A JOURNEY

AROUND THE
WORLD
BY

MARK TWAIN
 FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR
CHAPTER I.

A man may have no bad habits and have worse.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

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

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

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

We sailed at last; and so ended a snail-paced march across the continent, which had
lasted forty days.

We moved westward about mid-afternoon over a rippled and sparkling summer sea;
an enticing sea, a clean and cool sea, and apparently a welcome sea to all on board; it
certainly was to me, after the distressful dustings and smokings and swelterings of the
past weeks. The voyage would furnish a three-weeks holiday, with hardly a break in it.
We had the whole Pacific Ocean in front of us, with nothing to do but do nothing and
be comfortable. The city of Victoria was twinkling dim in the deep heart of her smoke-
cloud, and getting ready to vanish and now we closed the field-glasses and sat down
on our steamer chairs contented and at peace. But they went to wreck and ruin under
us and brought us to shame before all the passengers. They had been furnished by the
largest furniture-dealing house in Victoria, and were worth a couple of farthings a
dozen, though they had cost us the price of honest chairs. In the Pacific and Indian
Oceans one must still bring his own deck-chair on board or go without, just as in the
old forgotten Atlantic times—those Dark Ages of sea travel.
 Ours was a reasonably comfortable ship, with the customary sea-going fare—plenty
of good food furnished by the Deity and cooked by the devil. The discipline observable
on board was perhaps as good as it is anywhere in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The
ship was not very well arranged for tropical service; but that is nothing, for this is the
rule for ships which ply in the tropics. She had an over-supply of cockroaches, but this
is also the rule with ships doing business in the summer seas—at least such as have
been long in service. Our young captain was a very handsome man, tall and perfectly
formed, the very figure to show up a smart uniform's finest effects. He was a man of
the best intentions and was polite and courteous even to courtliness. There was a soft
and grace and finish about his manners which made whatever place he happened to
be in seem for the moment a drawing room. He avoided the smoking room. He had no
vices. He did not smoke or chew tobacco or take snuff; he did not swear, or use slang
or rude, or coarse, or indelicate language, or make puns, or tell anecdotes, or laugh
intemperately, or raise his voice above the moderate pitch enjoined by the canons of
good form. When he gave an order, his manner modified it into a request. After dinner
he and his officers joined the ladies and gentlemen in the ladies' saloon, and shared in
the singing and piano playing, and helped turn the music. He had a sweet and
sympathetic tenor voice, and used it with taste and effect. After the music he played
whist there, always with the same partner and opponents, until the ladies' bedtime.
The electric lights burned there as late as the ladies and their friends might desire; but
they were not allowed to burn in the smoking-room after eleven. There were many
laws on the ship's statute book of course; but so far as I could see, this and one other
were the only ones that were rigidly enforced. The captain explained that he enforced
this one because his own cabin adjoined the smoking-room, and the smell of tobacco
smoke made him sick. I did not see how our smoke could reach him, for the smoking-
room and his cabin were on the upper deck, targets for all the winds that blew; and
besides there was no crack of communication between them, no opening of any sort in
the solid intervening bulkhead. Still, to a delicate stomach even imaginary smoke can
convey damage.

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

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

The officers of our ship were hearty and companionable young men, and they
entered into the general amusements and helped the passengers pass the time.
Voyages in the Pacific and Indian Oceans are but pleasure excursions for all hands. Our
purser was a young Scotchman who was equipped with a grit that was remarkable. He
was an invalid, and looked it, as far as his body was concerned, but illness could not
subdue his spirit. He was full of life, and had a gay and capable tongue. To all
appearances he was a sick man without being aware of it, for he did not talk about his
ailments, and his bearing and conduct were those of a person in robust health; yet he
was the prey, at intervals, of ghastly sieges of pain in his heart. These lasted many
hours, and while the attack continued he could neither sit nor lie. In one instance he
stood on his feet twenty-four hours fighting for his life with these sharp agonies, and
yet was as full of life and cheer and activity the next day as if nothing had happened.

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

I have said that the system does not strike at the root of the trouble, and I venture
to repeat that. The root is not the drinking, but the desire to drink. These are very
different things. The one merely requires will—and a great deal of it, both as to bulk
and staying capacity—the other merely requires watchfulness—and for no long time.
The desire of course precedes the act, and should have one's first attention; it can do
but little good to refuse the act over and over again, always leaving the desire
unmolested, unconquered; the desire will continue to assert itself, and will be almost
sure to win in the long run. When the desire intrudes, it should be at once banished
out of the mind. One should be on the watch for it all the time—otherwise it will get
in. It must be taken in time and not allowed to get a lodgment. A desire constantly
repulsed for a fortnight should die, then. That should cure the drinking habit. The
system of refusing the mere act of drinking, and leaving the desire in full force, is
unintelligent war tactics, it seems to me. I used to take pledges—and soon violate
them. My will was not strong, and I could not help it. And then, to be tied in any way
naturally irks an otherwise free person and makes him chafe in his bonds and want to
get his liberty. But when I finally ceased from taking definite pledges, and merely
resolved that I would kill an injurious desire, but leave myself free to resume the desire
and the habit whenever I should choose to do so, I had no more trouble. In five days I
drove out the desire to smoke and was not obliged to keep watch after that; and I
never experienced any strong desire to smoke again. At the end of a year and a quarter
of idleness I began to write a book, and presently found that the pen was strangely
reluctant to go. I tried a smoke to see if that would help me out of the difficulty. It did.
I smoked eight or ten cigars and as many pipes a day for five months; finished the
book, and did not smoke again until a year had gone by and another book had to be
begun.

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

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

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

"Yes."

"You take coffee immoderately?"

"Yes."

"And some tea?"

 "Yes."

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

"Yes."

"You drink two hot Scotches every night?"

"Yes."

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

"I can't, doctor."

"Why can't you."

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

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

It seemed a valuable medical course, and I recommended it to a lady. She had run
down and down and down, and had at last reached a point where medicines no longer
had any helpful effect upon her. I said I knew I could put her upon her feet in a week. It
brightened her up, it filled her with hope, and she said she would do everything I told
her to do. So I said she must stop swearing and drinking, and smoking and eating for
four days, and then she would be all right again. And it would have happened just so, I
know it; but she said she could not stop swearing, and smoking, and drinking, because
she had never done those things. So there it was. She had neglected her habits, and
hadn't any. Now that they would have come good, there were none in stock. She had
nothing to fall back on. She was a sinking vessel, with no freight in her to throw
overbpard and lighten ship withal. Why, even one or two little bad habits could have
saved her, but she was just a moral pauper. When she could have acquired them she
was dissuaded by her parents, who were ignorant people though reared in the best
society, and it was too late to begin now. It seemed such a pity; but there was no help
for it. These things ought to be attended to while a person is young; otherwise, when
age and disease come, there is nothing effectual to fight them with.

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

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

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

When in doubt, tell the truth.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

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

From my diary:

There are several sorts of ills in the world from which a person can never escape
altogether, let him journey as far as he will. One escapes from one breed of an ill only
to encounter another breed of it. We have come far from the snake liar and the fish
liar, and there was rest and peace in the thought; but now we have reached the realm
of the boomerang liar, and sorrow is with us once more. The first officer has seen a
man try to escape from his enemy by getting behind a tree; but the enemy sent his
boomerang sailing into the sky far above and beyond the tree; then it turned,
descended, and killed the man. The Australian passenger has seen this thing done to
two men, behind two trees—and by the one arrow. This being received with a large
silence that suggested doubt, he buttressed it with the statement that his brother once
saw the boomerang kill a bird away off a hundred yards and bring it to the thrower.
But these are ills which must be borne. There is no other way.

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

The Viceroy was making a progress, and among the shows offered by the Maharajah
of Mysore for his entertainment was a memory-exhibition. The Viceroy and thirty
gentlemen of his suite sat in a row, and the memory-expert, a high-caste Brahmin, was
brought in and seated on the floor in front of them. He said he knew but two
languages, the English and his own, but would not exclude any foreign tongue from the
tests to be applied to his memory. Then he laid before the assemblage his program—a
sufficiently extraordinary one. He proposed that one gentleman should give him one
word of a foreign sentence, and tell him its place in the sentence. He was furnished
with the French word 'est', and was told it was second in a sentence of three words.
The next gentleman gave him the German word 'verloren' and said it was the third in a
sentence of four words. He asked the next gentleman for one detail in a sum in
addition; another for one detail in a sum of subtraction; others for single details in
mathematical problems of various kinds; he got them. Intermediates gave him single
words from sentences in Greek, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and other
languages, and told him their places in the sentences. When at last everybody had
furnished him a single rag from a foreign sentence or a figure from a problem, he went
over the ground again, and got a second word and a second figure and was told their
places in the sentences and the sums; and so on and so on. He went over the ground
again and again until he had collected all the parts of the sums and all the parts of the
sentences—and all in disorder, of course, not in their proper rotation. This had
occupied two hours.

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

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

General Grant had a fine memory for all kinds of things, including even names and
faces, and I could have furnished an instance of it if I had thought of it. The first time I
ever saw him was early in his first term as President. I had just arrived in Washington
from the Pacific coast, a stranger and wholly unknown to the public, and was passing
the White House one morning when I met a friend, a Senator from Nevada. He asked
me if I would like to see the President. I said I should be very glad; so we entered. I
supposed that the President would be in the midst of a crowd, and that I could look at
him in peace and security from a distance, as another stray cat might look at another
king. But it was in the morning, and the Senator was using a privilege of his office
which I had not heard of—the privilege of intruding upon the Chief Magistrate's
working hours. Before I knew it, the Senator and I were in the presence, and there was
none there but we three. General Grant got slowly up from his table, put his pen
down, and stood before me with the iron expression of a man who had not smiled for
seven years, and was not intending to smile for another seven. He looked me steadily
in the eyes—mine lost confidence and fell. I had never confronted a great man before,
and was in a miserable state of funk and inefficiency. The Senator said:—

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

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

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

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

Ten years passed away before I saw him the second time. Meantime I was become
better known; and was one of the people appointed to respond to toasts at the
banquet given to General Grant in Chicago—by the Army of the Tennessee when he
came back from his tour around the world. I arrived late at night and got up late in the
morning. All the corridors of the hotel were crowded with people waiting to get a
glimpse of General Grant when he should pass to the place whence he was to review
the great procession. I worked my way by the suite of packed drawing-rooms, and at
the corner of the house I found a window open where there was a roomy platform
decorated with flags, and carpeted. I stepped out on it, and saw below me millions of
people blocking all the streets, and other millions caked together in all the windows
and on all the house-tops around. These masses took me for General Grant, and broke
into volcanic explosions and cheers; but it was a good place to see the procession, and
I stayed. Presently I heard the distant blare of military music, and far up the street I
saw the procession come in sight, cleaving its way through the huzzaing multitudes,
with Sheridan, the most martial figure of the War, riding at its head in the dress
uniform of a Lieutenant-General.

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

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

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

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

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

Mary Taylor, twenty-three, modest, sweet, winning, and in character and person
beautiful, was all in all to him. And he was very nearly all in all to her. She was
wavering, his hopes were high. Her mother had been in opposition from the first. But
she was wavering, too; he could see it. She was being touched by his warm interest in
her two charity-proteges and by his contributions toward their support. These were
two forlorn and aged sisters who lived in a log hut in a lonely place up a cross road four
miles from Mrs. Taylor's farm. One of the sisters was crazy, and sometimes a little
violent, but not often.

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

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

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

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

His legs almost gave way under him. The horse was walking leisurely along the road.
Brown trotted after it, saying, "Whoa, whoa, there's a good fellow;" but whenever he
got near enough to chance a jump for the buggy, the horse quickened its pace a little
and defeated him. And so this went on, the naked man perishing with anxiety, and
expecting every moment to see people come in sight. He tagged on and on, imploring
the horse, beseeching the horse, till he had left a mile behind him, and was closing up
on the Taylor premises; then at last he was successful, and got into the buggy. He flung
on his shirt, his necktie, and his coat; then reached for—but he was too late; he sat
suddenly down and pulled up the lap-robe, for he saw some one coming out of the
gate—a woman; he thought. He wheeled the horse to the left, and struck briskly up
the cross-road. It was perfectly straight, and exposed on both sides; but there were
woods and a sharp turn three miles ahead, and he was very grateful when he got
there. As he passed around the turn he slowed down to a walk, and reached for his
tr—— too late again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It's per-fectly wonderful."

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

Brown gasped.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The others came back, and poured out their sympathies and commiserations, and
were full of self-reproaches for not having noticed how pale he was.

And they at once struck out a new plan, and soon agreed that it was by far the best
of all. They would all go to Nancy Taylor's house and see to Brown's needs first. He
could lie on the sofa in the parlor, and while Mrs. Taylor and Mary took care of him the
other two ladies would take the buggy and go and get one of the Old People, and leave
one of themselves with the other one, and——

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

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

They all exclaimed, "Why, sure-ly, that is so!" and they were, all perplexed again.

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

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

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

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

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

Then Mrs. Taylor said:

"The evening chill will be coming on, pretty soon, and those poor old burnt-out
things will need some kind of covering. Take the lap-robe with you, dear."

"Very well, Mother, I will."

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

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

Of course none but a happy ending of the story would be accepted by the jury; the
finish must find Brown in high credit with the ladies, his behavior without blemish, his
modesty unwounded, his character for self sacrifice maintained, the Old People
rescued through him, their benefactor, all the party proud of him, happy in him, his
praises on all their tongues.

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

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

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

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

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

In the night we anchored a mile from shore. Through my port I could see the
twinkling lights of Honolulu and the dark bulk of the mountain-range that stretched
away right and left. I could not make out the beautiful Nuuana valley, but I knew
where it lay, and remembered how it used to look in the old times. We used to ride up
it on horseback in those days—we young people—and branch off and gather bones in
a sandy region where one of the first Kamehameha's battles was fought. He was a
remarkable man, for a king; and he was also a remarkable man for a savage. He was a
mere kinglet and of little or no consequence at the time of Captain Cook's arrival in
1788; but about four years afterward he conceived the idea of enlarging his sphere of
influence. That is a courteous modern phrase which means robbing your neighbor—for
your neighbor's benefit; and the great theater of its benevolences is Africa.
Kamehameha went to war, and in the course of ten years he whipped out all the other
kings and made himself master of every one of the nine or ten islands that form the
group. But he did more than that. He bought ships, freighted them with sandal wood
and other native products, and sent them as far as South America and China; he sold
to his savages the foreign stuffs and tools and utensils which came back in these ships,
and started the march of civilization. It is doubtful if the match to this extraordinary
thing is to be found in the history of any other savage. Savages are eager to learn from
the white man any new way to kill each other, but it is not their habit to seize with
avidity and apply with energy the larger and nobler ideas which he offers them. The
details of Kamehameha's history show that he was always hospitably ready to examine
the white man's ideas, and that he exercised a tidy discrimination in making his
selections from the samples placed on view.
 A shrewder discrimination than was exhibited by his son and successor, Liholiho, I
think. Liholiho could have qualified as a reformer, perhaps, but as a king he was a
mistake. A mistake because he tried to be both king and reformer. This is mixing fire
and gunpowder together. A king has no proper business with reforming. His best policy
is to keep things as they are; and if he can't do that, he ought to try to make them
worse than they are. This is not guesswork; I have thought over this matter a good
deal, so that if I should ever have a chance to become a king I would know how to
conduct the business in the best way.

When Liholiho succeeded his father he found himself possessed of an equipment of

royal tools and safeguards which a wiser king would have known how to husband, and
judiciously employ, and make profitable. The entire country was under the one
scepter, and his was that scepter. There was an Established Church, and he was the
head of it. There was a Standing Army, and he was the head of that; an Army of 114
privates under command of 27 Generals and a Field Marshal. There was a proud and
ancient Hereditary Nobility. There was still one other asset. This was the tabu—an
agent endowed with a mysterious and stupendous power, an agent not found among
the properties of any European monarch, a tool of inestimable value in the business.
Liholiho was headmaster of the tabu. The tabu was the most ingenious and effective of
all the inventions that has ever been devised for keeping a people's privileges
satisfactorily restricted.

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

These rules, as you see, were quite simple and clear. It was easy to remember them;
and useful. For the penalty for infringing any rule in the whole list was death. Those
women easily learned to put up with shark and taro and dog for a diet when the other
things were so expensive.
 It was death for any one to walk upon tabu'd ground; or defile a tabu'd thing with
his touch; or fail in due servility to a chief; or step upon the king's shadow. The nobles
and the King and the priests were always suspending little rags here and there and
yonder, to give notice to the people that the decorated spot or thing was tabu, and
death lurking near. The struggle for life was difficult and chancy in the islands in those
days.

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

He destroyed his Established Church, and his kingdom is a republic today, in

consequence of that act.

When he destroyed the Church and burned the idols he did a mighty thing for
civilization and for his people's weal—but it was not "business." It was unkingly, it was
inartistic. It made trouble for his line. The American missionaries arrived while the
burned idols were still smoking. They found the nation without a religion, and they
repaired the defect. They offered their own religion and it was gladly received. But it
was no support to arbitrary kingship, and so the kingly power began to weaken from
that day. Forty-seven years later, when I was in the islands, Kamehameha V. was trying
to repair Liholiho's blunder, and not succeeding. He had set up an Established Church
and made himself the head of it. But it was only a pinchbeck thing, an imitation, a
bauble, an empty show. It had no power, no value for a king. It could not harry or burn
or slay, it in no way resembled the admirable machine which Liholiho destroyed. It was
an Established Church without an Establishment; all the people were Dissenters.
 Long before that, the kingship had itself become but a name, a show. At an early day
the missionaries had turned it into something very much like a republic; and here
lately the business whites have turned it into something exactly like it.

In Captain Cook's time (1778), the native population of the islands was estimated at
400,000; in 1836 at something short of 200,000, in 1866 at 50,000; it is to-day, per
census, 25,000. All intelligent people praise Kamehameha I. and Liholiho for conferring
upon their people the great boon of civilization. I would do it myself, but my
intelligence is out of repair, now, from over-work.

When I was in the islands nearly a generation ago, I was acquainted with a young
American couple who had among their belongings an attractive little son of the age of
seven—attractive but not practicably companionable with me, because he knew no
English. He had played from his birth with the little Kanakas on his father's plantation,
and had preferred their language and would learn no other. The family removed to
America a month after I arrived in the islands, and straightway the boy began to lose
his Kanaka and pick up English. By the time he was twelve he hadn't a word of Kanaka
left; the language had wholly departed from his tongue and from his comprehension.
Nine years later, when he was twenty-one, I came upon the family in one of the lake
towns of New York, and the mother told me about an adventure which her son had
been having. By trade he was now a professional diver. A passenger boat had been
caught in a storm on the lake, and had gone down, carrying her people with her. A few
days later the young diver descended, with his armor on, and entered the berth-saloon
of the boat, and stood at the foot of the companionway, with his hand on the rail,
peering through the dim water. Presently something touched him on the shoulder, and
he turned and found a dead man swaying and bobbing about him and seemingly
inspecting him inquiringly. He was paralyzed with fright.

His entry had disturbed the water, and now he discerned a number of dim corpses
making for him and wagging their heads and swaying their bodies like sleepy people
trying to dance. His senses forsook him, and in that condition he was drawn to the
surface. He was put to bed at home, and was soon very ill. During some days he had
seasons of delirium which lasted several hours at a time; and while they lasted he
talked Kanaka incessantly and glibly; and Kanaka only. He was still very ill, and he
talked to me in that tongue; but I did not understand it, of course. The doctor-books
tell us that cases like this are not uncommon. Then the doctors ought to study the
cases and find out how to multiply them. Many languages and things get mislaid in a
person's head, and stay mislaid for lack of this remedy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From talks with certain of our passengers whose home was Honolulu, and from a
sketch by Mrs. Mary H. Krout, I was able to perceive what the Honolulu of to-day is, as
compared with the Honolulu of my time. In my time it was a beautiful little town,
made up of snow-white wooden cottages deliciously smothered in tropical vines and
flowers and trees and shrubs; and its coral roads and streets were hard and smooth,
and as white as the houses. The outside aspects of the place suggested the presence of
a modest and comfortable prosperity—a general prosperity—perhaps one might
strengthen the term and say universal. There were no fine houses, no fine furniture.
There were no decorations. Tallow candles furnished the light for the bedrooms, a
whale-oil lamp furnished it for the parlor. Native matting served as carpeting. In the
parlor one would find two or three lithographs on the walls—portraits as a rule:
Kamehameha IV., Louis Kossuth, Jenny Lind; and may be an engraving or two: Rebecca
at the Well, Moses smiting the rock, Joseph's servants finding the cup in Benjamin's
sack. There would be a center table, with books of a tranquil sort on it: The Whole
Duty of Man, Baxter's Saints' Rest, Fox's Martyrs, Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy,
bound copies of The Missionary Herald and of Father Damon's Seaman's Friend. A
melodeon; a music stand, with 'Willie, We have Missed You', 'Star of the Evening', 'Roll
on Silver Moon', 'Are We Most There', 'I Would not Live Alway', and other songs of
love and sentiment, together with an assortment of hymns. A what-not with semi-
globular glass paperweights, enclosing miniature pictures of ships, New England rural
snowstorms, and the like; sea-shells with Bible texts carved on them in cameo style;
native curios; whale's tooth with full-rigged ship carved on it. There was nothing
reminiscent of foreign parts, for nobody had been abroad. Trips were made to San
Francisco, but that could not be called going abroad. Comprehensively speaking,
nobody traveled.

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

"Almost every house is surrounded by extensive lawns and gardens enclosed by walls
of volcanic stone or by thick hedges of the brilliant hibiscus.

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

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

"The lanai is the favorite reception room, and here at any social function the musical
program is given and cakes and ices are served; here morning callers are received, or
gay riding parties, the ladies in pretty divided skirts, worn for convenience in riding
astride,—the universal mode adopted by Europeans and Americans, as well as by the
natives.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Imagine it! The case of the babies is hard, but its bitterness is a trifle—less than a
trifle—less than nothing—compared to what the mother must suffer; and suffer minute
by minute, hour by hour, day by day, month by month, year by year, without respite,
relief, or any abatement of her pain till she dies.
 "One woman, Luka Kaaukau, has been living with her leper husband in the
settlement for twelve years. The man has scarcely a joint left, his limbs are only
distorted ulcerated stumps, for four years his wife has put every particle of food into his
mouth. He wanted his wife to abandon his wretched carcass long ago, as she herself
was sound and well, but Luka said that she was content to remain and wait on the man
she loved till the spirit should be freed from its burden.

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

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

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

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

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Sailed from Honolulu.—From diary:

Sept. 2. Flocks of flying fish-slim, shapely, graceful, and intensely white. With the sun
on them they look like a flight of silver fruit-knives. They are able to fly a hundred
yards.

Sept. 3. In 9 deg. 50' north latitude, at breakfast. Approaching the equator on a long
slant. Those of us who have never seen the equator are a good deal excited. I think I
would rather see it than any other thing in the world. We entered the "doldrums" last
night—variable winds, bursts of rain, intervals of calm, with chopping seas and a
wobbly and drunken motion to the ship—a condition of things findable in other
regions sometimes, but present in the doldrums always. The globe-girdling belt called
the doldrums is 20 degrees wide, and the thread called the equator lies along the
middle of it.

Sept. 4. Total eclipse of the moon last night. At 7.30 it began to go off. At total—or
about that—it was like a rich rosy cloud with a tumbled surface framed in the circle
and projecting from it—a bulge of strawberry-ice, so to speak. At half-eclipse the moon
was like a gilded acorn in its cup.

Sept. 5. Closing in on the equator this noon. A sailor explained to a young girl that
the ship's speed is poor because we are climbing up the bulge toward the center of the
globe; but that when we should once get over, at the equator, and start down-hill, we
should fly. When she asked him the other day what the fore-yard was, he said it was
the front yard, the open area in the front end of the ship. That man has a good deal of
learning stored up, and the girl is likely to get it all.

Afternoon. Crossed the equator. In the distance it looked like a blue ribbon
stretched across the ocean. Several passengers kodak'd it. We had no fool ceremonies,
no fantastics, no horse play. All that sort of thing has gone out. In old times a sailor,
dressed as Neptune, used to come in over the bows, with his suite, and lather up and
shave everybody who was crossing the equator for the first time, and then cleanse
these unfortunates by swinging them from the yard-arm and ducking them three times
in the sea. This was considered funny. Nobody knows why. No, that is not true. We do
know why. Such a thing could never be funny on land; no part of the old-time
grotesque performances gotten up on shipboard to celebrate the passage of the line
could ever be funny on shore—they would seem dreary and witless to shore people.
But the shore people would change their minds about it at sea, on a long voyage. On
such a voyage, with its eternal monotonies, people's intellects deteriorate; the owners
of the intellects soon reach a point where they almost seem to prefer childish things to
things of a maturer degree. One is often surprised at the juvenilities which grown
people indulge in at sea, and the interest they take in them, and the consuming
enjoyment they get out of them. This is on long voyages only. The mind gradually
becomes inert, dull, blunted; it loses its accustomed interest in intellectual things;
nothing but horse-play can rouse it, nothing but wild and foolish grotesqueries can
entertain it. On short voyages it makes no such exposure of itself; it hasn't time to
slump down to this sorrowful level.

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

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

We had a couple of grand tournaments, to determine who should be "Champion of

the Pacific"; they included among the participants nearly all the passengers, of both
sexes, and the officers of the ship, and they afforded many days of stupendous interest
and excitement, and murderous exercise—for horse-billiards is a physically violent
game.

The figures in the following record of some of the closing games in the first
tournament will show, better than any description, how very chancy the game is. The
losers here represented had all been winners in the previous games of the series, some
of them by fine majorities:

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

Miss C., 105 Mrs. T., 9 Clemens, 101 Taylor, 92
Taylor, 109 Davies, 95 Miss C., 108 Mortimer, 55
Thomas, 102 Roper, 76 Clemens, 111 Miss C., 89
Coomber, 106 Chase, 98

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

The next game would end tournament No. 1.

Mr. Thomas and I were the contestants. He won the lead and went to the bat—so to
speak. And there he stood, with the crotch of his cue resting against his disk while the
ship rose slowly up, sank slowly down, rose again, sank again. She never seemed to
rise to suit him exactly. She started up once more; and when she was nearly ready for
the turn, he let drive and landed his disk just within the left-hand end of the 10.
(Applause). The umpire proclaimed "a good 10," and the game-keeper set it down. I
played: my disk grazed the edge of Mr. Thomas's disk, and went out of the diagram.
(No applause.)
 Mr. Thomas played again—and landed his second disk alongside of the first, and
almost touching its right-hand side. "Good 10." (Great applause.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In a minor tournament I won the prize, which was a Waterbury watch. I put it in my
trunk. In Pretoria, South Africa, nine months afterward, my proper watch broke down
and I took the Waterbury out, wound it, set it by the great clock on the Parliament
House (8.05), then went back to my room and went to bed, tired from a long railway
journey. The parliamentary clock had a peculiarity which I was not aware of at the
time—a peculiarity which exists in no other clock, and would not exist in that one if it
had been made by a sane person; on the half-hour it strikes the succeeding hour, then
strikes the hour again, at the proper time. I lay reading and smoking awhile; then,
when I could hold my eyes open no longer and was about to put out the light, the
great clock began to boom, and I counted ten. I reached for the Waterbury to see how
it was getting along. It was marking 9.30. It seemed rather poor speed for a three-
dollar watch, but I supposed that the climate was affecting it. I shoved it half an hour
ahead; and took to my book and waited to see what would happen. At 10 the great
clock struck ten again. I looked—the Waterbury was marking half-past 10. This was too
much speed for the money, and it troubled me. I pushed the hands back a half hour,
and waited once more; I had to, for I was vexed and restless now, and my sleepiness
was gone. By and by the great clock struck 11. The Waterbury was marking 10.30. I
pushed it ahead half an hour, with some show of temper. By and by the great clock
struck 11 again. The Waterbury showed up 11.30, now, and I beat her brains out
against the bedstead. I was sorry next day, when I found out.

To return to the ship.

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

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

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

Sept. 8.—Sunday. We are moving so nearly south that we cross only about two
meridians of longitude a day. This morning we were in longitude 178 west from
Greenwich, and 57 degrees west from San Francisco. To-morrow we shall be close to
the center of the globe—the 180th degree of west longitude and 180th degree of east
longitude.

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

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

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

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

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had
laid an asteroid.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 11. In this world we often make mistakes of judgment. We do

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

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

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

"Robert Burns."

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

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

"This is what he says:

'There were nae bairns but only three—

Ane at the breast, twa at the knee.'"

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

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

We are moving steadily southward-getting further and further down under the
projecting paunch of the globe. Yesterday evening we saw the Big Dipper and the
north star sink below the horizon and disappear from our world. No, not "we," but
they. They saw it—somebody saw it—and told me about it. But it is no matter, I was
not caring for those things, I am tired of them, any way. I think they are well enough,
but one doesn't want them always hanging around. My interest was all in the Southern
Cross. I had never seen that. I had heard about it all my life, and it was but natural that
I should be burning to see it. No other constellation makes so much talk. I had nothing
against the Big Dipper—and naturally couldn't have anything against it, since it is a
citizen of our own sky, and the property of the United States—but I did want it to
move out of the way and give this foreigner a chance. Judging by the size of the talk
which the Southern Cross had made, I supposed it would need a sky all to itself.

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

It consists of four large stars and one little one. The little one is out of line and
further damages the shape. It should have been placed at the intersection of the stem
and the cross-bar. If you do not draw an imaginary line from star to star it does not
suggest a cross—nor anything in particular.

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

Constellations have always been troublesome things to name. If you give one of
them a fanciful name, it will always refuse to live up to it; it will always persist in not
resembling the thing it has been named for. Ultimately, to satisfy the public, the
fanciful name has to be discarded for a common-sense one, a manifestly descriptive
one. The Great Bear remained the Great Bear—and unrecognizable as such—for
thousands of years; and people complained about it all the time, and quite properly;
but as soon as it became the property of the United States, Congress changed it to the
Big Dipper, and now every body is satisfied, and there is no more talk about riots. I
would not change the Southern Cross to the Southern Coffin, I would change it to the
Southern Kite; for up there in the general emptiness is the proper home of a kite, but
not for coffins and crosses and dippers. In a little while, now—I cannot tell exactly how
long it will be—the globe will belong to the English-speaking race; and of course the
skies also. Then the constellations will be re-organized, and polished up, and re-
named—the most of them "Victoria," I reckon, but this one will sail thereafter as the
Southern Kite, or go out of business. Several towns and things, here and there, have
been named for Her Majesty already.

In these past few days we are plowing through a mighty Milky Way of islands. They
are so thick on the map that one would hardly expect to find room between them for a
canoe; yet we seldom glimpse one. Once we saw the dim bulk of a couple of them, far
away, spectral and dreamy things; members of the Horne-Alofa and Fortuna. On the
larger one are two rival native kings—and they have a time together. They are
Catholics; so are their people. The missionaries there are French priests.

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

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

"The afternoon of our arrival at Leper Island the schooner was lying almost
becalmed under the lee of the lofty central portion of the island, about three-quarters
of a mile from the shore. The boats were in sight at some distance. The recruiter-boat
had run into a small nook on the rocky coast, under a high bank, above which stood a
solitary hut backed by dense forest. The government agent and mate in the second
boat lay about 400 yards to the westward.

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

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

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

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Captain Wawn is crystal-clear on one point: He does not approve of missionaries.

They obstruct his business. They make "Recruiting," as he calls it ("Slave-Catching," as
they call it in their frank way) a trouble when it ought to be just a picnic and a pleasure
excursion. The missionaries have their opinion about the manner in which the Labor
Traffic is conducted, and about the recruiter's evasions of the law of the Traffic, and
about the traffic itself—and it is distinctly uncomplimentary to the Traffic and to
everything connected with it, including the law for its regulation. Captain Wawn's book
is of very recent date; I have by me a pamphlet of still later date—hot from the press,
in fact—by Rev. Wm. Gray, a missionary; and the book and the pamphlet taken
together make exceedingly interesting reading, to my mind.

Interesting, and easy to understand—except in one detail, which I will mention

presently. It is easy to understand why the Queensland sugar planter should want the
Kanaka recruit: he is cheap. Very cheap, in fact. These are the figures paid by the
planter: L20 to the recruiter for getting the Kanaka or "catching" him, as the missionary
phrase goes; L3 to the Queensland government for "superintending" the importation;
L5 deposited with the Government for the Kanaka's passage home when his three
years are up, in case he shall live that long; about L25 to the Kanaka himself for three
years' wages and clothing; total payment for the use of a man three years, L53; or,
including diet, L60. Altogether, a hundred dollars a year. One can understand why the
recruiter is fond of the business; the recruit costs him a few cheap presents (given to
the recruit's relatives, not to the recruit himself), and the recruit is worth L20 to the
recruiter when delivered in Queensland. All this is clear enough; but the thing that is
not clear is, what there is about it all to persuade the recruit. He is young and brisk; life
at home in his beautiful island is one lazy, long holiday to him; or if he wants to work
he can turn out a couple of bags of copra per week and sell it for four or five shillings a
bag. In Queensland he must get up at dawn and work from eight to twelve hours a day
in the canefields—in a much hotter climate than he is used to—and get less than four
shillings a week for it.
I cannot understand his willingness to go to Queensland. It is a deep puzzle to me.
Here is the explanation, from the planter's point of view; at least I gather from the
missionary's pamphlet that it is the planter's:

"When he comes from his home he is a savage, pure and simple. He feels no shame
at his nakedness and want of adornment. When he returns home he does so well
dressed, sporting a Waterbury watch, collars, cuffs, boots, and jewelry. He takes with
him one or more boxes—["Box" is English for trunk.]—well filled with clothing, a
musical instrument or two, and perfumery and other articles of luxury he has learned
to appreciate."

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

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

"Admitting that the foregoing description is the average one, the average sequel is
this: The cuffs and collars, if used at all, are carried off by youngsters, who fasten them
round the leg, just below the knee, as ornaments. The Waterbury, broken and dirty,
finds its way to the trader, who gives a trifle for it; or the inside is taken out, the wheels
strung on a thread and hung round the neck. Knives, axes, calico, and handkerchiefs
are divided among friends, and there is hardly one of these apiece. The boxes, the keys
often lost on the road home, can be bought for 2s. 6d. They are to be seen rotting
outside in almost any shore village on Tanna. (I speak of what I have seen.) A returned
Kanaka has been furiously angry with me because I would not buy his trousers, which
he declared were just my fit. He sold them afterwards to one of my Aniwan teachers for
9d. worth of tobacco—a pair of trousers that probably cost him 8s. or 10s. in
Queensland. A coat or shirt is handy for cold weather. The white handkerchiefs, the
'senet' (perfumery), the umbrella, and perhaps the hat, are kept. The boots have to
take their chance, if they do not happen to fit the copra trader. 'Senet' on the hair,
streaks of paint on the face, a dirty white handkerchief round the neck, strips of turtle
shell in the ears, a belt, a sheath and knife, and an umbrella constitute the rig of
returned Kanaka at home the day after landing."

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

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

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

The law and the missionaries feel for the repentant recruit—and properly, one may
be permitted to think, for he is only a youth and ignorant and persuadable to his
hurt—but sympathy for him is not kept in stock by the recruiter. Rev. Mr. Gray says:
 "A captain many years in the traffic explained to me how a penitent could be taken.
'When a boy jumps overboard we just take a boat and pull ahead of him, then lie
between him and the shore. If he has not tired himself swimming, and passes the boat,
keep on heading him in this way. The dodge rarely fails. The boy generally tires of
swimming, gets into the boat of his own accord, and goes quietly on board."

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

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

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

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

However, if the most a Kanaka advantages himself by a three-years course in

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

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

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

And he closes his vision with an invocation from Thomson:

"Come, bright Improvement! on the car of Time, And rule the spacious world from
clime to clime."
 Very well, Bright Improvement has arrived, you see, with her civilization, and her
Waterbury, and her umbrella, and her third-quality profanity, and her humanizing-not-
destroying machinery, and her hundred-and-eighty death-rate, and everything is going
along just as handsome!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

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

Wednesday, September 11.—Yesterday we passed close to an island or so, and

recognized the published Fiji characteristics: a broad belt of clean white coral sand
around the island; back of it a graceful fringe of leaning palms, with native huts
nestling cosily among the shrubbery at their bases; back of these a stretch of level land
clothed in tropic vegetation; back of that, rugged and picturesque mountains. A detail
of the immediate foreground: a mouldering ship perched high up on a reef-bench. This
completes the composition, and makes the picture artistically perfect.

In the afternoon we sighted Suva, the capital of the group, and threaded our way
into the secluded little harbor—a placid basin of brilliant blue and green water tucked
snugly in among the sheltering hills. A few ships rode at anchor in it—one of them a
sailing vessel flying the American flag; and they said she came from Duluth! There's a
journey! Duluth is several thousand miles from the sea, and yet she is entitled to the
proud name of Mistress of the Commercial Marine of the United States of America.
There is only one free, independent, unsubsidized American ship sailing the foreign
seas, and Duluth owns it. All by itself that ship is the American fleet. All by itself it
causes the American name and power to be respected in the far regions of the globe.
All by itself it certifies to the world that the most populous civilized nation, in the earth
has a just pride in her stupendous stretch of sea-front, and is determined to assert and
maintain her rightful place as one of the Great Maritime Powers of the Planet. All by
itself it is making foreign eyes familiar with a Flag which they have not seen before for
forty years, outside of the museum. For what Duluth has done, in building, equipping,
and maintaining at her sole expense the American Foreign Commercial Fleet, and in
thus rescuing the American name from shame and lifting it high for the homage of the
nations, we owe her a debt of gratitude which our hearts shall confess with quickened
beats whenever her name is named henceforth. Many national toasts will die in the
lapse of time, but while the flag flies and the Republic survives, they who live under
their shelter will still drink this one, standing and uncovered: Health and prosperity to
Thee, O Duluth, American Queen of the Alien Seas!

Row-boats began to flock from the shore; their crews were the first natives we had
seen. These men carried no overplus of clothing, and this was wise, for the weather
was hot. Handsome, great dusky men they were, muscular, clean-limbed, and with
faces full of character and intelligence. It would be hard to find their superiors
anywhere among the dark races, I should think.

Everybody went ashore to look around, and spy out the land, and have that luxury
of luxuries to sea-voyagers—a land-dinner. And there we saw more natives: Wrinkled
old women, with their flat mammals flung over their shoulders, or hanging down in
front like the cold-weather drip from the molasses-faucet; plump and smily young girls,
blithe and content, easy and graceful, a pleasure to look at; young matrons, tall,
straight, comely, nobly built, sweeping by with chin up, and a gait incomparable for
unconscious stateliness and dignity; majestic young men—athletes for build and
muscle—clothed in a loose arrangement of dazzling white, with bronze breast and
bronze legs naked, and the head a cannon-swab of solid hair combed straight out from
the skull and dyed a rich brick-red. Only sixty years ago they were sunk in darkness;
now they have the bicycle.

We strolled about the streets of the white folks' little town, and around over the
hills by paths and roads among European dwellings and gardens and plantations, and
past clumps of hibiscus that made a body blink, the great blossoms were so intensely
red; and by and by we stopped to ask an elderly English colonist a question or two, and
to sympathize with him concerning the torrid weather; but he was surprised, and said:

"This? This is not hot. You ought to be here in the summer time once."
 "We supposed that this was summer; it has the ear-marks of it. You could take it to
almost any country and deceive people with it. But if it isn't summer, what does it
lack?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In old times the Fijians were fierce fighters; they were very religious, and worshiped
idols; the big chiefs were proud and haughty, and they were men of great style in
many ways; all chiefs had several wives, the biggest chiefs sometimes had as many as
fifty; when a chief was dead and ready for burial, four or five of his wives were
strangled and put into the grave with him. In 1804 twenty-seven British convicts
escaped from Australia to Fiji, and brought guns and ammunition with them. Consider
what a power they were, armed like that, and what an opportunity they had. If they
had been energetic men and sober, and had had brains and known how to use them,
they could have achieved the sovereignty of the archipelago twenty-seven kings and
each with eight or nine islands under his scepter. But nothing came of this chance.
They lived worthless lives of sin and luxury, and died without honor—in most cases by
violence. Only one of them had any ambition; he was an Irishman named Connor. He
tried to raise a family of fifty children, and scored forty-eight. He died lamenting his
failure. It was a foolish sort of avarice. Many a father would have been rich enough
with forty.

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

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

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

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

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

What a strange and romantic episode it is; and how one is tortured with curiosity to
know whence those mysterious creatures came, those Men Without a Country, errant
waifs who cannot name their lost home, wandering Children of Nowhere.

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

We sailed again, refreshed.

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

His special interest was the fauna of Australasia, and his knowledge of the matter
was as exhaustive as it was accurate. I already knew a good deal about the rabbits in
Australasia and their marvelous fecundity, but in my talks with him I found that my
estimate of the great hindrance and obstruction inflicted by the rabbit pest upon
traffic and travel was far short of the facts. He told me that the first pair of rabbits
imported into Australasia bred so wonderfully that within six months rabbits were so
thick in the land that people had to dig trenches through them to get from town to
town.

He told me a great deal about worms, and the kangaroo, and other coleoptera, and
said he knew the history and ways of all such pachydermata. He said the kangaroo had
pockets, and carried its young in them when it couldn't get apples. And he said that the
emu was as big as an ostrich, and looked like one, and had an amorphous appetite and
would eat bricks. Also, that the dingo was not a dingo at all, but just a wild dog; and
that the only difference between a dingo and a dodo was that neither of them barked;
otherwise they were just the same. He said that the only game-bird in Australia was
the wombat, and the only song-bird the larrikin, and that both were protected by
government. The most beautiful of the native birds was the bird of Paradise. Next
came the two kinds of lyres; not spelt the same. He said the one kind was dying out,
the other thickening up. He explained that the "Sundowner" was not a bird it was a
man; sundowner was merely the Australian equivalent of our word, tramp. He is a
loafer, a hard drinker, and a sponge. He tramps across the country in the sheep-
shearing season, pretending to look for work; but he always times himself to arrive at a
sheep-run just at sundown, when the day's labor ends; all he wants is whisky and
supper and bed and breakfast; he gets them and then disappears. The naturalist spoke
of the bell bird, the creature that at short intervals all day rings out its mellow and
exquisite peal from the deeps of the forest. It is the favorite and best friend of the
weary and thirsty sundowner; for he knows that wherever the bell bird is, there is
water; and he goes somewhere else. The naturalist said that the oddest bird in
Australasia was the, Laughing Jackass, and the biggest the now extinct Great Moa.

