +intimately as the old Church has always taught them. After all, it must +be worth something to say your prayers in a dialect of the tongue that +Virgil handled; and a certain touch of insolence, more magnificent and +more ancient than the insolence of present materialism, makes a good +blend in a new land. + +I had the good fortune to see the cities through the eyes of an +Englishman out for the first time. 'Have you been to the Bank?' he +cried. 'I've never seen anything like it!' 'What's the matter with the +Bank?' I asked: for the financial situation across the Border was at +that moment more than usual picturesque. 'It's wonderful!' said he; +'marble pillars--acres of mosaic--steel grilles--'might be a cathedral. +No one ever told me.' 'I shouldn't worry over a Bank that pays its +depositors,' I replied soothingly. 'There are several like it in Ottawa +and Toronto.' Next he ran across some pictures in some palaces, and was +downright angry because no one had told him that there were five +priceless private galleries in one city. 'Look here!' he explained. +'I've been seeing Corots, and Greuzes, and Gainsboroughs, and a +Holbein, and--and hundreds of really splendid pictures!' 'Why shouldn't +you?' I said. 'They've given up painting their lodges with vermilion +hereabouts.' 'Yes, but what I mean is, have you seen the equipment of +their schools and colleges--desks, libraries, and lavatories? It's miles +ahead of anything we have and--no one ever told me.' 'What was the good +of telling? You wouldn't have believed. There's a building in one of the +cities, on the lines of the Sheldonian, but better, and if you go as far +as Winnipeg, you'll see the finest hotel in all the world.' + +'Nonsense!' he said. 'You're pulling my leg! Winnipeg's a prairie-town.' + +I left him still lamenting--about a Club and a Gymnasium this time--that +no one had ever told him about; and still doubting all that he had heard +of Wonders to come. + +If we could only manacle four hundred Members of Parliament, like the +Chinese in the election cartoons, and walk them round the Empire, what +an all-comprehending little Empire we should be when the survivors got +home! + +Certainly the Cities have good right to be proud, and I waited for them +to boast; but they were so busy explaining they were only at the +beginning of things that, for the honour of the Family, I had to do the +boasting. In this praiseworthy game I credited Melbourne (rightly, I +hope, but the pace was too good to inquire) with acres of municipal +buildings and leagues of art galleries; enlarged the borders of Sydney +harbour to meet a statement about Toronto's, wharfage; and recommended +folk to see Cape Town Cathedral when it should be finished. But Truth +will out even on a visit. Our Eldest Sister has more of beauty and +strength inside her three cities alone than the rest of Us put together. +Yet it would do her no harm to send a commission through the ten great +cities of the Empire to see what is being done there in the way of +street cleaning, water-supply, and traffic-regulation. + +Here and there the people are infected with the unworthy superstition of +'hustle,' which means half-doing your appointed job and applauding your +own slapdasherie for as long a time as would enable you to finish off +two clean pieces of work. Little congestions of traffic, that an English +rural policeman, in a country town, disentangles automatically, are +allowed to develop into ten-minute blocks, where wagons and men bang, +and back, and blaspheme, for no purpose except to waste time. + +The assembly and dispersal of crowds, purchase of tickets, and a good +deal of the small machinery of life is clogged and hampered by this +unstable, southern spirit which is own brother to Panic. 'Hustle' does +not sit well on the national character any more than falsetto or +fidgeting becomes grown men. 'Drive,' a laudable and necessary quality, +is quite different, and one meets it up the Western Road where the new +country is being made. + +We got clean away from the Three Cities and the close-tilled farming +and orchard districts, into the Land of Little Lakes--a country of +rushing streams, clear-eyed ponds, and boulders among berry-bushes; all +crying 'Trout' and 'Bear.' + +Not so very long ago only a few wise people kept holiday in that part of +the world, and they did not give away their discoveries. Now it has +become a summer playground where people hunt and camp at large. The +names of its further rivers are known in England, and men, otherwise +sane, slip away from London into the birches, and come out again bearded +and smoke-stained, when the ice is thick enough to cut a canoe. +Sometimes they go to look for game; sometimes for minerals--perhaps, +even, oil. No one can prophesy. 'We are only at the beginning of +things.' + +Said an Afrite of the Railway as we passed in our magic carpet: 'You've +no notion of the size of our tourist-traffic. It has all grown up since +the early 'Nineties. The trolley car teaches people in the towns to go +for little picnics. When they get more money they go for long ones. All +this Continent will want playgrounds soon. We're getting them ready.' + +The girl from Winnipeg saw the morning frost lie white on the long grass +at the lake edges, and watched the haze of mellow golden birch leaves as +they dropped. 'Now that's the way trees ought to turn,' she said. 'Don't +you think our Eastern maple is a little violent in colour?' Then we +passed through a country where for many hours the talk in the cars was +of mines and the treatment of ores. Men told one tales--prospectors' +yarns of the sort one used to hear vaguely before Klondike or Nome were +public property. They did not care whether one believed or doubted. +They, too, were only at the beginning of things--silver perhaps, gold +perhaps, nickel perhaps. If a great city did not arise at such a +place--the very name was new since my day--it would assuredly be born +within a few miles of it. The silent men boarded the cars, and dropped +off, and disappeared beyond thickets and hills precisely as the first +widely spaced line of skirmishers fans out and vanishes along the front +of the day's battle. + +One old man sat before me like avenging Time itself, and talked of +prophecies of evil, that had been falsified. '_They_ said there wasn't +nothing here excep' rocks an' snow. _They_ said there never _wouldn't_ +be nothing here excep' the railroad. There's them that can't see _yit_,' +and he gimleted me with a fierce eye. 'An' all the while, fortunes is +made--piles is made--right under our noses.' + +'Have you made your pile?' I asked. + +He smiled as the artist smiles--all true prospectors have that lofty +smile--'Me? No. I've been a prospector most o' my time, but I haven't +lost anything. I've had my fun out of the game. By God, I've had my fun +out of it! + +I told him how I had once come through when land and timber grants +could have been picked up for half less than nothing. + +'Yes,' he said placidly. 'I reckon if you'd had any kind of an education +you could ha' made a quarter of a million dollars easy in those days. +And it's to be made now if you could see where. How? Can you tell me +what the capital of the Hudson Bay district's goin' to be? You can't. +Nor I. Nor yet where the six next new cities is going to arise, I get +off here, but if I have my health I'll be out next summer +again--prospectin' North.' + +Imagine a country where men prospect till they are seventy, with no fear +of fever, fly, horse-sickness, or trouble from the natives--a country +where food and water always taste good! He told me curious things about +some fabled gold--the Eternal Mother-lode--out in the North, which is +to humble the pride of Nome. And yet, so vast is the Empire, he had +never heard the name of Johannesburg! + +As the train swung round the shores of Lake Superior the talk swung over +to Wheat. Oh yes, men said, there were mines in the country--they were +only at the beginning of mines--but that part of the world existed to +clean and grade and handle and deliver the Wheat by rail and steamer. +The track was being duplicated by a few hundred miles to keep abreast of +the floods of it. By and by it might be a four-track road. They were +only at the beginning. Meantime here was the Wheat sprouting, tender +green, a foot high, among a hundred sidings where it had spilled from +the cars; there were the high-shouldered, tea-caddy grain-elevators to +clean, and the hospitals to doctor the Wheat; here was new, gaily +painted machinery going forward to reap and bind and thresh the Wheat, +and all those car-loads of workmen had been slapping down more sidings +against the year's delivery of the Wheat. + +Two towns stand on the shores of the lake less than a mile apart. What +Lloyd's is to shipping, or the College of Surgeons to medicine, that +they are to the Wheat. Its honour and integrity are in their hands; and +they hate each other with the pure, poisonous, passionate hatred which +makes towns grow. If Providence wiped out one of them, the survivor +would pine away and die--a mateless hate-bird. Some day they must unite, +and the question of the composite name they shall then carry already +vexes them. A man there told me that Lake Superior was 'a useful piece +of water,' in that it lay so handy to the C.P.R. tracks. There is a +quiet horror about the Great Lakes which grows as one revisits them. +Fresh water has no right or call to dip over the horizon, pulling down +and pushing up the hulls of big steamers; no right to tread the slow, +deep-sea dance-step between wrinkled cliffs; nor to roar in on weed and +sand beaches between vast headlands that run out for leagues into haze +and sea-fog. Lake Superior is all the same stuff as what towns pay taxes +for, but it engulfs and wrecks and drives ashore, like a fully +accredited ocean--a hideous thing to find in the heart of a continent. +Some people go sailing on it for pleasure, and it has produced a breed +of sailors who bear the same relation to the salt-water variety as a +snake-charmer does to a lion-tamer. + +Yet it is undoubtedly a useful piece of water. + + + + +NEWSPAPERS AND DEMOCRACY + + +Let it be granted that, as the loud-voiced herald hired by the Eolithic +tribe to cry the news of the coming day along the caves, preceded the +chosen Tribal Bard who sang the more picturesque history of the tribe, +so is Journalism senior to Literature, in that Journalism meets the +first tribal need after warmth, food, and women. + +In new countries it shows clear trace of its descent from the Tribal +Herald. A tribe thinly occupying large spaces feels lonely. It desires +to hear the roll-call of its members cried often and loudly; to comfort +itself with the knowledge that there are companions just below the +horizon. It employs, therefore, heralds to name and describe all who +pass. That is why newspapers of new countries seem often so outrageously +personal. The tribe, moreover, needs quick and sure knowledge of +everything that touches on its daily life in the big spaces--earth, air, +and water news which the Older Peoples have put behind them. That is why +its newspapers so often seem so laboriously trivial. + +For example, a red-nosed member of the tribe, Pete O'Halloran, comes in +thirty miles to have his horse shod, and incidentally smashes the +king-bolt of his buckboard at a bad place in the road. The Tribal +Herald--a thin weekly, with a patent inside--connects the red nose and +the breakdown with an innuendo which, to the outsider, is clumsy libel. +But the Tribal Herald understands that two-and-seventy families of the +tribe may use that road weekly. It concerns them to discover whether the +accident was due to Pete being drunk or, as Pete protests, to the +neglected state of the road. Fifteen men happen to know that Pete's nose +is an affliction, not an indication. One of them loafs across and +explains to the Tribal Herald, who, next week, cries aloud that the road +ought to be mended. Meantime Pete, warmed to the marrow at having +focussed the attention of his tribe for a few moments, retires thirty +miles up-stage, pursued by advertisements of buckboards guaranteed not +to break their king-bolts, and later (which is what the tribe were after +all the time) some tribal authority or other mends the road. + +This is only a big-scale diagram, but with a little attention you can +see the tribal instinct of self-preservation quite logically +underrunning all sorts of queer modern developments. + +As the tribe grows, and men do not behold the horizon from edge to +unbroken edge, their desire to know all about the next man weakens a +little--but not much. Outside the cities are still the long distances, +the 'vast, unoccupied areas' of the advertisements; and the men who come +and go yearn to keep touch with and report themselves as of old to +their lodges. A man stepping out of the dark into the circle of the +fires naturally, if he be a true man, holds up his hands and says, 'I, +So-and-So, am here.' You can watch the ritual in full swing at any hotel +when the reporter (_pro_ Tribal Herald) runs his eyes down the list of +arrivals, and before he can turn from the register is met by the +newcomer, who, without special desire for notoriety, explains his +business and intentions. Observe, it is always at evening that the +reporter concerns himself with strangers. By day he follows the +activities of his own city and the doings of nearby chiefs; but when it +is time to close the stockade, to laager the wagons, to draw the +thorn-bush back into the gap, then in all lands he reverts to the Tribal +Herald, who is also the tribal Outer Guard. + +There are countries where a man is indecently pawed over by chattering +heralds who bob their foul torches in his face till he is singed and +smoked at once. In Canada the necessary 'Stand and deliver your +sentiments' goes through with the large decency that stamps all the +Dominion. A stranger's words are passed on to the tribe quite +accurately; no dirt is put into his mouth, and where the heralds judge +that it would be better not to translate certain remarks they +courteously explain why. + +It was always delightful to meet the reporters, for they were men +interested in their land, with the keen, unselfish interest that one +finds in young house-surgeons or civilians. Thanks to the (Boer) war, +many of them had reached out to the ends of our earth, and spoke of the +sister nations as it did one good to hear. Consequently the +interviews--which are as dreary for the reporter as the reported--often +turned into pleasant and unpublished talks. One felt at every turn of +the quick sentences to be dealing with made and trained players of the +game--balanced men who believed in decencies not to be disregarded, +confidences not to be violated, and honour not to be mocked. (This may +explain what men and women have told me--that there is very little of +the brutal domestic terrorism of the Press in Canada, and not much +blackmailing.) They neither spat nor wriggled; they interpolated no +juicy anecdotes of murder or theft among their acquaintance; and not +once between either ocean did they or any other fellow-subjects +volunteer that their country was 'law-abiding.' + +You know the First Sign-post on the Great Main Road? 'When a Woman +advertises that she is virtuous, a Man that he is a gentleman, a +Community that it is loyal, or a Country that it is law-abiding--go the +other way!' + +Yet, while the men's talk was so good and new, their written word seemed +to be cast in conventional, not to say old-fashioned, moulds. A quarter +of a century ago a sub-editor, opening his mail, could identify the +Melbourne _Argus_, the Sydney _Morning Herald_, or the Cape _Times_ as +far as he could see them. Even unheaded clippings from them declared +their origin as a piece of hide betrays the beast that wore it. But he +noticed then that Canadian journals left neither spoor nor scent--might +have blown in from anywhere between thirty degrees of latitude--and had +to be carefully identified by hand. To-day, the spacing, the headlines, +the advertising of Canadian papers, the chessboard-like look of the open +page which should be a daily beautiful study in black and white, the +brittle pulp-paper, the machine-set type, are all as standardised as the +railway cars of the Continent. Indeed, looking through a mass of +Canadian journals is like trying to find one's own sleeper in a corridor +train. Newspaper offices are among the most conservative organisations +in the world; but surely after twenty-five years some changes might be +permitted to creep in; some original convention of expression or +assembly might be developed. + +I drew up to this idea cautiously among a knot of fellow-craftsmen. 'You +mean,' said one straight-eyed youth, 'that we are a back-number copying +back-numbers?' + +It was precisely what I did mean, so I made haste to deny it. 'We know +that,' he said cheerfully. 'Remember we haven't the sea all round +us--and the postal rates to England have only just been lowered. It will +all come right.' + +Surely it will; but meantime one hates to think of these splendid people +using second-class words to express first-class emotions. + +And so naturally from Journalism to Democracy. Every country is entitled +to her reservations, and pretences, but the more 'democratic' a land +is, the more make-believes must the stranger respect. Some of the Tribal +Heralds were very good to me in this matter, and, as it were, nudged me +when it was time to duck in the House of Rimmon. During their office +hours they professed an unflinching belief in the blessed word +'Democracy,' which means any crowd on the move--that is to say, the +helpless thing which breaks through floors and falls into cellars; +overturns pleasure-boats by rushing from port to starboard; stamps men +into pulp because it thinks it has lost sixpence, and jams and grills in +the doorways of blazing theatres. Out of office, like every one else, +they relaxed. Many winked, a few were flippant, but they all agreed that +the only drawback to Democracy was Demos--a jealous God of primitive +tastes and despotic tendencies. I received a faithful portrait of him +from a politician who had worshipped him all his life. It was +practically the Epistle of Jeremy--the sixth chapter of Baruch--done +into unquotable English. + +But Canada is not yet an ideal Democracy. For one thing she has had to +work hard among rough-edged surroundings which carry inevitable +consequences. For another, the law in Canada exists and is administered, +not as a surprise, a joke, a favour, a bribe, or a Wrestling Turk +exhibition, but as an integral part of the national character--no more +to be forgotten or talked about than one's trousers. If you kill, you +hang. If you steal, you go to jail. This has worked toward peace, +self-respect, and, I think, the innate dignity of the people. On the +other hand--which is where the trouble will begin--railways and steamers +make it possible nowadays to bring in persons who need never lose touch +of hot and cold water-taps, spread tables, and crockery till they are +turned out, much surprised, into the wilderness. They clean miss the +long weeks of salt-water and the slow passage across the plains which +pickled and tanned the early emigrants. They arrive with soft bodies and +unaired souls. I had this vividly brought home to me by a man on a train +among the Selkirks. He stood on the safely railed rear-platform, looked +at the gigantic pine-furred shoulder round which men at their lives' +risk had led every yard of the track, and chirruped: 'I say, why can't +all this be nationalised?' There was nothing under heaven except the +snows and the steep to prevent him from dropping off the cars and +hunting a mine for himself. Instead of which he went into the +dining-car. That is one type. + +A man told me the old tale of a crowd of Russian immigrants who at a big +fire in a city 'verted to the ancestral type, and blocked the streets +yelling, 'Down with the Czar!' That is another type. A few days later I +was shown a wire stating that a community of Doukhobors--Russians +again--had, not for the first time, undressed themselves, and were +fleeing up the track to meet the Messiah before the snow fell. Police +were pursuing them with warm underclothing, and trains would please +take care not to run over them. + +So there you have three sort of steam-borne unfitness--soft, savage, and +mad. There is a fourth brand, which may be either home-grown or +imported, but democracies do not recognise it, of downright bad +folk--grown, healthy men and women who honestly rejoice in doing evil. +These four classes acting together might conceivably produce a rather +pernicious democracy; alien hysteria, blood-craze, and the like, +reinforcing local ignorance, sloth, and arrogance. For example, I read a +letter in a paper sympathising with these same Doukhobors. The writer +knew a community of excellent people in England (you see where the rot +starts!) who lived barefoot, paid no taxes, ate nuts, and were above +marriage. They were a soulful folk, living pure lives. The Doukhobors +were also pure and soulful, entitled in a free country to live their own +lives, and not to be oppressed, etc. etc. (Imported soft, observe, +playing up to Imported mad.) Meantime, disgusted police were chasing the +Doukhobors into flannels that they might live to produce children fit to +consort with the sons of the man who wrote that letter and the daughters +of the crowd that lost their heads at the fire. + +'All of which,' men and women answered, 'we admit. But what can we do? +We want people.' And they showed vast and well-equipped schools, where +the children of Slav immigrants are taught English and the songs of +Canada. 'When they grow up,' people said, 'you can't tell them from +Canadians.' It was a wonderful work. The teacher holds up pens, reels, +and so forth, giving the name in English; the children repeating Chinese +fashion. Presently when they have enough words they can bridge back to +the knowledge they learned in their own country, so that a boy of +twelve, at, say, the end of a year, will produce a well-written English +account of his journey from Russia, how much his mother paid for food by +the way, and where his father got his first job. He will also lay his +hand on his heart, and say, 'I--am--a--Canadian.' This gratifies the +Canadian, who naturally purrs over an emigrant owing everything to the +land which adopted him and set him on his feet. The Lady Bountiful of an +English village takes the same interest in a child she has helped on in +the world. And the child repays by his gratitude and good behaviour? + +Personally, one cannot care much for those who have renounced their own +country. They may have had good reason, but they have broken the rules +of the game, and ought to be penalised instead of adding to their score. +Nor is it true, as men pretend, that a few full meals and fine clothes +obliterate all taint of alien instinct and reversion. A thousand years +cannot be as yesterday for mankind; and one has only to glance at the +races across the Border to realise how in outlook, manner, expression, +and morale the South and South-east profoundly and fatally affects the +North and North-west. That was why the sight of the beady-eyed, +muddy-skinned, aproned women, with handkerchiefs on their heads and +Oriental bundles in their hands, always distressed one. + +'But _why_ must you get this stuff?' I asked. 