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

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

"You can call it anything you want to, and be right. It is a fish, for it lives in the river
half the time; it is a land animal, for it resides on the land half the time; it is an
amphibian, since it likes both and does not know which it prefers; it is a hybernian, for
when times are dull and nothing much going on it buries itself under the mud at the
bottom of a puddle and hybernates there a couple of weeks at a time; it is a kind of
duck, for it has a duck-bill and four webbed paddles; it is a fish and quadruped
together, for in the water it swims with the paddles and on shore it paws itself across
country with them; it is a kind of seal, for it has a seal's fur; it is carnivorous,
herbivorous, insectivorous, and vermifuginous, for it eats fish and grass and butterflies,
and in the season digs worms out of the mud and devours them; it is clearly a bird, for
it lays eggs, and hatches them; it is clearly a mammal, for it nurses its young; and it is
manifestly a kind of Christian, for it keeps the Sabbath when there is anybody around,
and when there isn't, doesn't. It has all the tastes there are except refined ones, it has
all the habits there are except good ones.

"It is a survival—a survival of the fittest. Mr. Darwin invented the theory that goes by
that name, but the Ornithorhynchus was the first to put it to actual experiment and
prove that it could be done. Hence it should have as much of the credit as Mr. Darwin.
It was never in the Ark; you will find no mention of it there; it nobly stayed out and
worked the theory. Of all creatures in the world it was the only one properly equipped
for the test. The Ark was thirteen months afloat, and all the globe submerged; no land
visible above the flood, no vegetation, no food for a mammal to eat, nor water for a
mammal to drink; for all mammal food was destroyed, and when the pure floods from
heaven and the salt oceans of the earth mingled their waters and rose above the
mountain tops, the result was a drink which no bird or beast of ordinary construction
could use and live. But this combination was nuts for the Ornithorhynchus, if I may use
a term like that without offense. Its river home had always been salted by the flood-
tides of the sea. On the face of the Noachian deluge innumerable forest trees were
floating. Upon these the Ornithorhynchus voyaged in peace; voyaged from clime to
clime, from hemisphere to hemisphere, in contentment and comfort, in virile interest in
the constant change of scene, in humble thankfulness for its privileges, in ever-
increasing enthusiasm in the development of the great theory upon whose validity it
had staked its life, its fortunes, and its sacred honor, if I may use such expressions
without impropriety in connection with an episode of this nature.

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

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

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

"Such is the history of the most hoary, the most ancient, the most venerable creature
that exists in the earth today—Ornithorhynchus Platypus Extraordinariensis—whom
God preserve!"

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

INVOCATION.

"Come forth from thy oozy couch,

O Ornithorhynchus dear!
And greet with a cordial claw
The stranger that longs to hear

"From thy own own lips the tale

Of thy origin all unknown:
Thy misplaced bone where flesh should be
And flesh where should be bone;
 "And fishy fin where should be paw,
And beaver-trowel tail,
And snout of beast equip'd with teeth
Where gills ought to prevail.

"Come, Kangaroo, the good and true

Foreshortened as to legs,
And body tapered like a churn,
And sack marsupial, i' fegs,

"And tells us why you linger here,

Thou relic of a vanished time,
When all your friends as fossils sleep,
Immortalized in lime!"

Perhaps no poet is a conscious plagiarist; but there seems to be warrant for

suspecting that there is no poet who is not at one time or another an unconscious one.
The above verses are indeed beautiful, and, in a way, touching; but there is a haunting
something about them which unavoidably suggests the Sweet Singer of Michigan. It
can hardly be doubted that the author had read the works of that poet and been
impressed by them. It is not apparent that he has borrowed from them any word or
yet any phrase, but the style and swing and mastery and melody of the Sweet Singer
all are there. Compare this Invocation with "Frank Dutton"—particularly stanzas first
and seventeenth—and I think the reader will feel convinced that he who wrote the
one had read the other:

I.

"Frank Dutton was as fine a lad

As ever you wish to see,
And he was drowned in Pine Island Lake
On earth no more will he be,
His age was near fifteen years,
And he was a motherless boy,
He was living with his grandmother
When he was drowned, poor boy."
 XVII.

"He was drowned on Tuesday afternoon,

On Sunday he was found,
And the tidings of that drowned boy
Was heard for miles around.
His form was laid by his mother's side,
Beneath the cold, cold ground,
His friends for him will drop a tear
When they view his little mound."

The Sentimental Song Book.

By Mrs. Julia Moore, p. 36.
 CHAPTER IX.

It is your human environment that makes climate.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Sept. 15—Night. Close to Australia now. Sydney 50 miles distant.

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

It was porpoises—porpoises aglow with phosphorescent light. They presently

collected in a wild and magnificent jumble under the bows, and there they played for
an hour, leaping and frollicking and carrying on, turning summersaults in front of the
stem or across it and never getting hit, never making a miscalculation, though the stem
missed them only about an inch, as a rule. They were porpoises of the ordinary
length—eight or ten feet—but every twist of their bodies sent a long procession of
united and glowing curves astern. That fiery jumble was an enchanting thing to look at,
and we stayed out the performance; one cannot have such a show as that twice in a
lifetime. The porpoise is the kitten of the sea; he never has a serious thought, he cares
for nothing but fun and play. But I think I never saw him at his winsomest until that
night. It was near a center of civilization, and he could have been drinking.
 By and by, when we had approached to somewhere within thirty miles of Sydney
Heads the great electric light that is posted on one of those lofty ramparts began to
show, and in time the little spark grew to a great sun and pierced the firmament of
darkness with a far-reaching sword of light.

Sydney Harbor is shut in behind a precipice that extends some miles like a wall, and
exhibits no break to the ignorant stranger. It has a break in the middle, but it makes so
little show that even Captain Cook sailed by it without seeing it. Near by that break is a
false break which resembles it, and which used to make trouble for the mariner at
night, in the early days before the place was lighted. It caused the memorable disaster
to the Duncan Dunbar, one of the most pathetic tragedies in the history of that pitiless
ruffian, the sea. The ship was a sailing vessel; a fine and favorite passenger packet,
commanded by a popular captain of high reputation. She was due from England, and
Sydney was waiting, and counting the hours; counting the hours, and making ready to
give her a heart-stirring welcome; for she was bringing back a great company of
mothers and daughters, the long-missed light and bloom of life of Sydney homes;
daughters that had been years absent at school, and mothers that had been with them
all that time watching over them. Of all the world only India and Australasia have by
custom freighted ships and fleets with their hearts, and know the tremendous
meaning of that phrase; only they know what the waiting is like when this freightage is
entrusted to the fickle winds, not steam, and what the joy is like when the ship that is
returning this treasure comes safe to port and the long dread is over.

On board the Duncan Dunbar, flying toward Sydney Heads in the waning afternoon,
the happy home-comers made busy preparation, for it was not doubted that they
would be in the arms of their friends before the day was done; they put away their
sea-going clothes and put on clothes meeter for the meeting, their richest and their
loveliest, these poor brides of the grave. But the wind lost force, or there was a
miscalculation, and before the Heads were sighted the darkness came on. It was said
that ordinarily the captain would have made a safe offing and waited for the morning;
but this was no ordinary occasion; all about him were appealing faces, faces pathetic
with disappointment. So his sympathy moved him to try the dangerous passage in the
dark. He had entered the Heads seventeen times, and believed he knew the ground. So
he steered straight for the false opening, mistaking it for the true one. He did not find
out that he was wrong until it was too late. There was no saving the ship. The great
seas swept her in and crushed her to splinters and rubbish upon the rock tushes at the
base of the precipice. Not one of all that fair and gracious company was ever seen
again alive. The tale is told to every stranger that passes the spot, and it will continue
to be told to all that come, for generations; but it will never grow old, custom cannot
stale it, the heart-break that is in it can never perish out of it.

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

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

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

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

The narrow inlets which I have mentioned go wandering out into the land
everywhere and hiding themselves in it, and pleasure-launches are always exploring
them with picnic parties on board. It is said by trustworthy people that if you explore
them all you will find that you have covered 700 miles of water passage. But there are
liars everywhere this year, and they will double that when their works are in good
going order. October was close at hand, spring was come. It was really spring—
everybody said so; but you could have sold it for summer in Canada, and nobody
would have suspected. It was the very weather that makes our home summers the
perfection of climatic luxury; I mean, when you are out in the wood or by the sea. But
these people said it was cool, now—a person ought to see Sydney in the summer time
if he wanted to know what warm weather is; and he ought to go north ten or fifteen
hundred miles if he wanted to know what hot weather is. They said that away up there
toward the equator the hens laid fried eggs. Sydney is the place to go to get
information about other people's climates. It seems to me that the occupation of
Unbiased Traveler Seeking Information is the pleasantest and most irresponsible trade
there is. The traveler can always find out anything he wants to, merely by asking. He
can get at all the facts, and more. Everybody helps him, nobody hinders him. Anybody
who has an old fact in stock that is no longer negotiable in the domestic market will let
him have it at his own price. An accumulation of such goods is easily and quickly made.
They cost almost nothing and they bring par in the foreign market. Travelers who come
to America always freight up with the same old nursery tales that their predecessors
selected, and they carry them back and always work them off without any trouble in
the home market.

If the climates of the world were determined by parallels of latitude, then we could
know a place's climate by its position on the map; and so we should know that the
climate of Sydney was the counterpart of the climate of Columbia, S. C., and of Little
Rock, Arkansas, since Sydney is about the same distance south of the equator that
those other towns are north of it—thirty-four degrees. But no, climate disregards the
parallels of latitude. In Arkansas they have a winter; in Sydney they have the name of
it, but not the thing itself. I have seen the ice in the Mississippi floating past the mouth
of the Arkansas river; and at Memphis, but a little way above, the Mississippi has been
frozen over, from bank to bank. But they have never had a cold spell in Sydney which
brought the mercury down to freezing point. Once in a mid-winter day there, in the
month of July, the mercury went down to 36 deg., and that remains the memorable
"cold day" in the history of the town. No doubt Little Rock has seen it below zero.
Once, in Sydney, in mid-summer, about New Year's Day, the mercury went up to 106
deg. in the shade, and that is Sydney's memorable hot day. That would about tally with
Little Rock's hottest day also, I imagine. My Sydney figures are taken from a
government report, and are trustworthy. In the matter of summer weather Arkansas
has no advantage over Sydney, perhaps, but when it comes to winter weather, that is
another affair. You could cut up an Arkansas winter into a hundred Sydney winters and
have enough left for Arkansas and the poor.

The whole narrow, hilly belt of the Pacific side of New South Wales has the climate
of its capital—a mean winter temperature of 54 deg. and a mean summer one of 71
deg. It is a climate which cannot be improved upon for healthfulness. But the experts
say that 90 deg. in New South Wales is harder to bear than 112 deg. in the neighboring
colony of Victoria, because the atmosphere of the former is humid, and of the latter
dry. The mean temperature of the southernmost point of New South Wales is the
same as that of Nice—60 deg.—yet Nice is further from the equator by 460 miles than
is the former.

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

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

But where as one finds a sufficiently good climate and fertile land almost
everywhere in the United States, it seems settled that inside of the Australian border-
belt one finds many deserts and in spots a climate which nothing can stand except a
few of the hardier kinds of rocks. In effect, Australia is as yet unoccupied. If you take a
map of the United States and leave the Atlantic sea-board States in their places; also
the fringe of Southern States from Florida west to the Mouth of the Mississippi; also a
narrow, inhabited streak up the Mississippi half-way to its head waters; also a narrow,
inhabited border along the Pacific coast: then take a brushful of paint and obliterate
the whole remaining mighty stretch of country that lies between the Atlantic States
and the Pacific-coast strip, your map will look like the latest map of Australia.
 This stupendous blank is hot, not to say torrid; a part of it is fertile, the rest is desert;
it is not liberally watered; it has no towns. One has only to cross the mountains of New
South Wales and descend into the westward-lying regions to find that he has left the
choice climate behind him, and found a new one of a quite different character. In fact,
he would not know by the thermometer that he was not in the blistering Plains of
India. Captain Sturt, the great explorer, gives us a sample of the heat.

"The wind, which had been blowing all the morning from the N.E., increased to a
heavy gale, and I shall never forget its withering effect. I sought shelter behind a large
gum-tree, but the blasts of heat were so terrific that I wondered the very grass did not
take fire. This really was nothing ideal: everything both animate and inanimate gave
way before it; the horses stood with their backs to the wind and their noses to the
ground, without the muscular strength to raise their heads; the birds were mute, and
the leaves of the trees under which we were sitting fell like a snow shower around us.
At noon I took a thermometer graded to 127 deg., out of my box, and observed that the
mercury was up to 125. Thinking that it had been unduly influenced, I put it in the fork
of a tree close to me, sheltered alike from the wind and the sun. I went to examine it
about an hour afterwards, when I found the mercury had risen to the-top of the
instrument and had burst the bulb, a circumstance that I believe no traveler has ever
before had to record. I cannot find language to convey to the reader's mind an idea of
the intense and oppressive nature of the heat that prevailed."

That hot wind sweeps over Sydney sometimes, and brings with it what is called a
"dust-storm." It is said that most Australian towns are acquainted with the dust-storm.
I think I know what it is like, for the following description by Mr. Gape tallies very well
with the alkali duststorm of Nevada, if you leave out the "shovel" part. Still the shovel
part is a pretty important part, and seems to indicate that my Nevada storm is but a
poor thing, after all.

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

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

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow.
There is no humor in heaven.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Captain Cook found Australia in 1770, and eighteen years later the British
Government began to transport convicts to it. Altogether, New South Wales received
83,000 in 53 years. The convicts wore heavy chains; they were ill-fed and badly treated
by the officers set over them; they were heavily punished for even slight infractions of
the rules; "the cruelest discipline ever known" is one historian's description of their
life.—[The Story of Australasia. J. S. Laurie.]

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

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

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

The convict life in Tasmania was so unendurable, and suicide so difficult to

accomplish that once or twice despairing men got together and drew straws to
determine which of them should kill another of the group—this murder to secure
death to the perpetrator and to the witnesses of it by the hand of the hangman!

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

Some of the convicts—indeed, a good many of them—were very bad people, even
for that day; but the most of them were probably not noticeably worse than the
average of the people they left behind them at home. We must believe this; we cannot
avoid it. We are obliged to believe that a nation that could look on, unmoved, and see
starving or freezing women hanged for stealing twenty-six cents' worth of bacon or
rags, and boys snatched from their mothers, and men from their families, and sent to
the other side of the world for long terms of years for similar trifling offenses, was a
nation to whom the term "civilized" could not in any large way be applied. And we
must also believe that a nation that knew, during more than forty years, what was
happening to those exiles and was still content with it, was not advancing in any showy
way toward a higher grade of civilization.

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

Four years had gone by, and many convicts had come. Respectable settlers were
beginning to arrive. These two classes of colonists had to be protected, in case of
trouble among themselves or with the natives. It is proper to mention the natives,
though they could hardly count they were so scarce. At a time when they had not as
yet begun to be much disturbed—not as yet being in the way—it was estimated that in
New South Wales there was but one native to 45,000 acres of territory.
 People had to be protected. Officers of the regular army did not want this service—
away off there where neither honor nor distinction was to be gained. So England
recruited and officered a kind of militia force of 1,000 uniformed civilians called the
"New South Wales Corps" and shipped it.

This was the worst blow of all. The colony fairly staggered under it. The Corps was
an object-lesson of the moral condition of England outside of the jails. The colonists
trembled. It was feared that next there would be an importation of the nobility.

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

Meantime, they had spread intemperance everywhere. And they had squeezed farm
after farm out of the settlers hands for rum, and thus had bountifully enriched
themselves. When a farmer was caught in the last agonies of thirst they took
advantage of him and sweated him for a drink. In one instance they sold a man a gallon
of rum worth two dollars for a piece of property which was sold some years later for
$100,000. When the colony was about eighteen or twenty years old it was discovered
that the land was specially fitted for the wool-culture. Prosperity followed, commerce
with the world began, by and by rich mines of the noble metals were opened,
immigrants flowed in, capital likewise. The result is the great and wealthy and
enlightened commonwealth of New South Wales.

It is a country that is rich in mines, wool ranches, trams, railways, steamship lines,
schools, newspapers, botanical gardens, art galleries, libraries, museums, hospitals,
learned societies; it is the hospitable home of every species of culture and of every
species of material enterprise, and there is a, church at every man's door, and a race-
track over the way.
 CHAPTER XI.

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

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

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

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

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

Nobody could say it finer than that. If he had put in his cork then, and stayed away
from Dubbo——but no; heedless man, he pulled it again. Pulled it when he was away
along in his book, and his memory of what he had said about Sydney had grown dim:

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

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

Sydney has a population of 400,000. When a stranger from America steps ashore
there, the first thing that strikes him is that the place is eight or nine times as large as
he was expecting it to be; and the next thing that strikes him is that it is an English city
with American trimmings. Later on, in Melbourne, he will find the American trimmings
still more in evidence; there, even the architecture will often suggest America; a
photograph of its stateliest business street might be passed upon him for a picture of
the finest street in a large American city. I was told that the most of the fine residences
were the city residences of squatters. The name seemed out of focus somehow. When
the explanation came, it offered a new instance of the curious changes which words,
as well as animals, undergo through change of habitat and climate. With us, when you
speak of a squatter you are always supposed to be speaking of a poor man, but in
Australia when you speak of a squatter you are supposed to be speaking of a
millionaire; in America the word indicates the possessor of a few acres and a doubtful
title, in Australia it indicates a man whose landfront is as long as a railroad, and whose
title has been perfected in one way or another; in America the word indicates a man
who owns a dozen head of live stock, in Australia a man who owns anywhere from fifty
thousand up to half a million head; in America the word indicates a man who is
obscure and not important, in Australia a man who is prominent and of the first
importance; in America you take off your hat to no squatter, in Australia you do; in
America if your uncle is a squatter you keep it dark, in Australia you advertise it; in
America if your friend is a squatter nothing comes of it, but with a squatter for your
friend in Australia you may sup with kings if there are any around.

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

He will live in a palace in Melbourne or Sydney or some other of the large cities, and
make occasional trips to his sheep-kingdom several hundred miles away in the great
plains to look after his battalions of riders and shepherds and other hands. He has a
commodious dwelling out there, and if he approve of you he will invite you to spend a
week in it, and will make you at home and comfortable, and let you see the great
industry in all its details, and feed you and slake you and smoke you with the best that
money can buy.

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

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

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

Now and then—but this is rare—one hears such words as piper for paper, lydy for
lady, and tyble for table fall from lips whence one would not expect such
pronunciations to come. There is a superstition prevalent in Sydney that this
pronunciation is an Australianism, but people who have been "home"—as the native
reverently and lovingly calls England—know better. It is "costermonger." All over
Australasia this pronunciation is nearly as common among servants as it is in London
among the uneducated and the partially educated of all sorts and conditions of people.
That mislaid 'y' is rather striking when a person gets enough of it into a short sentence
to enable it to show up. In the hotel in Sydney the chambermaid said, one morning:

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

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

In the Australasian home the table-talk is vivacious and unembarrassed; it is without

stiffness or restraint. This does not remind one of England so much as it does of
America. But Australasia is strictly democratic, and reserves and restraints are things
that are bred by differences of rank.

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

But it is hard to move a new English acquaintance when he is by himself, or when

the company present is small and new to him. He is on his guard then, and his natural
reserve is to the fore. This has given him the false reputation of being without humor
and without the appreciation of humor.

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

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

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"A good old Hindoo gentleman told me where my trouble lay. He said 'We Hindoos
recognize a god by the work of his hands—we accept no other testimony. Apparently,
this is also the rule with you Christians. And we know when a man has his power from a
god by the fact that he does things which he could not do, as a man, with the mere
powers of a man. Plainly, this is the Christian's way also, of knowing when a man is
working by a god's power and not by his own. You saw that there was a supernatural
property in the hair of Samson; for you perceived that when his hair was gone he was
as other men. It is our way, as I have said. There are many nations in the world, and
each group of nations has its own gods, and will pay no worship to the gods of the
others. Each group believes its own gods to be strongest, and it will not exchange them
except for gods that shall be proven to be their superiors in power. Man is but a weak
creature, and needs the help of gods—he cannot do without it. Shall he place his fate in
the hands of weak gods when there may be stronger ones to be found? That would be
foolish. No, if he hear of gods that are stronger than his own, he should not turn a deaf
ear, for it is not a light matter that is at stake. How then shall he determine which gods
are the stronger, his own or those that preside over the concerns of other nations? By
comparing the known works of his own gods with the works of those others; there is no
other way. Now, when we make this comparison, we are not drawn towards the gods
of any other nation. Our gods are shown by their works to be the strongest, the most
powerful. The Christians have but few gods, and they are new—new, and not strong; as
it seems to us. They will increase in number, it is true, for this has happened with all
gods, but that time is far away, many ages and decades of ages away, for gods
multiply slowly, as is meet for beings to whom a thousand years is but a single
moment. Our own gods have been born millions of years apart. The process is slow, the
gathering of strength and power is similarly slow. In the slow lapse of the ages the
steadily accumulating power of our gods has at last become prodigious. We have a
thousand proofs of this in the colossal character of their personal acts and the acts of
ordinary men to whom they have given supernatural qualities. To your Samson was
given supernatural power, and when he broke the withes, and slew the thousands with
the jawbone of an ass, and carried away the gate's of the city upon his shoulders, you
were amazed—and also awed, for you recognized the divine source of his strength. But
it could not profit to place these things before your Hindoo congregation and invite
their wonder; for they would compare them with the deed done by Hanuman, when our
gods infused their divine strength into his muscles; and they would be indifferent to
them—as you saw. In the old, old times, ages and ages gone by, when our god Rama
was warring with the demon god of Ceylon, Rama bethought him to bridge the sea and
connect Ceylon with India, so that his armies might pass easily over; and he sent his
general, Hanuman, inspired like your own Samson with divine strength, to bring the
materials for the bridge. In two days Hanuman strode fifteen hundred miles, to the
Himalayas, and took upon his shoulder a range of those lofty mountains two hundred
miles long, and started with it toward Ceylon. It was in the night; and, as he passed
along the plain, the people of Govardhun heard the thunder of his tread and felt the
earth rocking under it, and they ran out, and there, with their snowy summits piled to
heaven, they saw the Himalayas passing by. And as this huge continent swept along
overshadowing the earth, upon its slopes they discerned the twinkling lights of a
thousand sleeping villages, and it was as if the constellations were filing in procession
through the sky.

While they were looking, Hanuman stumbled, and a small ridge of red sandstone
twenty miles long was jolted loose and fell. Half of its length has wasted away in the
course of the ages, but the other ten miles of it remain in the plain by Govardhun to this
day as proof of the might of the inspiration of our gods. You must know, yourself, that
Hanuman could not have carried those mountains to Ceylon except by the strength of
the gods. You know that it was not done by his own strength, therefore, you know that
it was done by the strength of the gods, just as you know that Samson carried the gates
by the divine strength and not by his own. I think you must concede two things: First,
That in carrying the gates of the city upon his shoulders, Samson did not establish the
superiority of his gods over ours; secondly, That his feat is not supported by any but
verbal evidence, while Hanuman's is not only supported by verbal evidence, but this
evidence is confirmed, established, proven, by visible, tangible evidence, which is the
strongest of all testimony. We have the sandstone ridge, and while it remains we
cannot doubt, and shall not. Have you the gates?'"
 CHAPTER XIII.

The timid man yearns for full value and asks a tenth. The bold man strikes for double
value and compromises on par.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

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

The botanical garden of Sydney covers thirty-eight acres, beautifully laid out and rich
with the spoil of all the lands and all the climes of the world. The garden is on high
ground in the middle of the town, overlooking the great harbor, and it adjoins the
spacious grounds of Government House—fifty-six acres; and at hand also, is a
recreation ground containing eighty-two acres. In addition, there are the zoological
gardens, the race-course, and the great cricket-grounds where the international
matches are played. Therefore there is plenty of room for reposeful lazying and
lounging, and for exercise too, for such as like that kind of work.

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

The Australasian Governor would not be so restless, perhaps, if he had a war, or a

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

Thus the Governor's functions are much more limited than are a Governor's
functions with us. And therefore more fatiguing. He is the apparent head of the State,
he is the real head of Society. He represents culture, refinement, elevated sentiment,
polite life, religion; and by his example he propagates these, and they spread and
flourish and bear good fruit. He creates the fashion, and leads it. His ball is the ball of
balls, and his countenance makes the horse-race thrive.

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

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

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

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

The shark is the swiftest fish that swims. The speed of the fastest steamer afloat is
poor compared to his. And he is a great gad-about, and roams far and wide in the
oceans, and visits the shores of all of them, ultimately, in the course of his restless
excursions. I have a tale to tell now, which has not as yet been in print. In 1870 a young
stranger arrived in Sydney, and set about finding something to do; but he knew no
one, and brought no recommendations, and the result was that he got no
employment. He had aimed high, at first, but as time and his money wasted away he
grew less and less exacting, until at last he was willing to serve in the humblest
capacities if so he might get bread and shelter. But luck was still against him; he could
find no opening of any sort. Finally his money was all gone. He walked the streets all
day, thinking; he walked them all night, thinking, thinking, and growing hungrier and
hungrier. At dawn he found himself well away from the town and drifting aimlessly
along the harbor shore. As he was passing by a nodding shark-fisher the man looked up
and said——

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

"How do you know I won't make it worse?"

"Because you can't. It has been at its worst all night. If you can't change it, no harm's
done; if you do change it, it's for the better, of course. Come."

"All right, what will you give?"

"I'll give you the shark, if you catch one."

"And I will eat it, bones and all. Give me the line."

"Here you are. I will get away, now, for awhile, so that my luck won't spoil yours; for
many and many a time I've noticed that if——there, pull in, pull in, man, you've got a
bite! I knew how it would be. Why, I knew you for a born son of luck the minute I saw
you. All right—he's landed."

It was an unusually large shark—"a full nineteen-footer," the fisherman said, as he

laid the creature open with his knife.
 "Now you rob him, young man, while I step to my hamper for a fresh bait. There's
generally something in them worth going for. You've changed my luck, you see. But my
goodness, I hope you haven't changed your own."

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

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

"What, you are not going?"

"Yes. Good-bye."

"But what about your shark?"

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

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

"Oh, well, you can collect it."

"And keep it? Is that what you mean?"

"Yes."

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

"I am."

The young man walked slowly back to the town, deeply musing as he went. He
halted a moment in front of the best restaurant, then glanced at his clothes and
passed on, and got his breakfast at a "stand-up." There was a good deal of it, and it
cost five shillings. He tendered a sovereign, got his change, glanced at his silver,
muttered to himself, "There isn't enough to buy clothes with," and went his way.
 At half-past nine the richest wool-broker in Sydney was sitting in his morning-room
at home, settling his breakfast with the morning paper. A servant put his head in and
said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I want to borrow a hundred thousand pounds."

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

"Nobody that you know."

"What is your name?"

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

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

"Well, well, well. It is the most extraordinary idea that—sit down—you interest me.
And somehow you—well, you fascinate me; I think that that is about the word. And it
isn't your proposition—no, that doesn't fascinate me; it's something else, I don't quite
know what; something that's born in you and oozes out of you, I suppose. Now then
just for curiosity's sake again, nothing more: as I understand it, it is your desire to
bor——"

"I said intention."

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

"I knew its strength."

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

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

"What, the whole of it?"

"The whole of it."

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

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

"Well, you've got your statistics right, any way. Now, then, do you know what the
margins would foot up, to buy it at sixty days?"
 "The hundred thousand pounds I came here to get."

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

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

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

"I said 'shall'."

"Yes, by George, you did say 'shall'! You are the most definite devil I ever saw, in the
matter of language. Dear, dear, dear, look here! Definite speech means clarity of mind.
Upon my word I believe you've got what you believe to be a rational reason, for
venturing into this house, an entire stranger, on this wild scheme of buying the wool
crop of an entire colony on speculation. Bring it out—I am prepared—acclimatized, if I
may use the word. Why would you buy the crop, and why would you make that sum
out of it? That is to say, what makes you think you——"

"I don't think—I know."

"Definite again. How do you know?"

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

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

"Because I have later news."

"Later news? Oh, come—later news than fifty days, brought steaming hot from
London by the——"
 "My news is only ten days old."

"Oh, Mun-chausen, hear the maniac talk! Where did you get it?"

"Got it out of a shark."

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

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

"Oh, a thousand, thousand pardons! I ought to be ashamed of myself, and I am

ashamed of myself for thinking that a little bit of a circumstance like sending a shark to
England to fetch back a market report——"

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

"Andrew. What are you writing?"

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

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

"Here it is—and with it these buttons and a memorandum book that belonged to
the man the shark swallowed. Swallowed him in the Thames, without a doubt; for you
will notice that the last entry in the book is dated 'London,' and is of the same date as
the Times, and says, 'Ber confequentz der Kreigeseflarun, reife ich heute nach
Deutchland ab, aur bak ich mein leben auf dem Ultar meines Landes legen mag'——,
as clean native German as anybody can put upon paper, and means that in
consequence of the declaration of war, this loyal soul is leaving for home to-day, to
fight. And he did leave, too, but the shark had him before the day was done, poor
fellow."

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

"Cecil Rhodes."

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

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

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

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

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

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

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

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

Outside of Melbourne, Victoria seems to be owned by a handful of squatters, each

with a Rhode Island for a sheep farm. That is the impression which one gathers from
common talk, yet the wool industry of Victoria is by no means so great as that of New
South Wales. The climate of Victoria is favorable to other great industries—among
others, wheat-growing and the making of wine.

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

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

Now comes a singular thing: the oddest thing, the strangest thing, the most baffling
and unaccountable marvel that Australasia can show. At the frontier between New
South Wales and Victoria our multitude of passengers were routed out of their snug
beds by lantern-light in the morning in the biting-cold of a high altitude to change cars
on a road that has no break in it from Sydney to Melbourne! Think of the paralysis of
intellect that gave that idea birth; imagine the boulder it emerged from on some
petrified legislator's shoulders.

It is a narrow-gage road to the frontier, and a broader gauge thence to Melbourne.

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

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

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

We changed cars. This was at Albury. And it was there, I think, that the growing day
and the early sun exposed the distant range called the Blue Mountains. Accurately
named. "My word!" as the Australians say, but it was a stunning color, that blue. Deep,
strong, rich, exquisite; towering and majestic masses of blue—a softly luminous blue, a
smouldering blue, as if vaguely lit by fires within. It extinguished the blue of the sky—
made it pallid and unwholesome, whitey and washed-out. A wonderful color—just
divine.

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

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

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

And there were little villages, with neat stations well placarded with showy
advertisements—mainly of almost too self-righteous brands of "sheepdip." If that is
the name—and I think it is. It is a stuff like tar, and is dabbed on to places where the
shearer clips a piece out of the sheep. It bars out the flies, and has healing properties,
and a nip to it which makes the sheep skip like the cattle on a thousand hills. It is not
good to eat. That is, it is not good to eat except when mixed with railroad coffee. It
improves railroad coffee. Without it railroad coffee is too vague. But with it, it is quite
assertive and enthusiastic. By itself, railroad coffee is too passive; but sheep-dip makes
it wake up and get down to business. I wonder where they get railroad coffee?
 We saw birds, but not a kangaroo, not an emu, not an ornithorhynchus, not a
lecturer, not a native. Indeed, the land seemed quite destitute of game. But I have
misused the word native. In Australia it is applied to Australian-born whites only. I
should have said that we saw no Aboriginals—no "blackfellows." And to this day I have
never seen one. In the great museums you will find all the other curiosities, but in the
curio of chiefest interest to the stranger all of them are lacking. We have at home an
abundance of museums, and not an American Indian in them. It is clearly an absurdity,
but it never struck me before.
 CHAPTER XV.

Truth is stranger than fiction—to some people, but I am measurably familiar with it.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to

possibilities; Truth isn't.

Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

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

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

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

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

He always claimed to be Sir Roger Tichborne until death called for him. This was but
a few months ago—not very much short of a generation since he left Wagga-Wagga to
go and possess himself of his estates. On his death-bed he yielded up his secret, and
confessed in writing that he was only Arthur Orton of Wapping, able seaman and
butcher—that and nothing more. But it is scarcely to be doubted that there are people
whom even his dying confession will not convince. The old habit of assimilating
incredibilities must have made strong food a necessity in their case; a weaker article
would probably disagree with them.

I was in London when the Claimant stood his trial for perjury. I attended one of his
showy evenings in the sumptuous quarters provided for him from the purses of his
adherents and well-wishers. He was in evening dress, and I thought him a rather fine
and stately creature. There were about twenty-five gentlemen present; educated men,
men moving in good society, none of them commonplace; some of them were men of
distinction, none of them were obscurities. They were his cordial friends and admirers.
It was "Sir Roger," always "Sir Roger," on all hands; no one withheld the title, all turned
it from the tongue with unction, and as if it tasted good.

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

These invitations were always for a long time ahead; if we were in Europe, three
months ahead; if we were in America, six to twelve months ahead. They always named
the exact date and train for the beginning and also for the end of the visit.
 This first note invited us for a date three months in the future. It asked us to arrive
by the 4.10 p.m. train from London, August 6th. The carriage would be waiting. The
carriage would take us away seven days later-train specified. And there were these
words: "Speak to Tom Hughes."

I showed the note to the author of "Tom Brown at Rugby," and he said: "Accept, and
be thankful."

He described Mr. Bascom as being a man of genius, a man of fine attainments, a

choice man in every way, a rare and beautiful character. He said that Bascom Hall was
a particularly fine example of the stately manorial mansion of Elizabeth's days, and
that it was a house worth going a long way to see—like Knowle; that Mr. B. was of a
social disposition; liked the company of agreeable people, and always had samples of
the sort coming and going.

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

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

My first thought was, why didn't he have the coffin opened? He would have seen
that the corpse was an imposter, and he could have gone right ahead and dried up the
most of those tears, and comforted those sorrowing governments, and sold the
remains and sent me the money.

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

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

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

So my mystery was a mystery still. It was a great disappointment. I believed it would

never be cleared up—in this life—so I dropped it out of my mind.

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

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

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

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Melbourne spreads around over an immense area of ground. It is a stately city

architecturally as well as in magnitude. It has an elaborate system of cable-car service;
it has museums, and colleges, and schools, and public gardens, and electricity, and gas,
and libraries, and theaters, and mining centers, and wool centers, and centers of the
arts and sciences, and boards of trade, and ships, and railroads, and a harbor, and
social clubs, and journalistic clubs, and racing clubs, and a squatter club sumptuously
housed and appointed, and as many churches and banks as can make a living. In a
word, it is equipped with everything that goes to make the modern great city. It is the
largest city of Australasia, and fills the post with honor and credit. It has one specialty;
this must not be jumbled in with those other things. It is the mitred Metropolitan of
the Horse-Racing Cult. Its race-ground is the Mecca of Australasia. On the great annual
day of sacrifice—the 5th of November, Guy Fawkes's Day—business is suspended over
a stretch of land and sea as wide as from New York to San Francisco, and deeper than
from the northern lakes to the Gulf of Mexico; and every man and woman, of high
degree or low, who can afford the expense, put away their other duties and come.
They begin to swarm in by ship and rail a fortnight before the day, and they swarm
thicker and thicker day after day, until all the vehicles of transportation are taxed to
their uttermost to meet the demands of the occasion, and all hotels and lodgings are
bulging outward because of the pressure from within. They come a hundred thousand
strong, as all the best authorities say, and they pack the spacious grounds and
grandstands and make a spectacle such as is never to be seen in Australasia elsewhere.

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

And so the grand-stands make a brilliant and wonderful spectacle, a delirium of

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

The Melbourne Cup is the Australasian National Day. It would be difficult to

overstate its importance. It overshadows all other holidays and specialized days of
whatever sort in that congeries of colonies. Overshadows them? I might almost say it
blots them out. Each of them gets attention, but not everybody's; each of them evokes
interest, but not everybody's; each of them rouses enthusiasm, but not everybody's; in
each case a part of the attention, interest, and enthusiasm is a matter of habit and
custom, and another part of it is official and perfunctory. Cup Day, and Cup Day only,
commands an attention, an interest, and an enthusiasm which are universal—and
spontaneous, not perfunctory. Cup Day is supreme—it has no rival. I can call to mind
no specialized annual day, in any country, which can be named by that large name—
Supreme. I can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, whose approach
fires the whole land with a conflagration of conversation and preparation and
anticipation and jubilation. No day save this one; but this one does it.

In America we have no annual supreme day; no day whose approach makes the
whole nation glad. We have the Fourth of July, and Christmas, and Thanksgiving.
Neither of them can claim the primacy; neither of them can arouse an enthusiasm
which comes near to being universal. Eight grown Americans out of ten dread the
coming of the Fourth, with its pandemonium and its perils, and they rejoice when it is
gone—if still alive. The approach of Christmas brings harassment and dread to many
excellent people. They have to buy a cart-load of presents, and they never know what
to buy to hit the various tastes; they put in three weeks of hard and anxious work, and
when Christmas morning comes they are so dissatisfied with the result, and so
disappointed that they want to sit down and cry. Then they give thanks that Christmas
comes but once a year. The observance of Thanksgiving Day—as a function—has
become general of late years. The Thankfulness is not so general. This is natural. Two-
thirds of the nation have always had hard luck and a hard time during the year, and
this has a calming effect upon their enthusiasm.
 We have a supreme day—a sweeping and tremendous and tumultuous day, a day
which commands an absolute universality of interest and excitement; but it is not
annual. It comes but once in four years; therefore it cannot count as a rival of the
Melbourne Cup.

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

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

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

"Hello, Mark!"

"Here's to you, old chap!

"Say—Mark!—is he dead?"—a reference to a passage in some book of mine, though

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

And speaking of the war-flurry, it seemed to me to bring to light the unexpected, in

a detail or two. It seemed to relegate the war-talk to the politicians on both sides of
the water; whereas whenever a prospective war between two nations had been in the
air theretofore, the public had done most of the talking and the bitterest. The attitude
of the newspapers was new also. I speak of those of Australasia and India, for I had
access to those only. They treated the subject argumentatively and with dignity, not
with spite and anger. That was a new spirit, too, and not learned of the French and
German press, either before Sedan or since. I heard many public speeches, and they
reflected the moderation of the journals. The outlook is that the English-speaking race
will dominate the earth a hundred years from now, if its sections do not get to fighting
each other. It would be a pity to spoil that prospect by baffling and retarding wars
when arbitration would settle their differences so much better and also so much more
definitely.

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

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

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

The English are mentioned in the Bible: Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit
the earth.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

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

The population of Australasia—4,000,000—sinks into nothingness, and is lost from

sight in that British ocean of 400,000,000. Yet the statistics indicate that it rises again
and shows up very conspicuously when its share of the Empire's commerce is the
matter under consideration. The value of England's annual exports and imports is
stated at three billions of dollars,—[New South Wales Blue Book.]—and it is claimed
that more than one-tenth of this great aggregate is represented by Australasia's
exports to England and imports from England. In addition to this, Australasia does a
trade with countries other than England, amounting to a hundred million dollars a
year, and a domestic intercolonial trade amounting to a hundred and fifty millions.

In round numbers the 4,000,000 buy and sell about $600,000,000 worth of goods a
year. It is claimed that about half of this represents commodities of Australasian
production. The products exported annually by India are worth a trifle over
$500,000,000.1 Now, here are some faith-straining figures:

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

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

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

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

We left Melbourne by rail for Adelaide, the capital of the vast Province of South
Australia—a seventeen-hour excursion. On the train we found several Sydney friends;
among them a Judge who was going out on circuit, and was going to hold court at
Broken Hill, where the celebrated silver mine is. It seemed a curious road to take to get
to that region. Broken Hill is close to the western border of New South Wales, and
Sydney is on the eastern border. A fairly straight line, 700 miles long, drawn westward
from Sydney, would strike Broken Hill, just as a somewhat shorter one drawn west
from Boston would strike Buffalo. The way the Judge was traveling would carry him
over 2,000 miles by rail, he said; southwest from Sydney down to Melbourne, then
northward up to Adelaide, then a cant back northeastward and over the border into
New South Wales once more—to Broken Hill. It was like going from Boston southwest
to Richmond, Virginia, then northwest up to Erie, Pennsylvania, then a cant back
northeast and over the border—to Buffalo, New York.

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

We started at 4.20 in the afternoon, and moved across level plains until night. In the
morning we had a stretch of "scrub" country—the kind of thing which is so useful to
the Australian novelist. In the scrub the hostile aboriginal lurks, and flits mysteriously
about, slipping out from time to time to surprise and slaughter the settler; then
slipping back again, and leaving no track that the white man can follow. In the scrub
the novelist's heroine gets lost, search fails of result; she wanders here and there, and
finally sinks down exhausted and unconscious, and the searchers pass within a yard or
two of her, not suspecting that she is near, and by and by some rambler finds her
bones and the pathetic diary which she had scribbled with her failing hand and left
behind. Nobody can find a lost heroine in the scrub but the aboriginal "tracker," and he
will not lend himself to the scheme if it will interfere with the novelist's plot. The scrub
stretches miles and miles in all directions, and looks like a level roof of bush-tops
without a break or a crack in it—as seamless as a blanket, to all appearance. One might
as well walk under water and hope to guess out a route and stick to it, I should think.
Yet it is claimed that the aboriginal "tracker" was able to hunt out people lost in the
scrub. Also in the "bush"; also in the desert; and even follow them over patches of
bare rocks and over alluvial ground which had to all appearance been washed clear of
footprints.

From reading Australian books and talking with the people, I became convinced that
the aboriginal tracker's performances evince a craft, a penetration, a luminous
sagacity, and a minuteness and accuracy of observation in the matter of detective-
work not found in nearly so remarkable a degree in any other people, white or colored.
In an official account of the blacks of Australia published by the government of
Victoria, one reads that the aboriginal not only notices the faint marks left on the bark
of a tree by the claws of a climbing opossum, but knows in some way or other whether
the marks were made to-day or yesterday.

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

It is easier to stay out than get out.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

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

On some part of this railway journey we saw gorse and broom—importations from
England—and a gentleman who came into our compartment on a visit tried to tell me
which—was which; but as he didn't know, he had difficulty. He said he was ashamed of
his ignorance, but that he had never been confronted with the question before during
the fifty years and more that he had spent in Australia, and so he had never happened
to get interested in the matter. But there was no need to be ashamed. The most of us
have his defect. We take a natural interest in novelties, but it is against nature to take
an interest in familiar things. The gorse and the broom were a fine accent in the
landscape. Here and there they burst out in sudden conflagrations of vivid yellow
against a background of sober or sombre color, with a so startling effect as to make a
body catch his breath with the happy surprise of it. And then there was the wattle, a
native bush or tree, an inspiring cloud of sumptuous yellow bloom. It is a favorite with
the Australians, and has a fine fragrance, a quality usually wanting in Australian
blossoms.
 The gentleman who enriched me with the poverty of his information about the
gorse and the broom told me that he came out from England a youth of twenty and
entered the Province of South Australia with thirty-six shillings in his pocket—an
adventurer without trade, profession, or friends, but with a clearly-defined purpose in
his head: he would stay until he was worth L200, then go back home. He would allow
himself five years for the accumulation of this fortune.

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

As he went out at the door he met a friend, and turned and introduced him to me,
and the friend and I had a talk and a smoke. I spoke of the previous conversation and
said there was something very pathetic about this half century of exile, and that I
wished the L200 scheme had succeeded.

"With him? Oh, it did. It's not so sad a case. He is modest, and he left out some of
the particulars. The lad reached South Australia just in time to help discover the Burra-
Burra copper mines. They turned out L700,000 in the first three years. Up to now they
have yielded L20,000,000. He has had his share. Before that boy had been in the
country two years he could have gone home and bought a village; he could go now and
buy a city, I think. No, there is nothing very pathetic about his case. He and his copper
arrived at just a handy time to save South Australia. It had got mashed pretty flat
under the collapse of a land boom a while before." There it is again; picturesque
history—Australia's specialty. In 1829 South Australia hadn't a white man in it. In 1836
the British Parliament erected it—still a solitude—into a Province, and gave it a
governor and other governmental machinery. Speculators took hold, now, and
inaugurated a vast land scheme, and invited immigration, encouraging it with lurid
promises of sudden wealth. It was well worked in London; and bishops, statesmen, and
all sorts of people made a rush for the land company's shares. Immigrants soon began
to pour into the region of Adelaide and select town lots and farms in the sand and the
mangrove swamps by the sea. The crowds continued to come, prices of land rose high,
then higher and still higher, everybody was prosperous and happy, the boom swelled
into gigantic proportions. A village of sheet iron huts and clapboard sheds sprang up in
the sand, and in these wigwams fashion made display; richly-dressed ladies played on
costly pianos, London swells in evening dress and patent-leather boots were abundant,
and this fine society drank champagne, and in other ways conducted itself in this
capital of humble sheds as it had been accustomed to do in the aristocratic quarters of
the metropolis of the world. The provincial government put up expensive buildings for
its own use, and a palace with gardens for the use of its governor. The governor had a
guard, and maintained a court. Roads, wharves, and hospitals were built. All this on
credit, on paper, on wind, on inflated and fictitious values—on the boom's moonshine,
in fact. This went on handsomely during four or five years. Then all of a sudden came a
smash. Bills for a huge amount drawn by the governor upon the Treasury were
dishonored, the land company's credit went up in smoke, a panic followed, values fell
with a rush, the frightened immigrants seized their gripsacks and fled to other lands,
leaving behind them a good imitation of a solitude, where lately had been a buzzing
and populous hive of men.

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

The wool production began to grow; grain-raising followed—followed so vigorously,

too, that four or five years after the copper discovery, this little colony, which had had
to import its breadstuffs formerly, and pay hard prices for them—once $50 a barrel for
flour—had become an exporter of grain.

The prosperities continued. After many years Providence, desiring to show especial
regard for New South Wales and exhibit loving interest in its welfare which should
certify to all nations the recognition of that colony's conspicuous righteousness and
distinguished well-deserving, conferred upon it that treasury of inconceivable riches,
Broken Hill; and South Australia went over the border and took it, giving thanks.

Among our passengers was an American with a unique vocation. Unique is a strong
word, but I use it justifiably if I did not misconceive what the American told me; for I
understood him to say that in the world there was not another man engaged in the
business which he was following. He was buying the kangaroo-skin crop; buying all of
it, both the Australian crop and the Tasmanian; and buying it for an American house in
New York. The prices were not high, as there was no competition, but the year's
aggregate of skins would cost him L30,000. I had had the idea that the kangaroo was
about extinct in Tasmania and well thinned out on the continent. In America the skins
are tanned and made into shoes. After the tanning, the leather takes a new name—
which I have forgotten—I only remember that the new name does not indicate that
the kangaroo furnishes the leather. There was a German competition for a while, some
years ago, but that has ceased. The Germans failed to arrive at the secret of tanning
the skins successfully, and they withdrew from the business. Now then, I suppose that I
have seen a man whose occupation is really entitled to bear that high epithet—unique.
And I suppose that there is not another occupation in the world that is restricted to the
hands of a sole person. I can think of no instance of it. There is more than one Pope,
there is more than one Emperor, there is even more than one living god, walking upon
the earth and worshiped in all sincerity by large populations of men. I have seen and
talked with two of these Beings myself in India, and I have the autograph of one of
them. It can come good, by and by, I reckon, if I attach it to a "permit."

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

We descended and entered. There was nothing to remind one of the humble capital,
of huts and sheds of the long-vanished day of the land-boom. No, this was a modern
city, with wide streets, compactly built; with fine homes everywhere, embowered in
foliage and flowers, and with imposing masses of public buildings nobly grouped and
architecturally beautiful.

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

But South Australia deserves much, for apparently she is a hospitable home for
every alien who chooses to come; and for his religion, too. She has a population, as per
the latest census, of only 320,000-odd, and yet her varieties of religion indicate the
presence within her borders of samples of people from pretty nearly every part of the
globe you can think of. Tabulated, these varieties of religion make a remarkable show.
One would have to go far to find its match. I copy here this cosmopolitan curiosity, and
it comes from the published census:

Church of England, 89,271

Roman Catholic, 47,179
Wesleyan, 49,159
Lutheran, 23,328
Presbyterian, 18,206
Congregationalist, 11,882
Bible Christian, 15,762
Primitive Methodist, 11,654
Baptist, 17,547
Christian Brethren, 465
Methodist New Connexion, 39
Unitarian, 688
Church of Christ, 3,367
Society of Friends, 100
Salvation Army, 4,356
New Jerusalem Church, 168
Jews, 840
Protestants (undefined), 5,532
Mohammedans, 299
Confucians, etc, 3,884
Other religions, 1,719
Object, 6,940
Not stated, 8,046

Total, 320,431
 The item in the above list "Other religions" includes the following as returned:

Agnostics, Atheists, Believers in Christ, Buddhists, Calvinists, Christadelphians,

Christians, Christ's Chapel, Christian Israelites, Christian Socialists, Church of God,
Cosmopolitans, Deists, Evangelists, Exclusive Brethren, Free Church, Free Methodists,
Freethinkers, Followers of Christ, Gospel Meetings, Greek Church, Infidels, Maronites,
Memnonists, Moravians, Mormons, Naturalists, Orthodox, Others (indefinite), Pagans,
Pantheists, Plymouth Brethren, Rationalists, Reformers, Secularists, Seventh-day
Adventists, Shaker, Shintoists, Spiritualists, Theosophists, Town (City) Mission, Welsh
Church, Huguenot, Hussite, Zoroastrians, Zwinglian,

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

Pity is for the living, Envy is for the dead.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

The successor of the sheet-iron hamlet of the mangrove marshes has that other
Australian specialty, the Botanical Gardens. We cannot have these paradises. The best
we could do would be to cover a vast acreage under glass and apply steam heat. But it
would be inadequate, the lacks would still be so great: the confined sense, the sense of
suffocation, the atmospheric dimness, the sweaty heat—these would all be there, in
place of the Australian openness to the sky, the sunshine and the breeze. Whatever
will grow under glass with us will flourish rampantly out of doors in Australia.—[The
greatest heat in Victoria, that there is an authoritative record of, was at Sandhurst, in
January, 1862. The thermometer then registered 117 degrees in the shade. In January,
1880, the heat at Adelaide, South Australia, was 172 degrees in the sun.]

When the white man came the continent was nearly as poor, in variety of
vegetation, as the desert of Sahara; now it has everything that grows on the earth. In
fact, not Australia only, but all Australasia has levied tribute upon the flora of the rest
of the world; and wherever one goes the results appear, in gardens private and public,
in the woodsy walls of the highways, and in even the forests. If you see a curious or
beautiful tree or bush or flower, and ask about it, the people, answering, usually name
a foreign country as the place of its origin—India, Africa, Japan, China, England,
America, Java, Sumatra, New Guinea, Polynesia, and so on.

In the Zoological Gardens of Adelaide I saw the only laughing jackass that ever
showed any disposition to be courteous to me. This one opened his head wide and
laughed like a demon; or like a maniac who was consumed with humorous scorn over
a cheap and degraded pun. It was a very human laugh. If he had been out of sight I
could have believed that the laughter came from a man. It is an odd-looking bird, with
a head and beak that are much too large for its body. In time man will exterminate the
rest of the wild creatures of Australia, but this one will probably survive, for man is his
friend and lets him alone. Man always has a good reason for his charities towards wild
things, human or animal when he has any. In this case the bird is spared because he
kills snakes. If L. J. will take my advice he will not kill all of them.
 In that garden I also saw the wild Australian dog—the dingo. He was a beautiful
creature—shapely, graceful, a little wolfish in some of his aspects, but with a most
friendly eye and sociable disposition. The dingo is not an importation; he was present
in great force when the whites first came to the continent. It may be that he is the
oldest dog in the universe; his origin, his descent, the place where his ancestors first
appeared, are as unknown and as untraceable as are the camel's. He is the most
precious dog in the world, for he does not bark. But in an evil hour he got to raiding
the sheep-runs to appease his hunger, and that sealed his doom. He is hunted, now,
just as if he were a wolf. He has been sentenced to extermination, and the sentence
will be carried out. This is all right, and not objectionable. The world was made for
man—the white man.

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

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

A cable had been previously laid from Port Darwin to Java and thence to India, and
there was telegraphic communication with England from India. And so, if Adelaide
could make connection with Port Darwin it meant connection with the whole world.
The enterprise succeeded. One could watch the London markets daily, now; the profit
to the wool-growers of Australia was instant and enormous.

A telegram from Melbourne to San Francisco covers approximately 20,000 miles—

the equivalent of five-sixths of the way around the globe. It has to halt along the way a
good many times and be repeated; still, but little time is lost. These halts, and the
distances between them, are here tabulated.—[From "Round the Empire." (George R.
Parkin), all but the last two.]

Miles.

Melbourne-Mount Gambier, 300

Mount Gambier-Adelaide, 270
Adelaide-Port Augusta, 200
Port Augusta-Alice Springs, 1,036
Alice Springs-Port Darwin, 898
Port Darwin-Banjoewangie, 1,150
Banjoewangie-Batavia, 480
Batavia-Singapore, 553
Singapore-Penang, 399
Penang-Madras, 1,280
Madras-Bombay, 650
Bombay-Aden, 1,662
Aden-Suez, 1,346
Suez-Alexandria, 224
Alexandria-Malta, 828
Malta-Gibraltar, 1,008
Gibraltar-Falmouth, 1,061
Falmouth-London, 350
London-New York, 2,500
New York-San Francisco, 3,500

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

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

The mean temperature of the Province is 62 deg. The death-rate is 13 in the 1,000—
about half what it is in the city of New York, I should think, and New York is a healthy
city. Thirteen is the death-rate for the average citizen of the Province, but there seems
to be no death-rate for the old people. There were people at the Commemoration
banquet who could remember Cromwell. There were six of them. These Old Settlers
had all been present at the original Reading of the Proclamation, in 1836. They showed
signs of the blightings and blastings of time, in their outward aspect, but they were
young within; young and cheerful, and ready to talk; ready to talk, and talk all you
wanted; in their turn, and out of it. They were down for six speeches, and they made
42. The governor and the cabinet and the mayor were down for 42 speeches, and they
made 6. They have splendid grit, the Old Settlers, splendid staying power. But they do
not hear well, and when they see the mayor going through motions which they
recognize as the introducing of a speaker, they think they are the one, and they all get
up together, and begin to respond, in the most animated way; and the more the mayor
gesticulates, and shouts "Sit down! Sit down!" the more they take it for applause, and
the more excited and reminiscent and enthusiastic they get; and next, when they see
the whole house laughing and crying, three of them think it is about the bitter old-time
hardships they are describing, and the other three think the laughter is caused by the
jokes they have been uncorking—jokes of the vintage of 1836—and then the way they
do go on! And finally when ushers come and plead, and beg, and gently and reverently
crowd them down into their seats, they say, "Oh, I'm not tired—I could bang along a
week!" and they sit there looking simple and childlike, and gentle, and proud of their
oratory, and wholly unconscious of what is going on at the other end of the room. And
so one of the great dignitaries gets a chance, and begins his carefully prepared speech,
impressively and with solemnity—

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

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

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

One of these old gentlemen told me some things of interest afterward; things about
the aboriginals, mainly. He thought them intelligent—remarkably so in some
directions—and he said that along with their unpleasant qualities they had some
exceedingly good ones; and he considered it a great pity that the race had died out. He
instanced their invention of the boomerang and the "weet-weet" as evidences of their
brightness; and as another evidence of it he said he had never seen a white man who
had cleverness enough to learn to do the miracles with those two toys that the
aboriginals achieved. He said that even the smartest whites had been obliged to
confess that they could not learn the trick of the boomerang in perfection; that it had
possibilities which they could not master. The white man could not control its motions,
could not make it obey him; but the aboriginal could. He told me some wonderful
things—some almost incredible things—which he had seen the blacks do with the
boomerang and the weet-weet. They have been confirmed to me since by other early
settlers and by trustworthy books.
 It is contended—and may be said to be conceded—that the boomerang was known
to certain savage tribes in Europe in Roman times. In support of this, Virgil and two
other Roman poets are quoted. It is also contended that it was known to the ancient
Egyptians.

One of two things, either some one with a boomerang arrived in Australia in the
days of antiquity before European knowledge of the thing had been lost, or the
Australian aboriginal reinvented it. It will take some time to find out which of these
two propositions is the fact. But there is no hurry.
 CHAPTER XX.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably
precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to
practice either of them.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

From diary:

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

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

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

"I remember it too, because of a thing which happened then which I was not looking
for. He had told me a while before, about a remarkable and interesting Californian
whom he had met and who was a friend of yours, and said that if he should ever meet
you he would ask you for some particulars about that Californian. The subject was not
mentioned that day at Nauheim, for we were hurrying away, and there was no time;
but the thing that surprised me was this: when I introduced you, you said, 'I am glad to
meet your lordship again.' The 'again' was the surprise. He is a little hard of hearing,
and didn't catch that word, and I thought you hadn't intended that he should. As we
drove off I had only time to say, 'Why, what do you know about him?' and I
understood you to say, 'Oh, nothing, except that he is the quickest judge of——' Then
we were gone, and I didn't get the rest. I wondered what it was that he was such a
quick judge of. I have thought of it many times since, and still wondered what it could
be. He and I talked it over, but could not guess it out. He thought it must be fox-
hounds or horses, for he is a good judge of those—no one is a better. But you couldn't
know that, because you didn't know him; you had mistaken him for some one else; it
must be that, he said, because he knew you had never met him before. And of course
you hadn't had you?"

"Yes, I had."
 "Is that so? Where?"

"At a fox-hunt, in England."

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

"Some—yes."

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

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

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

"The fox."

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

"Yes. It showed me that he was a quick judge of—however, I will tell you all about it,
then you will understand. It was a quarter of a century ago 1873 or '74. I had an
American friend in London named F., who was fond of hunting, and his friends the
Blanks invited him and me to come out to a hunt and be their guests at their country
place. In the morning the mounts were provided, but when I saw the horses I changed
my mind and asked permission to walk. I had never seen an English hunter before, and
it seemed to me that I could hunt a fox safer on the ground. I had always been
diffident about horses, anyway, even those of the common altitudes, and I did not feel
competent to hunt on a horse that went on stilts. So then Mrs. Blank came to my help
and said I could go with her in the dog-cart and we would drive to a place she knew of,
and there we should have a good glimpse of the hunt as it went by.

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

"'Which way'd the fox go?'

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

"'Which fox?'

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

"'WHICH fox? Why, THE fox? Which way did the FOX go?'

"I said, with great gentleness—even argumentatively:

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

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

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

"'He spoke to you!—didn't he?'

"'Yes, it is what happened.'

"'I knew it! I couldn't hear what he said, but I knew he spoke to you! Do you know
who it was? It was Lord C., and he is Master of the Buckhounds! Tell me—what do you
think of him?'
 "'Him? Well, for sizing-up a stranger, he's got the most sudden and accurate
judgment of any man I ever saw.'

"It pleased her. I thought it would."

G. got away from Nauheim just in time to escape being shut in by the quarantine-
bars on the frontiers; and so did we, for we left the next day. But G. had a great deal of
trouble in getting by the Italian custom-house, and we should have fared likewise but
for the thoughtfulness of our consul-general in Frankfort. He introduced me to the
Italian consul-general, and I brought away from that consulate a letter which made our
way smooth. It was a dozen lines merely commending me in a general way to the
courtesies of servants in his Italian Majesty's service, but it was more powerful than it
looked. In addition to a raft of ordinary baggage, we had six or eight trunks which were
filled exclusively with dutiable stuff—household goods purchased in Frankfort for use
in Florence, where we had taken a house. I was going to ship these through by express;
but at the last moment an order went throughout Germany forbidding the moving of
any parcels by train unless the owner went with them. This was a bad outlook. We
must take these things along, and the delay sure to be caused by the examination of
them in the custom-house might lose us our train. I imagined all sorts of terrors, and
enlarged them steadily as we approached the Italian frontier. We were six in number,
clogged with all that baggage, and I was courier for the party—the most incapable one
they ever employed.

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

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

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

"There, let that alone! Lock it. Now chalk it. Chalk all of the lot. Now please come
and show me the hand-baggage."

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

"Chalk these. Chalk all of them."

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

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

When I had been marched two-thirds of the long distance and the misery of it was
at the worst, the stately station-master stepped out from somewhere, and the soldier
left me and darted after him and overtook him; and I could see by the soldier's excited
gestures that he was betraying to him the whole shabby business. The station-master
was plainly very angry. He came striding down toward me, and when he was come
near he began to pour out a stream of indignant Italian; then suddenly took off his hat
and made that beautiful bow and said:
 "Oh, it is you! I beg a thousands pardons! This idiot here—-" He turned to the
exulting soldier and burst out with a flood of white-hot Italian lava, and the next
moment he was bowing, and the soldier and I were moving in procession again—he in
the lead and ashamed, this time, I with my chin up. And so we marched by the crowd
of fascinated passengers, and I went forth to the train with the honors of war. Tobacco
and all.
 CHAPTER XXI.

Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself
envied.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Before I saw Australia I had never heard of the "weet-weet" at all. I met but few
men who had seen it thrown—at least I met but few who mentioned having seen it
thrown. Roughly described, it is a fat wooden cigar with its butt-end fastened to a
flexible twig. The whole thing is only a couple of feet long, and weighs less than two
ounces. This feather—so to call it—is not thrown through the air, but is flung with an
underhanded throw and made to strike the ground a little way in front of the thrower;
then it glances and makes a long skip; glances again, skips again, and again and again,
like the flat stone which a boy sends skating over the water. The water is smooth, and
the stone has a good chance; so a strong man may make it travel fifty or seventy-five
yards; but the weet-weet has no such good chance, for it strikes sand, grass, and earth
in its course. Yet an expert aboriginal has sent it a measured distance of two hundred
and twenty yards. It would have gone even further but it encountered rank ferns and
underwood on its passage and they damaged its speed. Two hundred and twenty
yards; and so weightless a toy—a mouse on the end of a bit of wire, in effect; and not
sailing through the accommodating air, but encountering grass and sand and stuff at
every jump. It looks wholly impossible; but Mr. Brough Smyth saw the feat and did the
measuring, and set down the facts in his book about aboriginal life, which he wrote by
command of the Victorian Government.

What is the secret of the feat? No one explains. It cannot be physical strength, for
that could not drive such a feather-weight any distance. It must be art. But no one
explains what the art of it is; nor how it gets around that law of nature which says you
shall not throw any two-ounce thing 220 yards, either through the air or bumping
along the ground. Rev. J. G. Woods says:

"The distance to which the weet-weet or kangaroo-rat can be thrown is truly

astonishing. I have seen an Australian stand at one side of Kennington Oval and throw
the kangaroo rat completely across it." (Width of Kennington Oval not stated.) "It darts
through the air with the sharp and menacing hiss of a rifle-ball, its greatest height from
the ground being some seven or eight feet . . . . . . When properly thrown it looks just
like a living animal leaping along . . . . . . Its movements have a wonderful resemblance
to the long leaps of a kangaroo-rat fleeing in alarm, with its long tail trailing behind it."

The Old Settler said that he had seen distances made by the weet-weet, in the early
days, which almost convinced him that it was as extraordinary an instrument as the
boomerang.

There must have been a large distribution of acuteness among those naked skinny
aboriginals, or they couldn't have been such unapproachable trackers and
boomerangers and weet-weeters. It must have been race-aversion that put upon them
a good deal of the low-rate intellectual reputation which they bear and have borne this
long time in the world's estimate of them.

They were lazy—always lazy. Perhaps that was their trouble. It is a killing defect.
Surely they could have invented and built a competent house, but they didn't. And
they could have invented and developed the agricultural arts, but they didn't. They
went naked and houseless, and lived on fish and grubs and worms and wild fruits, and
were just plain savages, for all their smartness.

With a country as big as the United States to live and multiply in, and with no
epidemic diseases among them till the white man came with those and his other
appliances of civilization, it is quite probable that there was never a day in his history
when he could muster 100,000 of his race in all Australia. He diligently and deliberately
kept population down by infanticide—largely; but mainly by certain other methods. He
did not need to practise these artificialities any more after the white man came. The
white man knew ways of keeping down population which were worth several of his.
The white man knew ways of reducing a native population 80 percent. in 20 years. The
native had never seen anything as fine as that before.

For example, there is the case of the country now called Victoria—a country eighty
times as large as Rhode Island, as I have already said. By the best official guess there
were 4,500 aboriginals in it when the whites came along in the middle of the 'Thirties.
Of these, 1,000 lived in Gippsland, a patch of territory the size of fifteen or sixteen
Rhode Islands: they did not diminish as fast as some of the other communities; indeed,
at the end of forty years there were still 200 of them left. The Geelong tribe diminished
more satisfactorily: from 173 persons it faded to 34 in twenty years; at the end of
another twenty the tribe numbered one person altogether. The two Melbourne tribes
could muster almost 300 when the white man came; they could muster but twenty,
thirty-seven years later, in 1875. In that year there were still odds and ends of tribes
scattered about the colony of Victoria, but I was told that natives of full blood are very
scarce now. It is said that the aboriginals continue in some force in the huge territory
called Queensland.

The early whites were not used to savages. They could not understand the primary
law of savage life: that if a man do you a wrong, his whole tribe is responsible—each
individual of it—and you may take your change out of any individual of it, without
bothering to seek out the guilty one. When a white killed an aboriginal, the tribe
applied the ancient law, and killed the first white they came across. To the whites this
was a monstrous thing. Extermination seemed to be the proper medicine for such
creatures as this. They did not kill all the blacks, but they promptly killed enough of
them to make their own persons safe. From the dawn of civilization down to this day
the white man has always used that very precaution. Mrs. Campbell Praed lived in
Queensland, as a child, in the early days, and in her "Sketches of Australian life," we
get informing pictures of the early struggles of the white and the black to reform each
other.

Speaking of pioneer days in the mighty wilderness of Queensland, Mrs. Praed says:

"At first the natives retreated before the whites; and, except that they every now and
then speared a beast in one of the herds, gave little cause for uneasiness. But, as the
number of squatters increased, each one taking up miles of country and bringing two
or three men in his train, so that shepherds' huts and stockmen's camps lay far apart,
and defenseless in the midst of hostile tribes, the Blacks' depredations became more
frequent and murder was no unusual event.

"The loneliness of the Australian bush can hardly be painted in words. Here extends
mile after mile of primeval forest where perhaps foot of white man has never trod—
interminable vistas where the eucalyptus trees rear their lofty trunks and spread forth
their lanky limbs, from which the red gum oozes and hangs in fantastic pendants like
crimson stalactites; ravines along the sides of which the long-bladed grass grows
rankly; level untimbered plains alternating with undulating tracts of pasture, here and
there broken by a stony ridge, steep gully, or dried-up creek. All wild, vast and desolate;
all the same monotonous gray coloring, except where the wattle, when in blossom,
shows patches of feathery gold, or a belt of scrub lies green, glossy, and impenetrable
as Indian jungle.
 "The solitude seems intensified by the strange sounds of reptiles, birds, and insects,
and by the absence of larger creatures; of which in the day-time, the only audible signs
are the stampede of a herd of kangaroo, or the rustle of a wallabi, or a dingo stirring
the grass as it creeps to its lair. But there are the whirring of locusts, the demoniac
chuckle of the laughing jack-ass, the screeching of cockatoos and parrots, the hissing of
the frilled lizard, and the buzzing of innumerable insects hidden under the dense
undergrowth. And then at night, the melancholy wailing of the curlews, the dismal
howling of dingoes, the discordant croaking of tree-frogs, might well shake the nerves
of the solitary watcher."

That is the theater for the drama. When you comprehend one or two other details,
you will perceive how well suited for trouble it was, and how loudly it invited it. The
cattlemen's stations were scattered over that profound wilderness miles and miles
apart—at each station half a dozen persons. There was a plenty of cattle, the black
natives were always ill-nourished and hungry. The land belonged to them. The whites
had not bought it, and couldn't buy it; for the tribes had no chiefs, nobody in authority,
nobody competent to sell and convey; and the tribes themselves had no
comprehension of the idea of transferable ownership of land. The ousted owners were
despised by the white interlopers, and this opinion was not hidden under a bushel.
More promising materials for a tragedy could not have been collated. Let Mrs. Praed
speak:

"At Nie Nie station, one dark night, the unsuspecting hut-keeper, having, as he
believed, secured himself against assault, was lying wrapped in his blankets sleeping
profoundly. The Blacks crept stealthily down the chimney and battered in his skull while
he slept."

One could guess the whole drama from that little text. The curtain was up. It would
not fall until the mastership of one party or the other was determined—and
permanently:

"There was treachery on both sides. The Blacks killed the Whites when they found
them defenseless, and the Whites slew the Blacks in a wholesale and promiscuous
fashion which offended against my childish sense of justice.

"They were regarded as little above the level of brutes, and in some cases were
destroyed like vermin.
 "Here is an instance. A squatter, whose station was surrounded by Blacks, whom he
suspected to be hostile and from whom he feared an attack, parleyed with them from
his house-door. He told them it was Christmas-time—a time at which all men, black or
white, feasted; that there were flour, sugar-plums, good things in plenty in the store,
and that he would make for them such a pudding as they had never dreamed of—a
great pudding of which all might eat and be filled. The Blacks listened and were lost.
The pudding was made and distributed. Next morning there was howling in the camp,
for it had been sweetened with sugar and arsenic!"

The white man's spirit was right, but his method was wrong. His spirit was the spirit
which the civilized white has always exhibited toward the savage, but the use of poison
was a departure from custom. True, it was merely a technical departure, not a real
one; still, it was a departure, and therefore a mistake, in my opinion. It was better,
kinder, swifter, and much more humane than a number of the methods which have
been sanctified by custom, but that does not justify its employment. That is, it does
not wholly justify it. Its unusual nature makes it stand out and attract an amount of
attention which it is not entitled to. It takes hold upon morbid imaginations and they
work it up into a sort of exhibition of cruelty, and this smirches the good name of our
civilization, whereas one of the old harsher methods would have had no such effect
because usage has made those methods familiar to us and innocent. In many countries
we have chained the savage and starved him to death; and this we do not care for,
because custom has inured us to it; yet a quick death by poison is loving kindness to it.
In many countries we have burned the savage at the stake; and this we do not care for,
because custom has inured us to it; yet a quick death is loving kindness to it. In more
than one country we have hunted the savage and his little children and their mother
with dogs and guns through the woods and swamps for an afternoon's sport, and filled
the region with happy laughter over their sprawling and stumbling flight, and their wild
supplications for mercy; but this method we do not mind, because custom has inured
us to it; yet a quick death by poison is loving kindness to it. In many countries we have
taken the savage's land from him, and made him our slave, and lashed him every day,
and broken his pride, and made death his only friend, and overworked him till he
dropped in his tracks; and this we do not care for, because custom has inured us to it;
yet a quick death by poison is loving kindness to it. In the Matabeleland today—why,
there we are confining ourselves to sanctified custom, we Rhodes-Beit millionaires in
South Africa and Dukes in London; and nobody cares, because we are used to the old
holy customs, and all we ask is that no notice—inviting new ones shall be intruded
upon the attention of our comfortable consciences. Mrs. Praed says of the poisoner,
"That squatter deserves to have his name handed down to the contempt of posterity."

I am sorry to hear her say that. I myself blame him for one thing, and severely, but I
stop there. I blame him for, the indiscretion of introducing a novelty which was
calculated to attract attention to our civilization. There was no occasion to do that. It
was his duty, and it is every loyal man's duty to protect that heritage in every way he
can; and the best way to do that is to attract attention elsewhere. The squatter's
judgment was bad—that is plain; but his heart was right. He is almost the only
pioneering representative of civilization in history who has risen above the prejudices
of his caste and his heredity and tried to introduce the element of mercy into the
superior race's dealings with the savage. His name is lost, and it is a pity; for it deserves
to be handed down to posterity with homage and reverence.

This paragraph is from a London journal:

"To learn what France is doing to spread the blessings of civilization in her distant
dependencies we may turn with advantage to New Caledonia. With a view to
attracting free settlers to that penal colony, M. Feillet, the Governor, forcibly
expropriated the Kanaka cultivators from the best of their plantations, with a derisory
compensation, in spite of the protests of the Council General of the island. Such
immigrants as could be induced to cross the seas thus found themselves in possession
of thousands of coffee, cocoa, banana, and bread-fruit trees, the raising of which had
cost the wretched natives years of toil whilst the latter had a few five-franc pieces to
spend in the liquor stores of Noumea."

You observe the combination? It is robbery, humiliation, and slow, slow murder,
through poverty and the white man's whisky. The savage's gentle friend, the savage's
noble friend, the only magnanimous and unselfish friend the savage has ever had, was
not there with the merciful swift release of his poisoned pudding.

There are many humorous things in the world; among them the white man's notion
that he is less savage than the other savages.—[See Chapter on Tasmania, post.]
 CHAPTER XXII.

Nothing is so ignorant as a man's left hand, except a lady's watch.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

You notice that Mrs. Praed knows her art. She can place a thing before you so that
you can see it. She is not alone in that. Australia is fertile in writers whose books are
faithful mirrors of the life of the country and of its history. The materials were
surprisingly rich, both in quality and in mass, and Marcus Clarke, Raolph Boldrewood,
Gordon, Kendall, and the others, have built out of them a brilliant and vigorous
literature, and one which must endure. Materials—there is no end to them! Why, a
literature might be made out of the aboriginal all by himself, his character and ways
are so freckled with varieties—varieties not staled by familiarity, but new to us. You do
not need to invent any picturesquenesses; whatever you want in that line he can
furnish you; and they will not be fancies and doubtful, but realities and authentic. In
his history, as preserved by the white man's official records, he is everything—
everything that a human creature can be. He covers the entire ground. He is a
coward—there are a thousand fact to prove it. He is brave—there are a thousand facts
to prove it. He is treacherous—oh, beyond imagination! he is faithful, loyal, true—the
white man's records supply you with a harvest of instances of it that are noble,
worshipful, and pathetically beautiful. He kills the starving stranger who comes
begging for food and shelter there is proof of it. He succors, and feeds, and guides to
safety, to-day, the lost stranger who fired on him only yesterday—there is proof of it.
He takes his reluctant bride by force, he courts her with a club, then loves her faithfully
through a long life—it is of record. He gathers to himself another wife by the same
processes, beats and bangs her as a daily diversion, and by and by lays down his life in
defending her from some outside harm—it is of record. He will face a hundred hostiles
to rescue one of his children, and will kill another of his children because the family is
large enough without it. His delicate stomach turns, at certain details of the white
man's food; but he likes over-ripe fish, and brazed dog, and cat, and rat, and will eat
his own uncle with relish. He is a sociable animal, yet he turns aside and hides behind
his shield when his mother-in-law goes by. He is childishly afraid of ghosts and other
trivialities that menace his soul, but dread of physical pain is a weakness which he is
not acquainted with. He knows all the great and many of the little constellations, and
has names for them; he has a symbol-writing by means of which he can convey
messages far and wide among the tribes; he has a correct eye for form and expression,
and draws a good picture; he can track a fugitive by delicate traces which the white
man's eye cannot discern, and by methods which the finest white intelligence cannot
master; he makes a missile which science itself cannot duplicate without the model—if
with it; a missile whose secret baffled and defeated the searchings and theorizings of
the white mathematicians for seventy years; and by an art all his own he performs
miracles with it which the white man cannot approach untaught, nor parallel after
teaching. Within certain limits this savage's intellect is the alertest and the brightest
known to history or tradition; and yet the poor creature was never able to invent a
counting system that would reach above five, nor a vessel that he could boil water in.
He is the prize-curiosity of all the races. To all intents and purposes he is dead—in the
body; but he has features that will live in literature.

Mr. Philip Chauncy, an officer of the Victorian Government, contributed to its

archives a report of his personal observations of the aboriginals which has in it some
things which I wish to condense slightly and insert here. He speaks of the quickness of
their eyes and the accuracy of their judgment of the direction of approaching missiles
as being quite extraordinary, and of the answering suppleness and accuracy of limb
and muscle in avoiding the missile as being extraordinary also. He has seen an
aboriginal stand as a target for cricket-balls thrown with great force ten or fifteen
yards, by professional bowlers, and successfully dodge them or parry them with his
shield during about half an hour. One of those balls, properly placed, could have killed
him; "Yet he depended, with the utmost self-possession, on the quickness of his eye
and his agility."

The shield was the customary war-shield of his race, and would not be a protection
to you or to me. It is no broader than a stovepipe, and is about as long as a man's arm.
The opposing surface is not flat, but slopes away from the centerline like a boat's bow.
The difficulty about a cricket-ball that has been thrown with a scientific "twist" is, that
it suddenly changes its course when it is close to its target and comes straight for the
mark when apparently it was going overhead or to one side. I should not be able to
protect myself from such balls for half-an-hour, or less.

Mr. Chauncy once saw "a little native man" throw a cricket-ball 119 yards. This is
said to beat the English professional record by thirteen yards.

We have all seen the circus-man bound into the air from a spring-board and make a
somersault over eight horses standing side by side. Mr. Chauncy saw an aboriginal do it
over eleven; and was assured that he had sometimes done it over fourteen. But what
is that to this:

"I saw the same man leap from the ground, and in going over he dipped his head,
unaided by his hands, into a hat placed in an inverted position on the top of the head of
another man sitting upright on horseback—both man and horse being of the average
size. The native landed on the other side of the horse with the hat fairly on his head.
The prodigious height of the leap, and the precision with which it was taken so as to
enable him to dip his head into the hat, exceeded any feat of the kind I have ever
beheld."

I should think so! On board a ship lately I saw a young Oxford athlete run four steps
and spring into the air and squirm his hips by a side-twist over a bar that was five and
one-half feet high; but he could not have stood still and cleared a bar that was four
feet high. I know this, because I tried it myself.

One can see now where the kangaroo learned its art.

Sir George Grey and Mr. Eyre testify that the natives dug wells fourteen or fifteen
feet deep and two feet in diameter at the bore—dug them in the sand—wells that
were "quite circular, carried straight down, and the work beautifully executed."

Their tools were their hands and feet. How did they throw sand out from such a
depth? How could they stoop down and get it, with only two feet of space to stoop in?
How did they keep that sand-pipe from caving in on them? I do not know. Still, they did
manage those seeming impossibilities. Swallowed the sand, may be.

Mr. Chauncy speaks highly of the patience and skill and alert intelligence of the
native huntsman when he is stalking the emu, the kangaroo, and other game:

"As he walks through the bush his step is light, elastic, and noiseless; every track on
the earth catches his keen eye; a leaf, or fragment of a stick turned, or a blade of grass
recently bent by the tread of one of the lower animals, instantly arrests his attention; in
fact, nothing escapes his quick and powerful sight on the ground, in the trees, or in the
distance, which may supply him with a meal or warn him of danger. A little
examination of the trunk of a tree which may be nearly covered with the scratches of
opossums ascending and descending is sufficient to inform him whether one went up
the night before without coming down again or not."
 Fennimore Cooper lost his chance. He would have known how to value these
people. He wouldn't have traded the dullest of them for the brightest Mohawk he ever
invented.

All savages draw outline pictures upon bark; but the resemblances are not close,
and expression is usually lacking. But the Australian aboriginal's pictures of animals
were nicely accurate in form, attitude, carriage; and he put spirit into them, and
expression. And his pictures of white people and natives were pretty nearly as good as
his pictures of the other animals. He dressed his whites in the fashion of their day,
both the ladies and the gentlemen. As an untaught wielder of the pencil it is not likely
that he has his equal among savage people.

His place in art—as to drawing, not color-work—is well up, all things considered. His
art is not to be classified with savage art at all, but on a plane two degrees above it and
one degree above the lowest plane of civilized art. To be exact, his place in art is
between Botticelli and De Maurier. That is to say, he could not draw as well as De
Maurier but better than Boticelli. In feeling, he resembles both; also in grouping and in
his preferences in the matter of subjects. His "corrobboree" of the Australian wilds
reappears in De Maurier's Belgravian ballrooms, with clothes and the smirk of
civilization added; Botticelli's "Spring" is the "corrobboree" further idealized, but with
fewer clothes and more smirk. And well enough as to intention, but—my word!

The aboriginal can make a fire by friction. I have tried that.

All savages are able to stand a good deal of physical pain. The Australian aboriginal
has this quality in a well-developed degree. Do not read the following instances if
horrors are not pleasant to you. They were recorded by the Rev. Henry N. Wolloston,
of Melbourne, who had been a surgeon before he became a clergyman:

1. "In the summer of 1852 I started on horseback from Albany, King George's Sound,
to visit at Cape Riche, accompanied by a native on foot. We traveled about forty miles
the first day, then camped by a water-hole for the night. After cooking and eating our
supper, I observed the native, who had said nothing to me on the subject, collect the
hot embers of the fire together, and deliberately place his right foot in the glowing
mass for a moment, then suddenly withdraw it, stamping on the ground and uttering a
long-drawn guttural sound of mingled pain and satisfaction. This operation he
repeated several times. On my inquiring the meaning of his strange conduct, he only
said, 'Me carpenter-make 'em' ('I am mending my foot'), and then showed me his
charred great toe, the nail of which had been torn off by a tea-tree stump, in which it
had been caught during the journey, and the pain of which he had borne with stoical
composure until the evening, when he had an opportunity of cauterizing the wound in
the primitive manner above described."

And he proceeded on the journey the next day, "as if nothing had happened"—and
walked thirty miles. It was a strange idea, to keep a surgeon and then do his own
surgery.

2. "A native about twenty-five years of age once applied to me, as a doctor, to
extract the wooden barb of a spear, which, during a fight in the bush some four months
previously, had entered his chest, just missing the heart, and penetrated the viscera to
a considerable depth. The spear had been cut off, leaving the barb behind, which
continued to force its way by muscular action gradually toward the back; and when I
examined him I could feel a hard substance between the ribs below the left blade-bone.
I made a deep incision, and with a pair of forceps extracted the barb, which was made,
as usual, of hard wood about four inches long and from half an inch to an inch thick. It
was very smooth, and partly digested, so to speak, by the maceration to which it had
been exposed during its four months' journey through the body. The wound made by
the spear had long since healed, leaving only a small cicatrix; and after the operation,
which the native bore without flinching, he appeared to suffer no pain. Indeed, judging
from his good state of health, the presence of the foreign matter did not materially
annoy him. He was perfectly well in a few days."

But No. 3 is my favorite. Whenever I read it I seem to enjoy all that the patient
enjoyed—whatever it was:

3. "Once at King George's Sound a native presented himself to me with one leg only,
and requested me to supply him with a wooden leg. He had traveled in this maimed
state about ninety-six miles, for this purpose. I examined the limb, which had been
severed just below the knee, and found that it had been charred by fire, while about
two inches of the partially calcined bone protruded through the flesh. I at once
removed this with the saw; and having made as presentable a stump of it as I could,
covered the amputated end of the bone with a surrounding of muscle, and kept the
patient a few days under my care to allow the wound to heal. On inquiring, the native
told me that in a fight with other black-fellows a spear had struck his leg and
penetrated the bone below the knee. Finding it was serious, he had recourse to the
following crude and barbarous operation, which it appears is not uncommon among
these people in their native state. He made a fire, and dug a hole in the earth only
sufficiently large to admit his leg, and deep enough to allow the wounded part to be on
a level with the surface of the ground. He then surrounded the limb with the live coals
or charcoal, which was replenished until the leg was literally burnt off. The
cauterization thus applied completely checked the hemorrhage, and he was able in a
day or two to hobble down to the Sound, with the aid of a long stout stick, although he
was more than a week on the road."

But he was a fastidious native. He soon discarded the wooden leg made for him by
the doctor, because "it had no feeling in it." It must have had as much as the one he
burnt off, I should think.

So much for the Aboriginals. It is difficult for me to let them alone. They are
marvelously interesting creatures. For a quarter of a century, now, the several colonial
governments have housed their remnants in comfortable stations, and fed them well
and taken good care of them in every way. If I had found this out while I was in
Australia I could have seen some of those people—but I didn't. I would walk thirty
miles to see a stuffed one.

Australia has a slang of its own. This is a matter of course. The vast cattle and sheep
industries, the strange aspects of the country, and the strange native animals, brute
and human, are matters which would naturally breed a local slang. I have notes of this
slang somewhere, but at the moment I can call to mind only a few of the words and
phrases. They are expressive ones. The wide, sterile, unpeopled deserts have created
eloquent phrases like "No Man's Land" and the "Never-never Country." Also this
felicitous form: "She lives in the Never-never Country"—that is, she is an old maid. And
this one is not without merit: "heifer-paddock"—young ladies' seminary. "Bail up" and
"stick up" equivalent of our highwayman-term to "hold up" a stage-coach or a train.
"New-chum" is the equivalent of our "tenderfoot"—new arrival.

And then there is the immortal "My word!" We must import it. "M-y word!" In cold
print it is the equivalent of our "Ger-rreat Caesar!" but spoken with the proper
Australian unction and fervency, it is worth six of it for grace and charm and
expressiveness. Our form is rude and explosive; it is not suited to the drawing-room or
the heifer-paddock; but "M-y word!" is, and is music to the ear, too, when the utterer
knows how to say it. I saw it in print several times on the Pacific Ocean, but it struck
me coldly, it aroused no sympathy. That was because it was the dead corpse of the
thing, the soul was not there—the tones were lacking—the informing spirit—the deep
feeling—the eloquence. But the first time I heard an Australian say it, it was positively
thrilling.
 CHAPTER XXIII.

Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

We left Adelaide in due course, and went to Horsham, in the colony of Victoria; a
good deal of a journey, if I remember rightly, but pleasant. Horsham sits in a plain
which is as level as a floor—one of those famous dead levels which Australian books
describe so often; gray, bare, sombre, melancholy, baked, cracked, in the tedious long
drouths, but a horizonless ocean of vivid green grass the day after a rain. A country
town, peaceful, reposeful, inviting, full of snug homes, with garden plots, and plenty of
shrubbery and flowers.

"Horsham, October 17. At the hotel. The weather divine. Across the way, in front of
the London Bank of Australia, is a very handsome cottonwood. It is in opulent leaf, and
every leaf perfect. The full power of the on-rushing spring is upon it, and I imagine I
can see it grow. Alongside the bank and a little way back in the garden there is a row of
soaring fountain-sprays of delicate feathery foliage quivering in the breeze, and
mottled with flashes of light that shift and play through the mass like flash-lights
through an opal—a most beautiful tree, and a striking contrast to the cottonwood.
Every leaf of the cottonwood is distinctly defined—it is a kodak for faithful, hard,
unsentimental detail; the other an impressionist picture, delicious to look upon, full of
a subtle and exquisite charm, but all details fused in a swoon of vague and soft
loveliness."

It turned out, upon inquiry, to be a pepper tree—an importation from China. It has a
silky sheen, soft and rich. I saw some that had long red bunches of currant-like berries
ambushed among the foliage. At a distance, in certain lights, they give the tree a
pinkish tint and a new charm.

There is an agricultural college eight miles from Horsham. We were driven out to it
by its chief. The conveyance was an open wagon; the time, noonday; no wind; the sky
without a cloud, the sunshine brilliant—and the mercury at 92 deg. in the shade. In
some countries an indolent unsheltered drive of an hour and a half under such
conditions would have been a sweltering and prostrating experience; but there was
nothing of that in this case. It is a climate that is perfect. There was no sense of heat;
indeed, there was no heat; the air was fine and pure and exhilarating; if the drive had
lasted half a day I think we should not have felt any discomfort, or grown silent or
droopy or tired. Of course, the secret of it was the exceeding dryness of the
atmosphere. In that plain 112 deg. in the shade is without doubt no harder upon a
man than is 88 or 90 deg. in New York.

The road lay through the middle of an empty space which seemed to me to be a
hundred yards wide between the fences. I was not given the width in yards, but only in
chains and perches—and furlongs, I think. I would have given a good deal to know
what the width was, but I did not pursue the matter. I think it is best to put up with
information the way you get it; and seem satisfied with it, and surprised at it, and
grateful for it, and say, "My word!" and never let on. It was a wide space; I could tell
you how wide, in chains and perches and furlongs and things, but that would not help
you any. Those things sound well, but they are shadowy and indefinite, like troy weight
and avoirdupois; nobody knows what they mean. When you buy a pound of a drug and
the man asks you which you want, troy or avoirdupois, it is best to say "Yes," and shift
the subject.

They said that the wide space dates from the earliest sheep and cattle-raising days.
People had to drive their stock long distances—immense journeys—from worn-out
places to new ones where were water and fresh pasturage; and this wide space had to
be left in grass and unfenced, or the stock would have starved to death in the transit.

On the way we saw the usual birds—the beautiful little green parrots, the magpie,
and some others; and also the slender native bird of modest plumage and the
eternally-forgettable name—the bird that is the smartest among birds, and can give a
parrot 30 to 1 in the game and then talk him to death. I cannot recall that bird's name.
I think it begins with M. I wish it began with G. or something that a person can
remember.

The magpie was out in great force, in the fields and on the fences. He is a handsome
large creature, with snowy white decorations, and is a singer; he has a murmurous rich
note that is lovely. He was once modest, even diffident; but he lost all that when he
found out that he was Australia's sole musical bird. He has talent, and cuteness, and
impudence; and in his tame state he is a most satisfactory pet—never coming when he
is called, always coming when he isn't, and studying disobedience as an
accomplishment. He is not confined, but loafs all over the house and grounds, like the
laughing jackass. I think he learns to talk, I know he learns to sing tunes, and his friends
say that he knows how to steal without learning. I was acquainted with a tame magpie
in Melbourne. He had lived in a lady's house several years, and believed he owned it.
The lady had tamed him, and in return he had tamed the lady. He was always on deck
when not wanted, always having his own way, always tyrannizing over the dog, and
always making the cat's life a slow sorrow and a martyrdom. He knew a number of
tunes and could sing them in perfect time and tune; and would do it, too, at any time
that silence was wanted; and then encore himself and do it again; but if he was asked
to sing he would go out and take a walk.

It was long believed that fruit trees would not grow in that baked and waterless
plain around Horsham, but the agricultural college has dissipated that idea. Its ample
nurseries were producing oranges, apricots, lemons, almonds, peaches, cherries, 48
varieties of apples—in fact, all manner of fruits, and in abundance. The trees did not
seem to miss the water; they were in vigorous and flourishing condition.

Experiments are made with different soils, to see what things thrive best in them
and what climates are best for them. A man who is ignorantly trying to produce upon
his farm things not suited to its soil and its other conditions can make a journey to the
college from anywhere in Australia, and go back with a change of scheme which will
make his farm productive and profitable.

There were forty pupils there—a few of them farmers, relearning their trade, the
rest young men mainly from the cities—novices. It seemed a strange thing that an
agricultural college should have an attraction for city-bred youths, but such is the fact.
They are good stuff, too; they are above the agricultural average of intelligence, and
they come without any inherited prejudices in favor of hoary ignorances made sacred
by long descent.

The students work all day in the fields, the nurseries, and the shearing-sheds,
learning and doing all the practical work of the business—three days in a week. On the
other three they study and hear lectures. They are taught the beginnings of such
sciences as bear upon agriculture—like chemistry, for instance. We saw the
sophomore class in sheep-shearing shear a dozen sheep. They did it by hand, not with
the machine. The sheep was seized and flung down on his side and held there; and the
students took off his coat with great celerity and adroitness. Sometimes they clipped
off a sample of the sheep, but that is customary with shearers, and they don't mind it;
they don't even mind it as much as the sheep. They dab a splotch of sheep-dip on the
place and go right ahead.
 The coat of wool was unbelievably thick. Before the shearing the sheep looked like
the fat woman in the circus; after it he looked like a bench. He was clipped to the skin;
and smoothly and uniformly. The fleece comes from him all in one piece and has the
spread of a blanket.

The college was flying the Australian flag—the gridiron of England smuggled up in
the northwest corner of a big red field that had the random stars of the Southern Cross
wandering around over it.

From Horsham we went to Stawell. By rail. Still in the colony of Victoria. Stawell is in
the gold-mining country. In the bank-safe was half a peck of surface-gold—gold dust,
grain gold; rich; pure in fact, and pleasant to sift through one's fingers; and would be
pleasanter if it would stick. And there were a couple of gold bricks, very heavy to
handle, and worth $7,500 a piece. They were from a very valuable quartz mine; a lady
owns two-thirds of it; she has an income of $75,000 a month from it, and is able to
keep house.

The Stawell region is not productive of gold only; it has great vineyards, and
produces exceptionally fine wines. One of these vineyards—the Great Western, owned
by Mr. Irving—is regarded as a model. Its product has reputation abroad. It yields a
choice champagne and a fine claret, and its hock took a prize in France two or three
years ago. The champagne is kept in a maze of passages under ground, cut in the rock,
to secure it an even temperature during the three-year term required to perfect it. In
those vaults I saw 120,000 bottles of champagne. The colony of Victoria has a
population of 1,000,000, and those people are said to drink 25,000,000 bottles of
champagne per year. The dryest community on the earth. The government has lately
reduced the duty upon foreign wines. That is one of the unkindnesses of Protection. A
man invests years of work and a vast sum of money in a worthy enterprise, upon the
faith of existing laws; then the law is changed, and the man is robbed by his own
government.

On the way back to Stawell we had a chance to see a group of boulders called the
Three Sisters—a curiosity oddly located; for it was upon high ground, with the land
sloping away from it, and no height above it from whence the boulders could have
rolled down. Relics of an early ice-drift, perhaps. They are noble boulders. One of them
has the size and smoothness and plump sphericity of a balloon of the biggest pattern.
 The road led through a forest of great gum-trees, lean and scraggy and sorrowful.
The road was cream-white—a clayey kind of earth, apparently. Along it toiled
occasional freight wagons, drawn by long double files of oxen. Those wagons were
going a journey of two hundred miles, I was told, and were running a successful
opposition to the railway! The railways are owned and run by the government.

Those sad gums stood up out of the dry white clay, pictures of patience and
resignation. It is a tree that can get along without water; still it is fond of it—
ravenously so. It is a very intelligent tree and will detect the presence of hidden water
at a distance of fifty feet, and send out slender long root-fibres to prospect it. They will
find it; and will also get at it even through a cement wall six inches thick. Once a
cement water-pipe under ground at Stawell began to gradually reduce its output, and
finally ceased altogether to deliver water. Upon examining into the matter it was
found stopped up, wadded compactly with a mass of root-fibres, delicate and hair-like.
How this stuff had gotten into the pipe was a puzzle for some little time; finally it was
found that it had crept in through a crack that was almost invisible to the eye. A gum
tree forty feet away had tapped the pipe and was drinking the water.
 CHAPTER XXIV.

There is no such thing as "the Queen's English." The property has gone into the
hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Frequently, in Australia, one has cloud-effects of an unfamiliar sort. We had this kind
of scenery, finely staged, all the way to Ballarat. Consequently we saw more sky than
country on that journey. At one time a great stretch of the vault was densely flecked
with wee ragged-edged flakes of painfully white cloud-stuff, all of one shape and size,
and equidistant apart, with narrow cracks of adorable blue showing between. The
whole was suggestive of a hurricane of snow-flakes drifting across the skies. By and by
these flakes fused themselves together in interminable lines, with shady faint hollows
between the lines, the long satin-surfaced rollers following each other in simulated
movement, and enchantingly counterfeiting the majestic march of a flowing sea. Later,
the sea solidified itself; then gradually broke up its mass into innumerable lofty white
pillars of about one size, and ranged these across the firmament, in receding and
fading perspective, in the similitude of a stupendous colonnade—a mirage without a
doubt flung from the far Gates of the Hereafter.

The approaches to Ballarat were beautiful. The features, great green expanses of
rolling pasture-land, bisected by eye-contenting hedges of commingled new-gold and
old-gold gorse—and a lovely lake. One must put in the pause, there, to fetch the
reader up with a slight jolt, and keep him from gliding by without noticing the lake.
One must notice it; for a lovely lake is not as common a thing along the railways of
Australia as are the dry places. Ninety-two in the shade again, but balmy and
comfortable, fresh and bracing. A perfect climate.

Forty-five years ago the site now occupied by the City of Ballarat was a sylvan
solitude as quiet as Eden and as lovely. Nobody had ever heard of it. On the 25th of
August, 1851, the first great gold-strike made in Australia was made here. The
wandering prospectors who made it scraped up two pounds and a half of gold the first
day-worth $600. A few days later the place was a hive—a town. The news of the strike
spread everywhere in a sort of instantaneous way—spread like a flash to the very ends
of the earth. A celebrity so prompt and so universal has hardly been paralleled in
history, perhaps. It was as if the name BALLARAT had suddenly been written on the
sky, where all the world could read it at once.
 The smaller discoveries made in the colony of New South Wales three months
before had already started emigrants toward Australia; they had been coming as a
stream, but they came as a flood, now. A hundred thousand people poured into
Melbourne from England and other countries in a single month, and flocked away to
the mines. The crews of the ships that brought them flocked with them; the clerks in
the government offices followed; so did the cooks, the maids, the coachmen, the
butlers, and the other domestic servants; so did the carpenters, the smiths, the
plumbers, the painters, the reporters, the editors, the lawyers, the clients, the
barkeepers, the bummers, the blacklegs, the thieves, the loose women, the grocers,
the butchers, the bakers, the doctors, the druggists, the nurses; so did the police; even
officials of high and hitherto envied place threw up their positions and joined the
procession. This roaring avalanche swept out of Melbourne and left it desolate,
Sunday-like, paralyzed, everything at a stand-still, the ships lying idle at anchor, all
signs of life departed, all sounds stilled save the rasping of the cloud-shadows as they
scraped across the vacant streets.

That grassy and leafy paradise at Ballarat was soon ripped open, and lacerated and
scarified and gutted, in the feverish search for its hidden riches. There is nothing like
surface-mining to snatch the graces and beauties and benignities out of a paradise,
and make an odious and repulsive spectacle of it.

What fortunes were made! Immigrants got rich while the ship unloaded and
reloaded—and went back home for good in the same cabin they had come out in! Not
all of them. Only some. I saw the others in Ballarat myself, forty-five years later—what
were left of them by time and death and the disposition to rove. They were young and
gay, then; they are patriarchal and grave, now; and they do not get excited any more.
They talk of the Past. They live in it. Their life is a dream, a retrospection.

Ballarat was a great region for "nuggets." No such nuggets were found in California
as Ballarat produced. In fact, the Ballarat region has yielded the largest ones known to
history. Two of them weighed about 180 pounds each, and together were worth
$90,000. They were offered to any poor person who would shoulder them and carry
them away. Gold was so plentiful that it made people liberal like that.

Ballarat was a swarming city of tents in the early days. Everybody was happy, for a
time, and apparently prosperous. Then came trouble. The government swooped down
with a mining tax. And in its worst form, too; for it was not a tax upon what the miner
had taken out, but upon what he was going to take out—if he could find it. It was a
license-tax—license to work his claim—and it had to be paid before he could begin
digging.

Consider the situation. No business is so uncertain as surface-mining. Your claim

may be good, and it may be worthless. It may make you well off in a month; and then
again you may have to dig and slave for half a year, at heavy expense, only to find out
at last that the gold is not there in cost-paying quantity, and that your time and your
hard work have been thrown away. It might be wise policy to advance the miner a
monthly sum to encourage him to develop the country's riches; but to tax him monthly
in advance instead—why, such a thing was never dreamed of in America. There,
neither the claim itself nor its products, howsoever rich or poor, were taxed.

The Ballarat miners protested, petitioned, complained—it was of no use; the

government held its ground, and went on collecting the tax. And not by pleasant
methods, but by ways which must have been very galling to free people. The rumblings
of a coming storm began to be audible.

By and by there was a result; and I think it may be called the finest thing in
Australasian history. It was a revolution—small in size; but great politically; it was a
strike for liberty, a struggle for a principle, a stand against injustice and oppression. It
was the Barons and John, over again; it was Hampden and Ship-Money; it was Concord
and Lexington; small beginnings, all of them, but all of them great in political results, all
of them epoch-making. It is another instance of a victory won by a lost battle. It adds
an honorable page to history; the people know it and are proud of it. They keep green
the memory of the men who fell at the Eureka Stockade, and Peter Lalor has his
monument.

The surface-soil of Ballarat was full of gold. This soil the miners ripped and tore and
trenched and harried and disembowled, and made it yield up its immense treasure.
Then they went down into the earth with deep shafts, seeking the gravelly beds of
ancient rivers and brooks—and found them. They followed the courses of these
streams, and gutted them, sending the gravel up in buckets to the upper world, and
washing out of it its enormous deposits of gold. The next biggest of the two monster
nuggets mentioned above came from an old river-channel 180 feet under ground.

Finally the quartz lodes were attacked. That is not poor-man's mining. Quartz-mining
and milling require capital, and staying-power, and patience. Big companies were
formed, and for several decades, now, the lodes have been successfully worked, and
have yielded great wealth. Since the gold discovery in 1853 the Ballarat mines—taking
the three kinds of mining together—have contributed to the world's pocket something
over three hundred millions of dollars, which is to say that this nearly invisible little
spot on the earth's surface has yielded about one-fourth as much gold in forty-four
years as all California has yielded in forty-seven. The Californian aggregate, from 1848
to 1895, inclusive, as reported by the Statistician of the United States Mint, is
$1,265,217,217.

A citizen told me a curious thing about those mines. With all my experience of
mining I had never heard of anything of the sort before. The main gold reef runs about
north and south—of course—for that is the custom of a rich gold reef. At Ballarat its
course is between walls of slate. Now the citizen told me that throughout a stretch of
twelve miles along the reef, the reef is crossed at intervals by a straight black streak of
a carbonaceous nature—a streak in the slate; a streak no thicker than a pencil—and
that wherever it crosses the reef you will certainly find gold at the junction. It is called
the Indicator. Thirty feet on each side of the Indicator (and down in the slate, of
course) is a still finer streak—a streak as fine as a pencil mark; and indeed, that is its
name Pencil Mark. Whenever you find the Pencil Mark you know that thirty feet from
it is the Indicator; you measure the distance, excavate, find the Indicator, trace it
straight to the reef, and sink your shaft; your fortune is made, for certain. If that is
true, it is curious. And it is curious anyway.

Ballarat is a town of only 40,000 population; and yet, since it is in Australia, it has
every essential of an advanced and enlightened big city. This is pure matter of course. I
must stop dwelling upon these things. It is hard to keep from dwelling upon them,
though; for it is difficult to get away from the surprise of it. I will let the other details
go, this time, but I must allow myself to mention that this little town has a park of 326
acres; a flower garden of 83 acres, with an elaborate and expensive fernery in it and
some costly and unusually fine statuary; and an artificial lake covering 600 acres,
equipped with a fleet of 200 shells, small sail boats, and little steam yachts.

At this point I strike out some other praiseful things which I was tempted to add. I
do not strike them out because they were not true or not well said, but because I find
them better said by another man—and a man more competent to testify, too, because
he belongs on the ground, and knows. I clip them from a chatty speech delivered some
years ago by Mr. William Little, who was at that time mayor of Ballarat:
 "The language of our citizens, in this as in other parts of Australasia, is mostly
healthy Anglo-Saxon, free from Americanisms, vulgarisms, and the conflicting dialects
of our Fatherland, and is pure enough to suit a Trench or a Latham. Our youth, aided by
climatic influence, are in point of physique and comeliness unsurpassed in the Sunny
South. Our young men are well ordered; and our maidens, 'not stepping over the
bounds of modesty,' are as fair as Psyches, dispensing smiles as charming as November
flowers."

The closing clause has the seeming of a rather frosty compliment, but that is
apparent only, not real. November is summer-time there.

His compliment to the local purity of the language is warranted. It is quite free from
impurities; this is acknowledged far and wide. As in the German Empire all cultivated
people claim to speak Hanovarian German, so in Australasia all cultivated people claim
to speak Ballarat English. Even in England this cult has made considerable progress,
and now that it is favored by the two great Universities, the time is not far away when
Ballarat English will come into general use among the educated classes of Great Britain
at large. Its great merit is, that it is shorter than ordinary English—that is, it is more
compressed. At first you have some difficulty in understanding it when it is spoken as
rapidly as the orator whom I have quoted speaks it. An illustration will show what I
mean. When he called and I handed him a chair, he bowed and said:

"Q."

Presently, when we were lighting our cigars, he held a match to mine and I said:

"Thank you," and he said:

"Km."

Then I saw. 'Q' is the end of the phrase "I thank you" 'Km' is the end of the phrase
"You are welcome." Mr. Little puts no emphasis upon either of them, but delivers them
so reduced that they hardly have a sound. All Ballarat English is like that, and the effect
is very soft and pleasant; it takes all the hardness and harshness out of our tongue and
gives to it a delicate whispery and vanishing cadence which charms the ear like the
faint rustling of the forest leaves.
 CHAPTER XXV.

"Classic." A book which people praise and don't read.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

On the rail again—bound for Bendigo. From diary:

October 23. Got up at 6, left at 7.30; soon reached Castlemaine, one of the rich gold-
fields of the early days; waited several hours for a train; left at 3.40 and reached
Bendigo in an hour. For comrade, a Catholic priest who was better than I was, but
didn't seem to know it—a man full of graces of the heart, the mind, and the spirit; a
lovable man. He will rise. He will be a bishop some day. Later an Archbishop. Later a
Cardinal. Finally an Archangel, I hope. And then he will recall me when I say, "Do you
remember that trip we made from Ballarat to Bendigo, when you were nothing but
Father C., and I was nothing to what I am now?" It has actually taken nine hours to
come from Ballarat to Bendigo. We could have saved seven by walking. However,
there was no hurry.

Bendigo was another of the rich strikes of the early days. It does a great quartz-
mining business, now—that business which, more than any other that I know of,
teaches patience, and requires grit and a steady nerve. The town is full of towering
chimney-stacks, and hoisting-works, and looks like a petroleum-city. Speaking of
patience; for example, one of the local companies went steadily on with its deep
borings and searchings without show of gold or a penny of reward for eleven years—
then struck it, and became suddenly rich. The eleven years' work had cost $55,000,
and the first gold found was a grain the size of a pin's head. It is kept under locks and
bars, as a precious thing, and is reverently shown to the visitor, "hats off." When I saw
it I had not heard its history.

"It is gold. Examine it—take the glass. Now how much should you say it is worth?"

I said:

"I should say about two cents; or in your English dialect, four farthings."

"Well, it cost L11,000."

"Oh, come!"
 "Yes, it did. Ballarat and Bendigo have produced the three monumental nuggets of
the world, and this one is the monumentalest one of the three. The other two
represent L9,000 a piece; this one a couple of thousand more. It is small, and not much
to look at, but it is entitled to (its) name—Adam. It is the Adam-nugget of this mine,
and its children run up into the millions."

Speaking of patience again, another of the mines was worked, under heavy
expenses, during 17 years before pay was struck, and still another one compelled a
wait of 21 years before pay was struck; then, in both instances, the outlay was all back
in a year or two, with compound interest.

Bendigo has turned out even more gold than Ballarat. The two together have
produced $650,000,000 worth—which is half as much as California produced.

It was through Mr. Blank—not to go into particulars about his name—it was mainly
through Mr. Blank that my stay in Bendigo was made memorably pleasant and
interesting. He explained this to me himself. He told me that it was through his
influence that the city government invited me to the town-hall to hear complimentary
speeches and respond to them; that it was through his influence that I had been taken
on a long pleasure-drive through the city and shown its notable features; that it was
through his influence that I was invited to visit the great mines; that it was through his
influence that I was taken to the hospital and allowed to see the convalescent
Chinaman who had been attacked at midnight in his lonely hut eight weeks before by
robbers, and stabbed forty-six times and scalped besides; that it was through his
influence that when I arrived this awful spectacle of piecings and patchings and
bandagings was sitting up in his cot letting on to read one of my books; that it was
through his influence that efforts had been made to get the Catholic Archbishop of
Bendigo to invite me to dinner; that it was through his influence that efforts had been
made to get the Anglican Bishop of Bendigo to ask me to supper; that it was through
his influence that the dean of the editorial fraternity had driven me through the
woodsy outlying country and shown me, from the summit of Lone Tree Hill, the
mightiest and loveliest expanse of forest-clad mountain and valley that I had seen in all
Australia. And when he asked me what had most impressed me in Bendigo and I
answered and said it was the taste and the public spirit which had adorned the streets
with 105 miles of shade trees, he said that it was through his influence that it had been
done.
 But I am not representing him quite correctly. He did not say it was through his
influence that all these things had happened—for that would have been coarse; he
merely conveyed that idea; conveyed it so subtly that I only caught it fleetingly, as one
catches vagrant faint breaths of perfume when one traverses the meadows in summer;
conveyed it without offense and without any suggestion of egoism or ostentation—but
conveyed it, nevertheless.

He was an Irishman; an educated gentleman; grave, and kindly, and courteous; a

bachelor, and about forty-five or possibly fifty years old, apparently. He called upon
me at the hotel, and it was there that we had this talk. He made me like him, and did it
without trouble. This was partly through his winning and gentle ways, but mainly
through the amazing familiarity with my books which his conversation showed. He was
down to date with them, too; and if he had made them the study of his life he could
hardly have been better posted as to their contents than he was. He made me better
satisfied with myself than I had ever been before. It was plain that he had a deep
fondness for humor, yet he never laughed; he never even chuckled; in fact, humor
could not win to outward expression on his face at all. No, he was always grave—
tenderly, pensively grave; but he made me laugh, all along; and this was very trying—
and very pleasant at the same time—for it was at quotations from my own books.

When he was going, he turned and said:

"You don't remember me?"

"I? Why, no. Have we met before?"

"No, it was a matter of correspondence."

"Correspondence?"

"Yes, many years ago. Twelve or fifteen. Oh, longer than that. But of course you——
" A musing pause. Then he said:

"Do you remember Corrigan Castle?"

"N-no, I believe I don't. I don't seem to recall the name."

He waited a moment, pondering, with the door-knob in his hand, then started out;
but turned back and said that I had once been interested in Corrigan Castle, and asked
me if I would go with him to his quarters in the evening and take a hot Scotch and talk
it over. I was a teetotaler and liked relaxation, so I said I would.

We drove from the lecture-hall together about half-past ten. He had a most
comfortably and tastefully furnished parlor, with good pictures on the walls, Indian
and Japanese ornaments on the mantel, and here and there, and books everywhere-
largely mine; which made me proud. The light was brilliant, the easy chairs were deep-
cushioned, the arrangements for brewing and smoking were all there. We brewed and
lit up; then he passed a sheet of note-paper to me and said—

"Do you remember that?"

"Oh, yes, indeed!"

The paper was of a sumptuous quality. At the top was a twisted and interlaced
monogram printed from steel dies in gold and blue and red, in the ornate English
fashion of long years ago; and under it, in neat gothic capitals was this—printed in
blue:

THE MARK TWAIN CLUB CORRIGAN CASTLE ............187..

"My!" said I, "how did you come by this?"

"I was President of it."

"No!—you don't mean it."

"It is true. I was its first President. I was re-elected annually as long as its meetings
were held in my castle—Corrigan—which was five years."

Then he showed me an album with twenty-three photographs of me in it. Five of

them were of old dates, the others of various later crops; the list closed with a picture
taken by Falk in Sydney a month before.

"You sent us the first five; the rest were bought."

This was paradise! We ran late, and talked, talked, talked—subject, the Mark Twain
Club of Corrigan Castle, Ireland.
 My first knowledge of that Club dates away back; all of twenty years, I should say. It
came to me in the form of a courteous letter, written on the note-paper which I have
described, and signed "By order of the President; C. PEMBROKE, Secretary." It
conveyed the fact that the Club had been created in my honor, and added the hope
that this token of appreciation of my work would meet with my approval.

I answered, with thanks; and did what I could to keep my gratification from over-
exposure.

It was then that the long correspondence began. A letter came back, by order of the
President, furnishing me the names of the members-thirty-two in number. With it
came a copy of the Constitution and By-Laws, in pamphlet form, and artistically
printed. The initiation fee and dues were in their proper place; also, schedule of
meetings—monthly—for essays upon works of mine, followed by discussions;
quarterly for business and a supper, without essays, but with after-supper speeches;
also there was a list of the officers: President, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer, etc.
The letter was brief, but it was pleasant reading, for it told me about the strong
interest which the membership took in their new venture, etc., etc. It also asked me
for a photograph—a special one. I went down and sat for it and sent it—with a letter,
of course.

Presently came the badge of the Club, and very dainty and pretty it was; and very
artistic. It was a frog peeping out from a graceful tangle of grass-sprays and rushes,
and was done in enamels on a gold basis, and had a gold pin back of it. After I had
petted it, and played with it, and caressed it, and enjoyed it a couple of hours, the light
happened to fall upon it at a new angle, and revealed to me a cunning new detail; with
the light just right, certain delicate shadings of the grass-blades and rush-stems wove
themselves into a monogram—mine! You can see that that jewel was a work of art.
And when you come to consider the intrinsic value of it, you must concede that it is
not every literary club that could afford a badge like that. It was easily worth $75, in
the opinion of Messrs. Marcus and Ward of New York. They said they could not
duplicate it for that and make a profit.

By this time the Club was well under way; and from that time forth its secretary kept
my off-hours well supplied with business. He reported the Club's discussions of my
books with laborious fullness, and did his work with great spirit and ability. As a, rule,
he synopsized; but when a speech was especially brilliant, he short-handed it and gave
me the best passages from it, written out. There were five speakers whom he
particularly favored in that way: Palmer, Forbes, Naylor, Norris, and Calder. Palmer and
Forbes could never get through a speech without attacking each other, and each in his
own way was formidably effective—Palmer in virile and eloquent abuse, Forbes in
courtly and elegant but scalding satire. I could always tell which of them was talking
without looking for his name. Naylor had a polished style and a happy knack at
felicitous metaphor; Norris's style was wholly without ornament, but enviably
compact, lucid, and strong. But after all, Calder was the gem. He never spoke when
sober, he spoke continuously when he wasn't. And certainly they were the drunkest
speeches that a man ever uttered. They were full of good things, but so incredibly
mixed up and wandering that it made one's head swim to follow him. They were not
intended to be funny, but they were,—funny for the very gravity which the speaker
put into his flowing miracles of incongruity. In the course of five years I came to know
the styles of the five orators as well as I knew the style of any speaker in my own club
at home.

These reports came every month. They were written on foolscap, 600 words to the
page, and usually about twenty-five pages in a report—a good 15,000 words, I should
say,—a solid week's work. The reports were absorbingly entertaining, long as they
were; but, unfortunately for me, they did not come alone. They were always
accompanied by a lot of questions about passages and purposes in my books, which
the Club wanted answered; and additionally accompanied every quarter by the
Treasurer's report, and the Auditor's report, and the Committee's report, and the
President's review, and my opinion of these was always desired; also suggestions for
the good of the Club, if any occurred to me.

By and by I came to dread those things; and this dread grew and grew and grew;
grew until I got to anticipating them with a cold horror. For I was an indolent man, and
not fond of letter-writing, and whenever these things came I had to put everything by
and sit down—for my own peace of mind—and dig and dig until I got something out of
my head which would answer for a reply. I got along fairly well the first year; but for
the succeeding four years the Mark Twain Club of Corrigan Castle was my curse, my
nightmare, the grief and misery of my life. And I got so, so sick of sitting for
photographs. I sat every year for five years, trying to satisfy that insatiable
organization. Then at last I rose in revolt. I could endure my oppressions no longer. I
pulled my fortitude together and tore off my chains, and was a free man again, and
happy. From that day I burned the secretary's fat envelopes the moment they arrived,
and by and by they ceased to come.
 Well, in the sociable frankness of that night in Bendigo I brought this all out in full
confession. Then Mr. Blank came out in the same frank way, and with a preliminary
word of gentle apology said that he was the Mark Twain Club, and the only member it
had ever had!

Why, it was matter for anger, but I didn't feel any. He said he never had to work for
a living, and that by the time he was thirty life had become a bore and a weariness to
him. He had no interests left; they had paled and perished, one by one, and left him
desolate. He had begun to think of suicide. Then all of a sudden he thought of that
happy idea of starting an imaginary club, and went straightway to work at it, with
enthusiasm and love. He was charmed with it; it gave him something to do. It
elaborated itself on his hands;—it became twenty times more complex and formidable
than was his first rude draft of it. Every new addition to his original plan which cropped
up in his mind gave him a fresh interest and a new pleasure. He designed the Club
badge himself, and worked over it, altering and improving it, a number of days and
nights; then sent to London and had it made. It was the only one that was made. It was
made for me; the "rest of the Club" went without.

He invented the thirty-two members and their names. He invented the five favorite
speakers and their five separate styles. He invented their speeches, and reported them
himself. He would have kept that Club going until now, if I hadn't deserted, he said. He
said he worked like a slave over those reports; each of them cost him from a week to a
fortnight's work, and the work gave him pleasure and kept him alive and willing to be
alive. It was a bitter blow to him when the Club died.

Finally, there wasn't any Corrigan Castle. He had invented that, too.

It was wonderful—the whole thing; and altogether the most ingenious and laborious
and cheerful and painstaking practical joke I have ever heard of. And I liked it; liked to
hear him tell about it; yet I have been a hater of practical jokes from as long back as I
can remember. Finally he said—

"Do you remember a note from Melbourne fourteen or fifteen years ago, telling
about your lecture tour in Australia, and your death and burial in Melbourne?—a note
from Henry Bascomb, of Bascomb Hall, Upper Holywell, Hants."

"Yes."
 "I wrote it."

"M-y-word!"

"Yes, I did it. I don't know why. I just took the notion, and carried it out without
stopping to think. It was wrong. It could have done harm. I was always sorry about it
afterward. You must forgive me. I was Mr. Bascom's guest on his yacht, on his voyage
around the world. He often spoke of you, and of the pleasant times you had had
together in his home; and the notion took me, there in Melbourne, and I imitated his
hand, and wrote the letter."

So the mystery was cleared up, after so many, many years.

 CHAPTER XXVI.

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one! keep from telling
their happinesses to the unhappy.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

After visits to Maryborough and some other Australian towns, we presently took
passage for New Zealand. If it would not look too much like showing off, I would tell
the reader where New Zealand is; for he is as I was; he thinks he knows. And he thinks
he knows where Hertzegovina is; and how to pronounce pariah; and how to use the
word unique without exposing himself to the derision of the dictionary. But in truth, he
knows none of these things. There are but four or five people in the world who possess
this knowledge, and these make their living out of it. They travel from place to place,
visiting literary assemblages, geographical societies, and seats of learning, and
springing sudden bets that these people do not know these things. Since all people
think they know them, they are an easy prey to these adventurers. Or rather they were
an easy prey until the law interfered, three months ago, and a New York court decided
that this kind of gambling is illegal, "because it traverses Article IV, Section 9, of the
Constitution of the United States, which forbids betting on a sure thing." This decision
was rendered by the full Bench of the New York Supreme Court, after a test sprung
upon the court by counsel for the prosecution, which showed that none of the nine
Judges was able to answer any of the four questions.

All people think that New Zealand is close to Australia or Asia, or somewhere, and
that you cross to it on a bridge. But that is not so. It is not close to anything, but lies by
itself, out in the water. It is nearest to Australia, but still not near. The gap between is
very wide. It will be a surprise to the reader, as it was to me, to learn that the distance
from Australia to New Zealand is really twelve or thirteen hundred miles, and that
there is no bridge. I learned this from Professor X., of Yale University, whom I met in
the steamer on the great lakes when I was crossing the continent to sail across the
Pacific. I asked him about New Zealand, in order to make conversation. I supposed he
would generalize a little without compromising himself, and then turn the subject to
something he was acquainted with, and my object would then be attained; the ice
would be broken, and we could go smoothly on, and get acquainted, and have a
pleasant time. But, to my surprise, he was not only not embarrassed by my question,
but seemed to welcome it, and to take a distinct interest in it. He began to talk—
fluently, confidently, comfortably; and as he talked, my admiration grew and grew; for
as the subject developed under his hands, I saw that he not only knew where New
Zealand was, but that he was minutely familiar with every detail of its history, politics,
religions, and commerce, its fauna, flora, geology, products, and climatic peculiarities.
When he was done, I was lost in wonder and admiration, and said to myself, he knows
everything; in the domain of human knowledge he is king.

I wanted to see him do more miracles; and so, just for the pleasure of hearing him
answer, I asked him about Hertzegovina, and pariah, and unique. But he began to
generalize then, and show distress. I saw that with New Zealand gone, he was a
Samson shorn of his locks; he was as other men. This was a curious and interesting
mystery, and I was frank with him, and asked him to explain it.

He tried to avoid it at first; but then laughed and said that after all, the matter was
not worth concealment, so he would let me into the secret. In substance, this is his
story:

"Last autumn I was at work one morning at home, when a card came up—the card
of a stranger. Under the name was printed a line which showed that this visitor was
Professor of Theological Engineering in Wellington University, New Zealand. I was
troubled—troubled, I mean, by the shortness of the notice. College etiquette required
that he be at once invited to dinner by some member of the Faculty—invited to dine on
that day—not, put off till a subsequent day. I did not quite know what to do. College
etiquette requires, in the case of a foreign guest, that the dinner-talk shall begin with
complimentary references to his country, its great men, its services to civilization, its
seats of learning, and things like that; and of course the host is responsible, and must
either begin this talk himself or see that it is done by some one else. I was in great
difficulty; and the more I searched my memory, the more my trouble grew. I found that
I knew nothing about New Zealand. I thought I knew where it was, and that was all. I
had an impression that it was close to Australia, or Asia, or somewhere, and that one
went over to it on a bridge. This might turn out to be incorrect; and even if correct, it
would not furnish matter enough for the purpose at the dinner, and I should expose my
College to shame before my guest; he would see that I, a member of the Faculty of the
first University in America, was wholly ignorant of his country, and he would go away
and tell this, and laugh at it. The thought of it made my face burn.

"I sent for my wife and told her how I was situated, and asked for her help, and she
thought of a thing which I might have thought of myself, if I had not been excited and
worried. She said she would go and tell the visitor that I was out but would be in in a
few minutes; and she would talk, and keep him busy while I got out the back way and
hurried over and make Professor Lawson give the dinner. For Lawson knew everything,
and could meet the guest in a creditable way and save the reputation of the University.

I ran to Lawson, but was disappointed. He did not know anything about New
Zealand. He said that, as far as his recollection went it was close to Australia, or Asia,
or somewhere, and you go over to it on a bridge; but that was all he knew. It was too
bad. Lawson was a perfect encyclopedia of abstruse learning; but now in this hour of
our need, it turned out that he did not know any useful thing.

"We consulted. He saw that the reputation of the University was in very real peril,
and he walked the floor in anxiety, talking, and trying to think out some way to meet
the difficulty. Presently he decided that we must try the rest of the Faculty—some of
them might know about New Zealand. So we went to the telephone and called up the
professor of astronomy and asked him, and he said that all he knew was, that it was
close to Australia, or Asia, or somewhere, and you went over to it on——

"We shut him off and called up the professor of biology, and he said that all he knew
was that it was close to Aus——.

"We shut him off, and sat down, worried and disheartened, to see if we could think
up some other scheme. We shortly hit upon one which promised well, and this one we
adopted, and set its machinery going at once. It was this. Lawson must give the dinner.
The Faculty must be notified by telephone to prepare. We must all get to work
diligently, and at the end of eight hours and a half we must come to dinner acquainted
with New Zealand; at least well enough informed to appear without discredit before
this native. To seem properly intelligent we should have to know about New Zealand's
population, and politics, and form of government, and commerce, and taxes, and
products, and ancient history, and modern history, and varieties of religion, and nature
of the laws, and their codification, and amount of revenue, and whence drawn, and
methods of collection, and percentage of loss, and character of climate, and—well, a
lot of things like that; we must suck the maps and cyclopedias dry. And while we posted
up in this way, the Faculty's wives must flock over, one after the other, in a studiedly
casual way, and help my wife keep the New Zealander quiet, and not let him get out
and come interfering with our studies. The scheme worked admirably; but it stopped
business, stopped it entirely.
 "It is in the official log-book of Yale, to be read and wondered at by future
generations—the account of the Great Blank Day—the memorable Blank Day—the day
wherein the wheels of culture were stopped, a Sunday silence prevailed all about, and
the whole University stood still while the Faculty read-up and qualified itself to sit at
meat, without shame, in the presence of the Professor of Theological Engineering from
New Zealand:

"When we assembled at the dinner we were miserably tired and worn—but we were
posted. Yes, it is fair to claim that. In fact, erudition is a pale name for it. New Zealand
was the only subject; and it was just beautiful to hear us ripple it out. And with such an
air of unembarrassed ease, and unostentatious familiarity with detail, and trained and
seasoned mastery of the subject-and oh, the grace and fluency of it!

"Well, finally somebody happened to notice that the guest was looking dazed, and
wasn't saying anything. So they stirred him up, of course. Then that man came out with
a good, honest, eloquent compliment that made the Faculty blush. He said he was not
worthy to sit in the company of men like these; that he had been silent from
admiration; that he had been silent from another cause also—silent from shame—
silent from ignorance! 'For,' said he, 'I, who have lived eighteen years in New Zealand
and have served five in a professorship, and ought to know much about that country,
perceive, now, that I know almost nothing about it. I say it with shame, that I have
learned fifty times, yes, a hundred times more about New Zealand in these two hours
at this table than I ever knew before in all the eighteen years put together. I was silent
because I could not help myself. What I knew about taxes, and policies, and laws, and
revenue, and products, and history, and all that multitude of things, was but general,
and ordinary, and vague-unscientific, in a word—and it would have been insanity to
expose it here to the searching glare of your amazingly accurate and all-comprehensive
knowledge of those matters, gentlemen. I beg you to let me sit silent—as becomes me.
But do not change the subject; I can at least follow you, in this one; whereas if you
change to one which shall call out the full strength of your mighty erudition, I shall be
as one lost. If you know all this about a remote little inconsequent patch like New
Zealand, ah, what wouldn't you know about any other Subject!'"
 CHAPTER XXVII.

Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or needs to.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession, what there is of
it.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

FROM DIARY:

November 1—noon. A fine day, a brilliant sun. Warm in the sun, cold in the shade—
an icy breeze blowing out of the south. A solemn long swell rolling up northward. It
comes from the South Pole, with nothing in the way to obstruct its march and tone its
energy down. I have read somewhere that an acute observer among the early
explorers—Cook? or Tasman?—accepted this majestic swell as trustworthy
circumstantial evidence that no important land lay to the southward, and so did not
waste time on a useless quest in that direction, but changed his course and went
searching elsewhere.

Afternoon. Passing between Tasmania (formerly Van Diemen's Land) and

neighboring islands—islands whence the poor exiled Tasmanian savages used to gaze
at their lost homeland and cry; and die of broken hearts. How glad I am that all these
native races are dead and gone, or nearly so. The work was mercifully swift and
horrible in some portions of Australia. As far as Tasmania is concerned, the
extermination was complete: not a native is left. It was a strife of years, and decades of
years. The Whites and the Blacks hunted each other, ambushed each other, butchered
each other. The Blacks were not numerous. But they were wary, alert, cunning, and
they knew their country well. They lasted a long time, few as they were, and inflicted
much slaughter upon the Whites.

The Government wanted to save the Blacks from ultimate extermination, if possible.
One of its schemes was to capture them and coop them up, on a neighboring island,
under guard. Bodies of Whites volunteered for the hunt, for the pay was good—L5 for
each Black captured and delivered, but the success achieved was not very satisfactory.
The Black was naked, and his body was greased. It was hard to get a grip on him that
would hold. The Whites moved about in armed bodies, and surprised little families of
natives, and did make captures; but it was suspected that in these surprises half a
dozen natives were killed to one caught—and that was not what the Government
desired.

Another scheme was to drive the natives into a corner of the island and fence them
in by a cordon of men placed in line across the country; but the natives managed to
slip through, constantly, and continue their murders and arsons.

The governor warned these unlettered savages by printed proclamation that they
must stay in the desolate region officially appointed for them! The proclamation was a
dead letter; the savages could not read it. Afterward a picture-proclamation was
issued. It was painted up on boards, and these were nailed to trees in the forest.