'You know it is not your +equal, and it knows that it is not your equal; and that is bad for you +both. What is the matter with the English as immigrants?' + +The answers were explicit: 'Because the English do not work. Because we +are sick of Remittance-men and loafers sent out here. Because the +English are rotten with Socialism. Because the English don't fit with +our life. They kick at our way of doing things. They are always telling +us how things are done in England. They carry frills! Don't you know the +story of the Englishman who lost his way and was found half-dead of +thirst beside a river? When he was asked why he didn't drink, he said, +"How the deuce can I without a glass?"' + +'But,' I argued over three thousand miles of country, 'all these are +excellent reasons for bringing in the Englishman. It is true that in his +own country he is taught to shirk work, because kind, silly people fall +over each other to help and debauch and amuse him. Here, General January +will stiffen him up. Remittance-men are an affliction to every branch of +the Family, but your manners and morals can't be so tender as to suffer +from a few thousand of them among your six millions. As to the +Englishman's Socialism, he is, by nature, the most unsocial animal +alive. What you call Socialism is his intellectual equivalent for +Diabolo and Limerick competitions. As to his criticisms, you surely +wouldn't marry a woman who agreed with you in everything, and you ought +to choose your immigrants on the same lines. You admit that the Canadian +is too busy to kick at anything. The Englishman is a born kicker. ("Yes, +he is all that," they said.) He kicks on principle, and that is what +makes for civilisation. So did your Englishman's instinct about the +glass. Every new country needs--vitally needs--one-half of one per cent +of its population trained to die of thirst rather than drink out of +their hands. You are always talking of the second generation of your +Smyrniotes and Bessarabians. Think what the second generation of the +English are!' + +They thought--quite visibly--but they did not much seem to relish it. +There was a queer stringhalt in their talk--a conversational shy across +the road--when one touched on these subjects. After a while I went to a +Tribal Herald whom I could trust, and demanded of him point-blank where +the trouble really lay, and who was behind it. + +'It is Labour,' he said. 'You had better leave it alone.' + + + + +LABOUR + + +One cannot leave a thing alone if it is thrust under the nose at every +turn. I had not quitted the Quebec steamer three minutes when I was +asked point-blank: 'What do you think of the question of Asiatic +Exclusion which is Agitating our Community?' + +The Second Sign-Post on the Great Main Road says: 'If a Community is +agitated by a Question--inquire politely after the health of the +Agitator,' This I did, without success; and had to temporise all across +the Continent till I could find some one to help me to acceptable +answers. The Question appears to be confined to British Columbia. There, +after a while, the men who had their own reasons for not wishing to talk +referred me to others who explained, and on the acutest understanding +that no names were to be published (it is sweet to see engineers afraid +of being hoist by their own petards) one got more or less at something +like facts. + +The Chinaman has always been in the habit of coming to British Columbia, +where he makes, as he does elsewhere, the finest servant in the world. +No one, I was assured on all hands, objects to the biddable Chinaman. +He takes work which no white man in a new country will handle, and when +kicked by the mean white will not grossly retaliate. He has always paid +for the privilege of making his fortune on this wonderful coast, but +with singular forethought and statesmanship, the popular Will, some few +years ago, decided to double the head-tax on his entry. Strange as it +may appear, the Chinaman now charges double for his services, and is +scarce at that. This is said to be one of the reasons why overworked +white women die or go off their heads; and why in new cities you can see +blocks of flats being built to minimise the inconveniences of +housekeeping without help. The birth-rate will fall later in exact +proportion to those flats. + +Since the Russo-Japanese War the Japanese have taken to coming over to +British Columbia. They also do work which no white man will; such as +hauling wet logs for lumber mills out of cold water at from eight to ten +shillings a day. They supply the service in hotels and dining-rooms and +keep small shops. The trouble with them is that they are just a little +too good, and when attacked defend themselves with asperity. + +A fair sprinkling of Punjabis--ex-soldiers, Sikhs, Muzbis, and Jats--are +coming in on the boats. The plague at home seems to have made them +restless, but I could not gather why so many of them come from Shahpur, +Phillour, and Jullundur way. These men do not, of course, offer for +house-service, but work in the lumber mills, and with the least little +care and attention could be made most valuable. Some one ought to tell +them not to bring their old men with them, and better arrangements +should be made for their remitting money home to their villages. They +are not understood, of course; but they are not hated. + +The objection is all against the Japanese. So far--except that they are +said to have captured the local fishing trade at Vancouver, precisely as +the Malays control the Cape Town fish business--they have not yet +competed with the whites; but I was earnestly assured by many men that +there was danger of their lowering the standard of life and wages. The +demand, therefore, in certain quarters is that they go--absolutely and +unconditionally. (You may have noticed that Democracies are strong on +the imperative mood.) An attempt was made to shift them shortly before I +came to Vancouver, but it was not very successful, because the Japanese +barricaded their quarters and flocked out, a broken bottle held by the +neck in either hand, which they jabbed in the faces of the +demonstrators. It is, perhaps, easier to haze and hammer bewildered +Hindus and Tamils, as is being done across the Border, than to stampede +the men of the Yalu and Liaoyang.[5] + +[Footnote 5: Battles in the Russo-Japanese War.] + +But when one began to ask questions one got lost in a maze of hints, +reservations, and orations, mostly delivered with constraint, as though +the talkers were saying a piece learned by heart. Here are some +samples:-- + +A man penned me in a corner with a single heavily capitalised sentence. +'There is a General Sentiment among Our People that the Japanese Must +Go,' said he. + +'Very good,' said I. 'How d'you propose to set about it?' + +'That is nothing to us. There is a General Sentiment,' etc. + +'Quite so. Sentiment is a beautiful thing, but what are you going to +do?' He did not condescend to particulars, but kept repeating the +sentiment, which, as I promised, I record. + +Another man was a little more explicit. 'We desire,' he said, 'to keep +the Chinaman. But the Japanese must go.' + +'Then who takes their place? Isn't this rather a new country to pitch +people out of?' + +'We must develop our Resources slowly, sir--with an Eye to the Interests +of our Children. We must preserve the Continent for Races which will +assimilate with Ours. We must not be swamped by Aliens.' + +'Then bring in your own races and bring 'em in quick,' I ventured. + +This is the one remark one must not make in certain quarters of the +West; and I lost caste heavily while he explained (exactly as the Dutch +did at the Cape years ago) how British Columbia was by no means so rich +as she appeared; that she was throttled by capitalists and monopolists +of all kinds; that white labour had to be laid off and fed and warmed +during the winter; that living expenses were enormously high; that they +were at the end of a period of prosperity, and were now entering on +lean years; and that whatever steps were necessary for bringing in more +white people should be taken with extreme caution. Then he added that +the railway rates to British Columbia were so high that emigrants were +debarred from coming on there. + +'But haven't the rates been reduced?' I asked. + +'Yes--yes, I believe they have, but immigrants are so much in demand +that they are snapped up before they have got so far West. You must +remember, too, that skilled labour is not like agricultural labour. It +is dependent on so many considerations. And the Japanese must go.' + +'So people have told me. But I heard stories of dairies and fruit-farms +in British Columbia being thrown up because there was no labour to milk +or pick the fruit. Is that true, d'you think?' + +'Well, you can't expect a man with all the chances that our country +offers him to milk cows in a pasture. A Chinaman can do that. We want +races that will assimilate with ours,' etc., etc. + +'But didn't the Salvation Army offer to bring in three or four thousand +English some short time ago? What came of that idea?' + +'It--er--fell through.' + +'Why?' + +'For political reasons, I believe. We do not want People who will lower +the Standard of Living. That is why the Japanese must go.' + +'Then why keep the Chinese?' + +'We can get on with the Chinese. We can't get on without the Chinese. +But we must have Emigration of a Type that will assimilate with Our +People. I hope I have made myself clear?' + +I hoped that he had, too. + +Now hear a wife, a mother, and a housekeeper. + +'We have to pay for this precious state of things with our health and +our children's. Do you know the saying that the Frontier is hard on +women and cattle? This isn't the frontier, but in some respects it's +worse, because we have all the luxuries and appearances--the pretty +glass and silver to put on the table. We have to dust, polish, and +arrange 'em after we've done our housework. I don't suppose that means +anything to you, but--try it for a month! We have no help. A Chinaman +costs fifty or sixty dollars a month now. Our husbands can't always +afford that. How old would you take me for? I'm not thirty. Well thank +God, I stopped my sister coming out West. Oh yes, it's a fine +country--for men.' + +'Can't you import servants from England?' + +'I can't pay a girl's passage in order to have her married in three +months. Besides, she wouldn't work. They won't when they see Chinamen +working.' + +'Do you object to the Japanese, too?' + +'Of course not. No one does. It's only politics. The wives of the men +who earn six and seven dollars a day--skilled labour they call it--have +Chinese and Jap servants. _We_ can't afford it. _We_ have to think of +saving for the future, but those other people live up to every cent they +earn. They know _they're_ all right. They're Labour. They'll be looked +after, whatever happens. You can see how the State looks after me.' + +A little later I had occasion to go through a great and beautiful city +between six and seven of a crisp morning. Milk and fish, vegetables, +etc., were being delivered to the silent houses by Chinese and Japanese. +Not a single white man was visible on that chilly job. + +Later still a man came to see me, without too publicly giving his name. +He was in a small way of business, and told me (others had said much the +same thing) that if I gave him away his business would suffer. He talked +for half an hour on end. + +'Am I to understand, then,' I said, 'that what you call Labour +absolutely dominates this part of the world?' + +He nodded. + +'That it is difficult to get skilled labour into here?' + +'Difficult? My God, if I want to get an extra hand for my business--I +pay Union wages, of course--I have to arrange to get him here secretly. +I have to go out and meet him, accidental-like, down the line, and if +the Unions find out that he is coming, they, like as not, order him back +East, or turn him down across the Border.' + +'Even if he has his Union ticket? Why?' + +'They'll tell him that labour conditions are not good here. He knows +what that means. He'll turn back quick enough. I'm in a small way of +business, and I can't afford to take any chances fighting the Unions.' + +'What would happen if you did?' + +'D'you know what's happening across the Border? Men get blown up +there--with dynamite.' + +'But this isn't across the Border?' + +'It's a damn-sight too near to be pleasant. And witnesses get blown up, +too. You see, the Labour situation ain't run from our side the line. +It's worked from down under. You may have noticed men were rather +careful when they talked about it?' + +'Yes, I noticed all that.' + +'Well, it ain't a pleasant state of affairs. I don't say that the Unions +here would do anything _to_ you--and please understand I'm all for the +rights of Labour myself. Labour has no better friend than me--I've been +a working man, though I've got a business of my own now. Don't run away +with any idea that I'm against Labour--will you?' + +'Not in the least. I can see that. You merely find that Labour's a +little bit--er--inconsiderate, sometimes?' + +'Look what happens across the Border! I suppose they've told you that +little fuss with the Japanese in Vancouver was worked from down under, +haven't they? I don't think our own people 'ud have done it by +themselves.' + +'I've heard that several times. Is it quite sporting, do you think, to +lay the blame on another country?' + +'_You_ don't live here. But as I was saying--if we get rid of the Japs +to-day, we'll be told to get rid of some one else to-morrow. There's no +limit, sir, to what Labour wants. None!' + +'I thought they only want a fair day's wage for a fair day's work?' + +'That may do in the Old Country, but here they mean to boss the country. +They do.' + +'And how does the country like it?' + +'We're about sick of it. It don't matter much in flush +times--employers'll do most anything sooner than stop work--but when we +come to a pinch, you'll hear something. We're a rich land--in spite of +everything they make out--but we're held up at every turn by Labour. +Why, there's businesses on businesses which friends of mine--in a small +way like myself--want to start. Businesses in every direction--if they +was only allowed to start in. But they ain't.' + +'That's a pity. Now, what do you think about the Japanese question?' + +'I don't think. I know. Both political parties are playing up to the +Labour vote--if you understand what that means.' + +I tried to understand. + +'And neither side'll tell the truth--that if the Asiatic goes, this side +of the Continent'll drop out of sight, unless we get free white +immigration. And any party that proposed white immigration on a large +scale 'ud be snowed under next election. I'm telling you what +politicians think. Myself, I believe if a man stood up to Labour--not +that I've any feeling against Labour--and just talked sense, a lot of +people would follow him--quietly, of course. I believe he could even get +white immigration after a while. He'd lose the first election, of +course, but in the long run.... We're about sick of Labour. I wanted you +to know the truth.' + +'Thank you. And you don't think any attempt to bring in white +immigration would succeed?' + +'Not if it didn't suit Labour. You can try it if you like, and see what +happens.' + +On that hint I made an experiment in another city. There were three men +of position, and importance, and affluence, each keenly interested in +the development of their land, each asserting that what the land needed +was white immigrants. And we four talked for two hours on the matter--up +and down and in circles. The one point on which those three men were +unanimous was, that whatever steps were taken to bring people into +British Columbia from England, by private recruiting or otherwise, +should be taken secretly. Otherwise the business of the people concerned +in the scheme would suffer. + +At which point I dropped the Great Question of Asiatic Exclusion which +is Agitating all our Community; and I leave it to you, especially in +Australia and the Cape, to draw your own conclusions. + +Externally, British Columbia appears to be the richest and the loveliest +section of the Continent. Over and above her own resources she has a +fair chance to secure an immense Asiatic trade, which she urgently +desires. Her land, in many places over large areas, is peculiarly fitted +for the small former and fruit-grower, who can send his truck to the +cities. On every hand I heard a demand for labour of all kinds. At the +same time, in no other part of the Continent did I meet so many men who +insistently decried the value and possibilities of their country, or who +dwelt more fluently on the hardships and privations to be endured by the +white immigrant. I believe that one or two gentlemen have gone to +England to explain the drawbacks _viva voce_. It is possible that they +incur a great responsibility in the present, and even a terrible one for +the future. + + + + +THE FORTUNATE TOWNS + +After Politics, let us return to the Prairie which is the High Veldt, +plus Hope, Activity, and Reward. Winnipeg is the door to it--a great +city in a great plain, comparing herself, innocently enough, to other +cities of her acquaintance, but quite unlike any other city. + +When one meets, in her own house, a woman not seen since girlhood she is +all a stranger till some remembered tone or gesture links up to the +past, and one cries: 'It _is_ you after all.' But, indeed, the child has +gone; the woman with her influences has taken her place. I tried vainly +to recover the gawky, graceless city I had known, so unformed and so +insistent on her shy self. I even ventured to remind a man of it. 'I +remember,' he said, smiling, 'but we were young then. This thing,' +indicating an immense perspective of asphalted avenue that dipped under +thirty railway tracks, 'only came up in the last ten years--practically +the last five. We've had to enlarge all those warehouses yonder by +adding two or three stories to 'em, and we've hardly begun to go ahead +yet. We're just beginning.' + +Warehouses, railway-sidings, and such are only counters in the White +Man's Game, which can be swept up and re-dealt as the play varies. It +was the spirit in the thin dancing air--the new spirit of the new +city--which rejoiced me. Winnipeg has Things in abundance, but has +learned to put them beneath her feet, not on top of her mind, and so is +older than many cities. None the less the Things had to be shown--for +what shopping is to the woman showing off his town is to the +right-minded man. First came the suburbs--miles on miles of the dainty, +clean-outlined, wooden-built houses, where one can be so happy and so +warm, each unjealously divided from its neighbour by the lightest of +boundaries. One could date them by their architecture, year after year, +back to the Early 'Nineties, which is when civilisation began; could +guess within a few score dollars at their cost and the incomes of their +owners, and could ask questions about the new domestic appliances of +to-day. + +'Asphalt streets and concrete sidewalks came up a few years ago,' said +our host as we trotted over miles of it. 'We found it the only way to +fight the prairie mud. Look!' Where the daring road ended, there lay +unsubdued, level with the pale asphalt, the tenacious prairie, over +which civilisation fought her hub-deep way to the West. And with asphalt +and concrete they fight the prairie back every building season. Next +came the show-houses, built by rich men with an eye to the honour and +glory of their city, which is the first obligation of wealth in a new +land. + +We twisted and turned among broad, clean, tree-lined, sunlit boulevards +and avenues, all sluiced down with an air that forbade any thought of +fatigue, and talked of city government and municipal taxation, till, in +a certain silence, we were shown a suburb of uncared-for houses, shops, +and banks, whose sides and corners were rubbed greasy by the shoulders +of loafers. Dirt and tin cans lay about the street. Yet it was not the +squalor of poverty so much as the lack of instinct to keep clean. One +race prefers to inhabit there. + +Next a glimpse of a cold, white cathedral, red-brick schools almost as +big (thank goodness!) as some convents; hospitals, institutions, a mile +or so of shops, and then a most familiar-feeling lunch at a Club which +would have amazed my Englishman at Montreal, where men, not yet old, +talked of Fort Garry as they remembered it, and tales of the founding of +the city, of early administrative shifts and accidents, mingled with the +younger men's prophecies and frivolities. + +There are a few places still left where men can handle big things with a +light touch, and take more for granted in five minutes than an +Englishman at home could puzzle out in a year. But one would not meet +many English at a lunch in a London club who took the contract for +building London Wall or helped bully King John into signing Magna +Charta. + +I had two views of the city--one on a gray day from the roof of a +monster building, whence it seemed to overflow and fill with noises the +whole vast cup of the horizon; and still, all round its edge, jets of +steam and the impatient cries of machinery showed it was eating out into +the Prairie like a smothered fire. + +The other picture was a silhouette of the city's flank, mysterious as a +line of unexplored cliffs, under a sky crimson--barred from the zenith +to the ground, where it lay, pale emerald behind the uneven ramparts. As +our train halted in the last of the dusk, and the rails glowed dull red, +I caught the deep surge of it, and seven miles across the purple levels +saw the low, restless aurora of its lights. It is rather an awesome +thing to listen to a vanguard of civilisation talking to itself in the +night in the same tone as a thousand-year-old city. + +All the country hereabouts is riddled with railways for business and +pleasure undreamed of fifteen years ago, and it was a long time before +we reached the clear prairie of air and space and open land. The air is +different from any air that ever blew; the space is ampler than most +spaces, because it runs back to the unhampered Pole, and the open land +keeps the secret of its magic as closely as the sea or the desert. + +People here do not stumble against each other around corners, but see +largely and tranquilly from a long way off what they desire, or wish to +avoid, and they shape their path accordingly across the waves, and +troughs, and tongues, and dips and fans of the land. + +When mere space and the stoop of the high sky begin to overwhelm, earth +provides little ponds and lakes, lying in soft-flanked hollows, where +people can step down out of the floods of air, and delight themselves +with small and known distances. Most of the women I saw about the houses +were down in the hollows, and most of the men were on the crests and the +flats. Once, while we halted a woman drove straight down at us from the +sky-line, along a golden path between black ploughed lands. When the +horse, who managed affairs, stopped at the cars, she nodded +mysteriously, and showed us a very small baby in the hollow of her arm. +Doubtless she was some exiled Queen flying North to found a dynasty and +establish a country. The Prairie makes everything wonderful. + +They were threshing the wheat on both sides or the track as far as the +eye could see. The smoke of the machines went up in orderly perspective +alongside the mounds of chaff--thus: a machine, a house, a mound of +chaff, a stretch of wheat in stocks--and then repeat the pattern over +the next few degrees of longitude. We ran through strings of nearly +touching little towns, where I remembered an occasional shack; and +through big towns once represented by a name-board, a siding, and two +troopers of the North-West Police. In those days men proved that Wheat +would not grow north of some fool's line, or other, or, if it did, that +no one would grow it. And now the Wheat was marching with us as far as +the eye could reach; the railways were out, two, three hundred miles +north, peopling a new wheat country; and north of that again the Grand +Trunk was laying down a suburban extension of a few thousand miles +across the Continent, with branches perhaps to Dawson City, certainly to +Hudson Bay. + +'Come north and look!' cried the Afrites of the Railway. 'You're only on +the fringe of it here.' I preferred to keep the old road, and to gape at +miracles accomplished since my day. The old, false-fronted, +hollow-stomached Western hotels were gone; their places filled by +five-storey brick or stone ones, with Post Offices to match. +Occasionally some overlooked fragment of the past still cleaved to a +town, and marked it for an old acquaintance, but often one had to get a +mile away and look back on a place--as one holds a palimpsest up against +the light--to identify the long overlaid lines of the beginnings. Each +town supplied the big farming country behind it, and each town school +carried the Union Jack on a flagstaff in its playground. So far as one +could understand, the scholars are taught neither to hate, nor despise, +nor beg from, their own country. + +I whispered to a man that I was a little tired of a three days' tyranny +of Wheat, besides being shocked at farmers who used clean bright straw +for fuel, and made bonfires of their chaff-hills. 'You're 'way behind +the times,' said he. 'There's fruit and dairying and any quantity of +mixed farming going forward all around--let alone irrigation further +West. Wheat's not our only king by a long sight. Wait till you strike +such and such a place.' It was there I met a prophet and a preacher in +the shape of a Commissioner of the Local Board of Trade (all towns have +them), who firmly showed me the vegetables which his district produced. +They _were_ vegetables too--all neatly staged in a little kiosk near the +station. + +I think the pious Thomas Tusser would have loved that man. 'Providence,' +said he, shedding pamphlets at every gesture, 'did not intend +everlasting Wheat in this section. No, sir! Our business is to keep +ahead of Providence--to meet her with mixed farming. Are you interested +in mixed farming? Psha! Too bad you missed our fruit and vegetable show. +It draws people together, mixed farming does. I don't say Wheat is +narrowing to the outlook, but I claim there's more sociability and money +in mixed farming. We've been hypnotised by Wheat and Cattle. Now--the +cars won't start yet awhile--I'll just tell you my ideas.' + +For fifteen glorious minutes he gave me condensed essence of mixed +farming, with excursions into sugar-beet (did you know they are making +sugar in Alberta?), and he talked of farmyard muck, our dark mother of +all things, with proper devotion. + +'What we want now,' he cried in farewell, 'is men--more men. Yes, and +women.' + +They need women sorely for domestic help, to meet the mad rush of work +at harvest time--maids who will help in house, dairy, and chicken-run +till they are married. + +A steady tide sets that way already; one contented settler recruiting +others from England; but if a tenth of that energy wasted on 'social +reform' could be diverted to decently thought out and supervised +emigration work ('Labour' does not yet object to people working on the +land) we might do something worth talking about. The races which work +and do not form Committees are going into the country at least as fast +as ours. It makes one jealous and afraid to watch aliens taking, and +taking honestly, so much of this treasure of good fortune and sane +living. + +There was a town down the road which I had first heard discussed nigh +twenty years ago by a broken-down prospector in a box-car. 'Young +feller,' said he, after he had made a professional prophecy,' you'll +hear of that town if you live. She's born lucky.' + +I saw the town later--it was a siding by a trestle bridge where Indians +sold beadwork--and as years passed I gathered that the old tramp's +prophecy had come true, and that Luck of some kind had struck the little +town by the big river. So, this trip, I stopped to make sure. It was a +beautiful town of six thousand people, and a railway junction, beside a +high-girdered iron bridge; there was a public garden with trees at the +station. A company of joyous men and women, whom that air and that +light, and their own goodwill, made our brothers and sisters, came along +in motors, and gave us such a day as never was. + +'What about the Luck?' I asked. + +'Heavens!' said one. 'Haven't you heard about our natural gas--the +greatest natural gas in the world? Oh, come and see!' + +I was whirled off to a roundhouse full of engines and machinery-shops, +worked by natural gas which comes out of the earth, smelling slightly of +fried onions, at a pressure of six hundred pounds, and by valves and +taps is reduced to four pounds. There was Luck enough to make a +metropolis. Imagine a city's heating and light--to say nothing of +power--laid on at no greater expense than that of piping! + +'Are there any limits to the possibilities of it?' I demanded. + +'Who knows? We're only at the beginning. We'll show you a brick-making +plant, out on the prairie, run by gas. But just now we want to show you +one of our pet farms.' + +Away swooped the motors, like swallows, over roads any width you please, +and up on to what looked like the High Veldt itself. A Major of the +Mounted Police, who had done a year at the (Boer) war, told us how the +ostrich-farm fencing and the little meercats sitting up and racing about +South Africa had made him homesick for the sight of the gophers by the +wayside, and the endless panels of wire fencing along which we rushed. +(The Prairie has nothing to learn from the Veldt about fencing, or +tricky gates.) + +'After all,' said the Major, 'there's no country to touch this. I've had +thirty years of it--from one end to the other.' + +Then they pointed out all the quarters of the horizon--say, fifty miles +wherever you turned--and gave them names. + +The show farmer had taken his folk to church, but we friendly slipped +through his gates and reached the silent, spick-and-span house, with its +trim barn, and a vast mound of copper-coloured wheat, piled in the sun +between two mounds of golden chaff. Every one thumbed a sample of it and +passed judgment--it must have been worth a few hundred golden sovereigns +as it lay, out on the veldt--and we sat around, on the farm machinery, +and, in the hush that a shut-up house always imposes, we seemed to hear +the lavish earth getting ready for new harvests. There was no true wind, +but a push, as it were, of the whole crystal atmosphere. + +'Now for the brickfield!' they cried. It was many miles off. The road +fed by a never-to-be-forgotten drop, to a river broad as the Orange at +Norval's Pont, rustling between mud hills. An old Scotchman, in the very +likeness of Charon, with big hip boots, controlled a pontoon, which +sagged back and forth by current on a wire rope. The reckless motors +bumped on to this ferry through a foot of water, and Charon, who never +relaxed, bore us statelily across the dark, broad river to the further +bank, where we all turned to look at the lucky little town, and discuss +its possibilities. + +'I think you can see it best from here,' said one. + +'No, from here,' said another, and their voices softened on the very +name of it. + +Then for an hour we raced over true prairie, great yellow-green plains +crossed by old buffalo trails, which do not improve motor springs, till +a single chimney broke the horizon like a mast at sea; and thereby were +more light-hearted men and women, a shed and a tent or two for workmen, +the ribs and frames of the brick-making mechanism, a fifteen foot square +shaft sunk, sixty foot down to the clay, and, stark and black, the pipe +of a natural-gas well. The rest was Prairie--the mere curve of the +earth--with little grey birds calling. + +I thought it could not have been simpler, more audacious or more +impressive, till I saw some women in pretty frocks go up and peer at the +hissing gas-valves. + +'We fancied that it might amuse you,' said all those merry people, and +between laughter and digressions they talked over projects for building, +first their own, and next other cities, in brick of all sorts; giving +figures of output and expenses of plant that made one gasp. To the eye +the affair was no more than a novel or delicious picnic. What it +actually meant was a committee to change the material of civilisation +for a hundred miles around. I felt as though I were assisting at the +planning of Nineveh; and whatever of good comes to the little town that +was born lucky I shall always claim a share. + +But there is no space to tell how we fed, with a prairie appetite, in +the men's quarters, on a meal prepared by an artist; how we raced home +at speeds no child could ever hear of, and no grown-up should attempt; +how the motors squattered at the ford, and took pot-shots at the pontoon +till even Charon smiled; how great horses hauled the motors up the +gravelly bank into the town; how there we met people in their Sunday +best, walking and driving, and pulled ourselves together, and looked +virtuous; and how the merry company suddenly and quietly evanished +because they thought that their guests might be tired. I can give you no +notion of the pure, irresponsible frolic of it--of the almost +affectionate kindness, the gay and inventive hospitality that so +delicately controlled the whole affair--any more than I can describe a +certain quiet half-hour in the dusk just before we left, when the +company gathered to say good-bye, while young couples walked in the +street, and the glare of the never-extinguished natural-gas lamps +coloured the leaves of the trees a stage green. + +It was a woman, speaking out of the shadow, who said, what we all felt, +'You see, we just love our town,' + +'So do we,' I said, and it slid behind us. + + + + +MOUNTAINS AND THE PACIFIC + + +The Prairie proper ends at Calgary, among the cattle-ranches, mills, +breweries, and three million acre irrigation works. The river that +floats timber to the town from the mountains does not slide nor rustle +like Prairie rivers, but brawls across bars of blue pebbles, and a +greenish tinge in its water hints of the snows. + +What I saw of Calgary was crowded into one lively half-hour (motors were +invented to run about new cities). What I heard I picked up, oddly +enough, weeks later, from a young Dane in the North Sea. He was +qualmish, but his Saga of triumph upheld him. + +'Three years ago I come to Canada by steerage--third class. _And_ I have +the language to learn. Look at me! I have now my own dairy business, in +Calgary, and--look at me!--my own half section, that is, three hundred +and twenty acres. All my land which is mine! And now I come home, first +class, for Christmas here in Denmark, and I shall take out back with me, +some friends of mine which are farmers, to farm on those irrigated lands +near by Calgary. Oh, I tell you there is nothing wrong with Canada for a +man which works.' + +'And will your friends go?' I inquired. + +'You bet they will. It is all arranged already. I bet they get ready to +go now already; and in three years they will come back for Christmas +here in Denmark, first class like me.' + +'Then you think Calgary is going ahead?' + +'You bet! We are only at the beginning of things. Look at me! Chickens? +I raise chickens also in Calgary,' etc., etc. + +After all this pageant of unrelieved material prosperity, it was a rest +to get to the stillness of the big foothills, though they, too, had been +in-spanned for the work of civilisation. The timber off their sides was +ducking and pitch-poling down their swift streams, to be sawn into +house-stuff for all the world. The woodwork of a purely English villa +may come from as many Imperial sources as its owner's income. + +The train crept, whistling to keep its heart up, through the winding +gateways of the hills, till it presented itself, very humbly, before the +true mountains, the not so Little Brothers to the Himalayas. Mountains +of the pine-cloaked, snow-capped breed are unchristian things. + +Men mine into the flanks of some of them, and trust to modern science to +pull them through. Not long ago, a mountain kneeled on a little mining +village as an angry elephant kneels; but it did not get up again, and +the half of that camp was no more seen on earth. The other half still +stands--uninhabited. The 'heathen in his blindness' would have made +arrangements with the Genius of the Place before he ever drove a pick +there. 'As a learned scholar of a little-known university once observed +to an engineer officer on the Himalaya-Tibet Road--'You white men gain +nothing by not noticing what you cannot see. You fall off the road, or +the road falls on you, and you die, and you think it all an accident. +How much wiser it was when we were allowed to sacrifice a man +officially, sir, before making bridges or other public works. Then the +local gods were officially recognised, sir, and did not give any more +trouble, and the local workmen, sir, were much pleased with these +precautions.' + +There are many local gods on the road through the Rockies: old bald +mountains that have parted with every shred of verdure and stand wrapped +in sheets of wrinkled silver rock, over which the sight travels slowly +as in delirium; mad, horned mountains, wreathed with dancing mists; +low-browed and bent-shouldered faquirs of the wayside, sitting in +meditation beneath a burden of glacier-ice that thickens every year; and +mountains of fair aspect on one side, but on the other seamed with +hollow sunless clefts, where last year's snow is blackened with this +year's dirt and smoke of forest-fires. The drip from it seeps away +through slopes of unstable gravel and dirt, till, at the appointed +season, the whole half-mile of undermined talus slips and roars into the +horrified valley. + +The railway winds in and out among them with little inexplicable +deviations and side-twists, much as a buck walks through a forest-glade, +sidling and crossing uneasily in what appears to be a plain way. Only +when the track has rounded another shoulder or two, a backward and +upward glance at some menacing slope shows why the train did not take +the easier-looking road on the other side of the gorge. + +From time to time the mountains lean apart, and nurse between them some +golden valley of slow streams, fat pastures, and park-like uplands, with +a little town, and cow bells tinkling among berry bushes; and children +who have never seen the sun rise or set, shouting at the trains; and +real gardens round the houses. + +At Calgary it was a frost, and the dahlias were dead. A day later +nasturtiums bloomed untouched beside the station platforms, and the air +was heavy and liquid with the breath of the Pacific. One felt the spirit +of the land change with the changing outline of the hills till, on the +lower levels by the Fraser, it seemed that even the Sussex Downs must be +nearer at heart to the Prairie than British Columbia. The Prairie people +notice the difference, and the Hill people, unwisely, I think, insist on +it. Perhaps the magic may lie in the scent of strange evergreens and +mosses not known outside the ranges: or it may strike from wall to wall +of timeless rifts and gorges, but it seemed to me to draw out of the +great sea that washes further Asia--the Asia of allied mountains, mines, +and forests. + +We rested one day high up in the Rockies, to visit a lake carved out of +pure jade, whose property is to colour every reflection on its bosom to +its own tint. A belt of brown dead timber on a gravel scar, showed, +upside down, like sombre cypresses rising from green turf and the +reflected snows were pale green. In summer many tourists go there, but +we saw nothing except the wonderworking lake lying mute in its circle of +forest, where red and orange lichens grew among grey and blue moss, and +we heard nothing except the noise of its outfall hurrying through a jam +of bone-white logs. The thing might have belonged to Tibet or some +unexplored valley behind Kin-chinjunga. It had no concern with the West. + +As we drove along the narrow hill-road a piebald pack-pony with a +china-blue eye came round a bend, followed by two women, black-haired, +bare-headed, wearing beadwork squaw-jackets, and riding straddle. A +string of pack-ponies trotted through the pines behind them. + +'Indians on the move?' said I. 'How characteristic!' + +As the women jolted by, one of them very slightly turned her eyes, and +they were, past any doubt, the comprehending equal eyes of the civilised +white woman which moved in that berry-brown face. + +'Yes,' said our driver, when the cavalcade had navigated the next +curve,' that'll be Mrs. So-and-So and Miss So-and-So. They mostly camp +hereabout for three months every year. I reckon they're coming in to the +railroad before the snow falls.' + +'And whereabout do they go?' I asked. + +'Oh, all about anywheres. If you mean where they come from just +now--that's the trail yonder.' + +He pointed to a hair-crack across the face of a mountain, and I took +his word for it that it was a safe pony-trail. The same evening, at an +hotel of all the luxuries, a slight woman in a very pretty evening frock +was turning over photographs, and the eyes beneath the strictly-arranged +hair were the eyes of the woman in the beadwork jacket who had quirted +the piebald pack-pony past our buggy. + +Praised be Allah for the diversity of His creatures! But do you know any +other country where two women could go out for a three months' trek and +shoot in perfect comfort and safety? + +These mountains are only ten days from London, and people more and more +use them for pleasure-grounds. Other and most unthought-of persons buy +little fruit-farms in British Columbia as an excuse for a yearly visit +to the beautiful land, and they tempt yet more people from England. This +is apart from the regular tide of emigration, and serves to make the +land known. If you asked a State-owned railway to gamble on the chance +of drawing tourists, the Commissioner of Railways would prove to you +that the experiment could never succeed, and that it was wrong to risk +the taxpayers' money in erecting first-class hotels. Yet South Africa +could, even now, be made a tourists' place--if only the railroads and +steamship lines had faith. + +On thinking things over I suspect I was not intended to appreciate the +merits of British Columbia too highly. Maybe I misjudged; maybe she was +purposely misrepresented; but I seemed to hear more about 'problems' +and 'crises' and 'situations' in her borders than anywhere else. So far +as eye or ear could gather, the one urgent problem was to find enough +men and women to do the work in hand. + +Lumber, coal, minerals, fisheries, fit soil for fruit, dairy, and +poultry farms are all there in a superb climate. The natural beauty of +earth and sky match these lavish gifts; to which are added thousands of +miles of safe and sheltered waterways for coastal trade; deep harbours +that need no dredge; the ground-works of immense and ice-free ports--all +the title-deeds to half the trade of Asia. For the people's pleasure and +good disport salmon, trout, quail, and pheasant play in front of and +through the suburbs of her capitals. A little axe-work and +road-metalling gives a city one of the loveliest water-girt parks that +we have outside the tropics. Another town is presented with a hundred +islands, knolls, wooded coves, stretches of beach, and dingles, laid +down as expressly for camp-life, picnics, and boating parties, beneath +skies never too hot and rarely too cold. If they care to lift up their +eyes from their almost subtropical gardens they can behold snowy peaks +across blue bays, which must be good for the soul. Though they face a +sea out of which any portent may arise, they are not forced to protect +or even to police its waters. They are as ignorant of drouth, murrain, +pestilence locusts, and blight, as they are of the true meaning of want +and fear. + +Such a land is good for an energetic man. It is also not so bad for the +loafer. I was, as I have told you, instructed on its, drawbacks. I was +to understand that there was no certainty in any employment; and that a +man who earned immense wages for six months of the year would have to be +kept by the community if he fell out of work for the other six. I was +not to be deceived by golden pictures set before me by interested +parties (that is to say, by almost every one I met), and I was to give +due weight to the difficulties and discouragements that beset the +intending immigrant. Were I an intending immigrant I would risk a good +deal of discomfort to get on to the land in British Columbia; and were I +rich, with no attachments outside England, I would swiftly buy me a farm +or a house in that country for the mere joy of it. + +I forgot those doleful and unhumorous conspirators among people who +fervently believed in the place; but afterwards the memory left a bad +taste in my mouth. Cities, like women, cannot be too careful what sort +of men they allow to talk about them. + +Time had changed Vancouver literally out of all knowledge. From the +station to the suburbs, and back to the wharves, every step was strange, +and where I remembered open spaces and still untouched timber, the +tramcars were fleeting people out to a lacrosse game. Vancouver is an +aged city, for only a few days previous to my arrival the Vancouver +Baby--_i.e._ the first child born in Vancouver--had been married. + +A steamer--once familiar in Table Bay--had landed a few hundred Sikhs +and Punjabi Jats--to each man his bundle--and the little groups walked +uneasy alone, keeping, for many of them had been soldiers, to the +military step. Yes, they said they had come to this country to get work. +News had reached their villages that work at great wages was to be had +in this country. Their brethren who had gone before had sent them the +news. Yes, and sometimes the money for the passage out. The money would +be paid back from the so-great wages to come. With interest? Assuredly +with interest.. Did men lend money for nothing in _any_ country? They +were waiting for their brethren to come and show them where to eat, and +later, how to work. Meanwhile this was a new country. How could they say +anything about it? No, it was not like Gurgaon or Shahpur or Jullundur. +The Sickness (plague) had come to all these places. It had come into the +Punjab by every road, and many--many--many had died. The crops, too, had +failed in some districts. Hearing the news about these so-great wages +they had taken ship for the belly's sake--for the money's sake--for the +children's sake. + +'Would they go back again?' + +They grinned as they nudged each other. The Sahib had not quite +understood. They had come over for the sake of the money--the rupees, +no, the dollars. The Punjab was their home where their villages lay, +where their people were waiting. Without doubt--without doubt--they +would go back. Then came the brethren already working in the +mills--cosmopolitans dressed in ready-made clothes, and smoking +cigarettes. + +'This way, O you people,' they cried. The bundles were reshouldered and +the turbaned knots melted away. The last words I caught were true Sikh +talk: 'But what about the money, O my brother?' + +Some Punjabis have found out that money can be too dearly bought. + +There was a Sikh in a sawmill, had been driver in a mountain battery at +home. Himself he was from Amritsar. (Oh, pleasant as cold water in a +thirsty land is the sound of a familiar name in a fair country!) + +'But you had your pension. Why did you come here?' + +'Heaven-born, because my sense was little. And there was also the +Sickness at Amritsar.' + +(The historian a hundred years hence will be able to write a book on +economic changes brought about by pestilence. There is a very +interesting study somewhere of the social and commercial effects of the +Black Death in England.) + +On a wharf, waiting for a steamer, some thirty Sikhs, many of them +wearing their old uniforms (which should not be allowed) were talking at +the tops of their voices, so that the shed rang like an Indian railway +station. A suggestion that if they spoke lower life would be easier was +instantly adopted. Then a senior officer with a British India medal +asked hopefully: 'Has the Sahib any orders where we are to go?' + +Alas he had none--nothing but goodwill and greetings for the sons of +the Khalsa, and they tramped off in fours. + +It is said that when the little riot broke out in Vancouver these +'heathen' were invited by other Asiatics to join in defending themselves +against the white man. They refused on the ground that they were +subjects of the King. I wonder what tales they sent back to their +villages, and where, and how fully, every detail of the affair was +talked over. White men forget that no part of the Empire can live or die +to itself. + +Here is a rather comic illustration of this on the material side. The +wonderful waters between Vancouver and Victoria are full of whales, +leaping and rejoicing in the strong blue all about the steamer. There +is, therefore, a whalery on an island near by, and I had the luck to +travel with one of the shareholders. + +'Whales are beautiful beasts,' he said affectionately. 