Herewith is a photographic reproduction of this fashion-plate. Substantially it

means:

1. The Governor wishes the Whites and the Blacks to love each other;

2. He loves his black subjects;

3. Blacks who kill Whites will be hanged;

4. Whites who kill Blacks will be hanged.

Upon its several schemes the Government spent L30,000 and employed the labors
and ingenuities of several thousand Whites for a long time with failure as a result.
Then, at last, a quarter of a century after the beginning of the troubles between the
two races, the right man was found. No, he found himself. This was George Augustus
Robinson, called in history "The Conciliator." He was not educated, and not
conspicuous in any way. He was a working bricklayer, in Hobart Town. But he must
have been an amazing personality; a man worth traveling far to see. It may be his
counterpart appears in history, but I do not know where to look for it.

He set himself this incredible task: to go out into the wilderness, the jungle, and the
mountain-retreats where the hunted and implacable savages were hidden, and appear
among them unarmed, speak the language of love and of kindness to them, and
persuade them to forsake their homes and the wild free life that was so dear to them,
and go with him and surrender to the hated Whites and live under their watch and
ward, and upon their charity the rest of their lives! On its face it was the dream of a
madman.

In the beginning, his moral-suasion project was sarcastically dubbed the sugar plum
speculation. If the scheme was striking, and new to the world's experience, the
situation was not less so. It was this. The White population numbered 40,000 in 1831;
the Black population numbered three hundred. Not 300 warriors, but 300 men,
women, and children. The Whites were armed with guns, the Blacks with clubs and
spears. The Whites had fought the Blacks for a quarter of a century, and had tried
every thinkable way to capture, kill, or subdue them; and could not do it. If white men
of any race could have done it, these would have accomplished it. But every scheme
had failed, the splendid 300, the matchless 300 were unconquered, and manifestly
unconquerable. They would not yield, they would listen to no terms, they would fight
to the bitter end. Yet they had no poet to keep up their heart, and sing the marvel of
their magnificent patriotism.

At the end of five-and-twenty years of hard fighting, the surviving 300 naked
patriots were still defiant, still persistent, still efficacious with their rude weapons, and
the Governor and the 40,000 knew not which way to turn, nor what to do.

Then the Bricklayer—that wonderful man—proposed to go out into the wilderness,

with no weapon but his tongue, and no protection but his honest eye and his humane
heart; and track those embittered savages to their lairs in the gloomy forests and
among the mountain snows. Naturally, he was considered a crank. But he was not
quite that. In fact, he was a good way short of that. He was building upon his long and
intimate knowledge of the native character. The deriders of his project were right—
from their standpoint—for they believed the natives to be mere wild beasts; and
Robinson was right, from his standpoint—for he believed the natives to be human
beings. The truth did really lie between the two. The event proved that Robinson's
judgment was soundest; but about once a month for four years the event came near
to giving the verdict to the deriders, for about that frequently Robinson barely escaped
falling under the native spears.

But history shows that he had a thinking head, and was not a mere wild
sentimentalist. For instance, he wanted the war parties called in before he started
unarmed upon his mission of peace. He wanted the best chance of success—not a half-
chance. And he was very willing to have help; and so, high rewards were advertised,
for any who would go unarmed with him. This opportunity was declined. Robinson
persuaded some tamed natives of both sexes to go with him—a strong evidence of his
persuasive powers, for those natives well knew that their destruction would be almost
certain. As it turned out, they had to face death over and over again.

Robinson and his little party had a difficult undertaking upon their hands. They could
not ride off, horseback, comfortably into the woods and call Leonidas and his 300
together for a talk and a treaty the following day; for the wild men were not in a body;
they were scattered, immense distances apart, over regions so desolate that even the
birds could not make a living with the chances offered—scattered in groups of twenty,
a dozen, half a dozen, even in groups of three. And the mission must go on foot. Mr.
Bonwick furnishes a description of those horrible regions, whereby it will be seen that
even fugitive gangs of the hardiest and choicest human devils the world has seen—the
convicts set apart to people the "Hell of Macquarrie Harbor Station"—were never able,
but once, to survive the horrors of a march through them, but starving and struggling,
and fainting and failing, ate each other, and died:

"Onward, still onward, was the order of the indomitable Robinson. No one ignorant
of the western country of Tasmania can form a correct idea of the traveling difficulties.
While I was resident in Hobart Town, the Governor, Sir John Franklin, and his lady,
undertook the western journey to Macquarrie Harbor, and suffered terribly. One man
who assisted to carry her ladyship through the swamps, gave me his bitter experience
of its miseries. Several were disabled for life. No wonder that but one party, escaping
from Macquarrie Harbor convict settlement, arrived at the civilized region in safety.
Men perished in the scrub, were lost in snow, or were devoured by their companions.
This was the territory traversed by Mr. Robinson and his Black guides. All honor to his
intrepidity, and their wonderful fidelity! When they had, in the depth of winter, to cross
deep and rapid rivers, pass among mountains six thousand feet high, pierce dangerous
thickets, and find food in a country forsaken even by birds, we can realize their
hardships.

"After a frightful journey by Cradle Mountain, and over the lofty plateau of
Middlesex Plains, the travelers experienced unwonted misery, and the circumstances
called forth the best qualities of the noble little band. Mr. Robinson wrote afterwards to
Mr. Secretary Burnett some details of this passage of horrors. In that letter, of Oct 2,
1834, he states that his Natives were very reluctant to go over the dreadful mountain
passes; that 'for seven successive days we continued traveling over one solid body of
snow;' that 'the snows were of incredible depth;' that 'the Natives were frequently up
to their middle in snow.' But still the ill-clad, ill-fed, diseased, and way-worn men and
women were sustained by the cheerful voice of their unconquerable friend, and
responded most nobly to his call."

Mr. Bonwick says that Robinson's friendly capture of the Big River tribe remember, it
was a whole tribe—"was by far the grandest feature of the war, and the crowning
glory of his efforts." The word "war" was not well chosen, and is misleading. There was
war still, but only the Blacks were conducting it—the Whites were holding off until
Robinson could give his scheme a fair trial. I think that we are to understand that the
friendly capture of that tribe was by far the most important thing, the highest in value,
that happened during the whole thirty years of truceless hostilities; that it was a
decisive thing, a peaceful Waterloo, the surrender of the native Napoleon and his
dreaded forces, the happy ending of the long strife. For "that tribe was the terror of
the colony," its chief "the Black Douglas of Bush households."

Robinson knew that these formidable people were lurking somewhere, in some
remote corner of the hideous regions just described, and he and his unarmed little
party started on a tedious and perilous hunt for them. At last, "there, under the
shadows of the Frenchman's Cap, whose grim cone rose five thousand feet in the
uninhabited westward interior," they were found. It was a serious moment. Robinson
himself believed, for once, that his mission, successful until now, was to end here in
failure, and that his own death-hour had struck.

The redoubtable chief stood in menacing attitude, with his eighteen-foot spear
poised; his warriors stood massed at his back, armed for battle, their faces eloquent
with their long-cherished loathing for white men. "They rattled their spears and
shouted their war-cry." Their women were back of them, laden with supplies of
weapons, and keeping their 150 eager dogs quiet until the chief should give the signal
to fall on.

"I think we shall soon be in the resurrection," whispered a member of Robinson's

little party.

"I think we shall," answered Robinson; then plucked up heart and began his
persuasions—in the tribe's own dialect, which surprised and pleased the chief.
Presently there was an interruption by the chief:

"Who are you?"

 "We are gentlemen."

"Where are your guns?"

"We have none."

The warrior was astonished.

"Where your little guns?" (pistols).

"We have none."

A few minutes passed—in by-play—suspense—discussion among the tribesmen—

Robinson's tamed squaws ventured to cross the line and begin persuasions upon the
wild squaws. Then the chief stepped back "to confer with the old women—the real
arbiters of savage war." Mr. Bonwick continues:

"As the fallen gladiator in the arena looks for the signal of life or death from the
president of the amphitheatre, so waited our friends in anxious suspense while the
conference continued. In a few minutes, before a word was uttered, the women of the
tribe threw up their arms three times. This was the inviolable sign of peace! Down fell
the spears. Forward, with a heavy sigh of relief, and upward glance of gratitude, came
the friends of peace. The impulsive natives rushed forth with tears and cries, as each
saw in the other's ranks a loved one of the past.

"It was a jubilee of joy. A festival followed. And, while tears flowed at the recital of
woe, a corrobory of pleasant laughter closed the eventful day."

In four years, without the spilling of a drop of blood, Robinson brought them all in,
willing captives, and delivered them to the white governor, and ended the war which
powder and bullets, and thousands of men to use them, had prosecuted without result
since 1804.

Marsyas charming the wild beasts with his music—that is fable; but the miracle
wrought by Robinson is fact. It is history—and authentic; and surely, there is nothing
greater, nothing more reverence-compelling in the history of any country, ancient or
modern.
 And in memory of the greatest man Australasia ever developed or ever will develop,
there is a stately monument to George Augustus Robinson, the Conciliator in—no, it is
to another man, I forget his name.

However, Robertson's own generation honored him, and in manifesting it honored

themselves. The Government gave him a money-reward and a thousand acres of land;
and the people held mass-meetings and praised him and emphasized their praise with
a large subscription of money.

A good dramatic situation; but the curtain fell on another:

"When this desperate tribe was thus captured, there was much surprise to find that
the L30,000 of a little earlier day had been spent, and the whole population of the
colony placed under arms, in contention with an opposing force of sixteen men with
wooden spears! Yet such was the fact. The celebrated Big River tribe, that had been
raised by European fears to a host, consisted of sixteen men, nine women, and one
child. With a knowledge of the mischief done by these few, their wonderful marches
and their widespread aggressions, their enemies cannot deny to them the attributes of
courage and military tact. A Wallace might harass a large army with a small and
determined band; but the contending parties were at least equal in arms and
civilization. The Zulus who fought us in Africa, the Maories in New Zealand, the Arabs in
the Soudan, were far better provided with weapons, more advanced in the science of
war, and considerably more numerous, than the naked Tasmanians. Governor Arthur
rightly termed them a noble race."

These were indeed wonderful people, the natives. They ought not to have been
wasted. They should have been crossed with the Whites. It would have improved the
Whites and done the Natives no harm.

But the Natives were wasted, poor heroic wild creatures. They were gathered
together in little settlements on neighboring islands, and paternally cared for by the
Government, and instructed in religion, and deprived of tobacco, because the
superintendent of the Sunday-school was not a smoker, and so considered smoking
immoral.

The Natives were not used to clothes, and houses, and regular hours, and church,
and school, and Sunday-school, and work, and the other misplaced persecutions of
civilization, and they pined for their lost home and their wild free life. Too late they
repented that they had traded that heaven for this hell. They sat homesick on their
alien crags, and day by day gazed out through their tears over the sea with
unappeasable longing toward the hazy bulk which was the specter of what had been
their paradise; one by one their hearts broke and they died.

In a very few years nothing but a scant remnant remained alive. A handful lingered
along into age. In 1864 the last man died, in 1876 the last woman died, and the
Spartans of Australasia were extinct.

The Whites always mean well when they take human fish out of the ocean and try to
make them dry and warm and happy and comfortable in a chicken coop; but the
kindest-hearted white man can always be depended on to prove himself inadequate
when he deals with savages. He cannot turn the situation around and imagine how he
would like it to have a well-meaning savage transfer him from his house and his church
and his clothes and his books and his choice food to a hideous wilderness of sand and
rocks and snow, and ice and sleet and storm and blistering sun, with no shelter, no
bed, no covering for his and his family's naked bodies, and nothing to eat but snakes
and grubs and 'offal. This would be a hell to him; and if he had any wisdom he would
know that his own civilization is a hell to the savage—but he hasn't any, and has never
had any; and for lack of it he shut up those poor natives in the unimaginable perdition
of his civilization, committing his crime with the very best intentions, and saw those
poor creatures waste away under his tortures; and gazed at it, vaguely troubled and
sorrowful, and wondered what could be the matter with them. One is almost betrayed
into respecting those criminals, they were so sincerely kind, and tender, and humane;
and well-meaning.

They didn't know why those exiled savages faded away, and they did their honest
best to reason it out. And one man, in a like case in New South Wales, did reason it out
and arrive at a solution:

"It is from the wrath of God, which is revealed from heaven against cold ungodliness
and unrighteousness of men."

That settles it.

 CHAPTER XXVIII.

Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

The aphorism does really seem true: "Given the Circumstances, the Man will
appear." But the man musn't appear ahead of time, or it will spoil everything. In
Robinson's case the Moment had been approaching for a quarter of a century—and
meantime the future Conciliator was tranquilly laying bricks in Hobart. When all other
means had failed, the Moment had arrived, and the Bricklayer put down his trowel and
came forward. Earlier he would have been jeered back to his trowel again. It reminds
me of a tale that was told me by a Kentuckian on the train when we were crossing
Montana. He said the tale was current in Louisville years ago. He thought it had been
in print, but could not remember. At any rate, in substance it was this, as nearly as I
can call it back to mind.

A few years before the outbreak of the Civil War it began to appear that Memphis,
Tennessee, was going to be a great tobacco entrepot—the wise could see the signs of
it. At that time Memphis had a wharf boat, of course. There was a paved sloping wharf,
for the accommodation of freight, but the steamers landed on the outside of the
wharfboat, and all loading and unloading was done across it, between steamer and
shore. A number of wharfboat clerks were needed, and part of the time, every day,
they were very busy, and part of the time tediously idle. They were boiling over with
youth and spirits, and they had to make the intervals of idleness endurable in some
way; and as a rule, they did it by contriving practical jokes and playing them upon each
other.

The favorite butt for the jokes was Ed Jackson, because he played none himself, and
was easy game for other people's—for he always believed whatever was told him.

One day he told the others his scheme for his holiday. He was not going fishing or
hunting this time—no, he had thought out a better plan. Out of his $40 a month he
had saved enough for his purpose, in an economical way, and he was going to have a
look at New York.

It was a great and surprising idea. It meant travel—immense travel—in those days it
meant seeing the world; it was the equivalent of a voyage around it in ours. At first the
other youths thought his mind was affected, but when they found that he was in
earnest, the next thing to be thought of was, what sort of opportunity this venture
might afford for a practical joke.

The young men studied over the matter, then held a secret consultation and made a
plan. The idea was, that one of the conspirators should offer Ed a letter of introduction
to Commodore Vanderbilt, and trick him into delivering it. It would be easy to do this.
But what would Ed do when he got back to Memphis? That was a serious matter. He
was good-hearted, and had always taken the jokes patiently; but they had been jokes
which did not humiliate him, did not bring him to shame; whereas, this would be a
cruel one in that way, and to play it was to meddle with fire; for with all his good
nature, Ed was a Southerner—and the English of that was, that when he came back he
would kill as many of the conspirators as he could before falling himself. However, the
chances must be taken—it wouldn't do to waste such a joke as that.

So the letter was prepared with great care and elaboration. It was signed Alfred
Fairchild, and was written in an easy and friendly spirit. It stated that the bearer was
the bosom friend of the writer's son, and was of good parts and sterling character, and
it begged the Commodore to be kind to the young stranger for the writer's sake. It
went on to say, "You may have forgotten me, in this long stretch of time, but you will
easily call me back out of your boyhood memories when I remind you of how we
robbed old Stevenson's orchard that night; and how, while he was chasing down the
road after us, we cut across the field and doubled back and sold his own apples to his
own cook for a hat-full of doughnuts; and the time that we——" and so forth and so
on, bringing in names of imaginary comrades, and detailing all sorts of wild and absurd
and, of course, wholly imaginary schoolboy pranks and adventures, but putting them
into lively and telling shape.

With all gravity Ed was asked if he would like to have a letter to Commodore
Vanderbilt, the great millionaire. It was expected that the question would astonish Ed,
and it did.

"What? Do you know that extraordinary man?"

"No; but my father does. They were schoolboys together. And if you like, I'll write
and ask father. I know he'll be glad to give it to you for my sake."
 Ed could not find words capable of expressing his gratitude and delight. The three
days passed, and the letter was put into his bands. He started on his trip, still pouring
out his thanks while he shook good-bye all around. And when he was out of sight his
comrades let fly their laughter in a storm of happy satisfaction—and then quieted
down, and were less happy, less satisfied. For the old doubts as to the wisdom of this
deception began to intrude again.

Arrived in New York, Ed found his way to Commodore Vanderbilt's business

quarters, and was ushered into a large anteroom, where a score of people were
patiently awaiting their turn for a two-minute interview with the millionaire in his
private office. A servant asked for Ed's card, and got the letter instead. Ed was sent for
a moment later, and found Mr. Vanderbilt alone, with the letter—open—in his hand.

"Pray sit down, Mr. —er—"

"Jackson."

"Ah—sit down, Mr. Jackson. By the opening sentences it seems to be a letter from
an old friend. Allow me—I will run my eye through it. He says he says—why, who is it?"
He turned the sheet and found the signature. "Alfred Fairchild—hm—Fairchild—I don't
recall the name. But that is nothing—a thousand names have gone from me. He says—
he says-hm-hmoh, dear, but it's good! Oh, it's rare! I don't quite remember it, but I
seem to it'll all come back to me presently. He says—he says—hm—hm-oh, but that
was a game! Oh, spl-endid! How it carries me back! It's all dim, of course it's a long
time ago—and the names—some of the names are wavery and indistinct—but sho', I
know it happened—I can feel it! and lord, how it warms my heart, and brings back my
lost youth! Well, well, well, I've got to come back into this work-a-day world now—
business presses and people are waiting—I'll keep the rest for bed to-night, and live
my youth over again. And you'll thank Fairchild for me when you see him—I used to
call him Alf, I think—and you'll give him my gratitude for—what this letter has done for
the tired spirit of a hard-worked man; and tell him there isn't anything that I can do for
him or any friend of his that I won't do. And as for you, my lad, you are my guest; you
can't stop at any hotel in New York. Sit. where you are a little while, till I get through
with these people, then we'll go home. I'll take care of you, my boy—make yourself
easy as to that."
 Ed stayed a week, and had an immense time—and never suspected that the
Commodore's shrewd eye was on him, and that he was daily being weighed and
measured and analyzed and tried and tested.

Yes, he had an immense time; and never wrote home, but saved it all up to tell
when he should get back. Twice, with proper modesty and decency, he proposed to
end his visit, but the Commodore said, "No—wait; leave it to me; I'll tell you when to
go."

In those days the Commodore was making some of those vast combinations of his—
consolidations of warring odds and ends of railroads into harmonious systems, and
concentrations of floating and rudderless commerce in effective centers—and among
other things his farseeing eye had detected the convergence of that huge tobacco-
commerce, already spoken of, toward Memphis, and he had resolved to set his grasp
upon it and make it his own.

The week came to an end. Then the Commodore said:

"Now you can start home. But first we will have some more talk about that tobacco
matter. I know you now. I know your abilities as well as you know them yourself—
perhaps better. You understand that tobacco matter; you understand that I am going
to take possession of it, and you also understand the plans which I have matured for
doing it. What I want is a man who knows my mind, and is qualified to represent me in
Memphis, and be in supreme command of that important business—and I appoint
you."

"Me!"

"Yes. Your salary will be high—of course-for you are representing me. Later you will
earn increases of it, and will get them. You will need a small army of assistants; choose
them yourself—and carefully. Take no man for friendship's sake; but, all things being
equal, take the man you know, take your friend, in preference to the stranger." After
some further talk under this head, the Commodore said:

"Good-bye, my boy, and thank Alf for me, for sending you to me."

When Ed reached Memphis he rushed down to the wharf in a fever to tell his great
news and thank the boys over and over again for thinking to give him the letter to Mr.
Vanderbilt. It happened to be one of those idle times. Blazing hot noonday, and no sign
of life on the wharf. But as Ed threaded his way among the freight piles, he saw a white
linen figure stretched in slumber upon a pile of grain-sacks under an awning, and said
to himself, "That's one of them," and hastened his step; next, he said, "It's Charley—
it's Fairchild good"; and the next moment laid an affectionate hand on the sleeper's
shoulder. The eyes opened lazily, took one glance, the face blanched, the form whirled
itself from the sack-pile, and in an instant Ed was alone and Fairchild was flying for the
wharf-boat like the wind!

Ed was dazed, stupefied. Was Fairchild crazy? What could be the meaning of this?
He started slow and dreamily down toward the wharf-boat; turned the corner of a
freight-pile and came suddenly upon two of the boys. They were lightly laughing over
some pleasant matter; they heard his step, and glanced up just as he discovered them;
the laugh died abruptly; and before Ed could speak they were off, and sailing over
barrels and bales like hunted deer. Again Ed was paralyzed. Had the boys all gone
mad? What could be the explanation of this extraordinary conduct? And so, dreaming
along, he reached the wharf-boat, and stepped aboard—nothing but silence there, and
vacancy. He crossed the deck, turned the corner to go down the outer guard, heard a
fervent—

"O lord!" and saw a white linen form plunge overboard.

The youth came up coughing and strangling, and cried out—

"Go 'way from here! You let me alone. I didn't do it, I swear I didn't!"

"Didn't do what?"

"Give you the——"

"Never mind what you didn't do—come out of that! What makes you all act so?
What have I done?"

"You? Why you haven't done anything. But——"

"Well, then, what have you got against me? What do you all treat me so for?"

"I—er—but haven't you got anything against us?"

"Of course not. What put such a thing into your head?"
 "Honor bright—you haven't?

"Honor bright."

"Swear it!"

"I don't know what in the world you mean, but I swear it, anyway."

"And you'll shake hands with me?"

"Goodness knows I'll be glad to! Why, I'm just starving to shake hands with
somebody!"

The swimmer muttered, "Hang him, he smelt a rat and never delivered the letter!—
but it's all right, I'm not going to fetch up the subject." And he crawled out and came
dripping and draining to shake hands. First one and then another of the conspirators
showed up cautiously—armed to the teeth—took in the amicable situation, then
ventured warily forward and joined the love-feast.

And to Ed's eager inquiry as to what made them act as they had been acting, they
answered evasively, and pretended that they had put it up as a joke, to see what he
would do. It was the best explanation they could invent at such short notice. And each
said to himself, "He never delivered that letter, and the joke is on us, if he only knew it
or we were dull enough to come out and tell."

Then, of course, they wanted to know all about the trip; and he said—

"Come right up on the boiler deck and order the drinks—it's my treat. I'm going to
tell you all about it. And to-night it's my treat again—and we'll have oysters and a
time!"

When the drinks were brought and cigars lighted, Ed said:

"Well, when I delivered the letter to Mr. Vanderbilt——"

"Great Scott!"

"Gracious, how you scared me. What's the matter?"

"Oh—er—nothing. Nothing—it was a tack in the chair-seat," said one.

 "But you all said it. However, no matter. When I delivered the letter——"

"Did you deliver it?" And they looked at each other as people might who thought
that maybe they were dreaming.

Then they settled to listening; and as the story deepened and its marvels grew, the
amazement of it made them dumb, and the interest of it took their breath. They hardly
uttered a whisper during two hours, but sat like petrifactions and drank in the
immortal romance. At last the tale was ended, and Ed said—

"And it's all owing to you, boys, and you'll never find me ungrateful—bless your
hearts, the best friends a fellow ever had! You'll all have places; I want every one of
you. I know you—I know you 'by the back,' as the gamblers say. You're jokers, and all
that, but you're sterling, with the hallmark on. And Charley Fairchild, you shall be my
first assistant and right hand, because of your first-class ability, and because you got
me the letter, and for your father's sake who wrote it for me, and to please Mr.
Vanderbilt, who said it would! And here's to that great man—drink hearty!"

Yes, when the Moment comes, the Man appears—even if he is a thousand miles
away, and has to be discovered by a practical joke.
 CHAPTER XXVIX.

When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private
heart no man much respects himself.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Necessarily, the human interest is the first interest in the log-book of any country.
The annals of Tasmania, in whose shadow we were sailing, are lurid with that feature.
Tasmania was a convict-dump, in old times; this has been indicated in the account of
the Conciliator, where reference is made to vain attempts of desperate convicts to win
to permanent freedom, after escaping from Macquarrie Harbor and the "Gates of
Hell." In the early days Tasmania had a great population of convicts, of both sexes and
all ages, and a bitter hard life they had. In one spot there was a settlement of juvenile
convicts—children—who had been sent thither from their home and their friends on
the other side of the globe to expiate their "crimes."

In due course our ship entered the estuary called the Derwent, at whose head
stands Hobart, the capital of Tasmania. The Derwent's shores furnish scenery of an
interesting sort. The historian Laurie, whose book, "The Story of Australasia," is just
out, invoices its features with considerable truth and intemperance: "The marvelous
picturesqueness of every point of view, combined with the clear balmy atmosphere
and the transparency of the ocean depths, must have delighted and deeply impressed"
the early explorers. "If the rock-bound coasts, sullen, defiant, and lowering, seemed
uninviting, these were occasionally broken into charmingly alluring coves floored with
golden sand, clad with evergreen shrubbery, and adorned with every variety of
indigenous wattle, she-oak, wild flower, and fern, from the delicately graceful 'maiden-
hair' to the palm-like 'old man'; while the majestic gum-tree, clean and smooth as the
mast of 'some tall ammiral' pierces the clear air to the height of 230 feet or more."

It looked so to me. "Coasting along Tasman's Peninsula, what a shock of pleasant

wonder must have struck the early mariner on suddenly sighting Cape Pillar, with its
cluster of black-ribbed basaltic columns rising to a height of 900 feet, the hydra head
wreathed in a turban of fleecy cloud, the base lashed by jealous waves spouting angry
fountains of foam."

That is well enough, but I did not suppose those snags were 900 feet high. Still they
were a very fine show. They stood boldly out by themselves, and made a fascinatingly
odd spectacle. But there was nothing about their appearance to suggest the heads of a
hydra. They looked like a row of lofty slabs with their upper ends tapered to the shape
of a carving-knife point; in fact, the early voyager, ignorant of their great height, might
have mistaken them for a rusty old rank of piles that had sagged this way and that out
of the perpendicular.

The Peninsula is lofty, rocky, and densely clothed with scrub, or brush, or both. It is
joined to the main by a low neck. At this junction was formerly a convict station called
Port Arthur—a place hard to escape from. Behind it was the wilderness of scrub, in
which a fugitive would soon starve; in front was the narrow neck, with a cordon of
chained dogs across it, and a line of lanterns, and a fence of living guards, armed. We
saw the place as we swept by—that is, we had a glimpse of what we were told was the
entrance to Port Arthur. The glimpse was worth something, as a remembrancer, but
that was all.

The voyage thence up the Derwent Frith displays a grand succession of fairy visions,
in its entire length elsewhere unequaled. In gliding over the deep blue sea studded
with lovely islets luxuriant to the water's edge, one is at a loss which scene to choose
for contemplation and to admire most. When the Huon and Bruni have been passed,
there seems no possible chance of a rival; but suddenly Mount Wellington, massive
and noble like his brother Etna, literally heaves in sight, sternly guarded on either hand
by Mounts Nelson and Rumney; presently we arrive at Sullivan's Cove—Hobart!

It is an attractive town. It sits on low hills that slope to the harbor—a harbor that
looks like a river, and is as smooth as one. Its still surface is pictured with dainty
reflections of boats and grassy banks and luxuriant foliage. Back of the town rise
highlands that are clothed in woodland loveliness, and over the way is that noble
mountain, Wellington, a stately bulk, a most majestic pile. How beautiful is the whole
region, for form, and grouping, and opulence, and freshness of foliage, and variety of
color, and grace and shapeliness of the hills, the capes, the promontories; and then,
the splendor of the sunlight, the dim rich distances, the charm of the water-glimpses!
And it was in this paradise that the yellow-liveried convicts were landed, and the
Corps-bandits quartered, and the wanton slaughter of the kangaroo-chasing black
innocents consummated on that autumn day in May, in the brutish old time. It was all
out of keeping with the place, a sort of bringing of heaven and hell together.

The remembrance of this paradise reminds me that it was at Hobart that we struck
the head of the procession of Junior Englands. We were to encounter other sections of
it in New Zealand, presently, and others later in Natal. Wherever the exiled Englishman
can find in his new home resemblances to his old one, he is touched to the marrow of
his being; the love that is in his heart inspires his imagination, and these allied forces
transfigure those resemblances into authentic duplicates of the revered originals. It is
beautiful, the feeling which works this enchantment, and it compels one's homage;
compels it, and also compels one's assent—compels it always—even when, as happens
sometimes, one does not see the resemblances as clearly as does the exile who is
pointing them out.

The resemblances do exist, it is quite true; and often they cunningly approximate
the originals—but after all, in the matter of certain physical patent rights there is only
one England. Now that I have sampled the globe, I am not in doubt. There is a beauty
of Switzerland, and it is repeated in the glaciers and snowy ranges of many parts of the
earth; there is a beauty of the fiord, and it is repeated in New Zealand and Alaska;
there is a beauty of Hawaii, and it is repeated in ten thousand islands of the Southern
seas; there is a beauty of the prairie and the plain, and it is repeated here and there in
the earth; each of these is worshipful, each is perfect in its way, yet holds no monopoly
of its beauty; but that beauty which is England is alone—it has no duplicate.

It is made up of very simple details—just grass, and trees, and shrubs, and roads,
and hedges, and gardens, and houses, and vines, and churches, and castles, and here
and there a ruin—and over it all a mellow dream-haze of history. But its beauty is
incomparable, and all its own.

Hobart has a peculiarity—it is the neatest town that the sun shines on; and I incline
to believe that it is also the cleanest. However that may be, its supremacy in neatness
is not to be questioned. There cannot be another town in the world that has no shabby
exteriors; no rickety gates and fences, no neglected houses crumbling to ruin, no crazy
and unsightly sheds, no weed-grown front-yards of the poor, no back-yards littered
with tin cans and old boots and empty bottles, no rubbish in the gutters, no clutter on
the sidewalks, no outer-borders fraying out into dirty lanes and tin-patched huts. No,
in Hobart all the aspects are tidy, and all a comfort to the eye; the modestest cottage
looks combed and brushed, and has its vines, its flowers, its neat fence, its neat gate,
its comely cat asleep on the window ledge.

We had a glimpse of the museum, by courtesy of the American gentleman who is

curator of it. It has samples of half-a-dozen different kinds of marsupials—[A marsupial
is a plantigrade vertebrate whose specialty is its pocket. In some countries it is extinct,
in the others it is rare. The first American marsupials were Stephen Girard, Mr. Astor
and the opossum; the principal marsupials of the Southern Hemisphere are Mr.
Rhodes, and the kangaroo. I, myself, am the latest marsupial. Also, I might boast that I
have the largest pocket of them all. But there is nothing in that.]—one, the "Tasmanian
devil;" that is, I think he was one of them. And there was a fish with lungs. When the
water dries up it can live in the mud. Most curious of all was a parrot that kills sheep.
On one great sheep-run this bird killed a thousand sheep in a whole year. He doesn't
want the whole sheep, but only the kidney-fat. This restricted taste makes him an
expensive bird to support. To get the fat he drives his beak in and rips it out; the
wound is mortal. This parrot furnishes a notable example of evolution brought about
by changed conditions. When the sheep culture was introduced, it presently brought
famine to the parrot by exterminating a kind of grub which had always thitherto been
the parrot's diet. The miseries of hunger made the bird willing to eat raw flesh, since it
could get no other food, and it began to pick remnants of meat from sheep skins hung
out on the fences to dry. It soon came to prefer sheep meat to any other food, and by
and by it came to prefer the kidney-fat to any other detail of the sheep. The parrot's
bill was not well shaped for digging out the fat, but Nature fixed that matter; she
altered the bill's shape, and now the parrot can dig out kidney-fat better than the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court, or anybody else, for that matter—even an Admiral.

And there was another curiosity—quite a stunning one, I thought: Arrow-heads and
knives just like those which Primeval Man made out of flint, and thought he had done
such a wonderful thing—yes, and has been humored and coddled in that superstition
by this age of admiring scientists until there is probably no living with him in the other
world by now. Yet here is his finest and nicest work exactly duplicated in our day; and
by people who have never heard of him or his works: by aborigines who lived in the
islands of these seas, within our time. And they not only duplicated those works of art
but did it in the brittlest and most treacherous of substances—glass: made them out of
old brandy bottles flung out of the British camps; millions of tons of them. It is time for
Primeval Man to make a little less noise, now. He has had his day. He is not what he
used to be. We had a drive through a bloomy and odorous fairy-land, to the Refuge for
the Indigent—a spacious and comfortable home, with hospitals, etc., for both sexes.
There was a crowd in there, of the oldest people I have ever seen. It was like being
suddenly set down in a new world—a weird world where Youth has never been, a
world sacred to Age, and bowed forms, and wrinkles. Out of the 359 persons present,
223 were ex-convicts, and could have told stirring tales, no doubt, if they had been
minded to talk; 42 of the 359 were past 80, and several were close upon 90; the
average age at death there is 76 years. As for me, I have no use for that place; it is too
healthy. Seventy is old enough—after that, there is too much risk. Youth and gaiety
might vanish, any day—and then, what is left? Death in life; death without its
privileges, death without its benefits. There were 185 women in that Refuge, and 81 of
them were ex-convicts.

The steamer disappointed us. Instead of making a long visit at Hobart, as usual, she
made a short one. So we got but a glimpse of Tasmania, and then moved on.
 CHAPTER XXX.

Nature makes the locust with an appetite for crops; man would have made him with
an appetite for sand.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

We spent part of an afternoon and a night at sea, and reached Bluff, in New
Zealand, early in the morning. Bluff is at the bottom of the middle island, and is away
down south, nearly forty-seven degrees below the equator. It lies as far south of the
line as Quebec lies north of it, and the climates of the two should be alike; but for
some reason or other it has not been so arranged. Quebec is hot in the summer and
cold in the winter, but Bluff's climate is less intense; the cold weather is not very cold,
the hot weather is not very hot; and the difference between the hottest month and
the coldest is but 17 degrees Fahrenheit.

In New Zealand the rabbit plague began at Bluff. The man who introduced the rabbit
there was banqueted and lauded; but they would hang him, now, if they could get him.
In England the natural enemy of the rabbit is detested and persecuted; in the Bluff
region the natural enemy of the rabbit is honored, and his person is sacred. The
rabbit's natural enemy in England is the poacher, in Bluff its natural enemy is the stoat,
the weasel, the ferret, the cat, and the mongoose. In England any person below the
Heir who is caught with a rabbit in his possession must satisfactorily explain how it got
there, or he will suffer fine and imprisonment, together with extinction of his peerage;
in Bluff, the cat found with a rabbit in its possession does not have to explain—
everybody looks the other way; the person caught noticing would suffer fine and
imprisonment, with extinction of peerage. This is a sure way to undermine the moral
fabric of a cat. Thirty years from now there will not be a moral cat in New Zealand.
Some think there is none there now. In England the poacher is watched, tracked,
hunted—he dare not show his face; in Bluff the cat, the weasel, the stoat, and the
mongoose go up and down, whither they will, unmolested. By a law of the legislature,
posted where all may read, it is decreed that any person found in possession of one of
these creatures (dead) must satisfactorily explain the circumstances or pay a fine of
not less than L5, nor more than L20. The revenue from this source is not large. Persons
who want to pay a hundred dollars for a dead cat are getting rarer and rarer every day.
This is bad, for the revenue was to go to the endowment of a University. All
governments are more or less short-sighted: in England they fine the poacher, whereas
he ought to be banished to New Zealand. New Zealand would pay his way, and give
him wages.

It was from Bluff that we ought to have cut across to the west coast and visited the
New Zealand Switzerland, a land of superb scenery, made up of snowy grandeurs, and
mighty glaciers, and beautiful lakes; and over there, also, are the wonderful rivals of
the Norwegian and Alaskan fiords; and for neighbor, a waterfall of 1,900 feet; but we
were obliged to postpone the trip to some later and indefinite time.

November 6. A lovely summer morning; brilliant blue sky. A few miles out from
Invercargill, passed through vast level green expanses snowed over with sheep. Fine to
see. The green, deep and very vivid sometimes; at other times less so, but delicate and
lovely. A passenger reminds me that I am in "the England of the Far South."

Dunedin, same date. The town justifies Michael Davitt's praises. The people are
Scotch. They stopped here on their way from home to heaven—thinking they had
arrived. The population is stated at 40,000, by Malcolm Ross, journalist; stated by an
M. P. at 60,000. A journalist cannot lie.

To the residence of Dr. Hockin. He has a fine collection of books relating to New
Zealand; and his house is a museum of Maori art and antiquities. He has pictures and
prints in color of many native chiefs of the past—some of them of note in history.
There is nothing of the savage in the faces; nothing could be finer than these men's
features, nothing more intellectual than these faces, nothing more masculine, nothing
nobler than their aspect. The aboriginals of Australia and Tasmania looked the savage,
but these chiefs looked like Roman patricians. The tattooing in these portraits ought to
suggest the savage, of course, but it does not. The designs are so flowing and graceful
and beautiful that they are a most satisfactory decoration. It takes but fifteen minutes
to get reconciled to the tattooing, and but fifteen more to perceive that it is just the
thing. After that, the undecorated European face is unpleasant and ignoble.

Dr. Hockiun gave us a ghastly curiosity—a lignified caterpillar with a plant growing
out of the back of its neck—a plant with a slender stem 4 inches high. It happened not
by accident, but by design—Nature's design. This caterpillar was in the act of loyally
carrying out a law inflicted upon him by Nature—a law purposely inflicted upon him to
get him into trouble—a law which was a trap; in pursuance of this law he made the
proper preparations for turning himself into a night-moth; that is to say, he dug a little
trench, a little grave, and then stretched himself out in it on his stomach and partially
buried himself—then Nature was ready for him. She blew the spores of a peculiar
fungus through the air with a purpose. Some of them fell into a crease in the back of
the caterpillar's neck, and began to sprout and grow—for there was soil there—he had
not washed his neck. The roots forced themselves down into the worm's person, and
rearward along through its body, sucking up the creature's juices for sap; the worm
slowly died, and turned to wood. And here he was now, a wooden caterpillar, with
every detail of his former physique delicately and exactly preserved and perpetuated,
and with that stem standing up out of him for his monument—monument
commemorative of his own loyalty and of Nature's unfair return for it.

Nature is always acting like that. Mrs. X. said (of course) that the caterpillar was not
conscious and didn't suffer. She should have known better. No caterpillar can deceive
Nature. If this one couldn't suffer, Nature would have known it and would have hunted
up another caterpillar. Not that she would have let this one go, merely because it was
defective. No. She would have waited and let him turn into a night-moth; and then
fried him in the candle.

Nature cakes a fish's eyes over with parasites, so that it shan't be able to avoid its
enemies or find its food. She sends parasites into a star-fish's system, which clog up its
prongs and swell them and make them so uncomfortable that the poor creature
delivers itself from the prong to ease its misery; and presently it has to part with
another prong for the sake of comfort, and finally with a third. If it re-grows the
prongs, the parasite returns and the same thing is repeated. And finally, when the
ability to reproduce prongs is lost through age, that poor old star-fish can't get around
any more, and so it dies of starvation.

In Australia is prevalent a horrible disease due to an "unperfected tapeworm."

Unperfected—that is what they call it, I do not know why, for it transacts business just
as well as if it were finished and frescoed and gilded, and all that.

November 9. To the museum and public picture gallery with the president of the
Society of Artists. Some fine pictures there, lent by the S. of A. several of them they
bought, the others came to them by gift. Next, to the gallery of the S. of A.—annual
exhibition—just opened. Fine. Think of a town like this having two such collections as
this, and a Society of Artists. It is so all over Australasia. If it were a monarchy one
might understand it. I mean an absolute monarchy, where it isn't necessary to vote
money, but take it. Then art flourishes. But these colonies are republics—republics
with a wide suffrage; voters of both sexes, this one of New Zealand. In republics,
neither the government nor the rich private citizen is much given to propagating art.
All over Australasia pictures by famous European artists are bought for the public
galleries by the State and by societies of citizens. Living citizens—not dead ones. They
rob themselves to give, not their heirs. This S. of A. here owns its building built it by
subscription.
 CHAPTER XXXI.

The spirit of wrath—not the words—is the sin; and the spirit of wrath is cursing. We
begin to swear before we can talk.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

November 11. On the road. This train-express goes twenty and one-half miles an
hour, schedule time; but it is fast enough, the outlook upon sea and land is so
interesting, and the cars so comfortable. They are not English, and not American; they
are the Swiss combination of the two. A narrow and railed porch along the side, where
a person can walk up and down. A lavatory in each car. This is progress; this is
nineteenth-century spirit. In New Zealand, these fast expresses run twice a week. It is
well to know this if you want to be a bird and fly through the country at a 20-mile gait;
otherwise you may start on one of the five wrong days, and then you will get a train
that can't overtake its own shadow.

By contrast, these pleasant cars call to mind the branch-road cars at Maryborough,
Australia, and the passengers' talk about the branch-road and the hotel.

Somewhere on the road to Maryborough I changed for a while to a smoking-

carriage. There were two gentlemen there; both riding backward, one at each end of
the compartment. They were acquaintances of each other. I sat down facing the one
that sat at the starboard window. He had a good face, and a friendly look, and I judged
from his dress that he was a dissenting minister. He was along toward fifty. Of his own
motion he struck a match, and shaded it with his hand for me to light my cigar. I take
the rest from my diary:

In order to start conversation I asked him something about Maryborough. He said, in

a most pleasant—even musical voice, but with quiet and cultured decision:

"It's a charming town, with a hell of a hotel."

I was astonished. It seemed so odd to hear a minister swear out loud. He went
placidly on:

"It's the worst hotel in Australia. Well, one may go further, and say in Australasia."

"Bad beds?"
 "No—none at all. Just sand-bags."

"The pillows, too?"

"Yes, the pillows, too. Just sand. And not a good quality of sand. It packs too hard,
and has never been screened. There is too much gravel in it. It is like sleeping on nuts."

"Isn't there any good sand?"

"Plenty of it. There is as good bed-sand in this region as the world can furnish.
Aerated sand—and loose; but they won't buy it. They want something that will pack
solid, and petrify."

"How are the rooms?"

"Eight feet square; and a sheet of iced oil-cloth to step on in the morning when you
get out of the sand-quarry."

"As to lights?"

"Coal-oil lamp."

"A good one?"

"No. It's the kind that sheds a gloom."

"I like a lamp that burns all night."

"This one won't. You must blow it out early."

"That is bad. One might want it again in the night. Can't find it in the dark."

"There's no trouble; you can find it by the stench."

"Wardrobe?"

"Two nails on the door to hang seven suits of clothes on if you've got them."

"Bells?"

"There aren't any."

 "What do you do when you want service?"

"Shout. But it won't fetch anybody."

"Suppose you want the chambermaid to empty the slopjar?"

"There isn't any slop-jar. The hotels don't keep them. That is, outside of Sydney and
Melbourne."

"Yes, I knew that. I was only talking. It's the oddest thing in Australia. Another thing:
I've got to get up in the dark, in the morning, to take the 5 o'clock train. Now if the
boots——"

"There isn't any."

"Well, the porter."

"There isn't any."

"But who will call me?"