'We've a contract +with a Scotch firm for every barrel of oil we can deliver for years +ahead. It's reckoned the best for harness-dressing.' + +He went on to tell me how a swift ship goes hunting whales with a +bomb-gun and explodes shells into their insides so that they perish at +once. + +'All the old harpoon and boat business would take till the cows come +home. We kill 'em right off.' + +'And how d'you strip 'em?' + +It seemed that the expeditious ship carried also a large air-pump, and +pumped up the carcass to float roundly till she could attend to it. At +the end of her day's kill she would return, towing sometimes as many as +four inflated whales to the whalery, which is a factory full of modern +appliances. The whales are hauled up inclined planes like logs to a +sawmill, and as much of them as will not make oil for the Scotch +leather-dresser, or cannot be dried for the Japanese market, is +converted into potent manure. + +'No manure can touch ours,' said the shareholder. 'It's so rich in bone, +d'you see. The only thing that has beat us up to date is their hides; +but we've fixed up a patent process now for turning 'em into floorcloth. +Yes, they're beautiful beasts. That fellow,' he pointed to a black hump +in a wreath of spray, 'would cut up a miracle.' + +'If you go on like this you won't have any whales left,' I said. + +'That is so. But the concern pays thirty per cent, and--a few years +back, no one believed in it.' + +I forgave him everything for the last sentence. + + + + +A CONCLUSION + + +Canada possesses two pillars of Strength and Beauty in Quebec and +Victoria. The former ranks by herself among those Mother-cities of whom +none can say 'This reminds me.' To realise Victoria you must take all +that the eye admires most in Bournemouth, Torquay, the Isle of Wight, +the Happy Valley at Hong-Kong, the Doon, Sorrento, and Camps Bay; add +reminiscences of the Thousand Islands, and arrange the whole round the +Bay of Naples, with some Himalayas for the background. + +Real estate agents recommend it as a little piece of England--the island +on which it stands is about the size of Great Britain--but no England is +set in any such seas or so fully charged with the mystery of the larger +ocean beyond. The high, still twilights along the beaches are out of the +old East just under the curve of the world, and even in October the sun +rises warm from the first. Earth, sky, and water wait outside every +man's door to drag him out to play if he looks up from his work; and, +though some other cities in the Dominion do not quite understand this +immoral mood of Nature, men who have made their money in them go off to +Victoria, and with the zeal of converts preach and preserve its +beauties. + +We went to look at a marine junk-store which had once been Esquimalt, a +station of the British Navy. It was reached through winding roads, +lovelier than English lanes, along watersides and parkways any one of +which would have made the fortune of a town. + +'Most cities,' a man said, suddenly, 'lay out their roads at right +angles. We do in the business quarters. What d'you think?' + +'I fancy some of those big cities will have to spend millions on curved +roads some day for the sake of a change,' I said. 'You've got what no +money can buy.' + +'That's what the men tell us who come to live in Victoria. And they've +had experience.' + +It is pleasant to think of the Western millionaire, hot from some +gridiron of rectangular civilisation, confirming good Victorians in the +policy of changing vistas and restful curves. + +There is a view, when the morning mists peel off the harbour where the +steamers tie up, or the Houses of Parliament on one hand, and a huge +hotel on the other, which as an example of cunningly-fitted-in +water-fronts and facades is worth a very long journey. The hotel was +just being finished. The ladies' drawing-room, perhaps a hundred feet by +forty, carried an arched and superbly enriched plaster ceiling of knops +and arabesques and interlacings, which somehow seemed familiar. + +'We saw a photo of it in _Country Life_,' the contractor explained. 'It +seemed just what the room needed, so one of our plasterers, a +Frenchman--that's him--took and copied it. It comes in all right, +doesn't it?' + +About the time the noble original was put up in England Drake might have +been sailing somewhere off this very coast. So, you see, Victoria +lawfully holds the copyright. + +I tried honestly to render something of the colour, the gaiety, and the +graciousness of the town and the island, but only found myself piling up +unbelievable adjectives, and so let it go with a hundred other wonders +and repented that I had wasted my time and yours on the anxious-eyed +gentlemen who talked of 'drawbacks.' A verse cut out of a newspaper +seems to sum up their attitude: + + As the Land of Little Leisure + Is the place where things are done, + So the Land of Scanty Pleasure + Is the place for lots of fun. + In the Land of Plenty Trouble + People laugh as people should, + But there's some one always kicking + In the Land of Heap Too Good! + +At every step of my journey people assured me that I had seen nothing of +Canada. Silent mining men from the North; fruit-farmers from the +Okanagan Valley; foremen of railway gangs, not so long from English +public schools; the oldest inhabitant of the town of Villeneuve, aged +twenty-eight; certain English who lived on the prairie and contrived to +get fun and good fellowship as well as money; the single-minded +wheat-growers and cattle-men; election agents; police troopers +expansive in the dusk of wayside halts; officials dependent on the +popular will, who talked as delicately as they walked; and queer souls +who did not speak English, and said so loudly in the dining-car--each, +in his or her own way, gave me to understand this. My excursion bore the +same relation to their country as a 'bus-ride down the Strand bears to +London, so I knew how they felt. + +The excuse is that our own flesh and blood are more interesting than +anybody else, and I held by birth the same right in them and their lives +as they held in any other part of the Empire. Because they had become a +people within the Empire my right was admitted and no word spoken; which +would not have been the case a few years ago. One may mistake many signs +on the road, but there is no mistaking the spirit of sane and realised +nationality, which fills the land from end to end precisely as the +joyous hum of a big dynamo well settled to its load makes a background +to all the other shop noises. For many reasons that Spirit came late, +but since it has come after the day of little things, doubts, and open +or veiled contempts, there is less danger that it will go astray among +the boundless wealth and luxury that await it. The people, the schools, +the churches, the Press in its degree, and, above all, the women, +understand without manifestoes that their land must now as always abide +under the Law in deed and in word and in thought. This is their +caste-mark, the ark of their covenant, their reason for being what they +are. In the big cities, with their village-like lists of police court +offences; in the wide-open little Western towns where the present is as +free as the lives and the future as safe as the property of their +inhabitants; in the coast cities galled and humiliated at their one +night's riot ('It's not our habit, Sir! It's not our habit!'); up among +the mountains where the officers of the law track and carefully bring +into justice the astounded malefactor; and behind the orderly prairies +to the barren grounds, as far as a single white man can walk, the +relentless spirit of the breed follows up, and oversees, and controls. +It does not much express itself in words, but sometimes, in intimate +discussion, one is privileged to catch a glimpse of the inner fires. +They burn hotly. + +'_We_ do not mean to be de-civilised,' said the first man with whom I +talked about it. + +That was the answer throughout--the keynote and the explanation. + +Otherwise the Canadians are as human as the rest of us to evade or deny +a plain issue. The duty of developing their country is always present, +but when it comes to taking thought, better thought, for her defence, +they refuge behind loose words and childish anticipations of +miracles--quite in the best Imperial manner. All admit that Canada is +wealthy; few that she is weak; still fewer that, unsupported, she would +very soon cease to exist as a nation. The anxious inquirer is told that +she does her duty towards England by developing her resources; that +wages are so high a paid army is out of the question; that she is +really maturing splendid defence schemes, but must not be hurried or +dictated to; that a little wise diplomacy is all that will ever be +needed in this so civilised era; that when the evil day comes something +will happen (it certainly will), the whole concluding, very often, with +a fervent essay on the immorality of war, all about as much to the point +as carrying a dove through the streets to allay pestilence. + +The question before Canada is not what she thinks or pays, but what an +enemy may think it necessary to make her pay. If she continues wealthy +and remains weak she will surely be attacked under one pretext or +another. Then she will go under, and her spirit will return to the dust +with her flag as it slides down the halliards. + +'That is absurd,' is always the quick answer. 'In her own interests +England could never permit it. What you speak of presupposes the fall of +England.' + +Not necessarily. Nothing worse than a stumble by the way; but when +England stumbles the Empire shakes. Canada's weakness is lack of men. +England's weakness is an excess of voters who propose to live at the +expense of the State. These loudly resent that any money should be +diverted from themselves; and since money is spent on fleets and armies +to protect the Empire while it is consolidating, they argue that if the +Empire ceased to exist armaments would cease too, and the money so saved +could be spent on their creature comforts. They pride themselves on +being an avowed and organised enemy of the Empire which, as others see +it, waits only to give them health, prosperity, and power beyond +anything their votes could win them in England. But their leaders need +their votes in England, as they need their outcries and discomforts to +help them in their municipal and Parliamentary careers. No engineer +lowers steam in his own boilers. + +So they are told little except evil of the great heritage outside, and +are kept compounded in cities under promise of free rations and +amusements. If the Empire were threatened they would not, in their own +interests, urge England to spend men and money on it. Consequently it +might be well if the nations within the Empire were strong enough to +endure a little battering unaided at the first outset--till such time, +that is, as England were permitted to move to their help. + +For this end an influx of good men is needed more urgently every year +during which peace holds--men loyal, clean, and experienced in +citizenship, with women not ignorant of sacrifice. + +Here the gentlemen who propose to be kept by their neighbours are our +helpful allies. They have succeeded in making uneasy the class +immediately above them, which is the English working class, as yet +undebauched by the temptation of State-aided idleness or +State-guaranteed irresponsibility. England has millions of such silent +careful folk accustomed, even yet, to provide for their own offspring, +to bring them up in a resolute fear of God, and to desire no more than +the reward of their own labours. A few years ago this class would not +have cared to shift; now they feel the general disquiet. They live close +to it. Tea-and-sugar borrowing friends have told them jocularly, or with +threats, of a good time coming when things will go hard with the +uncheerful giver. The prospect appeals neither to their reason nor to +their Savings Bank books. They hear--they do not need to read--the +speeches delivered in their streets on a Sunday morning. It is one of +their pre-occupations to send their children to Sunday School by +roundabout roads, lest they should pick up abominable blasphemies. When +the tills of the little shops are raided, or when the family +ne'er-do-well levies on his women with more than usual brutality, they +know, because they suffer, what principles are being put into practice. +If these people could quietly be shown a quiet way out of it all, very +many of them would call in their savings (they are richer than they +look), and slip quietly away. In the English country, as well as in the +towns, there is a feeling--not yet panic, but the dull edge of it--that +the future will be none too rosy for such as are working, or are in the +habit of working. This is all to our advantage. + +Canada can best serve her own interests and those of the Empire by +systematically exploiting this new recruiting-ground. Now that South +Africa, with the exception of Rhodesia, has been paralysed, and +Australia has not yet learned the things which belong to her peace, +Canada has the chance of the century to attract good men and capital +into the Dominion. But the men are much more important than the money. +They may not at first be as clever with the hoe as the Bessarabian or +the Bokhariot, or whatever the fashionable breed is, but they have +qualities of pluck, good humour, and a certain well-wearing virtue which +are not altogether bad. They will not hold aloof from the life of the +land, nor pray in unknown tongues to Byzantine saints; while the very +tenacity and caution which made them cleave to England this long, help +them to root deeply elsewhere. They are more likely to bring their women +than other classes, and those women will make sacred and individual +homes. A little-regarded Crown Colony has a proverb that no district can +be called settled till there are pots of musk in the house-windows--sure +sign that an English family has come to stay. It is not certain how much +of the present steamer-dumped foreign population has any such idea. We +have seen a financial panic in one country send whole army corps of +aliens kiting back to the lands whose allegiance they forswore. What +would they or their likes do in time of real stress, since no instinct +in their bodies or their souls would call them to stand by till the +storm were over? + +Surely the conclusion of the whole matter throughout the whole Empire +must be men and women of our own stock, habits, language, and hopes +brought in by every possible means under a well-settled policy? Time +will not be allowed us to multiply to unquestionable peace, but by +drawing upon England we can swiftly transfuse what we need of her +strength into her veins, and by that operation bleed her into health and +sanity Meantime, the only serious enemy to the Empire, within or +without, is that very Democracy which depends on the Empire for its +proper comforts, and in whose behalf these things are urged. + + +EGYPT OF THE MAGICIANS + +1913 + +SEA TRAVEL. +A RETURN TO THE EAST. +A SERPENT OF OLD NILE. +UP THE RIVER. +DEAD KINGS. +THE FACE OF THE DESERT. +THE RIDDLE OF EMPIRE. + +_And the magicians of Egypt did so with their enchantments_.--EXODUS +vii. 22. + + + + +I + + +SEA TRAVEL + +I had left Europe for no reason except to discover the Sun, and there +were rumours that he was to be found in Egypt. + +But I had not realised what more I should find there. + +A P. & O. boat carried us out of Marseilles. A serang of lascars, with +whistle, chain, shawl, and fluttering blue clothes, was at work on the +baggage-hatch. Somebody bungled at the winch. The serang called him a +name unlovely in itself but awakening delightful memories in the hearer. + +'O Serang, is that man a fool?' + +'Very foolish, sahib. He comes from Surat. He only comes for his food's +sake.' + +The serang grinned; the Surtee man grinned; the winch began again, and +the voices that called: 'Lower away! Stop her!' were as familiar as the +friendly whiff from the lascars' galley or the slap of bare feet along +the deck. But for the passage of a few impertinent years, I should have +gone without hesitation to share their rice. Serangs used to be very +kind to little white children below the age of caste. Most familiar of +all was the ship itself. It had slipped my memory, nor was there +anything in the rates charged to remind me, that single-screws still +lingered in the gilt-edged passenger trade. + +Some North Atlantic passengers accustomed to real ships made the +discovery, and were as pleased about it as American tourists at +Stratford-on-Avon. + +'Oh, come and see!' they cried. 'She has _one_ screw--only one screw! +Hear her thump! And _have_ you seen their old barn of a saloon? _And_ +the officers' library? It's open for two half-hours a day week-days and +one on Sundays. You pay a dollar and a quarter deposit on each book. We +wouldn't have missed this trip for anything. It's like sailing with +Columbus.' + +They wandered about--voluble, amazed, and happy, for they were getting +off at Port Said. + +I explored, too. From the rough-ironed table-linen, the thick +tooth-glasses for the drinks, the slummocky set-out of victuals at +meals, to the unaccommodating regulations in the curtainless cabin, +where they had not yet arrived at bunk-edge trays for morning tea, time +and progress had stood still with the P. & O. To be just, there were +electric-fan fittings in the cabins, but the fans were charged extra; +and there was a rumour, unverified, that one could eat on deck or in +one's cabin without a medical certificate from the doctor. All the rest +was under the old motto: '_Quis separabit_'--'This is quite separate +from other lines.' + +'After all,' said an Anglo-Indian, whom I was telling about civilised +ocean travel, 'they don't want you Egyptian trippers. They're sure of +_us_, because----' and he gave me many strong reasons connected with +leave, finance, the absence of competition, and the ownership of the +Bombay foreshore. + +'But it's absurd,' I insisted. 'The whole concern is out of date. +There's a notice on my deck forbidding smoking and the use of naked +lights, and there's a lascar messing about the hold-hatch outside my +cabin with a candle in a lantern.' + +Meantime, our one-screw tub thumped gingerly toward Port Said, because +we had no mails aboard, and the Mediterranean, exhausted after severe +February hysterics, lay out like oil. + +I had some talk with a Scotch quartermaster who complained that lascars +are not what they used to be, owing to their habit (but it has existed +since the beginning) of signing on as a clan or family--all sorts +together. + +The serang said that, for _his_ part, he had noticed no difference in +twenty years. 'Men are always of many kinds, sahib. And that is because +God makes men this and that. Not all one pattern--not by any means all +one pattern.' He told me, too, that wages were rising, but the price of +ghee, rice, and curry-stuffs was up, too, which was bad for wives and +families at Porbandar. 'And that also is thus, and no talk makes it +otherwise.' After Suez he would have blossomed into thin clothes and +long talks, but the bitter spring chill nipped him, as the thought of +partings just accomplished and work just ahead chilled the Anglo-Indian +contingent. Little by little one came at the outlines of the old +stories--a sick wife left behind here, a boy there, a daughter at +school, a very small daughter trusted to friends or hirelings, certain +separation for so many years and no great hope or delight in the future. +It was not a nice India that the tales hinted at. Here is one that +explains a great deal: + +There was a Pathan, a Mohammedan, in a Hindu village, employed by the +village moneylender as a debt-collector, which is not a popular trade. +He lived alone among Hindus, and--so ran the charge in the lower +court--he wilfully broke the caste of a Hindu villager by forcing on him +forbidden Mussulman food, and when that pious villager would have taken +him before the headman to make reparation, the godless one drew his +Afghan knife and killed the headman, besides wounding a few others. The +evidence ran without flaw, as smoothly as well-arranged cases should, +and the Pathan was condemned to death for wilful murder. He appealed +and, by some arrangement or other, got leave to state his case +personally to the Court of Revision. 'Said, I believe, that he did not +much trust lawyers, but that if the sahibs would give him a hearing, as +man to man, he might have a run for his money. + +Out of the jail, then, he came, and, Pathan-like, not content with his +own good facts, must needs begin by some fairy-tale that he was a secret +agent of the government sent down to spy on that village. Then he warmed +to it. Yes, he _was_ that money-lender's agent--a persuader of the +reluctant, if you like--working for a Hindu employer. Naturally, many +men owed him grudges. A lot of the evidence against him was quite true, +but the prosecution had twisted it abominably. About that knife, for +instance. True, he had a knife in his hand exactly as they had alleged. +But why? Because with that very knife he was cutting up and distributing +a roast sheep which he had given as a feast to the villagers. At that +feast, he sitting in amity with all his world, the village rose up at +the word of command, laid hands on him, and dragged him off to the +headman's house. How could he have broken _any_ man's caste when they +were all eating his sheep? And in the courtyard of the headman's house +they surrounded him with heavy sticks and worked themselves into anger +against him, each man exciting his neighbour. He was a Pathan. He knew +what that sort of talk meant. A man cannot collect debts without making +enemies. So he warned them. Again and again he warned them, saying: +'Leave me alone. Do not lay hands on me.' But the trouble grew worse, +and he saw it was intended that he should be clubbed to death like a +jackal in a drain. Then he said, 'If blows are struck, I strike, and _I_ +strike to kill, because I am a Pathan,' But the blows were struck, heavy +ones. Therefore, with the very Afghan knife that had cut up the mutton, +he struck the headman. 'Had you meant to kill the headman?' 'Assuredly! +I am a Pathan. When I strike, I strike to kill. I had warned them again +and again. I think I got him in the liver. He died. And that is all +there is to it, sahibs. It was my life or theirs. They would have taken +mine over my freely given meats. _Now_, what'll you do with me?' + +In the long run, he got several years for culpable homicide. + +'But,' said I, when the tale had been told, 'whatever made the lower +court accept all that village evidence? It was too good on the face of +it,' + +'The lower court said it could not believe it possible that so many +respectable native gentle could have banded themselves together to tell +a lie.' + +'Oh! Had the lower court been long in the country?' + +'It was a native judge,' was the reply. + +If you think this over in all its bearings, you will see that the lower +court was absolutely sincere. Was not the lower court itself a product +of Western civilisation, and, as such, bound to play up--to pretend to +think along Western lines--translating each grade of Indian village +society into its English equivalent, and ruling as an English judge +would have ruled? Pathans and, incidentally, English officials must look +after themselves. + +There is a fell disease of this century called 'snobbery of the soul.' +Its germ has been virulently developed in modern cultures from the +uncomplex bacillus isolated sixty years ago by the late William +Makepeace Thackeray. Precisely as Major Ponto, with his plated dishes +and stable-boy masquerading as footman, lied to himself and his guests +so--but the _Book of Snobs_ can only be brought up to date by him who +wrote it. + +Then, a man struck in from the Sudan--far and far to the south--with a +story of a discomposed judge and a much too collected prisoner. + +To the great bazaars of Omdurman, where all things are sold, came a +young man from the uttermost deserts of somewhere or other and heard a +gramophone. Life was of no value to him till he had bought the creature. +He took it back to his village, and at twilight set it going among his +ravished friends. His father, sheik of the village, came also, listened +to the loud shoutings without breath, the strong music lacking +musicians, and said, justly enough: 'This thing is a devil. You must not +bring devils into my village. Lock it up.' + +They waited until he had gone away and then began another tune. A second +time the sheik came, repeated the command, and added that if the singing +box was heard again, he would slay the buyer. But their curiosity and +joy defied even this, and for the third time (late at night) they +slipped in pin and record and let the djinn rave. So the sheik, with his +rifle, shot his son as he had promised, and the English judge before +whom he eventually came had all the trouble in the world to save that +earnest gray head from the gallows. Thus: + +'Now, old man, you must say guilty or not guilty.' + +'But I shot him. That is why I am here. I----' + +'Hush! It is a form of words which the law asks. _(Sotte voce_. Write +down that the old idiot doesn't understand.) Be still now.' + +'But I shot him. What else could I have done? He bought a devil in a +box, and----' + +'Quiet! That comes later. Leave talking.' + +'But I am sheik of the village. One must not bring devils into a +village. I _said_ I would shoot him.' + +'This matter is in the hands of the law. _I_ judge.' + +'What need? I shot him. Suppose that _your_ son had brought a devil in a +box to _your_ village----' + +They explained to him, at last, that under British rule fathers must +hand over devil-dealing children to be shot by the white men (the first +step, you see, on the downward path of State aid), and that he must go +to prison for several months for interfering with a government shoot. + +We are a great race. There was a pious young judge in Nigeria once, +who kept a condemned prisoner waiting very many minutes while he +hunted through the Hausa dictionary, word by word, for, +'May--God--have--mercy--on--your--soul.' + +And I heard another tale--about the Suez Canal this time--a hint of what +may happen some day at Panama. There was a tramp steamer, loaded with +high explosives, on her way to the East, and at the far end of the Canal +one of the sailors very naturally upset a lamp in the fo'c'sle. After a +heated interval the crew took to the desert alongside, while the captain +and the mate opened all cocks and sank her, not in the fairway but up +against a bank, just leaving room for a steamer to squeeze past. Then +the Canal authorities wired to her charterers to know exactly what there +might be in her; and it is said that the reply kept them awake of +nights, for it was their business to blow her up. + +Meantime, traffic had to go through, and a P. & O. steamer came along. +There was the Canal; there was the sunken wreck, marked by one elderly +Arab in a little boat with a red flag, and there was about five foot +clearance on each side for the P. & O. She went through a-tiptoe, +because even fifty tons of dynamite will jar a boat, perceptibly, and +the tramp held more--very much more, not to mention detonators. By some +absurd chance, almost the only passenger who knew about the thing at the +time was an old lady rather proud of the secret. + +'Ah,' she said, in the middle of that agonised glide, 'you may depend +upon it that if everybody knew what, I know, they'd all be on the other +side of the ship.' + +Later on, the authorities blew up the tramp with infinite precautions +from some two miles off, for which reason she neither destroyed the Suez +Canal nor dislocated the Sweet Water Canal alongside, but merely dug out +a hole a hundred feet or a hundred yards deep, and so vanished from +Lloyd's register. + +But no stories could divert one long from the peculiarities of that +amazing line which exists strictly for itself. There was a bathroom +(occupied) at the windy end of an open alleyway. In due time the bather +came out. + +Said the steward, as he swabbed out the tub for his successor: 'That was +the Chief Engineer. 'E's been some time. Must 'ave 'ad a mucky job +below, this mornin'.' + +I have a great admiration for Chief Engineers. They are men in +authority, needing all the comforts and aids that can possibly be given +them--such as bathrooms of their own close to their own cabins, where +they can clean off at leisure. + +It is not fair to mix them up with the ruck of passengers, nor is it +done on real ships. Nor, when a passenger wants a bath in the evening, +do the stewards of real ships roll their eyes like vergers in a +cathedral and say, 'We'll see if it can be managed.' They double down +the alleyway and shout, 'Matcham' or 'Ponting' or 'Guttman,' and in +fifteen seconds one of those swift three has the taps going and the +towels out. Real ships are not annexes of Westminster Abbey or Borstal +Reformatory. They supply decent accommodation in return for good money, +and I imagine that their directors instruct their staffs to look pleased +while at work. + +Some generations back there must have been an idea that the P. & O. was +vastly superior to all lines afloat--a sort of semipontifical show not +to be criticised. How much of the notion was due to its own excellence +and how much to its passenger-traffic monopoly does not matter. To-day, +it neither feeds nor tends its passengers, nor keeps its ships well +enough to put on any airs at all. + +For which reason, human nature being what it is, it surrounds itself +with an ungracious atmosphere of absurd ritual to cover grudged and +inadequate performance. + +What it really needs is to be dropped into a March North Atlantic, +without any lascars, and made to swim for its life between a C.P.R. boat +and a North German Lloyd--till it learns to smile. + + + + +II + +A RETURN TO THE EAST + +The East is a much larger slice of the world than Europeans care to +admit. Some say it begins at St. Gothard, where the smells of two +continents meet and fight all through that terrible restaurant-car +dinner in the tunnel. Others have found it at Venice on warm April +mornings. But the East is wherever one sees the lateen sail--that +shark's fin of a rig which for hundreds of years has dogged all white +bathers round the Mediterranean. There is still a suggestion of menace, +a hint of piracy, in the blood whenever the lateen goes by, fishing or +fruiting or coasting. + +'This is _not_ my ancestral trade,' she whispers to the accomplice sea. +'If everybody had their rights I should be doing something quite +different; for my father, he was the Junk, and my mother, she was the +Dhow, and between the two of 'em they made Asia.' Then she tacks, +disorderly but deadly quick, and shuffles past the unimaginative +steam-packet with her hat over one eye and a knife, as it were, up her +baggy sleeves. + +Even the stone-boats at Port Said, busied on jetty extensions, show +their untamed descent beneath their loaded clumsiness. They are all +children of the camel-nosed dhow, who is the mother of mischief; but it +was very good to meet them again in raw sunshine, unchanged in any rope +and patch. + +Old Port Said had disappeared beneath acres of new buildings where one +could walk at leisure without being turned back by soldiers. + +Two or three landmarks remained; two or three were reported as still in +existence, and one Face showed itself after many years--ravaged but +respectable--rigidly respectable. + +'Yes,' said the Face, 'I have been here all the time. But I have made +money, and when I die I am going home to be buried.' + +'Why not go home before you are buried, O Face?' + +'Because I have lived here _so_ long. Home is only good to be buried +in.' + +'And what do you do, nowadays?' + +'Nothing now. I live on my _rentes_--my income.' + +Think of it! To live icily in a perpetual cinematograph show of excited, +uneasy travellers; to watch huge steamers, sliding in and out all day +and all night like railway trucks, unknowing and unsought by a single +soul aboard; to talk five or six tongues indifferently, but to have no +country--no interest in any earth except one reservation in a +Continental cemetery. + +It was a cold evening after heavy rain and the half-flooded streets +reeked. But we undefeated tourists ran about in droves and saw all that +could be seen before train-time. We missed, most of us, the Canal +Company's garden, which happens to mark a certain dreadful and exact +division between East and West. + +Up to that point--it is a fringe of palms, stiff against the sky--the +impetus of home memories and the echo of home interests carry the young +man along very comfortably on his first journey. But at Suez one must +face things. People, generally the most sympathetic, leave the boat +there; the older men who are going on have discovered each other and +begun to talk shop; no newspapers come aboard, only clipped Reuter +telegrams; the world seems cruelly large and self-absorbed. One goes for +a walk and finds this little bit of kept ground, with comfortable +garden-gated houses on either side of the path. Then one begins to +wonder--in the twilight, for choice--when one will see those palms again +from the other side. Then the black hour of homesickness, vain regrets, +foolish promises, and weak despair shuts down with the smell of strange +earth and the cadence of strange tongues. + +Cross-roads and halting-places in the desert are always favoured by +djinns and afrits. The young man will find them waiting for him in the +Canal Company's garden at Port Said. + +On the other hand, if he is fortunate enough to have won the East by +inheritance, as there are families who served her for five or six +generations, he will meet no ghouls in that garden, but a free and a +friendly and an ample welcome from good spirits of the East that awaits +him. The voices of the gardeners and the watchmen will be as the +greetings of his father's servants in his father's house; the evening +smells and the sight of the hibiscus and poinsettia will unlock his +tongue in words and sentences that he thought he had clean forgotten, +and he will go back to the ship (I have seen) as a prince entering on +his kingdom. + +There was a man in our company--a young Englishman--who had just been +granted his heart's desire in the shape of some raw district south of +everything southerly in the Sudan, where, on two-thirds of a member of +Parliament's wage, under conditions of life that would horrify a +self-respecting operative, he will see perhaps some dozen white men in a +year, and will certainly pick up two sorts of fever. He had been moved +to work very hard for this billet by the representations of a friend in +the same service, who said that it was a 'rather decent sort of +service,' and he was all of a heat to reach Khartum, report for duty, +and fall to. If he is lucky, he may get a district where the people are +so virtuous that they do not know how to wear any clothes at all, and so +ignorant that they have never yet come across strong drink. + +The train that took us to Cairo was own sister in looks and fittings to +any South African train--for which I loved her--but she was a trial to +some citizens of the United States, who, being used to the Pullman, did +not understand the side-corridored, solid-compartment idea. The trouble +with a standardised democracy seems to be that, once they break loose +from their standards, they have no props. People are _not_ left behind +and luggage is rarely mislaid on the railroads of the older world. There +is an ordained ritual for the handling of all things, to which if a man +will only conform and keep quiet, he and his will be attended to with +the rest. The people that I watched would not believe this. They charged +about futilely and wasted themselves in trying to get ahead of their +neighbours. + +Here is a fragment from the restaurant-car: 'Look at here! Me and some +friends of mine are going to dine at this table. We don't want to be +separated and--' + +'You 'ave your number for the service, sar?' 'Number? What number? We +want to dine _here_, I tell you.' + +'You shall get your number, sar, for the first service?' + +'Haow's that? Where in thunder do we _get_ the numbers, anyway?' + +'I will give you the number, sar, at the time--for places at the first +service.' + +'Yes, but we want to dine together here--right _now._' + +'The service is not yet ready, sar.' + +And so on--and so on; with marchings and counter-marchings, and every +word nervously italicised. In the end they dined precisely where there +was room for them in that new world which they had strayed into. + +On one side our windows looked out on darkness of the waste; on the +other at the black Canal, all spaced with monstrous headlights of the +night-running steamers. Then came towns, lighted with electricity, +governed by mixed commissions, and dealing in cotton. Such a town, for +instance, as Zagazig, last seen by a very small boy who was lifted out +of a railway-carriage and set down beneath a whitewashed wall under +naked stars in an illimitable emptiness because, they told him, the +train was on fire. Childlike, this did not worry him. What stuck in his +sleepy mind was the absurd name of the place and his father's prophecy +that when he grew up he would 'come that way in a big steamer.' + +So all his life, the word 'Zagazig' carried memories of a brick shed, +the flicker of an oil-lamp's floating wick, a sky full of eyes, and an +engine coughing in a desert at the world's end; which memories returned +in a restaurant-car jolting through what seemed to be miles of +brilliantly lighted streets and factories. No one at the table had even +turned his head for the battlefields of Kassassin and Tel-el-Kebir. +After all, why should they? That work is done, and children are getting +ready to be born who will say: '_I_ can remember Gondokoro (or El-Obeid +or some undreamed of Clapham Junction, Abyssinia-way) before a single +factory was started--before the overhead traffic began. Yes, when there +was a fever--actually fever--in the city itself!' + +The gap is no greater than that between to-day's and t'other day's +Zagazig--between the horsed vans of the Overland Route in Lieutenant +Waghorn's time and the shining motor that flashed us to our Cairo hotel +through what looked like the suburbs of Marseilles or Rome. + +Always keep a new city till morning, 'In the daytime,' as it is written +in the Perspicuous Book,[6] 'thou hast long occupation,' Our window gave +on to the river, but before one moved toward it one heard the thrilling +squeal of the kites--those same thievish Companions of the Road who, at +that hour, were watching every Englishman's breakfast in every compound +and camp from Cairo to Calcutta. + +[Footnote 6: The Koran.] + +Voices rose from below--unintelligible words in maddeningly familiar +accents. A black boy in one blue garment climbed, using his toes as +fingers, the tipped mainyard of a Nile boat and framed himself in the +window. Then, because he felt happy, he sang, all among the wheeling +kites. And beneath our balcony rolled very Nile Himself, golden in +sunshine, wrinkled under strong breezes, with a crowd of creaking +cargo-boats waiting for a bridge to be opened. + +On the cut-stone quay above, a line of cab drivers--a _ticca-gharri_ +stand, nothing less--lolled and chaffed and tinkered with their +harnesses in every beautiful attitude of the ungirt East. All the ground +about was spotted with chewed sugarcane--first sign of the hot weather +all the world over. + +Troops with startlingly pink faces (one would not have noticed this +yesterday) rolled over the girder bridge between churning motors and +bubbling camels, and the whole long-coated loose-sleeved Moslem world +was awake and about its business, as befits sensible people who pray at +dawn. + +I made haste to cross the bridge and to hear the palms in the wind on +the far side. They sang as nobly as though they had been true coconuts, +and the thrust of the north wind behind them was almost as open-handed +as the thrust of the Trades. Then came a funeral--the sheeted corpse on +the shallow cot, the brisk-pacing bearers (if he was good, the sooner he +is buried the sooner in heaven; if bad, bury him swiftly for the sake of +the household--either way, as the Prophet says, do not let the mourners +go too long weeping and hungry)--the women behind, tossing their arms +and lamenting, and men and boys chanting low and high. + +They might have come forth from the Taksali Gate in the city of Lahore +on just such a cold weather morning as this, on their way to the +Mohammedan burial-grounds by the river. And the veiled countrywomen, +shuffling side by side, elbow pressed to hip, and eloquent right hand +pivoting round, palm uppermost, to give value to each shrill phrase, +might have been the wives of so many Punjabi cultivators but that they +wore another type of bangle and slipper. A knotty-kneed youth sitting +high on a donkey, both amuleted against the evil eye, chewed three +purplish-feet of sugar-cane, which made one envious as well as +voluptuously homesick, though the sugar-cane of Egypt is not to be +compared with that of Bombay. + +Hans Breitmann writes somewhere: + + Oh, if you live in Leyden town + You'll meet, if troot be told, + Der forms of all der freunds dot tied + When du werst six years old. + +And they were all there under the chanting palms--saices, orderlies, +pedlars, water-carriers, street-cleaners, chicken-sellers and the +slate-coloured buffalo with the china-blue eyes being talked to by a +little girl with the big stick. Behind the hedges of well-kept gardens +squatted the brown gardener, making trenches indifferently with a hoe or +a toe, and under the municipal lamp-post lounged the bronze policeman--a +touch of Arab about mouth and lean nostril--quite unconcerned with a +ferocious row between two donkey-men. They were fighting across the body +of a Nubian who had chosen to sleep in that place. Presently, one of +them stepped back on the sleeper's stomach. The Nubian grunted, elbowed +himself up, rolled his eyes, and pronounced a few utterly dispassionate +words. The warriors stopped, settled their headgear, and went away as +quickly as the Nubian went to sleep again. This was life, the real, +unpolluted stuff--worth a desert-full of mummies. And right through the +middle of it--hooting and kicking up the Nile--passed a Cook's steamer +all ready to take tourists to Assuan. From the Nubian's point of view +she, and not himself, was the wonder--as great as the Swiss-controlled, +Swiss-staffed hotel behind her, whose lift, maybe, the Nubian helped to +run. Marids, and afrits, guardians of hidden gold, who choke or crush +the rash seeker; encounters with the long-buried dead in a Cairo +back-alley; undreamed-of promotions, and suddenly lit loves are the +stuff of any respectable person's daily life; but the white man from +across the water, arriving in hundreds with his unveiled womenfolk, who +builds himself flying-rooms and talks along wires, who flees up and down +the river, mad to sit upon camels and asses, constrained to throw down +silver from both hands--at once a child and a warlock--this thing must +come to the Nubian sheer out of the _Thousand and One Nights_. At any +rate, the Nubian was perfectly sane. Having eaten, he slept in God's own +sunlight, and I left him, to visit the fortunate and guarded and +desirable city of Cairo, to whose people, male and female, Allah has +given subtlety in abundance. Their jesters are known to have surpassed +in refinement the jesters of Damascus, as did their twelve police +captains the hardiest and most corrupt of Bagdad in the tolerant days of +Harun-al-Raschid; while their old women, not to mention their young +wives, could deceive the Father of Lies himself. Delhi is a great +place--most bazaar storytellers in India make their villain hail from +there; but when the agony and intrigue are piled highest and the tale +halts till the very last breathless sprinkle of cowries has ceased to +fall on his mat, why then, with wagging head and hooked forefinger, the +storyteller goes on: + +'_But_ there was a man from Cairo, an Egyptian of the Egyptians, +who'--and all the crowd knows that a bit of real metropolitan devilry is +coming. + + + + +III + + +A SERPENT OF OLD NILE + +Modern Cairo is an unkempt place. The streets are dirty and +ill-constructed, the pavements unswept and often broken, the tramways +thrown, rather than laid, down, the gutters neglected. One expects +better than this in a city where the tourist spends so much every +season. Granted that the tourist is a dog, he comes at least with a bone +in his mouth, and a bone that many people pick. He should have a cleaner +kennel. The official answer is that the tourist-traffic is a flea-bite +compared with the cotton industry. Even so, land in Cairo city must be +too valuable to be used for cotton growing. It might just as well be +paved or swept. There is some sort of authority supposed to be in charge +of municipal matters, but its work is crippled by what is called 'The +Capitulations.' It was told to me that every one in Cairo except the +English, who appear to be the mean whites of these parts, has the +privilege of appealing to his consul on every conceivable subject from +the disposal of a garbage-can to that of a corpse. As almost every one +with claims to respectability, and certainly every one without any, +keeps a consul, it follows that there is one consul per superficial +meter, arshin, or cubit of Ezekiel within the city. And since every +consul is zealous for the honour of his country and not at all above +annoying the English on general principles, municipal progress is slow. + +Cairo strikes one as unventilated and unsterilised, even when the sun +and wind are scouring it together. The tourist talks a good deal, as you +may see here, but the permanent European resident does not open his +mouth more than is necessary--sound travels so far across flat water. +Besides, the whole position of things, politically and administratively, +is essentially false. + +Here is a country which is not a country but a longish strip of +market-garden, nominally in charge of a government which is not a +government but the disconnected satrapy of a half-dead empire, +controlled pecksniffingly by a Power which is not a Power but an Agency, +which Agency has been tied up by years, custom, and blackmail into all +sorts of intimate relations with six or seven European Powers, all with +rights and perquisites, none of whose subjects seem directly amenable to +any Power which at first, second, or third hand is supposed to be +responsible. That is the barest outline. To fill in the details (if any +living man knows them) would be as easy as to explain baseball to an +Englishman or the Eton Wall game to a citizen of the United States. But +it is a fascinating play. There are Frenchmen in it, whose logical mind +it offends, and they revenge themselves by printing the finance-reports +and the catalogue of the Bulak Museum in pure French. There are Germans +in it, whose demands must be carefully weighed--not that they can by any +means be satisfied, but they serve to block other people's. There are +Russians in it, who do not very much matter at present but will be heard +from later. There are Italians and Greeks in it (both rather pleased +with themselves just now), full of the higher finance and the finer +emotions. There