"Nobody. You'll call yourself. And you'll light yourself, too. There'll not be a light
burning in the halls or anywhere. And if you don't carry a light, you'll break your neck."

"But who will help me down with my baggage?"

"Nobody. However, I will tell you what to do. In Maryborough there's an American
who has lived there half a lifetime; a fine man, and prosperous and popular. He will be
on the lookout for you; you won't have any trouble. Sleep in peace; he will rout you
out, and you will make your train. Where is your manager?"

"I left him at Ballarat, studying the language. And besides, he had to go to
Melbourne and get us ready for New Zealand. I've not tried to pilot myself before, and
it doesn't look easy."

"Easy! You've selected the very most difficult piece of railroad in Australia for your
experiment. There are twelve miles of this road which no man without good executive
ability can ever hope—tell me, have you good executive ability? first-rate executive
ability?"
 "I—well, I think so, but——"

"That settles it. The tone of——oh, you wouldn't ever make it in the world.
However, that American will point you right, and you'll go. You've got tickets?"

"Yes—round trip; all the way to Sydney."

"Ah, there it is, you see! You are going in the 5 o'clock by Castlemaine—twelve
miles—instead of the 7.15 by Ballarat—in order to save two hours of fooling along the
road. Now then, don't interrupt—let me have the floor. You're going to save the
government a deal of hauling, but that's nothing; your ticket is by Ballarat, and it isn't
good over that twelve miles, and so——"

"But why should the government care which way I go?"

"Goodness knows! Ask of the winds that far away with fragments strewed the sea,
as the boy that stood on the burning deck used to say. The government chooses to do
its railway business in its own way, and it doesn't know as much about it as the French.
In the beginning they tried idiots; then they imported the French—which was going
backwards, you see; now it runs the roads itself—which is going backwards again, you
see. Why, do you know, in order to curry favor with the voters, the government puts
down a road wherever anybody wants it—anybody that owns two sheep and a dog;
and by consequence we've got, in the colony of Victoria, 800 railway stations, and the
business done at eighty of them doesn't foot up twenty shillings a week."

"Five dollars? Oh, come!"

"It's true. It's the absolute truth."

"Why, there are three or four men on wages at every station."

"I know it. And the station-business doesn't pay for the sheep-dip to sanctify their
coffee with. It's just as I say. And accommodating? Why, if you shake a rag the train
will stop in the midst of the wilderness to pick you up. All that kind of politics costs,
you see. And then, besides, any town that has a good many votes and wants a fine
station, gets it. Don't you overlook that Maryborough station, if you take an interest in
governmental curiosities. Why, you can put the whole population of Maryborough into
it, and give them a sofa apiece, and have room for more. You haven't fifteen stations in
America that are as big, and you probably haven't five that are half as fine. Why, it's
perfectly elegant. And the clock! Everybody will show you the clock. There isn't a
station in Europe that's got such a clock. It doesn't strike—and that's one mercy. It
hasn't any bell; and as you'll have cause to remember, if you keep your reason, all
Australia is simply bedamned with bells.

On every quarter-hour, night and day, they jingle a tiresome chime of half a dozen
notes—all the clocks in town at once, all the clocks in Australasia at once, and all the
very same notes; first, downward scale: mi, re, do, sol—then upward scale: sol, si, re,
do—down again: mi, re, do, sol—up again: sol, si, re, do—then the clock—say at
midnight clang—clang—clang—clang—clang—clang—clang—clang—clang— clang——
and, by that time you're—hello, what's all this excitement about? Oh I see—a
runaway—scared by the train; why, you wouldn't think this train could scare anything.
Well, of cours, when they build and run eighty stations at a loss and a lot of palace-
stations and clocks like Maryborough's at another loss, the government has got to
economize somewhere hasn't it? Very well look at the rolling stock. That's where they
save the money. Why, that train from Maryborough will consist of eighteen freight-
cars and two passenger-kennels; cheap, poor, shabby, slovenly; no drinking water, no
sanitary arrangements, every imaginable inconvenience; and slow?—oh, the gait of
cold molasses; no air-brake, no springs, and they'll jolt your head off every time they
start or stop. That's where they make their little economies, you see. They spend tons
of money to house you palatially while you wait fifteen minutes for a train, then
degrade you to six hours' convict-transportation to get the foolish outlay back. What a
rational man really needs is discomfort while he's waiting, then his journey in a nice
train would be a grateful change. But no, that would be common sense—and out of
place in a government. And then, besides, they save in that other little detail, you
know—repudiate their own tickets, and collect a poor little illegitimate extra shilling
out of you for that twelve miles, and——"

"Well, in any case——"

"Wait—there's more. Leave that American out of the account and see what would
happen. There's nobody on hand to examine your ticket when you arrive. But the
conductor will come and examine it when the train is ready to start. It is too late to buy
your extra ticket now; the train can't wait, and won't. You must climb out."

"But can't I pay the conductor?"

 "No, he is not authorized to receive the money, and he won't. You must climb out.
There's no other way. I tell you, the railway management is about the only thoroughly
European thing here—continentally European I mean, not English. It's the continental
business in perfection; down fine. Oh, yes, even to the peanut-commerce of weighing
baggage."

The train slowed up at his place. As he stepped out he said:

"Yes, you'll like Maryborough. Plenty of intelligence there. It's a charming place—
with a hell of a hotel."

Then he was gone. I turned to the other gentleman:

"Is your friend in the ministry?"

"No—studying for it."

 CHAPTER XXXII.

The man with a new idea is a Crank until the idea succeeds.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

It was Junior England all the way to Christchurch—in fact, just a garden. And
Christchurch is an English town, with an English-park annex, and a winding English
brook just like the Avon—and named the Avon; but from a man, not from
Shakespeare's river. Its grassy banks are bordered by the stateliest and most
impressive weeping willows to be found in the world, I suppose. They continue the line
of a great ancestor; they were grown from sprouts of the willow that sheltered
Napoleon's grave in St. Helena. It is a settled old community, with all the serenities, the
graces, the conveniences, and the comforts of the ideal home-life. If it had an
established Church and social inequality it would be England over again with hardly a
lack.

In the museum we saw many curious and interesting things; among others a fine
native house of the olden time, with all the details true to the facts, and the showy
colors right and in their proper places. All the details: the fine mats and rugs and
things; the elaborate and wonderful wood carvings—wonderful, surely, considering
who did them—wonderful in design and particularly in execution, for they were done
with admirable sharpness and exactness, and yet with no better tools than flint and
jade and shell could furnish; and the totem-posts were there, ancestor above ancestor,
with tongues protruded and hands clasped comfortably over bellies containing other
people's ancestors—grotesque and ugly devils, every one, but lovingly carved, and
ably; and the stuffed natives were present, in their proper places, and looking as
natural as life; and the housekeeping utensils were there, too, and close at hand the
carved and finely ornamented war canoe.

And we saw little jade gods, to hang around the neck—not everybody's, but sacred
to the necks of natives of rank. Also jade weapons, and many kinds of jade trinkets—all
made out of that excessively hard stone without the help of any tool of iron. And some
of these things had small round holes bored through them—nobody knows how it was
done; a mystery, a lost art. I think it was said that if you want such a hole bored in a
piece of jade now, you must send it to London or Amsterdam where the lapidaries are.
 Also we saw a complete skeleton of the giant Moa. It stood ten feet high, and must
have been a sight to look at when it was a living bird. It was a kicker, like the ostrich; in
fight it did not use its beak, but its foot. It must have been a convincing kind of kick. If a
person had his back to the bird and did not see who it was that did it, he would think
he had been kicked by a wind-mill.

There must have been a sufficiency of moas in the old forgotten days when his
breed walked the earth. His bones are found in vast masses, all crammed together in
huge graves. They are not in caves, but in the ground. Nobody knows how they
happened to get concentrated there. Mind, they are bones, not fossils. This means
that the moa has not been extinct very long. Still, this is the only New Zealand creature
which has no mention in that otherwise comprehensive literature, the native legends.
This is a significant detail, and is good circumstantial evidence that the moa has been
extinct 500 years, since the Maori has himself—by tradition—been in New Zealand
since the end of the fifteenth century. He came from an unknown land—the first Maori
did—then sailed back in his canoe and brought his tribe, and they removed the
aboriginal peoples into the sea and into the ground and took the land. That is the
tradition. That that first Maori could come, is understandable, for anybody can come
to a place when he isn't trying to; but how that discoverer found his way back home
again without a compass is his secret, and he died with it in him. His language indicates
that he came from Polynesia. He told where he came from, but he couldn't spell well,
so one can't find the place on the map, because people who could spell better than he
could, spelt the resemblance all out of it when they made the map. However, it is
better to have a map that is spelt right than one that has information in it.

In New Zealand women have the right to vote for members of the legislature, but
they cannot be members themselves. The law extending the suffrage to them went
into effect in 1893. The population of Christchurch (census of 1891) was 31,454. The
first election under the law was held in November of that year. Number of men who
voted, 6,313; number of women who voted, 5,989. These figures ought to convince us
that women are not as indifferent about politics as some people would have us
believe. In New Zealand as a whole, the estimated adult female population was
139,915; of these 109,461 qualified and registered their names on the rolls 78.23 per
cent. of the whole. Of these, 90,290 went to the polls and voted—85.18 per cent. Do
men ever turn out better than that—in America or elsewhere? Here is a remark to the
other sex's credit, too—I take it from the official report:
 "A feature of the election was the orderliness and sobriety of the people. Women
were in no way molested."

At home, a standing argument against woman suffrage has always been that women
could not go to the polls without being insulted. The arguments against woman
suffrage have always taken the easy form of prophecy. The prophets have been
prophesying ever since the woman's rights movement began in 1848—and in forty-
seven years they have never scored a hit.

Men ought to begin to feel a sort of respect for their mothers and wives and sisters
by this time. The women deserve a change of attitude like that, for they have wrought
well. In forty-seven years they have swept an imposingly large number of unfair laws
from the statute books of America. In that brief time these serfs have set themselves
free—essentially. Men could not have done so much for themselves in that time
without bloodshed—at least they never have; and that is argument that they didn't
know how. The women have accomplished a peaceful revolution, and a very
beneficent one; and yet that has not convinced the average man that they are
intelligent, and have courage and energy and perseverance and fortitude. It takes
much to convince the average man of anything; and perhaps nothing can ever make
him realize that he is the average woman's inferior—yet in several important details
the evidence seems to show that that is what he is. Man has ruled the human race
from the beginning—but he should remember that up to the middle of the present
century it was a dull world, and ignorant and stupid; but it is not such a dull world now,
and is growing less and less dull all the time. This is woman's opportunity—she has had
none before. I wonder where man will be in another forty-seven years?

In the New Zealand law occurs this: "The word person wherever it occurs
throughout the Act includes woman."

That is promotion, you see. By that enlargement of the word, the matron with the
garnered wisdom and experience of fifty years becomes at one jump the political equal
of her callow kid of twenty-one. The white population of the colony is 626,000, the
Maori population is 42,000. The whites elect seventy members of the House of
Representatives, the Maoris four. The Maori women vote for their four members.

November 16. After four pleasant days in Christchurch, we are to leave at midnight
to-night. Mr. Kinsey gave me an ornithorhynchus, and I am taming it.
 Sunday, 17th. Sailed last night in the Flora, from Lyttelton.

So we did. I remember it yet. The people who sailed in the Flora that night may
forget some other things if they live a good while, but they will not live long enough to
forget that. The Flora is about the equivalent of a cattle-scow; but when the Union
Company find it inconvenient to keep a contract and lucrative to break it, they smuggle
her into passenger service, and "keep the change."

They give no notice of their projected depredation; you innocently buy tickets for
the advertised passenger boat, and when you get down to Lyttelton at midnight, you
find that they have substituted the scow. They have plenty of good boats, but no
competition—and that is the trouble. It is too late now to make other arrangements if
you have engagements ahead.

It is a powerful company, it has a monopoly, and everybody is afraid of it—including

the government's representative, who stands at the end of the stage-plank to tally the
passengers and see that no boat receives a greater number than the law allows her to
carry. This conveniently-blind representative saw the scow receive a number which
was far in excess of its privilege, and winked a politic wink and said nothing. The
passengers bore with meekness the cheat which had been put upon them, and made
no complaint.

It was like being at home in America, where abused passengers act in just the same
way. A few days before, the Union Company had discharged a captain for getting a
boat into danger, and had advertised this act as evidence of its vigilance in looking
after the safety of the passengers—for thugging a captain costs the company nothing,
but when opportunity offered to send this dangerously overcrowded tub to sea and
save a little trouble and a tidy penny by it, it forgot to worry about the passenger's
safety.

The first officer told me that the Flora was privileged to carry 125 passengers. She
must have had all of 200 on board. All the cabins were full, all the cattle-stalls in the
main stable were full, the spaces at the heads of companionways were full, every inch
of floor and table in the swill-room was packed with sleeping men and remained so
until the place was required for breakfast, all the chairs and benches on the hurricane
deck were occupied, and still there were people who had to walk about all night!
 If the Flora had gone down that night, half of the people on board would have been
wholly without means of escape.

The owners of that boat were not technically guilty of conspiracy to commit murder,
but they were morally guilty of it.

I had a cattle-stall in the main stable—a cavern fitted up with a long double file of
two-storied bunks, the files separated by a calico partition—twenty men and boys on
one side of it, twenty women and girls on the other. The place was as dark as the soul
of the Union Company, and smelt like a kennel. When the vessel got out into the heavy
seas and began to pitch and wallow, the cavern prisoners became immediately seasick,
and then the peculiar results that ensued laid all my previous experiences of the kind
well away in the shade. And the wails, the groans, the cries, the shrieks, the strange
ejaculations—it was wonderful.

The women and children and some of the men and boys spent the night in that
place, for they were too ill to leave it; but the rest of us got up, by and by, and finished
the night on the hurricane-deck.

That boat was the foulest I was ever in; and the smell of the breakfast saloon when
we threaded our way among the layers of steaming passengers stretched upon its
floor and its tables was incomparable for efficiency.

A good many of us got ashore at the first way-port to seek another ship. After a wait
of three hours we got good rooms in the Mahinapua, a wee little bridal-parlor of a
boat—only 205 tons burthen; clean and comfortable; good service; good beds; good
table, and no crowding. The seas danced her about like a duck, but she was safe and
capable.

Next morning early she went through the French Pass—a narrow gateway of rock,
between bold headlands—so narrow, in fact, that it seemed no wider than a street.
The current tore through there like a mill-race, and the boat darted through like a
telegram. The passage was made in half a minute; then we were in a wide place where
noble vast eddies swept grandly round and round in shoal water, and I wondered what
they would do with the little boat. They did as they pleased with her. They picked her
up and flung her around like nothing and landed her gently on the solid, smooth
bottom of sand—so gently, indeed, that we barely felt her touch it, barely felt her
quiver when she came to a standstill. The water was as clear as glass, the sand on the
bottom was vividly distinct, and the fishes seemed to be swimming about in nothing.
Fishing lines were brought out, but before we could bait the hooks the boat was off
and away again.
 CHAPTER XXXIII.

Let us be grateful to Adam our benefactor. He cut us out of the "blessing of idleness,"
and won for us the "curse of labor."

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

We soon reached the town of Nelson, and spent the most of the day there, visiting
acquaintances and driving with them about the garden—the whole region is a garden,
excepting the scene of the "Maungatapu Murders," of thirty years ago. That is a wild
place—wild and lonely; an ideal place for a murder. It is at the base of a vast, rugged,
densely timbered mountain. In the deep twilight of that forest solitude four desperate
rascals—Burgess, Sullivan, Levy, and Kelley—ambushed themselves beside the
mountain-trail to murder and rob four travelers—Kempthorne, Mathieu, Dudley, and
De Pontius, the latter a New Yorker. A harmless old laboring man came wandering
along, and as his presence was an embarrassment, they choked him, hid him, and then
resumed their watch for the four. They had to wait a while, but eventually everything
turned out as they desired.

That dark episode is the one large event in the history of Nelson. The fame of it
traveled far. Burgess made a confession. It is a remarkable paper. For brevity,
succinctness, and concentration, it is perhaps without its peer in the literature of
murder. There are no waste words in it; there is no obtrusion of matter not pertinent
to the occasion, nor any departure from the dispassionate tone proper to a formal
business statement—for that is what it is: a business statement of a murder, by the
chief engineer of it, or superintendent, or foreman, or whatever one may prefer to call
him.

"We were getting impatient, when we saw four men and a pack-horse coming. I left
my cover and had a look at the men, for Levy had told me that Mathieu was a small
man and wore a large beard, and that it was a chestnut horse. I said, 'Here they come.'
They were then a good distance away; I took the caps off my gun, and put fresh ones
on. I said, 'You keep where you are, I'll put them up, and you give me your gun while
you tie them.' It was arranged as I have described. The men came; they arrived within
about fifteen yards when I stepped up and said, 'Stand! bail up!' That means all of them
to get together. I made them fall back on the upper side of the road with their faces up
the range, and Sullivan brought me his gun, and then tied their hands behind them. The
horse was very quiet all the time, he did not move. When they were all tied, Sullivan
took the horse up the hill, and put him in the bush; he cut the rope and let the swags—
[A "swag" is a kit, a pack, small baggage.]—fall on the ground, and then came to me.
We then marched the men down the incline to the creek; the water at this time barely
running. Up this creek we took the men; we went, I daresay, five or six hundred yards
up it, which took us nearly half-an-hour to accomplish. Then we turned to the right up
the range; we went, I daresay, one hundred and fifty yards from the creek, and there
we sat down with the men. I said to Sullivan, 'Put down your gun and search these
men,' which he did. I asked them their several names; they told me. I asked them if they
were expected at Nelson. They said, 'No.' If such their lives would have been spared. In
money we took L60 odd. I said, 'Is this all you have? You had better tell me.' Sullivan
said, 'Here is a bag of gold.' I said, 'What's on that pack-horse? Is there any gold?' when
Kempthorne said, 'Yes, my gold is in the portmanteau, and I trust you will not take it
all.' 'Well,' I said, 'we must take you away one at a time, because the range is steep just
here, and then we will let you go.' They said, 'All right,' most cheerfully. We tied their
feet, and took Dudley with us; we went about sixty yards with him. This was through a
scrub. It was arranged the night previously that it would be best to choke them, in case
the report of the arms might be heard from the road, and if they were missed they
never would be found. So we tied a handkerchief over his eyes, when Sullivan took the
sash off his waist, put it round his neck, and so strangled him. Sullivan, after I had killed
the old laboring man, found fault with the way he was choked. He said, 'The next we do
I'll show you my way.' I said, 'I have never done such a thing before. I have shot a man,
but never choked one.' We returned to the others, when Kempthorne said, 'What noise
was that?' I said it was caused by breaking through the scrub. This was taking too
much time, so it was agreed to shoot them. With that I said, 'We'll take you no further,
but separate you, and then loose one of you, and he can relieve the others.' So with
that, Sullivan took De Pontius to the left of where Kempthorne was sitting. I took
Mathieu to the right. I tied a strap round his legs, and shot him with a revolver. He
yelled, I ran from him with my gun in my hand, I sighted Kempthorne, who had risen to
his feet. I presented the gun, and shot him behind the right ear; his life's blood welled
from him, and he died instantaneously. Sullivan had shot De Pontius in the meantime,
and then came to me. I said, 'Look to Mathieu,' indicating the spot where he lay. He
shortly returned and said, 'I had to "chiv" that fellow, he was not dead,' a cant word,
meaning that he had to stab him. Returning to the road we passed where De Pontius
lay and was dead. Sullivan said, 'This is the digger, the others were all storekeepers;
this is the digger, let's cover him up, for should the others be found, they'll think he
done it and sloped,' meaning he had gone. So with that we threw all the stones on him,
and then left him. This bloody work took nearly an hour and a half from the time we
stopped the men."

Anyone who reads that confession will think that the man who wrote it was
destitute of emotions, destitute of feeling. That is partly true. As regarded others he
was plainly without feeling—utterly cold and pitiless; but as regarded himself the case
was different. While he cared nothing for the future of the murdered men, he cared a
great deal for his own. It makes one's flesh creep to read the introduction to his
confession. The judge on the bench characterized it as "scandalously blasphemous,"
and it certainly reads so, but Burgess meant no blasphemy. He was merely a brute, and
whatever he said or wrote was sure to expose the fact. His redemption was a very real
thing to him, and he was as jubilantly happy on the gallows as ever was Christian
martyr at the stake. We dwellers in this world are strangely made, and mysteriously
circumstanced. We have to suppose that the murdered men are lost, and that Burgess
is saved; but we cannot suppress our natural regrets.

"Written in my dungeon drear this 7th of August, in the year of Grace, 1866. To God
be ascribed all power and glory in subduing the rebellious spirit of a most guilty wretch,
who has been brought, through the instrumentality of a faithful follower of Christ, to
see his wretched and guilty state, inasmuch as hitherto he has led an awful and
wretched life, and through the assurance of this faithful soldier of Christ, he has been
led and also believes that Christ will yet receive and cleanse him from all his deep-dyed
and bloody sins. I lie under the imputation which says, 'Come now and let us reason
together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;
though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.' On this promise I rely."

We sailed in the afternoon late, spent a few hours at New Plymouth, then sailed
again and reached Auckland the next day, November 20th, and remained in that fine
city several days. Its situation is commanding, and the sea-view is superb. There are
charming drives all about, and by courtesy of friends we had opportunity to enjoy
them. From the grassy crater-summit of Mount Eden one's eye ranges over a grand
sweep and variety of scenery—forests clothed in luxuriant foliage, rolling green fields,
conflagrations of flowers, receding and dimming stretches of green plain, broken by
lofty and symmetrical old craters—then the blue bays twinkling and sparkling away
into the dreamy distances where the mountains loom spiritual in their veils of haze.

It is from Auckland that one goes to Rotorua, the region of the renowned hot lakes
and geysers—one of the chief wonders of New Zealand; but I was not well enough to
make the trip. The government has a sanitorium there, and everything is comfortable
for the tourist and the invalid. The government's official physician is almost over-
cautious in his estimates of the efficacy of the baths, when he is talking about
rheumatism, gout, paralysis, and such things; but when he is talking about the
effectiveness of the waters in eradicating the whisky-habit, he seems to have no
reserves. The baths will cure the drinking-habit no matter how chronic it is—and cure
it so effectually that even the desire to drink intoxicants will come no more. There
should be a rush from Europe and America to that place; and when the victims of
alcoholism find out what they can get by going there, the rush will begin.

The Thermal-springs District of New Zealand comprises an area of upwards of

600,000 acres, or close on 1,000 square miles. Rotorua is the favorite place. It is the
center of a rich field of lake and mountain scenery; from Rotorua as a base the
pleasure-seeker makes excursions. The crowd of sick people is great, and growing.
Rotorua is the Carlsbad of Australasia.

It is from Auckland that the Kauri gum is shipped. For a long time now about 8,000
tons of it have been brought into the town per year. It is worth about $300 per ton,
unassorted; assorted, the finest grades are worth about $1,000. It goes to America,
chiefly. It is in lumps, and is hard and smooth, and looks like amber—the light-colored
like new amber, and the dark brown like rich old amber. And it has the pleasant feel of
amber, too. Some of the light-colored samples were a tolerably fair counterfeit of
uncut South African diamonds, they were so perfectly smooth and polished and
transparent. It is manufactured into varnish; a varnish which answers for copal varnish
and is cheaper.

The gum is dug up out of the ground; it has been there for ages. It is the sap of the
Kauri tree. Dr. Campbell of Auckland told me he sent a cargo of it to England fifty years
ago, but nothing came of the venture. Nobody knew what to do with it; so it was sold
at L5 a ton, to light fires with.

November 26—3 P.M., sailed. Vast and beautiful harbor. Land all about for hours.
Tangariwa, the mountain that "has the same shape from every point of view." That is
the common belief in Auckland. And so it has—from every point of view except
thirteen. Perfect summer weather. Large school of whales in the distance. Nothing
could be daintier than the puffs of vapor they spout up, when seen against the pink
glory of the sinking sun, or against the dark mass of an island reposing in the deep blue
shadow of a storm cloud . . . . Great Barrier rock standing up out of the sea away to the
left. Sometime ago a ship hit it full speed in a fog—20 miles out of her course—140
lives lost; the captain committed suicide without waiting a moment. He knew that,
whether he was to blame or not, the company owning the vessel would discharge him
and make a devotion—to—passengers' safety advertisement out of it, and his chance
to make a livelihood would be permanently gone.
 XXXIV.

Let us not be too particular. It is better to have old second-hand diamonds than
none at all.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

November 27. To-day we reached Gisborne, and anchored in a big bay; there was a
heavy sea on, so we remained on board.

We were a mile from shore; a little steam-tug put out from the land; she was an
object of thrilling interest; she would climb to the summit of a billow, reel drunkenly
there a moment, dim and gray in the driving storm of spindrift, then make a plunge
like a diver and remain out of sight until one had given her up, then up she would dart
again, on a steep slant toward the sky, shedding Niagaras of water from her
forecastle—and this she kept up, all the way out to us. She brought twenty-five
passengers in her stomach—men and women—mainly a traveling dramatic company.
In sight on deck were the crew, in sou'westers, yellow waterproof canvas suits, and
boots to the thigh. The deck was never quiet for a moment, and seldom nearer level
than a ladder, and noble were the seas which leapt aboard and went flooding aft. We
rove a long line to the yard-arm, hung a most primitive basketchair to it and swung it
out into the spacious air of heaven, and there it swayed, pendulum-fashion, waiting for
its chance—then down it shot, skillfully aimed, and was grabbed by the two men on
the forecastle.

A young fellow belonging to our crew was in the chair, to be a protection to the
lady-comers. At once a couple of ladies appeared from below, took seats in his lap, we
hoisted them into the sky, waited a moment till the roll of the ship brought them in
overhead, then we lowered suddenly away, and seized the chair as it struck the deck.
We took the twenty-five aboard, and delivered twenty-five into the tug—among them
several aged ladies, and one blind one—and all without accident. It was a fine piece of
work.

Ours is a nice ship, roomy, comfortable, well-ordered, and satisfactory. Now and
then we step on a rat in a hotel, but we have had no rats on shipboard lately; unless,
perhaps in the Flora; we had more serious things to think of there, and did not notice. I
have noticed that it is only in ships and hotels which still employ the odious Chinese
gong, that you find rats. The reason would seem to be, that as a rat cannot tell the
time of day by a clock, he won't stay where he cannot find out when dinner is ready.

November 29. The doctor tells me of several old drunkards, one spiritless loafer, and
several far-gone moral wrecks who have been reclaimed by the Salvation Army and
have remained staunch people and hard workers these two years. Wherever one goes,
these testimonials to the Army's efficiency are forthcoming . . . . This morning we had
one of those whizzing green Ballarat flies in the room, with his stunning buzz-saw
noise—the swiftest creature in the world except the lightning-flash. It is a stupendous
force that is stored up in that little body. If we had it in a ship in the same proportion,
we could spin from Liverpool to New York in the space of an hour—the time it takes to
eat luncheon. The New Zealand express train is called the Ballarat Fly . . . . Bad teeth in
the colonies. A citizen told me they don't have teeth filled, but pull them out and put in
false ones, and that now and then one sees a young lady with a full set. She is
fortunate. I wish I had been born with false teeth and a false liver and false carbuncles.
I should get along better.

December 2. Monday. Left Napier in the Ballarat Fly the one that goes twice a week.
From Napier to Hastings, twelve miles; time, fifty-five minutes—not so far short of
thirteen miles an hour . . . . A perfect summer day; cool breeze, brilliant sky, rich
vegetation. Two or three times during the afternoon we saw wonderfully dense and
beautiful forests, tumultuously piled skyward on the broken highlands—not the
customary roof-like slant of a hillside, where the trees are all the same height. The
noblest of these trees were of the Kauri breed, we were told—the timber that is now
furnishing the wood-paving for Europe, and is the best of all wood for that purpose.
Sometimes these towering upheavals of forestry were festooned and garlanded with
vine-cables, and sometimes the masses of undergrowth were cocooned in another sort
of vine of a delicate cobwebby texture—they call it the "supplejack," I think. Tree ferns
everywhere—a stem fifteen feet high, with a graceful chalice of fern-fronds sprouting
from its top—a lovely forest ornament. And there was a ten-foot reed with a flowing
suit of what looked like yellow hair hanging from its upper end. I do not know its name,
but if there is such a thing as a scalp-plant, this is it. A romantic gorge, with a brook
flowing in its bottom, approaching Palmerston North.

Waitukurau. Twenty minutes for luncheon. With me sat my wife and daughter, and
my manager, Mr. Carlyle Smythe. I sat at the head of the table, and could see the right-
hand wall; the others had their backs to it. On that wall, at a good distance away, were
a couple of framed pictures. I could not see them clearly, but from the groupings of the
figures I fancied that they represented the killing of Napoleon III's son by the Zulus in
South Africa. I broke into the conversation, which was about poetry and cabbage and
art, and said to my wife—

"Do you remember when the news came to Paris——"

"Of the killing of the Prince?"

(Those were the very words I had in my mind.) "Yes, but what Prince?"

"Napoleon. Lulu."

"What made you think of that?"

"I don't know."

There was no collusion. She had not seen the pictures, and they had not been
mentioned. She ought to have thought of some recent news that came to Paris, for we
were but seven months from there and had been living there a couple of years when
we started on this trip; but instead of that she thought of an incident of our brief
sojourn in Paris of sixteen years before.

Here was a clear case of mental telegraphy; of mind-transference; of my mind

telegraphing a thought into hers. How do I know? Because I telegraphed an error. For
it turned out that the pictures did not represent the killing of Lulu at all, nor anything
connected with Lulu. She had to get the error from my head—it existed nowhere else.
 CHAPTER XXXV.

The Autocrat of Russia possesses more power than any other man in the earth; but
he cannot stop a sneeze.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

WAUGANUI, December 3. A pleasant trip, yesterday, per Ballarat Fly. Four hours. I
do not know the distance, but it must have been well along toward fifty miles. The Fly
could have spun it out to eight hours and not discommoded me; for where there is
comfort, and no need for hurry, speed is of no value—at least to me; and nothing that
goes on wheels can be more comfortable, more satisfactory, than the New Zealand
trains. Outside of America there are no cars that are so rationally devised. When you
add the constant presence of charming scenery and the nearly constant absence of
dust—well, if one is not content then, he ought to get out and walk. That would
change his spirit, perhaps? I think so. At the end of an hour you would find him waiting
humbly beside the track, and glad to be taken aboard again.

Much horseback riding, in and around this town; many comely girls in cool and
pretty summer gowns; much Salvation Army; lots of Maoris; the faces and bodies of
some of the old ones very tastefully frescoed. Maori Council House over the river—
large, strong, carpeted from end to end with matting, and decorated with elaborate
wood carvings, artistically executed. The Maoris were very polite.

I was assured by a member of the House of Representatives that the native race is
not decreasing, but actually increasing slightly. It is another evidence that they are a
superior breed of savages. I do not call to mind any savage race that built such good
houses, or such strong and ingenious and scientific fortresses, or gave so much
attention to agriculture, or had military arts and devices which so nearly approached
the white man's. These, taken together with their high abilities in boat-building, and
their tastes and capacities in the ornamental arts modify their savagery to a semi-
civilization—or at least to, a quarter-civilization.

It is a compliment to them that the British did not exterminate them, as they did the
Australians and the Tasmanians, but were content with subduing them, and showed
no desire to go further. And it is another compliment to them that the British did not
take the whole of their choicest lands, but left them a considerable part, and then
went further and protected them from the rapacities of landsharks—a protection
which the New Zealand Government still extends to them. And it is still another
compliment to the Maoris that the Government allows native representation—in both
the legislature and the cabinet, and gives both sexes the vote. And in doing these
things the Government also compliments itself; it has not been the custom of the
world for conquerors to act in this large spirit toward the conquered.

The highest class white men who lived among the Maoris in the earliest time had a
high opinion of them and a strong affection for them. Among the whites of this sort
was the author of "Old New Zealand;" and Dr. Campbell of Auckland was another. Dr.
Campbell was a close friend of several chiefs, and has many pleasant things to say of
their fidelity, their magnanimity, and their generosity. Also of their quaint notions
about the white man's queer civilization, and their equally quaint comments upon it.
One of them thought the missionary had got everything wrong end first and upside
down. "Why, he wants us to stop worshiping and supplicating the evil gods, and go to
worshiping and supplicating the Good One! There is no sense in that. A good god is not
going to do us any harm."

The Maoris had the tabu; and had it on a Polynesian scale of comprehensiveness
and elaboration. Some of its features could have been importations from India and
Judea. Neither the Maori nor the Hindoo of common degree could cook by a fire that a
person of higher caste had used, nor could the high Maori or high Hindoo employ fire
that had served a man of low grade; if a low-grade Maori or Hindoo drank from a
vessel belonging to a high-grade man, the vessel was defiled, and had to be destroyed.
There were other resemblances between Maori tabu and Hindoo caste-custom.

Yesterday a lunatic burst into my quarters and warned me that the Jesuits were
going to "cook" (poison) me in my food, or kill me on the stage at night. He said a
mysterious sign was visible upon my posters and meant my death. He said he saved
Rev. Mr. Haweis's life by warning him that there were three men on his platform who
would kill him if he took his eyes off them for a moment during his lecture. The same
men were in my audience last night, but they saw that he was there. "Will they be
there again to-night?" He hesitated; then said no, he thought they would rather take a
rest and chance the poison. This lunatic has no delicacy. But he was not uninteresting.
He told me a lot of things. He said he had "saved so many lecturers in twenty years,
that they put him in the asylum." I think he has less refinement than any lunatic I have
met.
 December 8. A couple of curious war-monuments here at Wanganui. One is in honor
of white men "who fell in defence of law and order against fanaticism and barbarism."
Fanaticism. We Americans are English in blood, English in speech, English in religion,
English in the essentials of our governmental system, English in the essentials of our
civilization; and so, let us hope, for the honor of the blend, for the honor of the blood,
for the honor of the race, that that word got there through lack of heedfulness, and
will not be suffered to remain. If you carve it at Thermopylae, or where Winkelried
died, or upon Bunker Hill monument, and read it again "who fell in defence of law and
order against fanaticism" you will perceive what the word means, and how mischosen
it is. Patriotism is Patriotism. Calling it Fanaticism cannot degrade it; nothing can
degrade it. Even though it be a political mistake, and a thousand times a political
mistake, that does not affect it; it is honorable—always honorable, always noble—and
privileged to hold its head up and look the nations in the face. It is right to praise these
brave white men who fell in the Maori war—they deserve it; but the presence of that
word detracts from the dignity of their cause and their deeds, and makes them appear
to have spilt their blood in a conflict with ignoble men, men not worthy of that costly
sacrifice. But the men were worthy. It was no shame to fight them. They fought for
their homes, they fought for their country; they bravely fought and bravely fell; and it
would take nothing from the honor of the brave Englishmen who lie under the
monument, but add to it, to say that they died in defense of English laws and English
homes against men worthy of the sacrifice—the Maori patriots.

The other monument cannot be rectified. Except with dynamite. It is a mistake all
through, and a strangely thoughtless one. It is a monument erected by white men to
Maoris who fell fighting with the whites and against their own people, in the Maori
war. "Sacred to the memory of the brave men who fell on the 14th of May, 1864," etc.
On one side are the names of about twenty Maoris. It is not a fancy of mine; the
monument exists. I saw it. It is an object-lesson to the rising generation. It invites to
treachery, disloyalty, unpatriotism. Its lesson, in frank terms is, "Desert your flag, slay
your people, burn their homes, shame your nationality—we honor such."

December 9. Wellington. Ten hours from Wanganui by the Fly. December 12. It is a
fine city and nobly situated. A busy place, and full of life and movement. Have spent
the three days partly in walking about, partly in enjoying social privileges, and largely in
idling around the magnificent garden at Hutt, a little distance away, around the shore. I
suppose we shall not see such another one soon.
 We are packing to-night for the return-voyage to Australia. Our stay in New Zealand
has been too brief; still, we are not unthankful for the glimpse which we have had of it.

The sturdy Maoris made the settlement of the country by the whites rather difficult.
Not at first—but later. At first they welcomed the whites, and were eager to trade with
them—particularly for muskets; for their pastime was internecine war, and they
greatly preferred the white man's weapons to their own. War was their pastime—I use
the word advisedly. They often met and slaughtered each other just for a lark, and
when there was no quarrel. The author of "Old New Zealand" mentions a case where a
victorious army could have followed up its advantage and exterminated the opposing
army, but declined to do it; explaining naively that "if we did that, there couldn't be
any more fighting." In another battle one army sent word that it was out of
ammunition, and would be obliged to stop unless the opposing army would send
some. It was sent, and the fight went on.

In the early days things went well enough. The natives sold land without clearly
understanding the terms of exchange, and the whites bought it without being much
disturbed about the native's confusion of mind. But by and by the Maori began to
comprehend that he was being wronged; then there was trouble, for he was not the
man to swallow a wrong and go aside and cry about it. He had the Tasmanian's spirit
and endurance, and a notable share of military science besides; and so he rose against
the oppressor, did this gallant "fanatic," and started a war that was not brought to a
definite end until more than a generation had sped.
 CHAPTER XXXVI.

There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Names are not always what they seem. The common Welsh name Bzjxxllwep is
pronounced Jackson.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Friday, December 13. Sailed, at 3 p.m., in the 'Mararoa'. Summer seas and a good
ship—life has nothing better.

Monday. Three days of paradise. Warm and sunny and smooth; the sea a luminous
Mediterranean blue . . . . One lolls in a long chair all day under deck-awnings, and
reads and smokes, in measureless content. One does not read prose at such a time,
but poetry. I have been reading the poems of Mrs. Julia A. Moore, again, and I find in
them the same grace and melody that attracted me when they were first published,
twenty years ago, and have held me in happy bonds ever since.

"The Sentimental Song Book" has long been out of print, and has been forgotten by
the world in general, but not by me. I carry it with me always—it and Goldsmith's
deathless story.

Indeed, it has the same deep charm for me that the Vicar of Wakefield has, and I
find in it the same subtle touch—the touch that makes an intentionally humorous
episode pathetic and an intentionally pathetic one funny. In her time Mrs. Moore was
called "the Sweet Singer of Michigan," and was best known by that name. I have read
her book through twice today, with the purpose of determining which of her pieces
has most merit, and I am persuaded that for wide grasp and sustained power, "William
Upson" may claim first place—

WILLIAM UPSON.

Air—"The Major's Only Son."

Come all good people far and near,
Oh, come and see what you can hear,
It's of a young man true and brave,
That is now sleeping in his grave.

Now, William Upson was his name

If it's not that, it's all the same
He did enlist in a cruel strife,
And it caused him to lose his life.

He was Perry Upson's eldest son,

His father loved his noble son,
This son was nineteen years of age
When first in the rebellion he engaged.

His father said that he might go,

But his dear mother she said no,
"Oh! stay at home, dear Billy," she said,
But she could not turn his head.

He went to Nashville, in Tennessee,

There his kind friends he could not see;
He died among strangers, so far away,
They did not know where his body lay.

He was taken sick and lived four weeks,

And Oh! how his parents weep,
But now they must in sorrow mourn,
For Billy has gone to his heavenly home.

Oh! if his mother could have seen her son,

For she loved him, her darling son;
If she could heard his dying prayer,
It would ease her heart till she met him there.

How it would relieve his mother's heart

To see her son from this world depart,
 And hear his noble words of love,
As he left this world for that above.

Now it will relieve his mother's heart,

For her son is laid in our graveyard;
For now she knows that his grave is near,
She will not shed so many tears.

Although she knows not that it was her son,

For his coffin could not be opened
It might be someone in his place,
For she could not see his noble face.

December, 17. Reached Sydney.

December, 19. In the train. Fellow of 30 with four valises; a slim creature, with teeth
which made his mouth look like a neglected churchyard. He had solidified hair—
solidified with pomatum; it was all one shell. He smoked the most extraordinary
cigarettes—made of some kind of manure, apparently. These and his hair made him
smell like the very nation. He had a low-cut vest on, which exposed a deal of frayed
and broken and unclean shirtfront. Showy studs, of imitation gold—they had made
black disks on the linen. Oversized sleeve buttons of imitation gold, the copper base
showing through. Ponderous watch-chain of imitation gold. I judge that he couldn't tell
the time by it, for he asked Smythe what time it was, once. He wore a coat which had
been gay when it was young; 5-o'clock-tea-trousers of a light tint, and marvelously
soiled; yellow mustache with a dashing upward whirl at the ends; foxy shoes, imitation
patent leather. He was a novelty—an imitation dude. He would have been a real one if
he could have afforded it. But he was satisfied with himself. You could see it in his
expression, and in all his attitudes and movements. He was living in a dude dreamland
where all his squalid shams were genuine, and himself a sincerity. It disarmed criticism,
it mollified spite, to see him so enjoy his imitation languors, and arts, and airs, and his
studied daintinesses of gesture and misbegotten refinements. It was plain to me that
he was imagining himself the Prince of Wales, and was doing everything the way he
thought the Prince would do it. For bringing his four valises aboard and stowing them
in the nettings, he gave his porter four cents, and lightly apologized for the smallness
of the gratuity—just with the condescendingest little royal air in the world. He
stretched himself out on the front seat and rested his pomatum-cake on the middle
arm, and stuck his feet out of the window, and began to pose as the Prince and work
his dreams and languors for exhibition; and he would indolently watch the blue films
curling up from his cigarette, and inhale the stench, and look so grateful; and would
flip the ash away with the daintiest gesture, unintentionally displaying his brass ring in
the most intentional way; why, it was as good as being in Marlborough House itself to
see him do it so like.

There was other scenery in the trip. That of the Hawksbury river, in the National
Park region, fine—extraordinarily fine, with spacious views of stream and lake
imposingly framed in woody hills; and every now and then the noblest groupings of
mountains, and the most enchanting rearrangements of the water effects. Further
along, green flats, thinly covered with gum forests, with here and there the huts and
cabins of small farmers engaged in raising children. Still further along, arid stretches,
lifeless and melancholy. Then Newcastle, a rushing town, capital of the rich coal
regions. Approaching Scone, wide farming and grazing levels, with pretty frequent
glimpses of a troublesome plant—a particularly devilish little prickly pear, daily
damned in the orisons of the agriculturist; imported by a lady of sentiment, and
contributed gratis to the colony. Blazing hot, all day.