are Egyptian pashas in it, who come back from Paris at +intervals and ask plaintively to whom they are supposed to belong. There +is His Highness, the Khedive, in it, and _he_ must be considered not a +little, and there are women in it, up to their eyes. And there are great +English cotton and sugar interests, and angry English importers +clamouring to know why they cannot do business on rational lines or get +into the Sudan, which they hold is ripe for development if the +administration there would only see reason. Among these conflicting +interests and amusements sits and perspires the English official, whose +job is irrigating or draining or reclaiming land on behalf of a trifle +of ten million people, and he finds himself tripped up by skeins of +intrigue and bafflement which may ramify through half a dozen harems and +four consulates. All this makes for suavity, toleration, and the blessed +habit of not being surprised at anything whatever. + +Or, so it seemed to me, watching a big dance at one of the hotels. Every +European race and breed, and half of the United States were +represented, but I fancied I could make out three distinct groupings. +The tourists with the steamer-trunk creases still across their dear, +excited backs; the military and the officials sure of their partners +beforehand, and saying clearly what ought to be said; and a third +contingent, lower-voiced, softer-footed, and keener-eyed than the other +two, at ease, as gipsies are on their own ground, flinging half-words in +local _argot_ over shoulders at their friends, understanding on the nod +and moved by springs common to their clan only. For example, a woman was +talking flawless English to her partner, an English officer. Just before +the next dance began, another woman beckoned to her, Eastern fashion, +all four fingers flicking downward. The first woman crossed to a potted +palm; the second moved toward it also, till the two drew, up, not +looking at each other, the plant between them. Then she who had beckoned +spoke in a strange tongue _at_ the palm. The first woman, still looking +away, answered in the same fashion with a rush of words that rattled +like buckshot through the stiff fronds. Her tone had nothing to do with +that in which she greeted her new partner, who came up as the music +began. The one was a delicious drawl; the other had been the guttural +rasp and click of the kitchen and the bazaar. So she moved off, and, in +a little, the second woman disappeared into the crowd. Most likely it +was no more than some question of the programme or dress, but the +prompt, feline stealth and coolness of it, the lightning-quick return to +and from world-apart civilisations stuck in my memory. + +So did the bloodless face of a very old Turk, fresh from some horror of +assassination in Constantinople in which he, too, had been nearly +pistolled, but, they said, he had argued quietly over the body of a late +colleague, as one to whom death was of no moment, until the hysterical +Young Turks were abashed and let him get away--to the lights and music +of this elegantly appointed hotel. + +These modern 'Arabian Nights' are too hectic for quiet folk. I declined +upon a more rational Cairo--the Arab city where everything is as it was +when Maruf the Cobbler fled from Fatima-el-Orra and met the djinn in the +Adelia Musjid. The craftsmen and merchants sat on their shop-boards, a +rich mystery of darkness behind them, and the narrow gullies were +polished to shoulder-height by the mere flux of people. Shod white men, +unless they are agriculturists, touch lightly, with their hands at most, +in passing. Easterns lean and loll and squat and sidle against things as +they daunder along. When the feet are bare, the whole body thinks. +Moreover, it is unseemly to buy or to do aught and be done with it. Only +people with tight-fitting clothes that need no attention have time for +that. So we of the loose skirt and flowing trousers and slack slipper +make full and ample salutations to our friends, and redouble them toward +our ill-wishers, and if it be a question of purchase, the stuff must be +fingered and appraised with a proverb or so, and if it be a +fool-tourist who thinks that he cannot be cheated, O true believers! +draw near and witness how we shall loot him. + +But I bought nothing. The city thrust more treasure upon me than I could +carry away. It came out of dark alleyways on tawny camels loaded with +pots; on pattering asses half buried under nets of cut clover; in the +exquisitely modelled hands of little children scurrying home from the +cookshop with the evening meal, chin pressed against the platter's edge +and eyes round with responsibility above the pile; in the broken lights +from jutting rooms overhead, where the women lie, chin between palms, +looking out of windows not a foot from the floor; in every glimpse into +every courtyard, where the men smoke by the tank; in the heaps of +rubbish and rotten bricks that flanked newly painted houses, waiting to +be built, some day, into houses once more; in the slap and slide or the +heelless red-and-yellow slippers all around, and, above all, in the +mixed delicious smells of frying butter, Mohammedan bread, kababs, +leather, cooking-smoke, assafetida, peppers, and turmeric. Devils cannot +abide the smell of burning turmeric, but the right-minded man loves it. +It stands for evening that brings all home, the evening meal, the +dipping of friendly hands in the dish, the one face, the dropped veil, +and the big, guttering pipe afterward. + +Praised be Allah for the diversity of His creatures and for the Five +Advantages of Travel and for the glories of the Cities of the Earth! +Harun-al-Raschid, in roaring Bagdad of old, never delighted himself to +the limits of such a delight as was mine, that afternoon. It is true +that the call to prayer, the cadence of some of the street-cries, and +the cut of some of the garments differed a little from what I had been +brought up to; but for the rest, the shadow on the dial had turned back +twenty degrees for me, and I found myself saying, as perhaps the dead +say when they have recovered their wits, 'This is my real world again,' + +Some men are Mohammedan by birth, some by training, and some by fate, +but I have never met an Englishman yet who hated Islam and its people as +I have met Englishmen who hated some other faiths. _Musalmani awadani_, +as the saying goes--where there are Mohammedans, there is a +comprehensible civilisation. + +Then we came upon a deserted mosque of pitted brick colonnades round a +vast courtyard open to the pale sky. It was utterly empty except for its +own proper spirit, and that caught one by the throat as one entered. +Christian churches may compromise with images and side-chapels where the +unworthy or abashed can traffic with accessible saints. Islam has but +one pulpit and one stark affirmation--living or dying, one only--and +where men have repeated that in red-hot belief through centuries, the +air still shakes to it. + +Some say now that Islam is dying and that nobody cares; others that, if +she withers in Europe and Asia, she will renew herself in Africa and +will return--terrible--after certain years, at the head of all the nine +sons of Ham; others dream that the English understand Islam as no one +else does, and, in years to be, Islam will admit this and the world will +be changed. If you go to the mosque Al Azhar--the thousand-year-old +University of Cairo--you will be able to decide for yourself. There is +nothing to see except many courts, cool in hot weather, surrounded by +cliff-like brick walls. Men come and go through dark doorways, giving on +to yet darker cloisters, as freely as though the place was a bazaar. +There are no aggressive educational appliances. The students sit on the +ground, and their teachers instruct them, mostly by word of mouth, in +grammar, syntax, logic; _al-hisab_, which is arithmetic; _al-jab'r w'al +muqabalah_, which is algebra; _at-tafsir,_ commentaries on the Koran, +and last and most troublesome, _al-ahadis,_ traditions, and yet more +commentaries on the law of Islam, which leads back, like everything, to +the Koran once again. (For it is written, 'Truly the Quran is none other +than a revelation.') It is a very comprehensive curriculum. No man can +master it entirely, but any can stay there as long as he pleases. The +university provides commons--twenty-five thousand loaves a day, I +believe,--and there is always a place to lie down in for such as do not +desire a shut room and a bed. Nothing could be more simple or, given +certain conditions, more effective. Close upon six hundred professors, +who represent officially or unofficially every school or thought, teach +ten or twelve thousand students, who draw from every Mohammedan +community, west and east between Manila and Morocco, north and south +between Kamchatka and the Malay mosque at Cape Town. These drift off to +become teachers of little schools, preachers at mosques, students of the +Law known to millions (but rarely to Europeans), dreamers, devotees, or +miracle-workers in all the ends of the earth. The man who interested me +most was a red-bearded, sunk-eyed mullah from the Indian frontier, not +likely to be last at any distribution of food, who stood up like a lean +wolfhound among collies in a little assembly at a doorway. + +And there was another mosque, sumptuously carpeted and lighted (which +the Prophet does not approve of), where men prayed in the dull mutter +that, at times, mounts and increases under the domes like the boom of +drums or the surge of a hot hive before the swarm flings out. And round +the corner of it, one almost ran into Our inconspicuous and wholly +detached Private of Infantry, his tunic open, his cigarette alight, +leaning against some railings and considering the city below. Men in +forts and citadels and garrisons all the world over go up at twilight as +automatically as sheep at sundown, to have a last look round. They say +little and return as silently across the crunching gravel, detested by +bare feet, to their whitewashed rooms and regulated lives. One of the +men told me he thought well of Cairo. It was interesting. 'Take it from +me,' he said, 'there's a lot in seeing places, because you can remember +'em afterward.' + +He was very right. The purple and lemon-coloured hazes of dusk and +reflected day spread over the throbbing, twinkling streets, masked the +great outline of the citadel and the desert hills, and conspired to +confuse and suggest and evoke memories, till Cairo the Sorceress cast +her proper shape and danced before me in the heartbreaking likeness of +every city I had known and loved, a little farther up the road. + +It was a cruel double-magic. For in the very hour that my homesick soul +had surrendered itself to the dream of the shadow that had turned back +on the dial, I realised all the desolate days and homesickness of all +the men penned in far-off places among strange sounds and smells. + + + + +IV + + +UP THE RIVER + +Once upon a time there was a murderer who got off with a life-sentence. +What impressed him most, when he had time to think, was the frank +boredom of all who took part in the ritual. + +'It was just like going to a doctor or a dentist,' he explained. '_You_ +come to 'em very full of your affairs, and then you discover that it's +only part of their daily work to _them_. I expect,' he added, 'I should +have found it the same if--er--I'd gone on to the finish.' + +He would have. Break into any new Hell or Heaven and you will be met at +its well-worn threshold by the bored experts in attendance. + +For three weeks we sat on copiously chaired and carpeted decks, +carefully isolated from everything that had anything to do with Egypt, +under chaperonage of a properly orientalised dragoman. Twice or thrice +daily, our steamer drew up at a mud-bank covered with donkeys. Saddles +were hauled out of a hatch in our bows; the donkeys were dressed, dealt +round like cards: we rode off through crops or desert, as the case might +be, were introduced in ringing tones to a temple, and were then duly +returned to our bridge and our Baedekers. For sheer comfort, not to say +padded sloth, the life was unequalled, and since the bulk of our +passengers were citizens of the United States--Egypt in winter ought to +be admitted into the Union as a temporary territory--there was no lack +of interest. They were overwhelmingly women, with here and there a +placid nose-led husband or father, visibly suffering from congestion of +information about his native city. I had the joy of seeing two such men +meet. They turned their backs resolutely on the River, bit and lit +cigars, and for one hour and a quarter ceased not to emit statistics of +the industries, commerce, manufacture, transport, and journalism of +their towns;--Los Angeles, let us say, and Rochester, N.Y. It sounded +like a duel between two cash-registers. + +One forgot, of course, that all the dreary figures were alive to them, +and as Los Angeles spoke Rochester visualised. Next day I met an +Englishman from the Soudan end of things, very full of a little-known +railway which had been laid down in what had looked like raw desert, and +therefore had turned out to be full of paying freight. He was in the +full-tide of it when Los Angeles ranged alongside and cast anchor, +fascinated by the mere roll of numbers. + +'Haow's that?' he cut in sharply at a pause. + +He was told how, and went on to drain my friend dry concerning that +railroad, out of sheer fraternal interest, as he explained, in 'any +darn' thing that's being made anywheres,' + +'So you see,' my friend went on, 'we shall be bringing Abyssinian cattle +into Cairo.' + +'On the hoof?' One quick glance at the Desert ranges. + +'No, no! By rail and River. And after _that_ we're going to grow cotton +between the Blue and the White Nile and knock spots out of the States.' + +'Ha-ow's that?' + +'This way.' The speaker spread his first and second fingers fanwise +under the big, interested beak. 'That's the Blue Nile. And that's the +White. There's a difference of so many feet between 'em, an' in that +fork here, 'tween my fingers, we shall--' + +'_I_ see. Irrigate on the strength of the little difference in the +levels. How many acres?' + +Again Los Angeles was told. He expanded like a frog in a shower. 'An' I +thought,' he murmured, 'Egypt was all mummies and the Bible! _I_ used to +know something about cotton. Now we'll talk.' + +All that day the two paced the deck with the absorbed insolente of +lovers; and, lover-like, each would steal away and tell me what a +splendid soul was his companion. + +That was one type; but there were others--professional men who did not +make or sell things--and these the hand of an all-exacting Democracy +seemed to have run into one mould. They 'were not reticent, but no +matter whence they hailed, their talk was as standardised as the +fittings of a Pullman. + +I hinted something of this to a woman aboard who was learned in their +sermons of either language. + +'I think,' she began, 'that the staleness you complain of--' + +'I never said "staleness,"' I protested. + +'But you thought it. The staleness you noticed is due to our men being +so largely educated by old women--old maids. Practically till he goes to +College, and not always then, a boy can't get away from them.' + +'Then what happens?' + +'The natural result. A man's instinct is to teach a boy to think for +himself. If a woman can't make a boy think _as_ she thinks, she sits +down and cries. A man hasn't any standards. He makes 'em. A woman's the +most standardised being in the world. She has to be. _Now_ d'you see?' + +'Not yet.' + +'Well, our trouble in America is that we're being school-marmed to +death. You can see it in any paper you pick up. What were those men +talking about just now?' + +'Food adulteration, police-reform, and beautifying waste-lots in towns,' +I replied promptly. + +She threw up her hands. 'I knew it!' she cried. 'Our great National +Policy of co-educational housekeeping! Ham-frills and pillow-shams. Did +you ever know a man get a woman's respect by parading around creation +with a dish-clout pinned to his coat-tails?' + +'But if his woman ord----told him to do it?' I suggested. + +'Then she'd despise him the more for doing it. _You_ needn't laugh. +'You're coming to the same sort of thing in England.' + +I returned to the little gathering. A woman was talking to them as one +accustomed to talk from birth. They listened with the rigid attention of +men early trained to listen to, but not to talk with, women. She was, to +put it mildly, the mother of all she-bores, but when she moved on, no +man ventured to say as much. + +'That's what I mean by being school-manned to death,' said my +acquaintance wickedly. 'Why, she bored 'em stiff; but they are so well +brought up, they didn't even know they were bored. Some day the American +Man is going to revolt.' + +'And what'll the American Woman do?' + +'She'll sit and cry--and it'll do her good.' + +Later on, I met a woman from a certain Western State seeing God's great, +happy, inattentive world for the first time, and rather distressed that +it was not like hers. She had always understood that the English were +brutal to their wives--the papers of her State said so. (If you only +knew the papers of her State I) But she had not noticed any scandalous +treatment so far, and Englishwomen, whom she admitted she would never +understand, seemed to enjoy a certain specious liberty and equality; +while Englishmen were distinctly kind to girls in difficulties over +their baggage and tickets on strange railways. Quite a nice people, she +concluded, but without much sense of humour. One day, she showed me +what looked like a fashion-paper print of a dress-stuff--a pretty oval +medallion of stars on a striped grenadine background that somehow seemed +familiar. + +'How nice! What is it?' I asked. + +'Our National Flag,' she replied. + +'Indeed. But it doesn't look quite----' + +'No. This is a new design for arranging the stars so that they shall be +easier to count and more decorative in effect. We're going to take a +vote on it in our State, where _we_ have the franchise. I shall cast my +vote when I get home.' + +'Really! And how will you vote?' + +'I'm just thinking that out.' She spread the picture on her knee and +considered it, head to one side, as though it were indeed dress +material. + +All this while the land of Egypt marched solemnly beside us on either +hand. The river being low, we saw it from the boat as one long plinth, +twelve to twenty feet high of brownish, purplish mud, visibly upheld +every hundred yards or so by glistening copper caryatides in the shape +of naked men baling water up to the crops above. Behind that bright +emerald line ran the fawn-or tiger-coloured background of desert, and a +pale blue sky closed all. There was Egypt even as the Pharaohs, their +engineers and architects, had seen it--land to cultivate, folk and +cattle for the work, and outside that work no distraction nor allurement +of any kind whatever, save when the dead were taken to their place +beyond the limits of cultivation. When the banks grew lower, one looked +across as much as two miles of green-stuff packed like a toy Noah's-ark +with people, camels, sheep, goats, oxen, buffaloes, and an occasional +horse. The beasts stood as still, too, as the toys, because they were +tethered or hobbled each to his own half-circle of clover, and moved +forward when that was eaten. Only the very little kids were loose, and +these played on the flat mud roofs like kittens. + +No wonder 'every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians.' The +dusty, naked-footed field-tracks are cut down to the last centimetre of +grudged width; the main roads are lifted high on the flanks of the +canals, unless the permanent-way of some light railroad can be pressed +to do duty for them. The wheat, the pale ripened tufted sugar-cane, the +millet, the barley, the onions, the fringed castor-oil bushes jostle +each other for foothold, since the Desert will not give them room; and +men chase the falling Nile inch by inch, each dawn, with new furrowed +melon-beds on the still dripping mud-banks. + +Administratively, such a land ought to be a joy. The people do not +emigrate; all their resources are in plain sight; they are as accustomed +as their cattle to being led about. All they desire, and it has been +given them, is freedom from murder and mutilation, rape and robbery. The +rest they can attend to in their silent palm-shaded villages where the +pigeons coo and the little children play in the dust. + +But Western civilisation is a devastating and a selfish game. Like the +young woman from 'our State,' it says in effect: 'I am rich. I've +nothing to do. I _must_ do something. I shall take up social reform.' + +Just now there is a little social reform in Egypt which is rather +amusing. The Egyptian cultivator borrows money; as all farmers must. +This land without hedge or wild-flower is his passion by age-long +inheritance and suffering, by, in and for which he lives. He borrows to +develop it and to buy more at from L30 to L200 per acre, the profit on +which, when all is paid, works out at between L5 to L10 per acre. +Formerly, he borrowed from the local money-lenders, mostly Greeks, at 30 +per cent per annum and over. This rate is not excessive, so long as +public opinion allows the borrower from time to time to slay the lender; +but modern administration calls that riot and murder. Some years ago, +therefore, there was established a State-guaranteed Bank which lent to +the cultivators at eight per cent, and the cultivator zealously availed +himself of that privilege. He did not default more than in reason, but +being a farmer, he naturally did not pay up till threatened with being +sold up. So he prospered and bought more land, which was his heart's +desire. This year--1913--the administration issued sudden orders that no +man owning less than five acres could borrow on security of his land. +The matter interested me directly, because I held five hundred pounds +worth of shares in that State-guaranteed Bank, and more than half our +clients were small men of less than five acres. So I made inquiries in +quarters that seemed to possess information, and was told that the new +law was precisely on all-fours with the Homestead Act or the United +States and France, and the intentions of Divine Providence--or words to +that effect. + +'But,' I asked, 'won't this limitation of credit prevent the men with +less than five acres from borrowing more to buy more land and getting on +in the world?' + +'Yes,' was the answer, 'of course it will. That's just what we want to +prevent. Half these fellows ruin themselves trying to buy more land. +We've got to protect them against themselves.' + +That, alas! is the one enemy against which no law can protect any son of +Adam; since the real reasons that make or break a man are too absurd or +too obscene to be reached from outside. Then I cast about in other +quarters to discover what the cultivator was going to do about it. + +'Oh, him?' said one of my many informants. '_He's_ all right. There are +about six ways of evading the Act that, _I_ know of. The fellah probably +knows another six. He has been trained to look after himself since the +days of Rameses. He can forge land-transfers for one thing; borrow land +enough to make his holding more than five acres for as long as it takes +to register a loan; get money from his own women (yes, that's one result +of modern progress in this land!) or go back to his old friend the Greek +at 30 per cent.' + +'Then the Greek will sell him up, and that will be against the law, +won't it?' I said. + +'Don't you worry about the Greek. He can get through any law ever made +if there's five piastres on the other side of it.' + +'Maybe; but _was_ the Agricultural Bank selling the cultivators up too +much?' + +'Not in the least. The number of small holdings is on the increase, if +anything. Most cultivators won't pay a loan until you point a +judgment-summons at their head. They think that shows they're men of +consequence. This swells the number of judgment-summonses issued, but it +doesn't mean a land-sale for each summons. Another fact is that in real +life some men don't get on as well as others. Either they don't farm +well enough, or they take to hashish, or go crazy about a girl and +borrow money for her, or--er--something of that kind, and they are sold +up. You may have noticed that.' + +'I have. And meantime, what is the fellah doing?' + +'Meantime, the fellah has misread the Act--as usual. He thinks it's +retrospective, and that he needn't pay past debts. They may make +trouble, but I fancy your Bank will keep quiet.' + +'Keep quiet! With the bottom knocked out of two-thirds of its business +and--and my five hundred pounds involved!' + +'Is that your trouble? I don't think your shares will rise in a hurry; +but if you want some fun, go and talk to the French about it,' + +This seemed as good a way as any of getting a little interest. The +Frenchman that I went to spoke with a certain knowledge of finance and +politics and the natural malice of a logical race against an illogical +horde. + +'Yes,' he said. 'The idea of limiting credit under these circumstances +is absurd. But that is not all. People are not frightened, business is +not upset by one absurd idea, but by the possibilities of more,' + +'Are there any more ideas, then, that are going to be tried on this +country?' + +'Two or three,' he replied placidly. 'They are all generous; but they +are all ridiculous. Egypt is not a place where one should promulgate +ridiculous ideas.' + +'But my shares--my shares!' I cried. 'They have already dropped several +points.' + +'It is possible. They will drop more. Then they will rise.' + +'Thank you. But why?' + +'Because the idea is fundamentally absurd. That will never be admitted +by your people, but there will be arrangements, accommodations, +adjustments, till it is all the same as it used to be. It will be the +concern of the Permanent Official--poor devil!--to pull it straight. It +is always his concern. Meantime, prices will rise for all things.' + +'Why?' + +'Because the land is the chief security in Egypt. If a man cannot borrow +on that security, the rates of interest will increase on whatever other +security he offers. That will affect all work and wages and Government +contracts.' + +He put it so convincingly and with so many historical illustrations +that I saw whole perspectives of the old energetic Pharaohs, masters of +life and death along the River, checked in mid-career by cold-blooded +accountants chanting that not even the Gods themselves can make two plus +two more than four. And the vision ran down through the ages to one +little earnest head on a Cook's steamer, bent sideways over the vital +problem of rearranging 'our National Flag' so that it should be 'easier +to count the stars.' + +For the thousandth time: Praised be Allah for the diversity of His +creatures! + + + + +V + + +DEAD KINGS + +The Swiss are the only people who have taken the trouble to master the +art of hotel-keeping. Consequently, in the things that really +matter--beds, baths, and victuals--they control Egypt; and since every +land always throws back to its aboriginal life (which is why the United +States delight in telling aged stories), any ancient Egyptian would at +once understand and join in with the life that roars through the +nickel-plumbed tourist-barracks on the river, where all the world +frolics in the sunshine. At first sight, the show lends itself to cheap +moralising, till one recalls that one only sees busy folk when they are +idle, and rich folk when they have made their money. A citizen of the +United States--his first trip abroad--pointed out a middle-aged +Anglo-Saxon who was relaxing after the manner of several school-boys. + +'There's a sample!' said the Son of Hustle scornfully. 'Tell me, _he_ +ever did anything in his life?' Unluckily he had pitched upon one who, +when he is in collar, reckons thirteen and a half hours a fairish day's +work. + +Among this assembly were men and women burned to an even blue-black +tint--civilised people with bleached hair and sparkling eyes. They +explained themselves as 'diggers'--just diggers--and opened me a new +world. Granted that all Egypt is one big undertaker's emporium, what +could be more fascinating than to get Government leave to rummage in a +corner of it, to form a little company and spend the cold weather trying +to pay dividends in the shape of amethyst necklaces, lapis-lazuli +scarabs, pots of pure gold, and priceless bits of statuary? Or, if one +is rich, what better fun than to grub-stake an expedition on the +supposed site of a dead city and see what turns up? There was a big-game +hunter who had used most of the Continent, quite carried away by this +sport. + +'I'm going to take shares in a city next year, and watch the digging +myself,' he said. 'It beats elephants to pieces. In _this_ game you're +digging up dead things and making them alive. Aren't you going to have a +flutter?' + +He showed me a seductive little prospectus. Myself, I would sooner not +lay hands on a dead man's kit or equipment, especially when he has gone +to his grave in the belief that the trinkets guarantee salvation. Of +course, there is the other argument, put forward by sceptics, that the +Egyptian was a blatant self-advertiser, and that nothing would please +him more than the thought that he was being looked at and admired after +all these years. Still, one might rob some shrinking soul who didn't see +it in that light. + +At the end of spring the diggers flock back out of the Desert and +exchange chaff and flews in the gorgeous verandahs. For example, A's +company has made a find of priceless stuff, Heaven knows how old, and +is--not too meek about it. Company B, less fortunate, hints that if only +A knew to what extent their native diggers had been stealing and +disposing of the thefts, under their very archaeological noses, they +would not be so happy. + +'Nonsense,' says Company A. 'Our diggers are above suspicion. Besides, +we watched 'em.' + +'_Are_ they?' is the reply. 'Well, next time you are in Berlin, go to +the Museum and you'll see what the Germans have got hold of. It must +have come out of your ground. The Dynasty proves it.' So A's cup is +poisoned--till next year. + +No collector or curator of a museum should have any moral scruples +whatever; and I have never met one who had; though I have been informed +by deeply-shocked informants of four nationalities that the Germans are +the most flagrant pirates of all. + +The business of exploration is about as romantic as earth-work on Indian +railways. There are the same narrow-gauge trams and donkeys, the same +shining gangs in the borrow-pits and the same skirling dark-blue crowds +of women and children with the little earth-baskets. But the hoes are +not driven in, nor the clods jerked aside at random, and when the work +fringes along the base of some mighty wall, men use their hands +carefully. A white man--or he was white at breakfast-time--patrols +through the continually renewed dust-haze. Weeks may pass without a +single bead, but anything may turn up at any moment, and it is his to +answer the shout of discovery. + +We had the good fortune to stay a while at the Headquarters of the +Metropolitan Museum (New York) in a valley riddled like a rabbit-warren +with tombs. Their stables, store-houses, and servants' quarters are old +tombs; their talk is of tombs, and their dream (the diggers' dream +always) is to discover a virgin tomb where the untouched dead lie with +their jewels upon them. Four miles away are the wide-winged, rampant +hotels. Here is nothing whatever but the rubbish of death that died +thousands of years ago, on whose grave no green thing has ever grown. +Villages, expert in two hundred generations of grave-robbing, cower +among the mounds of wastage, and whoop at the daily tourist. Paths made +by bare feet run from one half-tomb, half-mud-heap to the next, not much +more distinct than snail smears, but they have been used since.... + +Time is a dangerous thing to play with. That morning the concierge had +toiled for us among steamer-sailings to see if we could save three days. +That evening we sat with folk for whom Time had stood still since the +Ptolemies. I wondered, at first, how it concerned them or any man if +such and such a Pharaoh had used to his own glory the plinths and +columns of such another Pharaoh before or after Melchizedek. Their +whole background was too inconceivably remote for the mind to work on. +But the next morning we were taken to the painted tomb of a noble--a +Minister of Agriculture--who died four or five thousand years ago. He +said to me, in so many words: 'Observe I was very like your friend, the +late Mr. Samuel Pepys, of your Admiralty. I took an enormous interest in +life, which I most thoroughly enjoyed, on its human and on its spiritual +side. I do not think you will find many departments of State better +managed than mine, or a better-kept house, or a nicer set of young +people ... My daughters! The eldest, as you can see, takes after her +mother. The youngest, my favourite, is supposed to favour me. Now I will +show you all the things that I did, and delighted in, till it was time +for me to present my accounts elsewhere.' And he showed me, detail by +detail, in colour and in drawing, his cattle, his horses, his crops, his +tours in the district, his accountants presenting the revenue returns, +and he himself, busiest of the busy, in the good day. + +But when we left that broad, gay ante-room and came to the narrower +passage where once his body had lain and where all his doom was +portrayed, I could not follow him so well. I did not see how he, so +experienced in life, could be cowed by friezes of brute-headed +apparitions or satisfied by files of repeated figures. He explained, +something to this effect: + +'We live on the River--a line without breadth or thickness. Behind us +is the Desert, which nothing can affect; wither no man goes till he is +dead, (One does not use good agricultural ground for cemeteries.) +Practically, then, we only move in two dimensions--up stream or down. +Take away the Desert, which we don't consider any more than a healthy +man considers death, and you will see that we have no background +whatever. Our world is all one straight bar of brown or green earth, +and, for some months, mere sky-reflecting water that wipes out +everything You have only to look at the Colossi to realise how +enormously and extravagantly man and his works must scale in such a +country. Remember too, that our crops are sure, and our life is very, +very easy. Above all, we have no neighbours That is to say, we must give +out, for we cannot take in. Now, I put it to you, what is left for a +priest with imagination, except to develop ritual and multiply gods on +friezes? Unlimited leisure, limited space of two dimensions, divided by +the hypnotising line of the River, and bounded by visible, unalterable +death--must, _ipso facto_----' + +'Even so,' I interrupted. 'I do not comprehend your Gods--your direct +worship of beasts, for instance?' + +'You prefer the indirect? The worship of Humanity with a capital H? My +Gods, or what I saw in them, contented me.' + +'What did you see in your Gods as affecting belief and conduct?' + +'You know the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx?' + +'No,' I murmured. 'What is it?' + +'"All sensible men are of the same religion, but no sensible man ever +tells,"' he replied. With that I had to be content, for the passage +ended in solid rock. + +There were other tombs in the valley, but the owners were dumb, except +one Pharaoh, who from the highest motives had broken with the creeds and +instincts of his country, and so had all but wrecked it. One of his +discoveries was an artist, who saw men not on one plane but modelled +full or three-quarter face, with limbs suited to their loads and +postures. His vividly realised stuff leaped to the eye out of the +acreage of low-relief in the old convention, and I applauded as a +properly brought-up tourist should. + +'Mine was a fatal mistake,' Pharaoh Ahkenaton sighed in my ear,' I +mistook the conventions of life for the realities.' + +'Ah, those soul-crippling conventions!' I cried. + +'You mistake _me_,' he answered more stiffly. 'I was so sure of their +reality that I thought that they were really lies, whereas they were +only invented to cover the raw facts of life.' + +'Ah, those raw facts of life!' I cried, still louder; for it is not +often that one has a chance of impressing a Pharaoh.' We must face them +with open eyes and an open mind! Did _you_?' + +'I had no opportunity of avoiding them,' he replied. 'I broke every +convention in my land.' + +'Oh, noble! And what happened?' + +'What happens when you strip the cover off a hornet's nest? The raw +fact of life is that mankind is just a little lower than the angels, and +the conventions are based on that fact in order that men may become +angels. But if you begin, as I did, by the convention that men are +angels they will assuredly become bigger beasts than ever.' + +'That,' I said firmly, 'is altogether out-of-date. You should have +brought a larger mentality, a more vital uplift, and--er--all that sort +of thing, to bear on--all that sort of thing, you know.' + +'I did,' said Ahkenaton gloomily. 'It broke me!' And he, too, went dumb +among the ruins. + +There is a valley of rocks and stones in every shade of red and brown, +called the Valley of the Kings, where a little oil-engine coughs behind +its hand all day long, grinding electricity to light the faces of dead +Pharaohs a hundred feet underground. All down the valley, during the +tourist season, stand char-a-bancs and donkeys and sand-carts, with here +and there exhausted couples who have dropped out of the processions and +glisten and fan themselves in some scrap of shade. Along the sides of +the valley are the tombs of the kings neatly numbered, as it might be +mining adits with concrete steps leading up to them, and iron grilles +that lock of nights, and doorkeepers of the Department of Antiquities +demanding the proper tickets. One enters, and from deeps below deeps +hears the voices of dragomans booming through the names and titles of +the illustrious and thrice-puissant dead. Rock-cut steps go down into +hot, still darkness, passages-twist and are led over blind pits which, +men say, the wise builders childishly hoped would be taken for the real +tombs by thieves to come. Up and down these alley-ways clatter all the +races of Europe with a solid backing of the United States. Their +footsteps are suddenly blunted on the floor of a hall paved with +immemorial dust that will never dance in any wind. They peer up at the +blazoned ceilings, stoop down to the minutely decorated walls, crane and +follow the sombre splendours of a cornice, draw in their breaths and +climb up again to the fierce sunshine to re-dive into the next adit on +their programme. What they think proper to say, they say aloud--and some +of it is very interesting. What they feel you can guess from a certain +haste in their movements--something between the shrinking modesty of a +man under fire and the Hadn't-we-better-be-getting-on attitude of +visitors to a mine. After all, it is not natural for man to go +underground except for business or for the last time. He is conscious of +the weight of mother-earth overhead, and when to her expectant bulk is +added the whole beaked, horned, winged, and crowned hierarchy of a lost +faith flaming at every turn of his eye, he naturally wishes to move +away. Even the sight of a very great king indeed, sarcophagused under +electric light in a hall full of most fortifying pictures, does not hold +him too long. + +Some men assert that the crypt of St. Peter's, with only nineteen +centuries bearing down on the groining, and the tombs of early popes and +kings all about, is more impressive than the Valley of the Kings +because it explains how and out of what an existing creed grew. But the +Valley of the Kings explains nothing except that most terrible line in +_Macbeth_: + + To the last syllable of recorded time. + +Earth opens her dry lips and says it. + +In one of the tombs there is a little chamber whose ceiling, probably +because of a fault in the rock, could not be smoothed off like the +others. So the decorator, very cunningly, covered it with a closely +designed cloth-pattern--just such a chintz-like piece of stuff as, in +real life, one would use to underhang a rough roof with. He did it +perfectly, down there in the dark, and went his way. Thousands of years +later, there was born a man of my acquaintance who, for good and +sufficient reason, had an almost insane horror of anything in the nature +of a ceiling-cloth. He used to make excuses for not going into the dry +goods shops at Christmas, when hastily enlarged annexes are hidden, roof +and sides, with embroideries. Perhaps a snake or a lizard had dropped on +his mother from the roof before he was born; perhaps it was the memory +of some hideous fever-bout in a tent. At any rate, that man's idea of +The Torment was a hot, crowded underground room, underhung with +patterned cloths. Once in his life at a city in the far north, where he +had to make a speech, he met that perfect combination. They led him up +and down narrow, crowded, steam-heated passages, till they planted him +at last in a room without visible windows (by which he knew +he was, underground), and directly beneath a warm-patterned +ceiling-cloth--rather like a tent-lining. And there he had to say his +say, while panic terror sat in his throat. The second time was in the +Valley of the Kings, where very similar passages, crowded with people, +led him into a room cut of rock, fathoms underground, with what looked +like a sagging chintz cloth not three feet above his head. The man I'd +like to catch,' he said when he came outside again, 'is that +decorator-man. D'you suppose he meant to produce that effect?' + +Every man has his private terrors, other than those of his own +conscience. From what I saw in the Valley of the Kings, the Egyptians +seem to have known this some time ago. They certainly have impressed it +on most unexpected people. I heard two voices down a passage talking +together as follows: + +_She_. I guess we weren't ever meant to see these old tombs from inside, +anyway. + +_He_. How so? + +_She_. For one thing, they believe so hard in being dead. Of course, +their outlook on spiritual things wasn't as broad as ours. + +_He_. Well, there's no danger of _our_ being led away by it. Did you buy +that alleged scarab off the dragoman this morning? + + + + +VI + + +THE FACE OF THE DESERT + +Going up the Nile is like running the gauntlet before Eternity. Till one +has seen it, one does not realise the amazing thinness of that little +damp trickle of life that steals along undefeated through the jaws of +established death. A rifle-shot would cover the widest limits of +cultivation, a bow-shot would reach the narrower. Once beyond them a man +may carry his next drink with him till he reaches Cape Blanco on the +west (where he may signal for one from a passing Union Castle boat) or +the Karachi Club on the east. Say four thousand dry miles to the left +hand and three thousand to the right. + +The weight of the Desert is on one, every day and every hour. At +morning, when the cavalcade tramps along in the rear of the tulip-like +dragoman, She says: 'I am here----just beyond that ridge of pink sand +that you are admiring. Come along, pretty gentleman, and I'll tell you +your fortune.' But the dragoman says very clearly: 'Please, sar, do not +separate yourself at _all_ from the main body,' which, the Desert knows +well, you had no thought of doing. At noon, when the stewards rummage +out lunch-drinks from the dewy ice-chest, the Desert whines louder than +the well-wheels on the bank: 'I am here, only a quarter of a mile away. +For mercy's sake, pretty gentleman, spare a mouthful of that prickly +whisky-and-soda you are lifting to your lips. There's a white man a few +hundred miles off, dying on my lap of thirst--thirst that you cure with +a rag dipped in lukewarm water while you hold him down with the one +hand, and he thinks he is cursing you aloud, but he isn't, because his +tongue is outside his mouth and he can't get it back. Thank _you_, my +noble captain!' For naturally one tips half the drink over the rail with +the ancient prayer: 'May it reach him who needs it,' and turns one's +back on the pulsing ridges and fluid horizons that are beginning their +mid-day mirage-dance. + +At evening the Desert obtrudes again--tricked out as a Nautch girl in +veils of purple, saffron, gold-tinsel, and grass-green. She postures +shamelessly before the delighted tourists with woven skeins of +homeward-flying pelicans, fringes of wild duck, black spotted on +crimson, and cheap jewellery of opal clouds. 'Notice Me!' She cries, +like any other worthless woman. 