December 20. Back to Sydney. Blazing hot again. From the newspaper, and from the
map, I have made a collection of curious names of Australasian towns, with the idea of
making a poem out of them:

Tumut
Takee
Murriwillumba
Bowral
Ballarat
Mullengudgery
Murrurundi
Wagga-Wagga
Wyalong
Murrumbidgee
Goomeroo
Wolloway
Wangary
Wanilla
Worrow
Koppio
Yankalilla
Yaranyacka
Yackamoorundie
Kaiwaka
Coomooroo
Tauranga
Geelong
Tongariro
Kaikoura
Wakatipu
Oohipara
Waitpinga
Goelwa
Munno Para
Nangkita
Myponga
Kapunda
Kooringa
Penola
Nangwarry
Kongorong
Comaum
Koolywurtie
Killanoola
Naracoorte
Muloowurtie
Binnum
Wallaroo
Wirrega
Mundoora
Hauraki
Rangiriri
 Teawamute
Taranaki
Toowoomba
Goondiwindi
Jerrilderie
Whangaroa
Wollongong
Woolloomooloo
Bombola
Coolgardie
Bendigo
Coonamble
Cootamundra
Woolgoolga
Mittagong
Jamberoo
Kondoparinga
Kuitpo
Tungkillo
Oukaparinga
Talunga
Yatala
Parawirra
Moorooroo
Whangarei
Woolundunga
Booleroo
Pernatty
Parramatta
Taroom
Narrandera
Deniliquin
Kawakawa.

It may be best to build the poem now, and make the weather help
 A SWELTERING DAY IN AUSTRALIA.

(To be read soft and low, with the lights turned down.)

The Bombola faints in the hot Bowral tree,

Where fierce Mullengudgery's smothering fires
Far from the breezes of Coolgardie
Burn ghastly and blue as the day expires;

And Murriwillumba complaineth in song

For the garlanded bowers of Woolloomooloo,
And the Ballarat Fly and the lone Wollongong
They dream of the gardens of Jamberoo;

The wallabi sighs for the Murrubidgee,

For the velvety sod of the Munno Parah,
Where the waters of healing from Muloowurtie
Flow dim in the gloaming by Yaranyackah;

The Koppio sorrows for lost Wolloway,

And sigheth in secret for Murrurundi,
The Whangeroo wombat lamenteth the day
That made him an exile from Jerrilderie;

The Teawamute Tumut from Wirrega's glade,

The Nangkita swallow, the Wallaroo swan,
They long for the peace of the Timaru shade
And thy balmy soft airs, O sweet Mittagong!

The Kooringa buffalo pants in the sun,

The Kondoparinga lies gaping for breath,
The Kongorong Camaum to the shadow has won,
But the Goomeroo sinks in the slumber of death;

In the weltering hell of the Moorooroo plain

 The Yatala Wangary withers and dies,
And the Worrow Wanilla, demented with pain,
To the Woolgoolga woodlands despairingly flies;

Sweet Nangwarry's desolate, Coonamble wails,

And Tungkillo Kuito in sables is drest,
For the Whangerei winds fall asleep in the sails
And the Booleroo life-breeze is dead in the west.

Mypongo, Kapunda, O slumber no more

Yankalilla, Parawirra, be warned
There's death in the air!
Killanoola, wherefore
Shall the prayer of Penola be scorned?

Cootamundra, and Takee, and Wakatipu,

Toowoomba, Kaikoura are lost
From Onkaparinga to far Oamaru
All burn in this hell's holocaust!

Paramatta and Binnum are gone to their rest

In the vale of Tapanni Taroom,
Kawakawa, Deniliquin—all that was best
In the earth are but graves and a tomb!

Narrandera mourns, Cameron answers not

When the roll of the scathless we cry
Tongariro, Goondiwindi, Woolundunga, the spot
Is mute and forlorn where ye lie.

Those are good words for poetry. Among the best I have ever seen. There are 81 in
the list. I did not need them all, but I have knocked down 66 of them; which is a good
bag, it seems to me, for a person not in the business. Perhaps a poet laureate could do
better, but a poet laureate gets wages, and that is different. When I write poetry I do
not get any wages; often I lose money by it. The best word in that list, and the most
musical and gurgly, is Woolloomoolloo. It is a place near Sydney, and is a favorite
pleasure-resort. It has eight O's in it.
 CHAPTER XXXVII.

To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law, concealment of it
will do.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

MONDAY,—December 23, 1895. Sailed from Sydney for Ceylon in the P. & O.
steamer 'Oceana'. A Lascar crew mans this ship—the first I have seen. White cotton
petticoat and pants; barefoot; red shawl for belt; straw cap, brimless, on head, with
red scarf wound around it; complexion a rich dark brown; short straight black hair;
whiskers fine and silky; lustrous and intensely black. Mild, good faces; willing and
obedient people; capable, too; but are said to go into hopeless panics when there is
danger. They are from Bombay and the coast thereabouts. Left some of the trunks in
Sydney, to be shipped to South Africa by a vessel advertised to sail three months
hence. The proverb says: "Separate not yourself from your baggage."

This 'Oceana' is a stately big ship, luxuriously appointed. She has spacious
promenade decks. Large rooms; a surpassingly comfortable ship. The officers' library is
well selected; a ship's library is not usually that . . . . For meals, the bugle call, man-of-
war fashion; a pleasant change from the terrible gong . . . . Three big cats—very
friendly loafers; they wander all over the ship; the white one follows the chief steward
around like a dog. There is also a basket of kittens. One of these cats goes ashore, in
port, in England, Australia, and India, to see how his various families are getting along,
and is seen no more till the ship is ready to sail. No one knows how he finds out the
sailing date, but no doubt he comes down to the dock every day and takes a look, and
when he sees baggage and passengers flocking in, recognizes that it is time to get
aboard. This is what the sailors believe. . . .

The Chief Engineer has been in the China and India trade thirty three years, and has
had but three Christmases at home in that time . . . . Conversational items at dinner,
"Mocha! sold all over the world! It is not true. In fact, very few foreigners except the
Emperor of Russia have ever seen a grain of it, or ever will, while they live." Another
man said: "There is no sale in Australia for Australian wine. But it goes to France and
comes back with a French label on it, and then they buy it." I have heard that the most
of the French-labeled claret in New York is made in California. And I remember what
Professor S. told me once about Veuve Cliquot—if that was the wine, and I think it
was. He was the guest of a great wine merchant whose town was quite near that
vineyard, and this merchant asked him if very much V. C. was drunk in America.

"Oh, yes," said S., "a great abundance of it."

"Is it easy to be had?"

"Oh, yes—easy as water. All first and second-class hotels have it."

"What do you pay for it?"

"It depends on the style of the hotel—from fifteen to twenty-five francs a bottle."

"Oh, fortunate country! Why, it's worth 100 francs right here on the ground."

"No!"

"Yes!"

"Do you mean that we are drinking a bogus Veuve-Cliquot over there?"

"Yes—and there was never a bottle of the genuine in America since Columbus's
time. That wine all comes from a little bit of a patch of ground which isn't big enough
to raise many bottles; and all of it that is produced goes every year to one person—the
Emperor of Russia. He takes the whole crop in advance, be it big or little."

January 4, 1896. Christmas in Melbourne, New Year's Day in Adelaide, and saw most
of the friends again in both places . . . . Lying here at anchor all day—Albany (King
George's Sound), Western Australia. It is a perfectly landlocked harbor, or roadstead—
spacious to look at, but not deep water. Desolate-looking rocks and scarred hills.
Plenty of ships arriving now, rushing to the new gold-fields. The papers are full of
wonderful tales of the sort always to be heard in connection with new gold diggings. A
sample: a youth staked out a claim and tried to sell half for L5; no takers; he stuck to it
fourteen days, starving, then struck it rich and sold out for L10,000. . . About sunset,
strong breeze blowing, got up the anchor. We were in a small deep puddle, with a
narrow channel leading out of it, minutely buoyed, to the sea.

I stayed on deck to see how we were going to manage it with such a big ship and
such a strong wind. On the bridge our giant captain, in uniform; at his side a little pilot
in elaborately gold-laced uniform; on the forecastle a white mate and quartermaster
or two, and a brilliant crowd of lascars standing by for business. Our stern was pointing
straight at the head of the channel; so we must turn entirely around in the puddle—
and the wind blowing as described. It was done, and beautifully. It was done by help of
a jib. We stirred up much mud, but did not touch the bottom. We turned right around
in our tracks—a seeming impossibility. We had several casts of quarter-less 5, and one
cast of half 4—27 feet; we were drawing 26 astern. By the time we were entirely
around and pointed, the first buoy was not more than a hundred yards in front of us. It
was a fine piece of work, and I was the only passenger that saw it. However, the others
got their dinner; the P. & O. Company got mine . . . . More cats developed. Smythe says
it is a British law that they must be carried; and he instanced a case of a ship not
allowed to sail till she sent for a couple. The bill came, too: "Debtor, to 2 cats, 20
shillings." . . . News comes that within this week Siam has acknowledged herself to be,
in effect, a French province. It seems plain that all savage and semi-civilized countries
are going to be grabbed . . . . A vulture on board; bald, red, queer-shaped head,
featherless red places here and there on his body, intense great black eyes set in
featherless rims of inflamed flesh; dissipated look; a businesslike style, a selfish,
conscienceless, murderous aspect—the very look of a professional assassin, and yet a
bird which does no murder. What was the use of getting him up in that tragic style for
so innocent a trade as his? For this one isn't the sort that wars upon the living, his diet
is offal—and the more out of date it is the better he likes it. Nature should give him a
suit of rusty black; then he would be all right, for he would look like an undertaker and
would harmonize with his business; whereas the way he is now he is horribly out of
true.

January 5. At 9 this morning we passed Cape Leeuwin (lioness) and ceased from our
long due-west course along the southern shore of Australia. Turning this extreme
southwestern corner, we now take a long straight slant nearly N. W., without a break,
for Ceylon. As we speed northward it will grow hotter very fast—but it isn't chilly, now.
. . . The vulture is from the public menagerie at Adelaide—a great and interesting
collection. It was there that we saw the baby tiger solemnly spreading its mouth and
trying to roar like its majestic mother. It swaggered, scowling, back and forth on its
short legs just as it had seen her do on her long ones, and now and then snarling
viciously, exposing its teeth, with a threatening lift of its upper lip and bristling
moustache; and when it thought it was impressing the visitors, it would spread its
mouth wide and do that screechy cry which it meant for a roar, but which did not
deceive. It took itself quite seriously, and was lovably comical. And there was a
hyena—an ugly creature; as ugly as the tiger-kitty was pretty. It repeatedly arched its
back and delivered itself of such a human cry; a startling resemblance; a cry which was
just that of a grown person badly hurt. In the dark one would assuredly go to its
assistance—and be disappointed . . . . Many friends of Australasian Federation on
board. They feel sure that the good day is not far off, now. But there seems to be a
party that would go further—have Australasia cut loose from the British Empire and
set up housekeeping on her own hook. It seems an unwise idea. They point to the
United States, but it seems to me that the cases lack a good deal of being alike.
Australasia governs herself wholly—there is no interference; and her commerce and
manufactures are not oppressed in any way. If our case had been the same we should
not have gone out when we did.

January 13. Unspeakably hot. The equator is arriving again. We are within eight
degrees of it. Ceylon present. Dear me, it is beautiful! And most sumptuously tropical,
as to character of foliage and opulence of it. "What though the spicy breezes blow soft
o'er Ceylon's isle"—an eloquent line, an incomparable line; it says little, but conveys
whole libraries of sentiment, and Oriental charm and mystery, and tropic
deliciousness—a line that quivers and tingles with a thousand unexpressed and
inexpressible things, things that haunt one and find no articulate voice . . . . Colombo,
the capital. An Oriental town, most manifestly; and fascinating.

In this palatial ship the passengers dress for dinner. The ladies' toilettes make a fine
display of color, and this is in keeping with the elegance of the vessel's furnishings and
the flooding brilliancies of the electric light. On the stormy Atlantic one never sees a
man in evening dress, except at the rarest intervals; and then there is only one, not
two; and he shows up but once on the voyage—the night before the ship makes port—
the night when they have the "concert" and do the amateur wailings and recitations.
He is the tenor, as a rule . . . . There has been a deal of cricket-playing on board; it
seems a queer game for a ship, but they enclose the promenade deck with nettings
and keep the ball from flying overboard, and the sport goes very well, and is properly
violent and exciting . . . . We must part from this vessel here.

January 14. Hotel Bristol. Servant Brompy. Alert, gentle, smiling, winning young
brown creature as ever was. Beautiful shining black hair combed back like a woman's,
and knotted at the back of his head—tortoise-shell comb in it, sign that he is a
Singhalese; slender, shapely form; jacket; under it is a beltless and flowing white
cotton gown—from neck straight to heel; he and his outfit quite unmasculine. It was
an embarrassment to undress before him.
 We drove to the market, using the Japanese jinriksha—our first acquaintanceship
with it. It is a light cart, with a native to draw it. He makes good speed for half-an-hour,
but it is hard work for him; he is too slight for it. After the half-hour there is no more
pleasure for you; your attention is all on the man, just as it would be on a tired horse,
and necessarily your sympathy is there too. There's a plenty of these 'rickshas, and the
tariff is incredibly cheap.

I was in Cairo years ago. That was Oriental, but there was a lack. When you are in
Florida or New Orleans you are in the South—that is granted; but you are not in the
South; you are in a modified South, a tempered South. Cairo was a tempered Orient—
an Orient with an indefinite something wanting. That feeling was not present in
Ceylon. Ceylon was Oriental in the last measure of completeness—utterly Oriental;
also utterly tropical; and indeed to one's unreasoning spiritual sense the two things
belong together. All the requisites were present. The costumes were right; the black
and brown exposures, unconscious of immodesty, were right; the juggler was there,
with his basket, his snakes, his mongoose, and his arrangements for growing a tree
from seed to foliage and ripe fruitage before one's eyes; in sight were plants and
flowers familiar to one on books but in no other way—celebrated, desirable, strange,
but in production restricted to the hot belt of the equator; and out a little way in the
country were the proper deadly snakes, and fierce beasts of prey, and the wild
elephant and the monkey. And there was that swoon in the air which one associates
with the tropics, and that smother of heat, heavy with odors of unknown flowers, and
that sudden invasion of purple gloom fissured with lightnings,—then the tumult of
crashing thunder and the downpour and presently all sunny and smiling again; all
these things were there; the conditions were complete, nothing was lacking. And away
off in the deeps of the jungle and in the remotenesses of the mountains were the
ruined cities and mouldering temples, mysterious relics of the pomps of a forgotten
time and a vanished race—and this was as it should be, also, for nothing is quite
satisfyingly Oriental that lacks the somber and impressive qualities of mystery and
antiquity.

The drive through the town and out to the Galle Face by the seashore, what a dream
it was of tropical splendors of bloom and blossom, and Oriental conflagrations of
costume! The walking groups of men, women, boys, girls, babies—each individual was
a flame, each group a house afire for color. And such stunning colors, such intensely
vivid colors, such rich and exquisite minglings and fusings of rainbows and lightnings!
And all harmonious, all in perfect taste; never a discordant note; never a color on any
person swearing at another color on him or failing to harmonize faultlessly with the
colors of any group the wearer might join. The stuffs were silk—thin, soft, delicate,
clinging; and, as a rule, each piece a solid color: a splendid green, a splendid blue, a
splendid yellow, a splendid purple, a splendid ruby, deep, and rich with smouldering
fires—they swept continuously by in crowds and legions and multitudes, glowing,
flashing, burning, radiant; and every five seconds came a burst of blinding red that
made a body catch his breath, and filled his heart with joy. And then, the unimaginable
grace of those costumes! Sometimes a woman's whole dress was but a scarf wound
about her person and her head, sometimes a man's was but a turban and a careless
rag or two—in both cases generous areas of polished dark skin showing—but always
the arrangement compelled the homage of the eye and made the heart sing for
gladness.

I can see it to this day, that radiant panorama, that wilderness of rich color, that
incomparable dissolving-view of harmonious tints, and lithe half-covered forms, and
beautiful brown faces, and gracious and graceful gestures and attitudes and
movements, free, unstudied, barren of stiffness and restraint, and—

Just then, into this dream of fairyland and paradise a grating dissonance was
injected.

Out of a missionary school came marching, two and two, sixteen prim and pious
little Christian black girls, Europeanly clothed—dressed, to the last detail, as they
would have been dressed on a summer Sunday in an English or American village. Those
clothes—oh, they were unspeakably ugly! Ugly, barbarous, destitute of taste, destitute
of grace, repulsive as a shroud. I looked at my womenfolk's clothes—just full-grown
duplicates of the outrages disguising those poor little abused creatures—and was
ashamed to be seen in the street with them. Then I looked at my own clothes, and was
ashamed to be seen in the street with myself.

However, we must put up with our clothes as they are—they have their reason for
existing. They are on us to expose us—to advertise what we wear them to conceal.
They are a sign; a sign of insincerity; a sign of suppressed vanity; a pretense that we
despise gorgeous colors and the graces of harmony and form; and we put them on to
propagate that lie and back it up. But we do not deceive our neighbor; and when we
step into Ceylon we realize that we have not even deceived ourselves. We do love
brilliant colors and graceful costumes; and at home we will turn out in a storm to see
them when the procession goes by—and envy the wearers. We go to the theater to
look at them and grieve that we can't be clothed like that. We go to the King's ball,
when we get a chance, and are glad of a sight of the splendid uniforms and the
glittering orders. When we are granted permission to attend an imperial drawing-room
we shut ourselves up in private and parade around in the theatrical court-dress by the
hour, and admire ourselves in the glass, and are utterly happy; and every member of
every governor's staff in democratic America does the same with his grand new
uniform—and if he is not watched he will get himself photographed in it, too. When I
see the Lord Mayor's footman I am dissatisfied with my lot. Yes, our clothes are a lie,
and have been nothing short of that these hundred years. They are insincere, they are
the ugly and appropriate outward exposure of an inward sham and a moral decay.

The last little brown boy I chanced to notice in the crowds and swarms of Colombo
had nothing on but a twine string around his waist, but in my memory the frank
honesty of his costume still stands out in pleasant contrast with the odious flummery
in which the little Sunday-school dowdies were masquerading.
 CHAPTER XXXVIII.

Prosperity is the best protector of principle.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

EVENING—14th. Sailed in the Rosetta. This is a poor old ship, and ought to be
insured and sunk. As in the 'Oceana', just so here: everybody dresses for dinner; they
make it a sort of pious duty. These fine and formal costumes are a rather conspicuous
contrast to the poverty and shabbiness of the surroundings . . . . If you want a slice of a
lime at four o'clock tea, you must sign an order on the bar. Limes cost 14 cents a
barrel.

January 18th. We have been running up the Arabian Sea, latterly. Closing up on
Bombay now, and due to arrive this evening.

January 20th. Bombay! A bewitching place, a bewildering place, an enchanting

place—the Arabian Nights come again? It is a vast city; contains about a million
inhabitants. Natives, they are, with a slight sprinkling of white people—not enough to
have the slightest modifying effect upon the massed dark complexion of the public. It
is winter here, yet the weather is the divine weather of June, and the foliage is the
fresh and heavenly foliage of June. There is a rank of noble great shade trees across
the way from the hotel, and under them sit groups of picturesque natives of both
sexes; and the juggler in his turban is there with his snakes and his magic; and all day
long the cabs and the multitudinous varieties of costumes flock by. It does not seem as
if one could ever get tired of watching this moving show, this shining and shifting
spectacle . . . . In the great bazar the pack and jam of natives was marvelous, the sea of
rich-colored turbans and draperies an inspiring sight, and the quaint and showy Indian
architecture was just the right setting for it. Toward sunset another show; this is the
drive around the sea-shore to Malabar Point, where Lord Sandhurst, the Governor of
the Bombay Presidency, lives. Parsee palaces all along the first part of the drive; and
past them all the world is driving; the private carriages of wealthy Englishmen and
natives of rank are manned by a driver and three footmen in stunning oriental
liveries—two of these turbaned statues standing up behind, as fine as monuments.
Sometimes even the public carriages have this superabundant crew, slightly
modified—one to drive, one to sit by and see it done, and one to stand up behind and
yell—yell when there is anybody in the way, and for practice when there isn't. It all
helps to keep up the liveliness and augment the general sense of swiftness and energy
and confusion and pow-wow.

In the region of Scandal Point—felicitous name—where there are handy rocks to sit
on and a noble view of the sea on the one hand, and on the other the passing and
repassing whirl and tumult of gay carriages, are great groups of comfortably-off Parsee
women—perfect flower-beds of brilliant color, a fascinating spectacle. Tramp, tramp,
tramping along the road, in singles, couples, groups, and gangs, you have the working-
man and the working-woman—but not clothed like ours. Usually the man is a nobly-
built great athlete, with not a rag on but his loin-handkerchief; his color a deep dark
brown, his skin satin, his rounded muscles knobbing it as if it had eggs under it. Usually
the woman is a slender and shapely creature, as erect as a lightning-rod, and she has
but one thing on—a bright-colored piece of stuff which is wound about her head and
her body down nearly half-way to her knees, and which clings like her own skin. Her
legs and feet are bare, and so are her arms, except for her fanciful bunches of loose
silver rings on her ankles and on her arms. She has jewelry bunched on the side of her
nose also, and showy cluster-rings on her toes. When she undresses for bed she takes
off her jewelry, I suppose. If she took off anything more she would catch cold. As a rule
she has a large shiney brass water jar of graceful shape on her head, and one of her
naked arms curves up and the hand holds it there. She is so straight, so erect, and she
steps with such style, and such easy grace and dignity; and her curved arm and her
brazen jar are such a help to the picture—indeed, our working-women cannot begin
with her as a road-decoration.

It is all color, bewitching color, enchanting color—everywhere all around—all the

way around the curving great opaline bay clear to Government House, where the
turbaned big native 'chuprassies' stand grouped in state at the door in their robes of
fiery red, and do most properly and stunningly finish up the splendid show and make it
theatrically complete. I wish I were a 'chuprassy'.

This is indeed India! the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and
fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and
pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra
and the jungle, the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a
thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of
human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of
tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the mouldering antiquities of the rest of
the nations—the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable
interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich
and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen
once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of
the globe combined. Even now, after the lapse of a year, the delirium of those days in
Bombay has not left me, and I hope never will. It was all new, no detail of it hackneyed.
And India did not wait for morning, it began at the hotel—straight away. The lobbies
and halls were full of turbaned, and fez'd and embroidered, cap'd, and barefooted, and
cotton-clad dark natives, some of them rushing about, others at rest squatting, or
sitting on the ground; some of them chattering with energy, others still and dreamy; in
the dining-room every man's own private native servant standing behind his chair, and
dressed for a part in the Arabian Nights.

Our rooms were high up, on the front. A white man—he was a burly German—went
up with us, and brought three natives along to see to arranging things. About fourteen
others followed in procession, with the hand-baggage; each carried an article—and
only one; a bag, in some cases, in other cases less. One strong native carried my
overcoat, another a parasol, another a box of cigars, another a novel, and the last man
in the procession had no load but a fan. It was all done with earnestness and sincerity,
there was not a smile in the procession from the head of it to the tail of it. Each man
waited patiently, tranquilly, in no sort of hurry, till one of us found time to give him a
copper, then he bent his head reverently, touched his forehead with his fingers, and
went his way. They seemed a soft and gentle race, and there was something both
winning and touching about their demeanor.

There was a vast glazed door which opened upon the balcony. It needed closing, or
cleaning, or something, and a native got down on his knees and went to work at it. He
seemed to be doing it well enough, but perhaps he wasn't, for the burly German put
on a look that betrayed dissatisfaction, then without explaining what was wrong, gave
the native a brisk cuff on the jaw and then told him where the defect was. It seemed
such a shame to do that before us all. The native took it with meekness, saying
nothing, and not showing in his face or manner any resentment. I had not seen the like
of this for fifty years. It carried me back to my boyhood, and flashed upon me the
forgotten fact that this was the usual way of explaining one's desires to a slave. I was
able to remember that the method seemed right and natural to me in those days, I
being born to it and unaware that elsewhere there were other methods; but I was also
able to remember that those unresented cuffings made me sorry for the victim and
ashamed for the punisher. My father was a refined and kindly gentleman, very grave,
rather austere, of rigid probity, a sternly just and upright man, albeit he attended no
church and never spoke of religious matters, and had no part nor lot in the pious joys
of his Presbyterian family, nor ever seemed to suffer from this deprivation. He laid his
hand upon me in punishment only twice in his life, and then not heavily; once for
telling him a lie—which surprised me, and showed me how unsuspicious he was, for
that was not my maiden effort. He punished me those two times only, and never any
other member of the family at all; yet every now and then he cuffed our harmless
slave boy, Lewis, for trifling little blunders and awkwardnesses. My father had passed
his life among the slaves from his cradle up, and his cuffings proceeded from the
custom of the time, not from his nature. When I was ten years old I saw a man fling a
lump of iron-ore at a slaveman in anger, for merely doing something awkwardly—as if
that were a crime. It bounded from the man's skull, and the man fell and never spoke
again. He was dead in an hour. I knew the man had a right to kill his slave if he wanted
to, and yet it seemed a pitiful thing and somehow wrong, though why wrong I was not
deep enough to explain if I had been asked to do it. Nobody in the village approved of
that murder, but of course no one said much about it.

It is curious—the space-annihilating power of thought. For just one second, all that
goes to make the me in me was in a Missourian village, on the other side of the globe,
vividly seeing again these forgotten pictures of fifty years ago, and wholly unconscious
of all things but just those; and in the next second I was back in Bombay, and that
kneeling native's smitten cheek was not done tingling yet! Back to boyhood—fifty
years; back to age again, another fifty; and a flight equal to the circumference of the
globe-all in two seconds by the watch!

Some natives—I don't remember how many—went into my bedroom, now, and put
things to rights and arranged the mosquito-bar, and I went to bed to nurse my cough.
It was about nine in the evening. What a state of things! For three hours the yelling
and shouting of natives in the hall continued, along with the velvety patter of their
swift bare feet—what a racket it was! They were yelling orders and messages down
three flights. Why, in the matter of noise it amounted to a riot, an insurrection, a
revolution. And then there were other noises mixed up with these and at intervals
tremendously accenting them—roofs falling in, I judged, windows smashing, persons
being murdered, crows squawking, and deriding, and cursing, canaries screeching,
monkeys jabbering, macaws blaspheming, and every now and then fiendish bursts of
laughter and explosions of dynamite. By midnight I had suffered all the different kinds
of shocks there are, and knew that I could never more be disturbed by them, either
isolated or in combination. Then came peace—stillness deep and solemn and lasted till
five.

Then it all broke loose again. And who re-started it? The Bird of Birds the Indian
crow. I came to know him well, by and by, and be infatuated with him. I suppose he is
the hardest lot that wears feathers. Yes, and the cheerfulest, and the best satisfied
with himself. He never arrived at what he is by any careless process, or any sudden
one; he is a work of art, and "art is long"; he is the product of immemorial ages, and of
deep calculation; one can't make a bird like that in a day. He has been reincarnated
more times than Shiva; and he has kept a sample of each incarnation, and fused it into
his constitution. In the course of his evolutionary promotions, his sublime march
toward ultimate perfection, he has been a gambler, a low comedian, a dissolute priest,
a fussy woman, a blackguard, a scoffer, a liar, a thief, a spy, an informer, a trading
politician, a swindler, a professional hypocrite, a patriot for cash, a reformer, a
lecturer, a lawyer, a conspirator, a rebel, a royalist, a democrat, a practicer and
propagator of irreverence, a meddler, an intruder, a busybody, an infidel, and a
wallower in sin for the mere love of it. The strange result, the incredible result, of this
patient accumulation of all damnable traits is, that he does not know what care is, he
does not know what sorrow is, he does not know what remorse is, his life is one long
thundering ecstasy of happiness, and he will go to his death untroubled, knowing that
he will soon turn up again as an author or something, and be even more intolerably
capable and comfortable than ever he was before.

In his straddling wide forward-step, and his springy side-wise series of hops, and his
impudent air, and his cunning way of canting his head to one side upon occasion, he
reminds one of the American blackbird. But the sharp resemblances stop there. He is
much bigger than the blackbird; and he lacks the blackbird's trim and slender and
beautiful build and shapely beak; and of course his sober garb of gray and rusty black is
a poor and humble thing compared with the splendid lustre of the blackbird's metallic
sables and shifting and flashing bronze glories. The blackbird is a perfect gentleman, in
deportment and attire, and is not noisy, I believe, except when holding religious
services and political conventions in a tree; but this Indian sham Quaker is just a
rowdy, and is always noisy when awake—always chaffing, scolding, scoffing, laughing,
ripping, and cursing, and carrying on about something or other. I never saw such a bird
for delivering opinions. Nothing escapes him; he notices everything that happens, and
brings out his opinion about it, particularly if it is a matter that is none of his business.
And it is never a mild opinion, but always violent—violent and profane—the presence
of ladies does not affect him. His opinions are not the outcome of reflection, for he
never thinks about anything, but heaves out the opinion that is on top in his mind, and
which is often an opinion about some quite different thing and does not fit the case.
But that is his way; his main idea is to get out an opinion, and if he stopped to think he
would lose chances.

I suppose he has no enemies among men. The whites and Mohammedans never
seemed to molest him; and the Hindoos, because of their religion, never take the life
of any creature, but spare even the snakes and tigers and fleas and rats.

If I sat on one end of the balcony, the crows would gather on the railing at the other
end and talk about me; and edge closer, little by little, till I could almost reach them;
and they would sit there, in the most unabashed way, and talk about my clothes, and
my hair, and my complexion, and probable character and vocation and politics, and
how I came to be in India, and what I had been doing, and how many days I had got for
it, and how I had happened to go unhanged so long, and when would it probably come
off, and might there be more of my sort where I came from, and when would they be
hanged,—and so on, and so on, until I could not longer endure the embarrassment of
it; then I would shoo them away, and they would circle around in the air a little while,
laughing and deriding and mocking, and presently settle on the rail and do it all over
again.

They were very sociable when there was anything to eat—oppressively so. With a
little encouragement they would come in and light on the table and help me eat my
breakfast; and once when I was in the other room and they found themselves alone,
they carried off everything they could lift; and they were particular to choose things
which they could make no use of after they got them. In India their number is beyond
estimate, and their noise is in proportion. I suppose they cost the country more than
the government does; yet that is not a light matter. Still, they pay; their company pays;
it would sadden the land to take their cheerful voice out of it.
 CHAPTER XXXIX.

By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

You soon find your long-ago dreams of India rising in a sort of vague and luscious
moonlight above the horizon-rim of your opaque consciousness, and softly lighting up
a thousand forgotten details which were parts of a vision that had once been vivid to
you when you were a boy, and steeped your spirit in tales of the East. The barbaric
gorgeousnesses, for instance; and the princely titles, the sumptuous titles, the
sounding titles,—how good they taste in the mouth! The Nizam of Hyderabad; the
Maharajah of Travancore; the Nabob of Jubbelpore; the Begum of Bhopal; the Nawab
of Mysore; the Ranee of Gulnare; the Ahkoond of Swat's; the Rao of Rohilkund; the
Gaikwar of Baroda. Indeed, it is a country that runs richly to name. The great god
Vishnu has 108—108 special ones—108 peculiarly holy ones—names just for Sunday
use only. I learned the whole of Vishnu's 108 by heart once, but they wouldn't stay; I
don't remember any of them now but John W.

And the romances connected with those princely native houses—to this day they
are always turning up, just as in the old, old times. They were sweating out a romance
in an English court in Bombay a while before we were there. In this case a native
prince, 16 1/2 years old, who has been enjoying his titles and dignities and estates
unmolested for fourteen years, is suddenly haled into court on the charge that he is
rightfully no prince at all, but a pauper peasant; that the real prince died when two and
one-half years old; that the death was concealed, and a peasant child smuggled into
the royal cradle, and that this present incumbent was that smuggled substitute. This is
the very material that so many oriental tales have been made of.

The case of that great prince, the Gaikwar of Baroda, is a reversal of the theme.
When that throne fell vacant, no heir could be found for some time, but at last one
was found in the person of a peasant child who was making mud pies in a village
street, and having an innocent good time. But his pedigree was straight; he was the
true prince, and he has reigned ever since, with none to dispute his right.

Lately there was another hunt for an heir to another princely house, and one was
found who was circumstanced about as the Gaikwar had been. His fathers were traced
back, in humble life, along a branch of the ancestral tree to the point where it joined
the stem fourteen generations ago, and his heirship was thereby squarely established.
The tracing was done by means of the records of one of the great Hindoo shrines,
where princes on pilgrimage record their names and the date of their visit. This is to
keep the prince's religious account straight, and his spiritual person safe; but the
record has the added value of keeping the pedigree authentic, too.

When I think of Bombay now, at this distance of time, I seem to have a kaleidoscope
at my eye; and I hear the clash of the glass bits as the splendid figures change, and fall
apart, and flash into new forms, figure after figure, and with the birth of each new
form I feel my skin crinkle and my nerve-web tingle with a new thrill of wonder and
delight. These remembered pictures float past me in a sequence of contracts;
following the same order always, and always whirling by and disappearing with the
swiftness of a dream, leaving me with the sense that the actuality was the experience
of an hour, at most, whereas it really covered days, I think.

The series begins with the hiring of a "bearer"—native man-servant—a person who
should be selected with some care, because as long as he is in your employ he will be
about as near to you as your clothes.

In India your day may be said to begin with the "bearer's" knock on the bedroom
door, accompanied by a formula of words—a formula which is intended to mean that
the bath is ready. It doesn't really seem to mean anything at all. But that is because
you are not used to "bearer" English. You will presently understand.

Where he gets his English is his own secret. There is nothing like it elsewhere in the
earth; or even in paradise, perhaps, but the other place is probably full of it. You hire
him as soon as you touch Indian soil; for no matter what your sex is, you cannot do
without him. He is messenger, valet, chambermaid, table-waiter, lady's maid, courier—
he is everything. He carries a coarse linen clothes-bag and a quilt; he sleeps on the
stone floor outside your chamber door, and gets his meals you do not know where nor
when; you only know that he is not fed on the premises, either when you are in a hotel
or when you are a guest in a private house. His wages are large—from an Indian point
of view—and he feeds and clothes himself out of them. We had three of him in two
and a half months. The first one's rate was thirty rupees a month that is to say, twenty-
seven cents a day; the rate of the others, Rs. 40 (40 rupees) a month. A princely sum;
for the native switchman on a railway and the native servant in a private family get
only Rs. 7 per month, and the farm-hand only 4. The two former feed and clothe
themselves and their families on their $1.90 per month; but I cannot believe that the
farmhand has to feed himself on his $1.08. I think the farm probably feeds him, and
that the whole of his wages, except a trifle for the priest, go to the support of his
family. That is, to the feeding of his family; for they live in a mud hut, hand-made, and,
doubtless, rent-free, and they wear no clothes; at least, nothing more than a rag. And
not much of a rag at that, in the case of the males. However, these are handsome
times for the farm-hand; he was not always the child of luxury that he is now. The
Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces, in a recent official utterance wherein he
was rebuking a native deputation for complaining of hard times, reminded them that
they could easily remember when a farm-hand's wages were only half a rupee (former
value) a month—that is to say, less than a cent a day; nearly $2.90 a year. If such a
wage-earner had a good deal of a family—and they all have that, for God is very good
to these poor natives in some ways—he would save a profit of fifteen cents, clean and
clear, out of his year's toil; I mean a frugal, thrifty person would, not one given to
display and ostentation. And if he owed $13.50 and took good care of his health, he
could pay it off in ninety years. Then he could hold up his head, and look his creditors
in the face again.

Think of these facts and what they mean. India does not consist of cities. There are
no cities in India—to speak of. Its stupendous population consists of farm-laborers.
India is one vast farm—one almost interminable stretch of fields with mud fences
between. . . Think of the above facts; and consider what an incredible aggregate of
poverty they place before you.

The first Bearer that applied, waited below and sent up his recommendations. That
was the first morning in Bombay. We read them over; carefully, cautiously,
thoughtfully. There was not a fault to find with them—except one; they were all from
Americans. Is that a slur? If it is, it is a deserved one. In my experience, an American's
recommendation of a servant is not usually valuable. We are too good-natured a race;
we hate to say the unpleasant thing; we shrink from speaking the unkind truth about a
poor fellow whose bread depends upon our verdict; so we speak of his good points
only, thus not scrupling to tell a lie—a silent lie—for in not mentioning his bad ones we
as good as say he hasn't any. The only difference that I know of between a silent lie
and a spoken one is, that the silent lie is a less respectable one than the other. And it
can deceive, whereas the other can't—as a rule. We not only tell the silent lie as to a
servant's faults, but we sin in another way: we overpraise his merits; for when it comes
to writing recommendations of servants we are a nation of gushers. And we have not
the Frenchman's excuse. In France you must give the departing servant a good
recommendation; and you must conceal his faults; you have no choice. If you mention
his faults for the protection of the next candidate for his services, he can sue you for
damages; and the court will award them, too; and, moreover, the judge will give you a
sharp dressing-down from the bench for trying to destroy a poor man's character, and
rob him of his bread. I do not state this on my own authority, I got it from a French
physician of fame and repute—a man who was born in Paris, and had practiced there
all his life. And he said that he spoke not merely from common knowledge, but from
exasperating personal experience.

As I was saying, the Bearer's recommendations were all from American tourists; and
St. Peter would have admitted him to the fields of the blest on them—I mean if he is as
unfamiliar with our people and our ways as I suppose he is. According to these
recommendations, Manuel X. was supreme in all the arts connected with his complex
trade; and these manifold arts were mentioned—and praised-in detail. His English was
spoken of in terms of warm admiration—admiration verging upon rapture. I took
pleased note of that, and hoped that some of it might be true.

We had to have some one right away; so the family went down stairs and took him a
week on trial; then sent him up to me and departed on their affairs. I was shut up in
my quarters with a bronchial cough, and glad to have something fresh to look at,
something new to play with. Manuel filled the bill; Manuel was very welcome. He was
toward fifty years old, tall, slender, with a slight stoop—an artificial stoop, a
deferential stoop, a stoop rigidified by long habit—with face of European mould; short
hair intensely black; gentle black eyes, timid black eyes, indeed; complexion very dark,
nearly black in fact; face smooth-shaven. He was bareheaded and barefooted, and was
never otherwise while his week with us lasted; his clothing was European, cheap,
flimsy, and showed much wear.

He stood before me and inclined his head (and body) in the pathetic Indian way,
touching his forehead with the finger-ends of his right hand, in salute. I said:

"Manuel, you are evidently Indian, but you seem to have a Spanish name when you
put it all together. How is that?"

A perplexed look gathered in his face; it was plain that he had not understood—but
he didn't let on. He spoke back placidly.

"Name, Manuel. Yes, master."

 "I know; but how did you get the name?"

"Oh, yes, I suppose. Think happen so. Father same name, not mother."

I saw that I must simplify my language and spread my words apart, if I would be
understood by this English scholar.

"Well—then—how—did—your—father—get—his name?"

"Oh, he,"—brightening a little—"he Christian—Portygee; live in Goa; I born Goa;

mother not Portygee, mother native-high-caste Brahmin—Coolin Brahmin; highest
caste; no other so high caste. I high-caste Brahmin, too. Christian, too, same like
father; high-caste Christian Brahmin, master—Salvation Army."

All this haltingly, and with difficulty. Then he had an inspiration, and began to pour
out a flood of words that I could make nothing of; so I said:

"There—don't do that. I can't understand Hindostani."

"Not Hindostani, master—English. Always I speaking English sometimes when I

talking every day all the time at you."

"Very well, stick to that; that is intelligible. It is not up to my hopes, it is not up to

the promise of the recommendations, still it is English, and I understand it. Don't
elaborate it; I don't like elaborations when they are crippled by uncertainty of touch."

"Master?"

"Oh, never mind; it was only a random thought; I didn't expect you to understand it.
How did you get your English; is it an acquirement, or just a gift of God?"

After some hesitation—piously:

"Yes, he very good. Christian god very good, Hindoo god very good, too. Two million
Hindoo god, one Christian god—make two million and one. All mine; two million and
one god. I got a plenty. Sometime I pray all time at those, keep it up, go all time every
day; give something at shrine, all good for me, make me better man; good for me,
good for my family, dam good."
 Then he had another inspiration, and went rambling off into fervent confusions and
incoherencies, and I had to stop him again. I thought we had talked enough, so I told
him to go to the bathroom and clean it up and remove the slops—this to get rid of
him. He went away, seeming to understand, and got out some of my clothes and
began to brush them. I repeated my desire several times, simplifying and re-simplifying
it, and at last he got the idea. Then he went away and put a coolie at the work, and
explained that he would lose caste if he did it himself; it would be pollution, by the law
of his caste, and it would cost him a deal of fuss and trouble to purify himself and
accomplish his rehabilitation. He said that that kind of work was strictly forbidden to
persons of caste, and as strictly restricted to the very bottom layer of Hindoo society—
the despised 'Sudra' (the toiler, the laborer). He was right; and apparently the poor
Sudra has been content with his strange lot, his insulting distinction, for ages and
ages—clear back to the beginning of things, so to speak. Buckle says that his name—
laborer—is a term of contempt; that it is ordained by the Institutes of Menu (900 B.C.)
that if a Sudra sit on a level with his superior he shall be exiled or branded—[Without
going into particulars I will remark that as a rule they wear no clothing that would
conceal the brand.—M. T.] . . . if he speak contemptuously of his superior or insult him
he shall suffer death; if he listen to the reading of the sacred books he shall have
burning oil poured in his ears; if he memorize passages from them he shall be killed; if
he marry his daughter to a Brahmin the husband shall go to hell for defiling himself by
contact with a woman so infinitely his inferior; and that it is forbidden to a Sudra to
acquire wealth. "The bulk of the population of India," says Bucklet—[Population to-
day, 300,000,000.]—"is the Sudras—the workers, the farmers, the creators of wealth."

Manuel was a failure, poor old fellow. His age was against him. He was desperately
slow and phenomenally forgetful. When he went three blocks on an errand he would
be gone two hours, and then forget what it was he went for. When he packed a trunk
it took him forever, and the trunk's contents were an unimaginable chaos when he got
done. He couldn't wait satisfactorily at table—a prime defect, for if you haven't your
own servant in an Indian hotel you are likely to have a slow time of it and go away
hungry. We couldn't understand his English; he couldn't understand ours; and when
we found that he couldn't understand his own, it seemed time for us to part. I had to
discharge him; there was no help for it. But I did it as kindly as I could, and as gently.
We must part, said I, but I hoped we should meet again in a better world. It was not
true, but it was only a little thing to say, and saved his feelings and cost me nothing.
 But now that he was gone, and was off my mind and heart, my spirits began to rise
at once, and I was soon feeling brisk and ready to go out and have adventures. Then
his newly-hired successor flitted in, touched his forehead, and began to fly around
here, there, and everywhere, on his velvet feet, and in five minutes he had everything
in the room "ship-shape and Bristol fashion," as the sailors say, and was standing at
the salute, waiting for orders. Dear me, what a rustler he was after the slumbrous way
of Manuel, poor old slug! All my heart, all my affection, all my admiration, went out
spontaneously to this frisky little forked black thing, this compact and compressed
incarnation of energy and force and promptness and celerity and confidence, this
smart, smily, engaging, shiney-eyed little devil, feruled on his upper end by a gleaming
fire-coal of a fez with a red-hot tassel dangling from it. I said, with deep satisfaction—

"You'll suit. What is your name?"