'Admire the play of My mobile +features--the revelations of My multi-coloured soul! Observe My +allurements and potentialities. Thrill while I stir you!' So She floats +through all Her changes and retires upstage into the arms of the dusk. +But at midnight She drops all pretence and bears down in Her natural +shape, which depends upon the conscience of the beholder and his +distance from the next white man. + +You will observe in the _Benedicite Omnia Opera_ that the Desert is the +sole thing not enjoined to 'bless the Lord, praise Him and magnify Him +for ever.' This is because when our illustrious father, the Lord Adam, +and his august consort, the Lady Eve, were expelled from Eden, Eblis the +Accursed, fearful lest mankind should return ultimately to the favour of +Allah, set himself to burn and lay waste all the lands east and west of +Eden. + +Oddly enough, the Garden of Eden is almost the exact centre of all the +world's deserts, counting from Gobi to Timbuctoo; and all that land +_qua_ land is 'dismissed from the mercy of God.' Those who use it do so +at their own risk. Consequently the Desert produces her own type of man +exactly as the sea does. I was fortunate enough to meet one sample, aged +perhaps twenty-five. His work took him along the edge of the Red Sea, +where men on swift camels come to smuggle hashish, and sometimes guns, +from dhows that put in to any convenient beach. These smugglers must be +chased on still swifter camels, and since the wells are few and known, +the game is to get ahead of them and occupy their drinking-places. + +But they may skip a well or so, and do several days' march in one. Then +their pursuer must take e'en greater risks and make crueller marches +that the Law may be upheld. The one thing in the Law's favour is that +_hashish_ smells abominably--worse than a heated camel--so, when they +range alongside, no time is lost in listening to lies. It was not told +to me how they navigate themselves across the broken wastes, or by what +arts they keep alive in the dust-storms and heat. That was taken for +granted, and the man who took it so considered himself the most +commonplace of mortals. He was deeply moved by the account of a new +aerial route which the French are laying out somewhere in the Sahara +over a waterless stretch of four hundred miles, where if the aeroplane +is disabled between stations the pilot will most likely die and dry up +beside it. To do the Desert justice, she rarely bothers to wipe out +evidence of a kill. There are places in the Desert, men say, where even +now you come across the dead of old battles, all as light as last year's +wasps' nests, laid down in swaths or strung out in flight, with, here +and there, the little sparkling lines of the emptied cartridge-cases +that dropped them. + +There are valleys and ravines that the craziest smugglers do not care to +refuge in at certain times of the year; as there are rest-houses where +one's native servants will not stay because they are challenged on their +way to the kitchen by sentries of old Soudanese regiments which have +long gone over to Paradise. And of voices and warnings and outcries +behind rocks there is no end. These last arise from the fact that men +very rarely live in a spot so utterly still that they can hear the +murmuring race of the blood over their own ear-drums. Neither ship, +prairie, nor forest gives that silence. I went out to find it once, when +our steamer tied up and the rest of them had gone to see a sight, but I +never dared venture more than a mile from our funnel-smoke. At that +point I came upon a hill honey-combed with graves that held a multitude +of paper-white skulls, all grinning cheerfully like ambassadors of the +Desert. But I did not accept their invitation. They had told me that all +the little devils learn to draw in the Desert, which explains the +elaborate and purposeless detail that fills it. None but devils could +think of etching every rock outcrop with wind-lines, or skinning it down +to its glistening nerves with sand-blasts; of arranging hills in the +likeness of pyramids and sphinxes and wrecked town-suburbs; of covering +the space of half an English county with sepia studies of interlacing +and recrossing ravines, dongas, and nullahs, each an exposition of much +too clever perspective; and of wiping out the half-finished work with a +wash of sand in three tints, only to pick it up again in silver-point on +the horizon's edge. This they do in order to make lost travellers think +they can recognise landmarks and run about identifying them till the +madness comes. The Desert is all devil-device--as you might say 'blasted +cleverness'--crammed with futile works, always promising something fresh +round the next corner, always leading out through heaped decoration and +over-insistent design into equal barrenness. + +There was a morning of mornings when we lay opposite the rock-hewn +Temple of Abu Simbel, where four great figures, each sixty feet high, +sit with their hands on their knees waiting for Judgment Day. At their +feet is a little breadth of blue-green crop; they seem to hold back all +the weight of the Desert behind them, which, none the less, lips over at +one side in a cataract of vividest orange sand. The tourist is +recommended to see the sunrise here, either from within the temple where +it falls on a certain altar erected by Rameses in his own honour, or +from without where another Power takes charge. + +The stars had paled when we began our watch; the river birds were just +whispering over their toilettes in the uncertain purplish light. Then +the river dimmered up like pewter; the line of the ridge behind the +Temple showed itself against a milkiness in the sky; one felt rather +than saw that there were four figures in the pit of gloom below it. +These blocked themselves out, huge enough, but without any special +terror, while the glorious ritual of the Eastern dawn went forward. Some +reed of the bank revealed itself by reflection, black on silver; arched +wings flapped and jarred the still water to splintered glass; the desert +ridge turned to topaz, and the four figures stood clear, yet without +shadowing, from their background. The stronger light flooded them red +from head to foot, and they became alive--as horridly and tensely yet +blindly alive as pinioned men in the death-chair before the current is +switched on. One felt that if by any miracle the dawn could be delayed a +second longer, they would tear themselves free, and leap forth to +heaven knows what sort of vengeance. But that instant the full sun +pinned them in their places--nothing more than statues slashed with +light and shadow--and another day got to work. + +A few yards to the left of the great images, close to the statue of an +Egyptian princess, whose face was the very face of 'She,' there was a +marble slab over the grave of an English officer killed in a fight +against dervishes nearly a generation ago. + +From Abu Simbel to Wady Halfa the river, escaped from the domination of +the Pharaohs, begins to talk about dead white men. Thirty years ago, +young English officers in India lied and intrigued furiously that they +might be attached to expeditions whose bases were sometimes at Suakim, +sometimes quite in the desert air, but all of whose deeds are now quite +forgotten. Occasionally the dragoman, waving a smooth hand east or +south-easterly, will speak of some fight. Then every one murmurs: 'Oh +yes. That was Gordon, of course,' or 'Was that before or after +Omdurman?' But the river is much more precise. As the boat quarters +the falling stream like a puzzled hound, all the old names spurt +up again under the paddle-wheels--'Hicks' army--Val Baker--El +Teb--Tokar--Tamai--Tamanieb and Osman Digna!' Her head swings round +for another slant: '_We cannot land English or Indian troops: if +consulted, recommend abandonment of the Soudan within certain limits._' +That was my Lord Granville chirruping to the advisers of His Highness +the Khedive, and the sentence comes back as crisp as when it first +shocked one in '84. Next--here is a long reach between flooded palm +trees--next, of course, comes Gordon--and a delightfully mad Irish +war correspondent who was locked up with him in Khartoum. +Gordon--Eighty-four--Eighty-five--the Suakim-Berber Railway really begun +and quite as really abandoned. Korti--Abu Klea--the Desert Column--a +steamer called the _Safieh_ not the _Condor_, which rescued two other +steamers wrecked on their way back from a Khartoum in the red hands of +the Mahdi of those days. Then--the smooth glide over deep water +continues--another Suakim expedition with a great deal of Osman Digna +and renewed attempts to build the Suakim-Berber Railway. 'Hashin,' say +the paddle-wheels, slowing all of a sudden--'MacNeill's Zareba--the 15th +Sikhs and another native regiment--Osman Digna in great pride and power, +and Wady Halfa a frontier town. Tamai, once more; another siege of +Suakim: Gemaiza; Handub; Trinkitat, and Tokar--1887.' + +The river recalls the names; the mind at once brings up the face and +every trick of speech of some youth met for a few hours, maybe, in a +train on the way to Egypt of the old days. Both name and face had +utterly vanished from one's memory till then. + +It was another generation that picked up the ball ten years later and +touched down in Khartoum. Several people aboard the Cook boat had been +to that city. They all agreed that the hotel charges were very high, but +that you could buy the most delightful curiosities in the native +bazaar. But I do not like bazaars of the Egyptian kind, since a +discovery I made at Assouan. There was an old man--a Mussulman--who +pressed me to buy some truck or other, but not with the villainous +camaraderie that generations of low-caste tourists have taught the +people, nor yet with the cosmopolitan light-handedness of appeal which +the town-bred Egyptian picks up much too quickly; but with a certain +desperate zeal, foreign to his whole creed and nature. He fingered, he +implored, he fawned with an unsteady eye, and while I wondered I saw +behind him the puffy pink face of a fezzed Jew, watching him as a stoat +watches a rabbit. When he moved the Jew followed and took position at a +commanding angle. The old man glanced from me to him and renewed his +solicitations. So one could imagine an elderly hare thumping wildly on a +tambourine with the stoat behind him. They told me afterwards that Jews +own most of the stalls in Assouan bazaar, the Mussulmans working for +them, since tourists need Oriental colour. Never having seen or imagined +a Jew coercing a Mussulman, this colour was new and displeasing to me. + + + + +VII + + +THE RIDDLE OF EMPIRE + +At Halfa one feels the first breath of a frontier. Here the Egyptian +Government retires into the background, and even the Cook steamer does not +draw up in the exact centre of the postcard. At the telegraph-office, too, +there are traces, diluted but quite recognisable, of military +administration. Nor does the town, in any way or place whatever, +smell--which is proof that it is not looked after on popular lines. There +is nothing to see in it any more than there is in Hulk C. 60, late of her +Majesty's troopship _Himalaya_, now a coal-hulk in the Hamoaze at +Plymouth. A river front, a narrow terraced river-walk of semi-oriental +houses, barracks, a mosque, and half-a-dozen streets at right angles, the +Desert racing up to the end of each, make all the town. A mile or so up +stream under palm trees are bungalows of what must have been cantonments, +some machinery repair-shops, and odds and ends of railway track. It is all +as paltry a collection of whitewashed houses, pitiful gardens, dead walls, +and trodden waste spaces as one would wish to find anywhere; and every bit +of it quivers with the remembered life of armies and river-fleets, as the +finger-bowl rings when the rubbing finger is lifted. The most unlikely men +have done time there; stores by the thousand ton have been rolled and +pushed and hauled up the banks by tens of thousands of scattered hands; +hospitals have pitched themselves there, expanded enormously, shrivelled +up and drifted away with the drifting regiments; railway sidings by the +mile have been laid down and ripped up again, as need changed, and utterly +wiped out by the sands. + +Halfa has been the rail-head, Army Headquarters, and hub of the +universe--the one place where a man could make sure of buying tobacco +and sardines, or could hope for letters for himself and medical +attendance for his friend. Now she is a little shrunken shell of a town +without a proper hotel, where tourists hurry up from the river to buy +complete sets of Soudan stamps at the Post Office. + +I went for a purposeless walk from one end of the place to the other, +and found a crowd of native boys playing football on what might have +been a parade-ground of old days. + +'And what school is that?' I asked in English of a small, eager youth. + +'Madrissah,' said he most intelligently, which being translated means +just 'school.' + +'Yes, but _what_ school?' + +'Yes, Madrissah, school, sir,' and he tagged after to see what else the +imbecile wanted. + +A line of railway track, that must have fed big workshops in its time, +led me between big-roomed houses and offices labelled departmentally, +with here and there a clerk at work. I was directed and re-directed by +polite Egyptian officials (I wished to get at a white officer if +possible, but there wasn't one about); was turned out of a garden which +belonged to an Authority; hung round the gate of a bungalow with an +old-established compound and two white men sitting in chairs on a +verandah; wandered down towards the river under the palm trees, where +the last red light came through; lost myself among rusty boilers and +balks of timber; and at last loafed back in the twilight escorted by the +small boy and an entire brigade of ghosts, not one of whom I had ever +met before, but all of whom I knew most intimately. They said it was the +evenings that used to depress _them_ most, too; so they all came back +after dinner and bore me company, while I went to meet a friend arriving +by the night train from Khartoum. + +She was an hour late, and we spent it, the ghosts and I, in a +brick-walled, tin-roofed shed, warm with the day's heat; a crowd of +natives laughing and talking somewhere behind in the darkness. We knew +each other so well by that time, that we had finished discussing every +conceivable topic of conversation--the whereabouts of the Mahdi's head, +for instance--work, reward, despair, acknowledgment, flat failure, all +the real motives that had driven us to do anything, and all our other +longings. So we sat still and let the stars move, as men must do when +they meet this kind of train. + +Presently I asked: 'What is the name of the next station out from +here?' + +'Station Number One,' said a ghost. + +'And the next?' + +'Station Number Two, and so on to Eight, I think.' + +'And wasn't it worth while to name even _one_ of these stations from +some man, living or dead, who had something to do with making the line?' + +'Well, they didn't, anyhow,' said another ghost. 'I suppose they didn't +think it worth while. Why? What do _you_ think?' + +'I think, I replied, 'it is the sort of snobbery that nations go to +Hades for.' + +Her headlight showed at last, an immense distance off; the economic +electrics were turned up, the ghosts vanished, the dragomans of the +various steamers flowed forward in beautiful garments to meet their +passengers who had booked passages in the Cook boats, and the Khartoum +train decanted a joyous collection of folk, all decorated with horns, +hoofs, skins, hides, knives, and assegais, which they had been buying at +Omdurman. And when the porters laid hold upon their bristling bundles, +it was like MacNeill's Zareba without the camels. + +Two young men in tarboushes were the only people who had no part in the +riot. Said one of them to the other: + +'Hullo?' + +Said the other: 'Hullo!' + +They grunted together for a while. Then one pleasantly: + +'Oh, I'm sorry for _that_! I thought I was going to have you under me +for a bit. Then you'll use the rest-house there?' + +'I suppose so,' said the other. 'Do you happen to know if the roof's +on?' + +Here a woman wailed aloud for her dervish spear which had gone adrift, +and I shall never know, except from the back pages of the Soudan +Almanack, what state that rest-house there is in. + +The Soudan Administration, by the little I heard, is a queer service. It +extends itself in silence from the edges of Abyssinia to the swamps of +the Equator at an average pressure of one white man to several thousand +square miles. It legislates according to the custom of the tribe where +possible, and on the common sense of the moment when there is no +precedent. It is recruited almost wholly from the army, armed chiefly +with binoculars, and enjoys a death-rate a little lower than its own +reputation. It is said to be the only service in which a man taking +leave is explicitly recommended to get out of the country and rest +himself that he may return the more fit to his job. A high standard of +intelligence is required, and lapses are not overlooked. For instance, +one man on leave in London took the wrong train from Boulogne, and +instead of going to Paris, which, of course, he had intended, found +himself at a station called Kirk Kilissie or Adrianople West, where he +stayed for some weeks. It was a mistake that might have happened to any +one on a dark night after a stormy passage, but the authorities would +not believe it, and when I left Egypt were busily engaged in boiling +him in hot oil. They are grossly respectable in the Soudan now. + +Long and long ago, before even the Philippines were taken, a friend of +mine was reprimanded by a British Member of Parliament, first for the +sin of blood-guiltiness because he was by trade a soldier, next for +murder because he had fought in great battles, and lastly, and most +important, because he and his fellow-braves had saddled the British +taxpayer with the expense of the Soudan. My friend explained that all +the Soudan had ever cost the British taxpayer was the price of about one +dozen of regulation Union Jacks--one for each province. 'That,' said the +M.P. triumphantly, 'is all it will ever be worth.' He went on to justify +himself, and the Soudan went on also. To-day it has taken its place as +one of those accepted miracles which are worked without heat or +headlines by men who do the job nearest their hand and seldom fuss about +their reputations. + +But less than sixteen years ago the length and breadth of it was one +crazy hell of murder, torture, and lust, where every man who had a sword +used it till he met a stronger and became a slave. It was--men say who +remember it--a hysteria of blood and fanaticism; and precisely as an +hysterical woman is called to her senses by a dash of cold water, so at +the battle of Omdurman the land was reduced to sanity by applied death +on such a scale as the murderers and the torturers at their most +unbridled could scarcely have dreamed. In a day and a night all who had +power and authority were wiped out and put under till, as the old song +says, no chief remained to ask after any follower. They had all charged +into Paradise. The people who were left looked for renewed massacres of +the sort they had been accustomed to, and when these did not come, they +said helplessly: 'We have nothing. We are nothing. Will you sell us into +slavery among the Egyptians?' The men who remember the old days of the +Reconstruction--which deserves an epic of its own--say that there was +nothing left to build on, not even wreckage. Knowledge, decency, +kinship, property, tide, sense of possession had all gone. The people +were told they were to sit still and obey orders; and they stared and +fumbled like dazed crowds after an explosion. Bit by bit, however, they +were fed and watered and marshalled into some sort of order; set to +tasks they never dreamed to see the end of; and, almost by physical +force, pushed and hauled along the ways of mere life. They came to +understand presently that they might reap what they had sown, and that +man, even a woman, might walk for a day's journey with two goats and a +native bedstead and live undespoiled. But they had to be taught +kindergarten-fashion. + +And little by little, as they realised that the new order was sure and +that their ancient oppressors were quite dead, there returned not only +cultivators, craftsmen, and artisans, but outlandish men of war, scarred +with old wounds and the generous dimples that the Martini-Henry bullet +used to deal--fighting men on the lookout for new employ. They would +hang about, first on one leg, then on the other, proud or uneasily +friendly, till some white officer circulated near by. And at his fourth +or fifth passing, brown and white having approved each other by eye, the +talk--so men say--would run something like this: + +OFFICER (_with air of sudden discovery_). Oh, you by the hut, there, +what is your business? + +WARRIOR (_at 'attention' complicated by attempt to salute_). I am +So-and-So, son of So-and-So, from such and such a place. + +OFFICER. I hear. And ...? + +WARRIOR (_repeating salute_). And a fighting man also. + +OFFICER (_impersonally to horizon_). But they _all_ say that nowadays. + +WARRIOR (_very loudly_). But there is a man in one of your battalions +who can testify to it. He is the grandson of my father's uncle. + +OFFICER (_confidentially to his boots_). Hell is _quite_ full of such +grandsons of just such father's uncles; and how do I know if Private +So-and-So speaks the truth about his family? (_Makes to go._) + +WARRIOR (_swiftly removing necessary garments_). Perhaps. But _these_ +don't lie. Look! I got this ten, twelve years ago when I was quite a +lad, close to the old Border, Yes, Halfa. It was a true Snider bullet. +Feel it! This little one on the leg I got at the big fight that finished +it all last year. But I am not lame (_violent leg-exercise_), not in +the least lame. See! I run. I jump. I kick. Praised be Allah! + +OFFICER. Praised be Allah! And then? + +WARRIOR (_coquettishly_). Then, I shoot. I am not a common spear-man. +(_Lapse into English._) Yeh, dam goo' shot! (_pumps lever of imaginary +Martini_). + +OFFICER (_unmoved_). I see. And then? + +WARRIOR (_indignantly_). _I_ am come here--after many days' marching. +(_Change to childlike wheedle_.) Are _all_ the regiments full? + +At this point the relative, in uniform, generally discovered himself, +and if the officer liked the cut of his jib, another 'old Mahdi's man' +would be added to the machine that made itself as it rolled along. They +dealt with situations in those days by the unclouded light of reason and +a certain high and holy audacity. + +There is a tale of two Sheikhs shortly after the Reconstruction began. +One of them, Abdullah of the River, prudent and the son of a +slave-woman, professed loyalty to the English very early in the day, and +used that loyalty as a cloak to lift camels from another Sheikh, Farid +of the Desert, still at war with the English, but a perfect gentleman, +which Abdullah was not. Naturally, Farid raided back on Abdullah's kine, +Abdullah complained to the authorities, and the Border fermented. To +Farid in his desert camp with a clutch of Abdullah's cattle round him, +entered, alone and unarmed, the officer responsible for the peace of +those parts. After compliments, for they had had dealings with each +other before: 'You've been driving Abdullah's stock again,' said the +Englishman. + +'I should think I had!' was the hot answer. 'He lifts my camels and +scuttles back into your territory, where he knows I can't follow him for +the life; and when I try to get a bit of my own back, he whines to you. +He's a cad--an utter cad.' + +'At any rate, he is loyal. If you'd only come in and be loyal too, you'd +both be on the same footing, and then if he stole from you, he'd catch +it!' + +'He'd never dare to steal except under your protection. Give him what +he'd have got in the Mahdi's time--a first-class flogging. _You_ know he +deserves it!' + +'I'm afraid that isn't allowed. You have to let me shift all those +bullocks of his back again.' + +'And if I don't?' + +'Then, I shall have to ride back and collect all my men and begin war +against you.' + +'But what prevents my cutting your throat where you sit? + +'For one thing, you aren't Abdullah, and----' + +'There! You confess he's a cad!' + +'And for another, the Government would only send another officer who +didn't understand your ways, and then there _would_ be war, and no one +would score except Abdullah. He'd steal your camels and get credit for +it.' + +'So he would, the scoundrel! This is a hard world for honest men. Now, +you admit Abdullah is a cad. Listen to me, and I'll tell you a few more +things about him. He was, etc., etc. He is, etc., etc.' + +'You're perfectly right, Sheikh, but don't you see I can't tell him what +I think of him so long as he's loyal and you're out against us? Now, if +_you_ come in I promise you that I'll give Abdullah a telling-off--yes, +in your presence--that will do you good to listen to.' + +'No! I won't come in! But--I tell you what I will do. I'll accompany you +to-morrow as your guest, understand, to your camp. Then you send for +Abdullah, and _if_ I judge that his fat face has been sufficiently +blackened in my presence, I'll think about coming in later.' + +So it was arranged, and they slept out the rest of the night, side by +side, and in the morning they gathered up and returned all Abdullah's +cattle, and in the evening, in Farid's presence, Abdullah got the +tongue-lashing of his wicked old life, and Farid of the Desert laughed +and came in; and they all lived happy ever afterwards. + +Somewhere or other in the nearer provinces the old heady game must be +going on still, but the Soudan proper has settled to civilisation of the +brick-bungalow and bougainvillea sort, and there is a huge technical +college where the young men are trained to become fitters, surveyors, +draftsmen, and telegraph employees at fabulous wages. In due time, they +will forget how warily their fathers had to walk in the Mahdi's time to +secure even half a bellyful; then, as has happened elsewhere. They will +honestly believe that they themselves originally created and since then +have upheld the easy life into which they were bought at so heavy a +price. Then the demand will go up for 'extension of local government,' +'Soudan for the Soudanese,' and so on till the whole cycle has to be +retrodden. It is a hard law but an old one--Rome died learning it, as +our western civilisation may die--that if you give any man anything that +he has not painfully earned for himself, you infallibly make him or his +descendants your devoted enemies. + + + +THE END + + + + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Letters of Travel (1892-1913), by Rudyard Kipling + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS OF TRAVEL (1892-1913) *** + +***** This file should be named 12089.txt or 12089.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/0/8/12089/ + +Produced by Sjaani and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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