He reeled it mellowly off.

"Let me see if I can make a selection out of it—for business uses, I mean; we will
keep the rest for Sundays. Give it to me in installments."

He did it. But there did not seem to be any short ones, except Mousa—which
suggested mouse. It was out of character; it was too soft, too quiet, too conservative;
it didn't fit his splendid style. I considered, and said—

"Mousa is short enough, but I don't quite like it. It seems colorless—inharmonious—
inadequate; and I am sensitive to such things. How do you think Satan would do?"

"Yes, master. Satan do wair good."

It was his way of saying "very good."

There was a rap at the door. Satan covered the ground with a single skip; there was
a word or two of Hindostani, then he disappeared. Three minutes later he was before
me again, militarily erect, and waiting for me to speak first.

"What is it, Satan?"

"God want to see you."

"Who?"
 "God. I show him up, master?"

"Why, this is so unusual, that—that—well, you see indeed I am so unprepared—I

don't quite know what I do mean. Dear me, can't you explain? Don't you see that this
is a most ex——"

"Here his card, master."

Wasn't it curious—and amazing, and tremendous, and all that? Such a personage
going around calling on such as I, and sending up his card, like a mortal—sending it up
by Satan. It was a bewildering collision of the impossibles. But this was the land of the
Arabian Nights, this was India! and what is it that cannot happen in India?

We had the interview. Satan was right—the Visitor was indeed a God in the
conviction of his multitudinous followers, and was worshiped by them in sincerity and
humble adoration. They are troubled by no doubts as to his divine origin and office.
They believe in him, they pray to him, they make offerings to him, they beg of him
remission of sins; to them his person, together with everything connected with it, is
sacred; from his barber they buy the parings of his nails and set them in gold, and wear
them as precious amulets.

I tried to seem tranquilly conversational and at rest, but I was not. Would you have
been? I was in a suppressed frenzy of excitement and curiosity and glad wonder. I
could not keep my eyes off him. I was looking upon a god, an actual god, a recognized
and accepted god; and every detail of his person and his dress had a consuming
interest for me. And the thought went floating through my head, "He is worshiped—
think of it—he is not a recipient of the pale homage called compliment, wherewith the
highest human clay must make shift to be satisfied, but of an infinitely richer spiritual
food: adoration, worship!—men and women lay their cares and their griefs and their
broken hearts at his feet; and he gives them his peace; and they go away healed."

And just then the Awful Visitor said, in the simplest way—"There is a feature of the
philosophy of Huck Finn which"—and went luminously on with the construction of a
compact and nicely-discriminated literary verdict.

It is a land of surprises—India! I had had my ambitions—I had hoped, and almost

expected, to be read by kings and presidents and emperors—but I had never looked so
high as That. It would be false modesty to pretend that I was not inordinately pleased.
I was. I was much more pleased than I should have been with a compliment from a
man.

He remained half an hour, and I found him a most courteous and charming
gentleman. The godship has been in his family a good while, but I do not know how
long. He is a Mohammedan deity; by earthly rank he is a prince; not an Indian but a
Persian prince. He is a direct descendant of the Prophet's line. He is comely; also
young—for a god; not forty, perhaps not above thirty-five years old. He wears his
immense honors with tranquil grace, and with a dignity proper to his awful calling. He
speaks English with the ease and purity of a person born to it. I think I am not
overstating this. He was the only god I had ever seen, and I was very favorably
impressed. When he rose to say good-bye, the door swung open and I caught the flash
of a red fez, and heard these words, reverently said—

"Satan see God out?"

"Yes." And these mis-mated Beings passed from view Satan in the lead and The
Other following after.
 CHAPTER XL.

Few of us can stand prosperity. Another man's, I mean.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

The next picture in my mind is Government House, on Malabar Point, with the wide
sea-view from the windows and broad balconies; abode of His Excellency the Governor
of the Bombay Presidency—a residence which is European in everything but the native
guards and servants, and is a home and a palace of state harmoniously combined.

That was England, the English power, the English civilization, the modern
civilization—with the quiet elegancies and quiet colors and quiet tastes and quiet
dignity that are the outcome of the modern cultivation. And following it came a picture
of the ancient civilization of India—an hour in the mansion of a native prince: Kumar
Schri Samatsinhji Bahadur of the Palitana State.

The young lad, his heir, was with the prince; also, the lad's sister, a wee brown
sprite, very pretty, very serious, very winning, delicately moulded, costumed like the
daintiest butterfly, a dear little fairyland princess, gravely willing to be friendly with the
strangers, but in the beginning preferring to hold her father's hand until she could take
stock of them and determine how far they were to be trusted. She must have been
eight years old; so in the natural (Indian) order of things she would be a bride in three
or four years from now, and then this free contact with the sun and the air and the
other belongings of out-door nature and comradeship with visiting male folk would
end, and she would shut herself up in the zenana for life, like her mother, and by
inherited habit of mind would be happy in that seclusion and not look upon it as an
irksome restraint and a weary captivity.

The game which the prince amuses his leisure with—however, never mind it, I
should never be able to describe it intelligibly. I tried to get an idea of it while my wife
and daughter visited the princess in the zenana, a lady of charming graces and a fluent
speaker of English, but I did not make it out. It is a complicated game, and I believe it is
said that nobody can learn to play it well—but an Indian. And I was not able to learn
how to wind a turban. It seemed a simple art and easy; but that was a deception. It is a
piece of thin, delicate stuff a foot wide or more, and forty or fifty feet long; and the
exhibitor of the art takes one end of it in his two hands, and winds it in and out
intricately about his head, twisting it as he goes, and in a minute or two the thing is
finished, and is neat and symmetrical and fits as snugly as a mould.

We were interested in the wardrobe and the jewels, and in the silverware, and its
grace of shape and beauty and delicacy of ornamentation. The silverware is kept
locked up, except at meal-times, and none but the chief butler and the prince have
keys to the safe. I did not clearly understand why, but it was not for the protection of
the silver. It was either to protect the prince from the contamination which his caste
would suffer if the vessels were touched by low-caste hands, or it was to protect his
highness from poison. Possibly it was both. I believe a salaried taster has to taste
everything before the prince ventures it—an ancient and judicious custom in the East,
and has thinned out the tasters a good deal, for of course it is the cook that puts the
poison in. If I were an Indian prince I would not go to the expense of a taster, I would
eat with the cook.

Ceremonials are always interesting; and I noted that the Indian good-morning is a
ceremonial, whereas ours doesn't amount to that. In salutation the son reverently
touches the father's forehead with a small silver implement tipped with vermillion
paste which leaves a red spot there, and in return the son receives the father's
blessing. Our good morning is well enough for the rowdy West, perhaps, but would be
too brusque for the soft and ceremonious East.

After being properly necklaced, according to custom, with great garlands made of
yellow flowers, and provided with betel-nut to chew, this pleasant visit closed, and we
passed thence to a scene of a different sort: from this glow of color and this sunny life
to those grim receptacles of the Parsee dead, the Towers of Silence. There is
something stately about that name, and an impressiveness which sinks deep; the hush
of death is in it. We have the Grave, the Tomb, the Mausoleum, God's Acre, the
Cemetery; and association has made them eloquent with solemn meaning; but we
have no name that is so majestic as that one, or lingers upon the ear with such deep
and haunting pathos.

On lofty ground, in the midst of a paradise of tropical foliage and flowers, remote
from the world and its turmoil and noise, they stood—the Towers of Silence; and away
below was spread the wide groves of cocoa palms, then the city, mile on mile, then the
ocean with its fleets of creeping ships all steeped in a stillness as deep as the hush that
hallowed this high place of the dead. The vultures were there. They stood close
together in a great circle all around the rim of a massive low tower—waiting; stood as
motionless as sculptured ornaments, and indeed almost deceived one into the belief
that that was what they were. Presently there was a slight stir among the score of
persons present, and all moved reverently out of the path and ceased from talking. A
funeral procession entered the great gate, marching two and two, and moved silently
by, toward the Tower. The corpse lay in a shallow shell, and was under cover of a white
cloth, but was otherwise naked. The bearers of the body were separated by an interval
of thirty feet from the mourners. They, and also the mourners, were draped all in pure
white, and each couple of mourners was figuratively bound together by a piece of
white rope or a handkerchief—though they merely held the ends of it in their hands.
Behind the procession followed a dog, which was led in a leash. When the mourners
had reached the neighborhood of the Tower—neither they nor any other human being
but the bearers of the dead must approach within thirty feet of it—they turned and
went back to one of the prayer-houses within the gates, to pray for the spirit of their
dead. The bearers unlocked the Tower's sole door and disappeared from view within.
In a little while they came out bringing the bier and the white covering-cloth, and
locked the door again. Then the ring of vultures rose, flapping their wings, and
swooped down into the Tower to devour the body. Nothing was left of it but a clean-
picked skeleton when they flocked-out again a few minutes afterward.

The principle which underlies and orders everything connected with a Parsee funeral
is Purity. By the tenets of the Zoroastrian religion, the elements, Earth, Fire, and
Water, are sacred, and must not be contaminated by contact with a dead body. Hence
corpses must not be burned, neither must they be buried. None may touch the dead or
enter the Towers where they repose except certain men who are officially appointed
for that purpose. They receive high pay, but theirs is a dismal life, for they must live
apart from their species, because their commerce with the dead defiles them, and any
who should associate with them would share their defilement. When they come out of
the Tower the clothes they are wearing are exchanged for others, in a building within
the grounds, and the ones which they have taken off are left behind, for they are
contaminated, and must never be used again or suffered to go outside the grounds.
These bearers come to every funeral in new garments. So far as is known, no human
being, other than an official corpse-bearer—save one—has ever entered a Tower of
Silence after its consecration. Just a hundred years ago a European rushed in behind
the bearers and fed his brutal curiosity with a glimpse of the forbidden mysteries of
the place. This shabby savage's name is not given; his quality is also concealed. These
two details, taken in connection with the fact that for his extraordinary offense the
only punishment he got from the East India Company's Government was a solemn
official "reprimand"—suggest the suspicion that he was a European of consequence.
The same public document which contained the reprimand gave warning that future
offenders of his sort, if in the Company's service, would be dismissed; and if
merchants, suffer revocation of license and exile to England.

The Towers are not tall, but are low in proportion to their circumference, like a
gasometer. If you should fill a gasometer half way up with solid granite masonry, then
drive a wide and deep well down through the center of this mass of masonry, you
would have the idea of a Tower of Silence. On the masonry surrounding the well the
bodies lie, in shallow trenches which radiate like wheel-spokes from the well. The
trenches slant toward the well and carry into it the rainfall. Underground drains, with
charcoal filters in them, carry off this water from the bottom of the well.

When a skeleton has lain in the Tower exposed to the rain and the flaming sun a
month it is perfectly dry and clean. Then the same bearers that brought it there come
gloved and take it up with tongs and throw it into the well. There it turns to dust. It is
never seen again, never touched again, in the world. Other peoples separate their
dead, and preserve and continue social distinctions in the grave—the skeletons of
kings and statesmen and generals in temples and pantheons proper to skeletons of
their degree, and the skeletons of the commonplace and the poor in places suited to
their meaner estate; but the Parsees hold that all men rank alike in death—all are
humble, all poor, all destitute. In sign of their poverty they are sent to their grave
naked, in sign of their equality the bones of the rich, the poor, the illustrious and the
obscure are flung into the common well together. At a Parsee funeral there are no
vehicles; all concerned must walk, both rich and poor, howsoever great the distance to
be traversed may be. In the wells of the Five Towers of Silence is mingled the dust of
all the Parsee men and women and children who have died in Bombay and its vicinity
during the two centuries which have elapsed since the Mohammedan conquerors
drove the Parsees out of Persia, and into that region of India. The earliest of the five
towers was built by the Modi family something more than 200 years ago, and it is now
reserved to the heirs of that house; none but the dead of that blood are carried
thither.

The origin of at least one of the details of a Parsee funeral is not now known—the
presence of the dog. Before a corpse is borne from the house of mourning it must be
uncovered and exposed to the gaze of a dog; a dog must also be led in the rear of the
funeral. Mr. Nusserwanjee Byramjee, Secretary to the Parsee Punchayet, said that
these formalities had once had a meaning and a reason for their institution, but that
they were survivals whose origin none could now account for. Custom and tradition
continue them in force, antiquity hallows them. It is thought that in ancient times in
Persia the dog was a sacred animal and could guide souls to heaven; also that his eye
had the power of purifying objects which had been contaminated by the touch of the
dead; and that hence his presence with the funeral cortege provides an ever-
applicable remedy in case of need.

The Parsees claim that their method of disposing of the dead is an effective
protection of the living; that it disseminates no corruption, no impurities of any sort,
no disease-germs; that no wrap, no garment which has touched the dead is allowed to
touch the living afterward; that from the Towers of Silence nothing proceeds which
can carry harm to the outside world. These are just claims, I think. As a sanitary
measure, their system seems to be about the equivalent of cremation, and as sure. We
are drifting slowly—but hopefully—toward cremation in these days. It could not be
expected that this progress should be swift, but if it be steady and continuous, even if
slow, that will suffice. When cremation becomes the rule we shall cease to shudder at
it; we should shudder at burial if we allowed ourselves to think what goes on in the
grave.

The dog was an impressive figure to me, representing as he did a mystery whose key
is lost. He was humble, and apparently depressed; and he let his head droop pensively,
and looked as if he might be trying to call back to his mind what it was that he had
used to symbolize ages ago when he began his function. There was another impressive
thing close at hand, but I was not privileged to see it. That was the sacred fire—a fire
which is supposed to have been burning without interruption for more than two
centuries; and so, living by the same heat that was imparted to it so long ago.

The Parsees are a remarkable community. There are only about 60,000 in Bombay,
and only about half as many as that in the rest of India; but they make up in
importance what they lack in numbers. They are highly educated, energetic,
enterprising, progressive, rich, and the Jew himself is not more lavish or catholic in his
charities and benevolences. The Parsees build and endow hospitals, for both men and
animals; and they and their womenkind keep an open purse for all great and good
objects. They are a political force, and a valued support to the government. They have
a pure and lofty religion, and they preserve it in its integrity and order their lives by it.
 We took a final sweep of the wonderful view of plain and city and ocean, and so
ended our visit to the garden and the Towers of Silence; and the last thing I noticed
was another symbol—a voluntary symbol this one; it was a vulture standing on the
sawed-off top of a tall and slender and branchless palm in an open space in the
ground; he was perfectly motionless, and looked like a piece of sculpture on a pillar.
And he had a mortuary look, too, which was in keeping with the place.
 CHAPTER XLI.

There is an old-time toast which is golden for its beauty. "When you ascend the hill of
prosperity may you not meet a friend."

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

The next picture that drifts across the field of my memory is one which is connected
with religious things. We were taken by friends to see a Jain temple. It was small, and
had many flags or streamers flying from poles standing above its roof; and its little
battlements supported a great many small idols or images. Upstairs, inside, a solitary
Jain was praying or reciting aloud in the middle of the room. Our presence did not
interrupt him, nor even incommode him or modify his fervor. Ten or twelve feet in
front of him was the idol, a small figure in a sitting posture. It had the pinkish look of a
wax doll, but lacked the doll's roundness of limb and approximation to correctness of
form and justness of proportion. Mr. Gandhi explained every thing to us. He was
delegate to the Chicago Fair Congress of Religions. It was lucidly done, in masterly
English, but in time it faded from me, and now I have nothing left of that episode but
an impression: a dim idea of a religious belief clothed in subtle intellectual forms, lofty
and clean, barren of fleshly grossnesses; and with this another dim impression which
connects that intellectual system somehow with that crude image, that inadequate
idol—how, I do not know. Properly they do not seem to belong together. Apparently
the idol symbolized a person who had become a saint or a god through accessions of
steadily augmenting holiness acquired through a series of reincarnations and
promotions extending over many ages; and was now at last a saint and qualified to
vicariously receive worship and transmit it to heaven's chancellery. Was that it?

And thence we went to Mr. Premchand Roychand's bungalow, in Lovelane, Byculla,

where an Indian prince was to receive a deputation of the Jain community who desired
to congratulate him upon a high honor lately conferred upon him by his sovereign,
Victoria, Empress of India. She had made him a knight of the order of the Star of India.
It would seem that even the grandest Indian prince is glad to add the modest title "Sir"
to his ancient native grandeurs, and is willing to do valuable service to win it. He will
remit taxes liberally, and will spend money freely upon the betterment of the
condition of his subjects, if there is a knighthood to be gotten by it. And he will also do
good work and a deal of it to get a gun added to the salute allowed him by the British
Government. Every year the Empress distributes knighthoods and adds guns for public
services done by native princes. The salute of a small prince is three or four guns;
princes of greater consequence have salutes that run higher and higher, gun by gun,—
oh, clear away up to eleven; possibly more, but I did not hear of any above eleven-gun
princes. I was told that when a four-gun prince gets a gun added, he is pretty
troublesome for a while, till the novelty wears off, for he likes the music, and keeps
hunting up pretexts to get himself saluted. It may be that supremely grand folk, like
the Nyzam of Hyderabad and the Gaikwar of Baroda, have more than eleven guns, but
I don't know.

When we arrived at the bungalow, the large hall on the ground floor was already
about full, and carriages were still flowing into the grounds. The company present
made a fine show, an exhibition of human fireworks, so to speak, in the matters of
costume and comminglings of brilliant color. The variety of form noticeable in the
display of turbans was remarkable. We were told that the explanation of this was, that
this Jain delegation was drawn from many parts of India, and that each man wore the
turban that was in vogue in his own region. This diversity of turbans made a beautiful
effect.

I could have wished to start a rival exhibition there, of Christian hats and clothes. I
would have cleared one side of the room of its Indian splendors and repacked the
space with Christians drawn from America, England, and the Colonies, dressed in the
hats and habits of now, and of twenty and forty and fifty years ago. It would have been
a hideous exhibition, a thoroughly devilish spectacle. Then there would have been the
added disadvantage of the white complexion. It is not an unbearably unpleasant
complexion when it keeps to itself, but when it comes into competition with masses of
brown and black the fact is betrayed that it is endurable only because we are used to
it. Nearly all black and brown skins are beautiful, but a beautiful white skin is rare. How
rare, one may learn by walking down a street in Paris, New York, or London on a week-
day—particularly an unfashionable street—and keeping count of the satisfactory
complexions encountered in the course of a mile. Where dark complexions are
massed, they make the whites look bleached-out, unwholesome, and sometimes
frankly ghastly. I could notice this as a boy, down South in the slavery days before the
war. The splendid black satin skin of the South African Zulus of Durban seemed to me
to come very close to perfection. I can see those Zulus yet—'ricksha athletes waiting in
front of the hotel for custom; handsome and intensely black creatures, moderately
clothed in loose summer stuffs whose snowy whiteness made the black all the blacker
by contrast. Keeping that group in my mind, I can compare those complexions with the
white ones which are streaming past this London window now:
 A lady. Complexion, new parchment. Another lady. Complexion, old parchment.

Another. Pink and white, very fine.

Man. Grayish skin, with purple areas.

Man. Unwholesome fish-belly skin.

Girl. Sallow face, sprinkled with freckles.

Old woman. Face whitey-gray.

Young butcher. Face a general red flush.

Jaundiced man—mustard yellow.

Elderly lady. Colorless skin, with two conspicuous moles.

Elderly man—a drinker. Boiled-cauliflower nose in a flabby face veined with purple
crinklings.

Healthy young gentleman. Fine fresh complexion.

Sick young man. His face a ghastly white.

No end of people whose skins are dull and characterless modifications of the tint
which we miscall white. Some of these faces are pimply; some exhibit other signs of
diseased blood; some show scars of a tint out of a harmony with the surrounding
shades of color. The white man's complexion makes no concealments. It can't. It
seemed to have been designed as a catch-all for everything that can damage it. Ladies
have to paint it, and powder it, and cosmetic it, and diet it with arsenic, and enamel it,
and be always enticing it, and persuading it, and pestering it, and fussing at it, to make
it beautiful; and they do not succeed. But these efforts show what they think of the
natural complexion, as distributed. As distributed it needs these helps. The complexion
which they try to counterfeit is one which nature restricts to the few—to the very few.
To ninety-nine persons she gives a bad complexion, to the hundredth a good one. The
hundredth can keep it—how long? Ten years, perhaps.

The advantage is with the Zulu, I think. He starts with a beautiful complexion, and it
will last him through. And as for the Indian brown—firm, smooth, blemishless,
pleasant and restful to the eye, afraid of no color, harmonizing with all colors and
adding a grace to them all—I think there is no sort of chance for the average white
complexion against that rich and perfect tint.

To return to the bungalow. The most gorgeous costumes present were worn by
some children. They seemed to blaze, so bright were the colors, and so brilliant the
jewels strewing over the rich materials. These children were professional nautch-
dancers, and looked like girls, but they were boys. They got up by ones and twos and
fours, and danced and sang to an accompaniment of weird music. Their posturings and
gesturings were elaborate and graceful, but their voices were stringently raspy and
unpleasant, and there was a good deal of monotony about the tune.

By and by there was a burst of shouts and cheers outside and the prince with his
train entered in fine dramatic style. He was a stately man, he was ideally costumed,
and fairly festooned with ropes of gems; some of the ropes were of pearls, some were
of uncut great emeralds—emeralds renowned in Bombay for their quality and value.
Their size was marvelous, and enticing to the eye, those rocks. A boy—a princeling—
was with the prince, and he also was a radiant exhibition.

The ceremonies were not tedious. The prince strode to his throne with the port and
majesty—and the sternness—of a Julius Caesar coming to receive and receipt for a
back-country kingdom and have it over and get out, and no fooling. There was a throne
for the young prince, too, and the two sat there, side by side, with their officers
grouped at either hand and most accurately and creditably reproducing the pictures
which one sees in the books—pictures which people in the prince's line of business
have been furnishing ever since Solomon received the Queen of Sheba and showed her
his things. The chief of the Jain delegation read his paper of congratulations, then
pushed it into a beautifully engraved silver cylinder, which was delivered with
ceremony into the prince's hands and at once delivered by him without ceremony into
the hands of an officer. I will copy the address here. It is interesting, as showing what
an Indian prince's subject may have opportunity to thank him for in these days of
modern English rule, as contrasted with what his ancestor would have given them
opportunity to thank him for a century and a half ago—the days of freedom
unhampered by English interference. A century and a half ago an address of thanks
could have been put into small space. It would have thanked the prince—

1. For not slaughtering too many of his people upon mere caprice;
 2. For not stripping them bare by sudden and arbitrary tax levies, and bringing
famine upon them;

3. For not upon empty pretext destroying the rich and seizing their property;

4. For not killing, blinding, imprisoning, or banishing the relatives of the royal house
to protect the throne from possible plots;

5. For not betraying the subject secretly, for a bribe, into the hands of bands of
professional Thugs, to be murdered and robbed in the prince's back lot.

Those were rather common princely industries in the old times, but they and some
others of a harsh sort ceased long ago under English rule. Better industries have taken
their place, as this Address from the Jain community will show:

"Your Highness,—We the undersigned members of the Jain community of Bombay

have the pleasure to approach your Highness with the expression of our heartfelt
congratulations on the recent conference on your Highness of the Knighthood of the
Most Exalted Order of the Star of India. Ten years ago we had the pleasure and
privilege of welcoming your Highness to this city under circumstances which have made
a memorable epoch in the history of your State, for had it not been for a generous and
reasonable spirit that your Highness displayed in the negotiations between the Palitana
Durbar and the Jain community, the conciliatory spirit that animated our people could
not have borne fruit. That was the first step in your Highness's administration, and it
fitly elicited the praise of the Jain community, and of the Bombay Government. A
decade of your Highness's administration, combined with the abilities, training, and
acquirements that your Highness brought to bear upon it, has justly earned for your
Highness the unique and honourable distinction—the Knighthood of the Most Exalted
Order of the Star of India, which we understand your Highness is the first to enjoy
among Chiefs of your Highness's rank and standing. And we assure your Highness that
for this mark of honour that has been conferred on you by Her Most Gracious Majesty,
the Queen-Empress, we feel no less proud than your Highness. Establishment of
commercial factories, schools, hospitals, etc., by your Highness in your State has
marked your Highness's career during these ten years, and we trust that your Highness
will be spared to rule over your people with wisdom and foresight, and foster the many
reforms that your Highness has been pleased to introduce in your State. We again offer
your Highness our warmest felicitations for the honour that has been conferred on you.
We beg to remain your Highness's obedient servants."
 Factories, schools, hospitals, reforms. The prince propagates that kind of things in
the modern times, and gets knighthood and guns for it.

After the address the prince responded with snap and brevity; spoke a moment with
half a dozen guests in English, and with an official or two in a native tongue; then the
garlands were distributed as usual, and the function ended.
 CHAPTER XLII.

Each person is born to one possession which outvalues all his others—his last breath.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Toward midnight, that night, there was another function. This was a Hindoo
wedding—no, I think it was a betrothal ceremony. Always before, we had driven
through streets that were multitudinous and tumultuous with picturesque native life,
but now there was nothing of that. We seemed to move through a city of the dead.
There was hardly a suggestion of life in those still and vacant streets. Even the crows
were silent. But everywhere on the ground lay sleeping natives-hundreds and
hundreds. They lay stretched at full length and tightly wrapped in blankets, heads and
all. Their attitude and their rigidity counterfeited death.

The plague was not in Bombay then, but it is devastating the city now. The shops are
deserted, now, half of the people have fled, and of the remainder the smitten perish
by shoals every day. No doubt the city looks now in the daytime as it looked then at
night. When we had pierced deep into the native quarter and were threading its
narrow dim lanes, we had to go carefully, for men were stretched asleep all about and
there was hardly room to drive between them. And every now and then a swarm of
rats would scamper across past the horses' feet in the vague light—the forbears of the
rats that are carrying the plague from house to house in Bombay now. The shops were
but sheds, little booths open to the street; and the goods had been removed, and on
the counters families were sleeping, usually with an oil lamp present. Recurrent dead
watches, it looked like.

But at last we turned a corner and saw a great glare of light ahead. It was the home
of the bride, wrapped in a perfect conflagration of illuminations,—mainly gas-work
designs, gotten up specially for the occasion. Within was abundance of brilliancy—
flames, costumes, colors, decorations, mirrors—it was another Aladdin show.

The bride was a trim and comely little thing of twelve years, dressed as we would
dress a boy, though more expensively than we should do it, of course. She moved
about very much at her ease, and stopped and talked with the guests and allowed her
wedding jewelry to be examined. It was very fine. Particularly a rope of great
diamonds, a lovely thing to look at and handle. It had a great emerald hanging to it.
 The bridegroom was not present. He was having betrothal festivities of his own at
his father's house. As I understood it, he and the bride were to entertain company
every night and nearly all night for a week or more, then get married, if alive. Both of
the children were a little elderly, as brides and grooms go, in India—twelve; they ought
to have been married a year or two sooner; still to a stranger twelve seems quite
young enough.

A while after midnight a couple of celebrated and high-priced nautch-girls appeared

in the gorgeous place, and danced and sang. With them were men who played upon
strange instruments which made uncanny noises of a sort to make one's flesh creep.

One of these instruments was a pipe, and to its music the girls went through a
performance which represented snake charming. It seemed a doubtful sort of music to
charm anything with, but a native gentleman assured me that snakes like it and will
come out of their holes and listen to it with every evidence of refreshment and
gratitude. He said that at an entertainment in his grounds once, the pipe brought out
half a dozen snakes, and the music had to be stopped before they would be persuaded
to go. Nobody wanted their company, for they were bold, familiar, and dangerous; but
no one would kill them, of course, for it is sinful for a Hindoo to kill any kind of a
creature.

We withdrew from the festivities at two in the morning. Another picture, then—but
it has lodged itself in my memory rather as a stage-scene than as a reality. It is of a
porch and short flight of steps crowded with dark faces and ghostly-white draperies
flooded with the strong glare from the dazzling concentration of illuminations; and
midway of the steps one conspicuous figure for accent—a turbaned giant, with a name
according to his size: Rao Bahadur Baskirao Balinkanje Pitale, Vakeel to his Highness
the Gaikwar of Baroda. Without him the picture would not have been complete; and if
his name had been merely Smith, he wouldn't have answered. Close at hand on house-
fronts on both sides of the narrow street were illuminations of a kind commonly
employed by the natives—scores of glass tumblers (containing tapers) fastened a few
inches apart all over great latticed frames, forming starry constellations which showed
out vividly against their black backgrounds. As we drew away into the distance down
the dim lanes the illuminations gathered together into a single mass, and glowed out
of the enveloping darkness like a sun.

Then again the deep silence, the skurrying rats, the dim forms stretched everywhere
on the ground; and on either hand those open booths counterfeiting sepulchres, with
counterfeit corpses sleeping motionless in the flicker of the counterfeit death lamps.
And now, a year later, when I read the cablegrams I seem to be reading of what I
myself partly saw—saw before it happened—in a prophetic dream, as it were. One
cablegram says, "Business in the native town is about suspended. Except the wailing
and the tramp of the funerals. There is but little life or movement. The closed shops
exceed in number those that remain open." Another says that 325,000 of the people
have fled the city and are carrying the plague to the country. Three days later comes
the news, "The population is reduced by half." The refugees have carried the disease
to Karachi; "220 cases, 214 deaths." A day or two later, "52 fresh cases, all of which
proved fatal."

The plague carries with it a terror which no other disease can excite; for of all
diseases known to men it is the deadliest—by far the deadliest. "Fifty-two fresh
cases—all fatal." It is the Black Death alone that slays like that. We can all imagine,
after a fashion, the desolation of a plague-stricken city, and the stupor of stillness
broken at intervals by distant bursts of wailing, marking the passing of funerals, here
and there and yonder, but I suppose it is not possible for us to realize to ourselves the
nightmare of dread and fear that possesses the living who are present in such a place
and cannot get away. That half million fled from Bombay in a wild panic suggests to us
something of what they were feeling, but perhaps not even they could realize what the
half million were feeling whom they left stranded behind to face the stalking horror
without chance of escape. Kinglake was in Cairo many years ago during an epidemic of
the Black Death, and he has imagined the terrors that creep into a man's heart at such
a time and follow him until they themselves breed the fatal sign in the armpit, and
then the delirium with confused images, and home-dreams, and reeling billiard-tables,
and then the sudden blank of death:

"To the contagionist, filled as he is with the dread of final causes, having no faith in
destiny, nor in the fixed will of God, and with none of the devil-may-care indifference
which might stand him instead of creeds—to such one, every rag that shivers in the
breeze of a plague-stricken city has this sort of sublimity. If by any terrible ordinance he
be forced to venture forth, he sees death dangling from every sleeve; and, as he creeps
forward, he poises his shuddering limbs between the imminent jacket that is stabbing
at his right elbow and the murderous pelisse that threatens to mow him clean down as
it sweeps along on his left. But most of all he dreads that which most of all he should
love—the touch of a woman's dress; for mothers and wives, hurrying forth on kindly
errands from the bedsides of the dying, go slouching along through the streets more
willfully and less courteously than the men. For a while it may be that the caution of
the poor Levantine may enable him to avoid contact, but sooner or later, perhaps, the
dreaded chance arrives; that bundle of linen, with the dark tearful eyes at the top of it,
that labors along with the voluptuous clumsiness of Grisi—she has touched the poor
Levantine with the hem of her sleeve! From that dread moment his peace is gone; his
mind for ever hanging upon the fatal touch invites the blow which he fears; he watches
for the symptoms of plague so carefully, that sooner or later they come in truth. The
parched mouth is a sign—his mouth is parched; the throbbing brain—his brain does
throb; the rapid pulse—he touches his own wrist (for he dares not ask counsel of any
man lest he be deserted), he touches his wrist, and feels how his frighted blood goes
galloping out of his heart. There is nothing but the fatal swelling that is wanting to
make his sad conviction complete; immediately, he has an odd feel under the arm—no
pain, but a little straining of the skin; he would to God it were his fancy that were
strong enough to give him that sensation; this is the worst of all. It now seems to him
that he could be happy and contented with his parched mouth, and his throbbing brain,
and his rapid pulse, if only he could know that there were no swelling under the left
arm; but dares he try?—in a moment of calmness and deliberation he dares not; but
when for a while he has writhed under the torture of suspense, a sudden strength of
will drives him to seek and know his fate; he touches the gland, and finds the skin sane
and sound but under the cuticle there lies a small lump like a pistol-bullet, that moves
as he pushes it. Oh! but is this for all certainty, is this the sentence of death? Feel the
gland of the other arm. There is not the same lump exactly, yet something a little like it.
Have not some people glands naturally enlarged?—would to heaven he were one! So
he does for himself the work of the plague, and when the Angel of Death thus courted
does indeed and in truth come, he has only to finish that which has been so well begun;
he passes his fiery hand over the brain of the victim, and lets him rave for a season, but
all chance-wise, of people and things once dear, or of people and things indifferent.
Once more the poor fellow is back at his home in fair Provence, and sees the sundial
that stood in his childhood's garden—sees his mother, and the long-since forgotten
face of that little dear sister—(he sees her, he says, on a Sunday morning, for all the
church bells are ringing); he looks up and down through the universe, and owns it well
piled with bales upon bales of cotton, and cotton eternal—so much so that he feels—he
knows—he swears he could make that winning hazard, if the billiard-table would not
slant upwards, and if the cue were a cue worth playing with; but it is not—it's a cue
that won't move—his own arm won't move—in short, there's the devil to pay in the
brain of the poor Levantine; and perhaps, the next night but one he becomes the 'life
and the soul' of some squalling jackal family, who fish him out by the foot from his
shallow and sandy grave."
 CHAPTER XLIII.

Hunger is the handmaid of genius

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

One day during our stay in Bombay there was a criminal trial of a most interesting
sort, a terribly realistic chapter out of the "Arabian Nights," a strange mixture of
simplicities and pieties and murderous practicalities, which brought back the forgotten
days of Thuggee and made them live again; in fact, even made them believable. It was
a case where a young girl had been assassinated for the sake of her trifling ornaments,
things not worth a laborer's day's wages in America. This thing could have been done
in many other countries, but hardly with the cold business-like depravity, absence of
fear, absence of caution, destitution of the sense of horror, repentance, remorse,
exhibited in this case. Elsewhere the murderer would have done his crime secretly, by
night, and without witnesses; his fears would have allowed him no peace while the
dead body was in his neighborhood; he would not have rested until he had gotten it
safe out of the way and hidden as effectually as he could hide it. But this Indian
murderer does his deed in the full light of day, cares nothing for the society of
witnesses, is in no way incommoded by the presence of the corpse, takes his own time
about disposing of it, and the whole party are so indifferent, so phlegmatic, that they
take their regular sleep as if nothing was happening and no halters hanging over them;
and these five bland people close the episode with a religious service. The thing reads
like a Meadows-Taylor Thug-tale of half a century ago, as may be seen by the official
report of the trial:

"At the Mazagon Police Court yesterday, Superintendent Nolan again charged
Tookaram Suntoo Savat Baya, woman, her daughter Krishni, and Gopal Vithoo
Bhanayker, before Mr. Phiroze Hoshang Dastur, Fourth Presidency Magistrate, under
sections 302 and 109 of the Code, with having on the night of the 30th of December
last murdered a Hindoo girl named Cassi, aged 12, by strangulation, in the room of a
chawl at Jakaria Bunder, on the Sewriroad, and also with aiding and abetting each
other in the commission of the offense.

"Mr. F. A. Little, Public Prosecutor, conducted the case on behalf of the Crown, the
accused being undefended.
 "Mr. Little applied under the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code to tender
pardon to one of the accused, Krishni, woman, aged 22, on her undertaking to make a
true and full statement of facts under which the deceased girl Cassi was murdered.

"The Magistrate having granted the Public Prosecutor's application, the accused
Krishni went into the witness-box, and, on being examined by Mr. Little, made the
following confession:—I am a mill-hand employed at the Jubilee Mill. I recollect the day
(Tuesday); on which the body of the deceased Cassi was found. Previous to that I
attended the mill for half a day, and then returned home at 3 in the afternoon, when I
saw five persons in the house, viz.: the first accused Tookaram, who is my paramour,
my mother, the second accused Baya, the accused Gopal, and two guests named Ramji
Daji and Annaji Gungaram. Tookaram rented the room of the chawl situated at Jakaria
Bunder-road from its owner, Girdharilal Radhakishan, and in that room I, my
paramour, Tookaram, and his younger brother, Yesso Mahadhoo, live. Since his arrival
in Bombay from his native country Yesso came and lived with us. When I returned from
the mill on the afternoon of that day, I saw the two guests seated on a cot in the
veranda, and a few minutes after the accused Gopal came and took his seat by their
side, while I and my mother were seated inside the room. Tookaram, who had gone out
to fetch some 'pan' and betelnuts, on his return home had brought the two guests with
him. After returning home he gave them 'pan supari'. While they were eating it my
mother came out of the room and inquired of one of the guests, Ramji, what had
happened to his foot, when he replied that he had tried many remedies, but they had
done him no good. My mother then took some rice in her hand and prophesied that the
disease which Ramji was suffering from would not be cured until he returned to his
native country. In the meantime the deceased Casi came from the direction of an out-
house, and stood in front on the threshold of our room with a 'lota' in her hand.
Tookaram then told his two guests to leave the room, and they then went up the steps
towards the quarry. After the guests had gone away, Tookaram seized the deceased,
who had come into the room, and he afterwards put a waistband around her, and tied
her to a post which supports a loft. After doing this, he pressed the girl's throat, and,
having tied her mouth with the 'dhotur' (now shown in Court), fastened it to the post.
Having killed the girl, Tookaram removed her gold head ornament and a gold 'putlee',
and also took charge of her 'lota'. Besides these two ornaments Cassi had on her
person ear-studs, a nose-ring, some silver toe-rings, two necklaces, a pair of silver
anklets and bracelets. Tookaram afterwards tried to remove the silver amulets, the ear-
studs, and the nose-ring; but he failed in his attempt. While he was doing so, I, my
mother, and Gopal were present. After removing the two gold ornaments, he handed
them over to Gopal, who was at the time standing near me. When he killed Cassi,
Tookaram threatened to strangle me also if I informed any one of this. Gopal and
myself were then standing at the door of our room, and we both were threatened by
Tookaram. My mother, Baya, had seized the legs of the deceased at the time she was
killed, and whilst she was being tied to the post. Cassi then made a noise. Tookaram
and my mother took part in killing the girl. After the murder her body was wrapped up
in a mattress and kept on the loft over the door of our room. When Cassi was
strangled, the door of the room was fastened from the inside by Tookaram. This deed
was committed shortly after my return home from work in the mill. Tookaram put the
body of the deceased in the mattress, and, after it was left on the loft, he went to have
his head shaved by a barber named Sambhoo Raghoo, who lives only one door away
from me. My mother and myself then remained in the possession of the information. I
was slapped and threatened by my paramour, Tookaram, and that was the only reason
why I did not inform any one at that time. When I told Tookaram that I would give
information of the occurrence, he slapped me. The accused Gopal was asked by
Tookaram to go back to his room, and he did so, taking away with him the two gold
ornaments and the 'lota'. Yesso Mahadhoo, a brother-in-law of Tookaram, came to the
house and asked Tookaram why he was washing, the water-pipe being just opposite.
Tookaram replied that he was washing his dhotur, as a fowl had polluted it. About 6
o'clock of the evening of that day my mother gave me three pice and asked me to buy a
cocoanut, and I gave the money to Yessoo, who went and fetched a cocoanut and some
betel leaves. When Yessoo and others were in the room I was bathing, and, after I
finished my bath, my mother took the cocoanut and the betel leaves from Yessoo, and
we five went to the sea. The party consisted of Tookaram, my mother, Yessoo,
Tookaram's younger brother, and myself. On reaching the seashore, my mother made
the offering to the sea, and prayed to be pardoned for what we had done. Before we
went to the sea, some one came to inquire after the girl Cassi. The police and other
people came to make these inquiries both before and after we left the house for the
seashore. The police questioned my mother about the girl, and she replied that Cassi
had come to her door, but had left. The next day the police questioned Tookaram, and
he, too, gave a similar reply. This was said the same night when the search was made
for the girl. After the offering was made to the sea, we partook of the cocoanut and
returned home, when my mother gave me some food; but Tookaram did not partake of
any food that night. After dinner I and my mother slept inside the room, and Tookaram
slept on a cot near his brother-in-law, Yessoo Mahadhoo, just outside the door. That
was not the usual place where Tookaram slept. He usually slept inside the room. The
body of the deceased remained on the loft when I went to sleep. The room in which we
slept was locked, and I heard that my paramour, Tookaram, was restless outside.
About 3 o'clock the following morning Tookaram knocked at the door, when both
myself and my mother opened it. He then told me to go to the steps leading to the
quarry, and see if any one was about. Those steps lead to a stable, through which we
go to the quarry at the back of the compound. When I got to the steps I saw no one
there. Tookaram asked me if any one was there, and I replied that I could see no one
about. He then took the body of the deceased from the loft, and having wrapped it up
in his saree, asked me to accompany him to the steps of the quarry, and I did so. The
'saree' now produced here was the same. Besides the 'saree', there was also a 'cholee'
on the body. He then carried the body in his arms, and went up the steps, through the
stable, and then to the right hand towards a Sahib's bungalow, where Tookaram
placed the body near a wall. All the time I and my mother were with him. When the
body was taken down, Yessoo was lying on the cot. After depositing the body under the
wall, we all returned home, and soon after 5 a.m. the police again came and took
Tookaram away. About an hour after they returned and took me and my mother away.
We were questioned about it, when I made a statement. Two hours later I was taken to
the room, and I pointed out this waistband, the 'dhotur', the mattress, and the wooden
post to Superintendent Nolan and Inspectors Roberts and Rashanali, in the presence of
my mother and Tookaram. Tookaram killed the girl Cassi for her ornaments, which he
wanted for the girl to whom he was shortly going to be married. The body was found in
the same place where it was deposited by Tookaram."

The criminal side of the native has always been picturesque, always readable. The
Thuggee and one or two other particularly outrageous features of it have been
suppressed by the English, but there is enough of it left to keep it darkly interesting.
One finds evidence of these survivals in the newspapers. Macaulay has a light-throwing
passage upon this matter in his great historical sketch of Warren Hastings, where he is
describing some effects which followed the temporary paralysis of Hastings' powerful
government brought about by Sir Philip Francis and his party:

"The natives considered Hastings as a fallen man; and they acted after their kind.
Some of our readers may have seen, in India, a cloud of crows pecking a sick vulture to
death—no bad type of what happens in that country as often as fortune deserts one
who has been great and dreaded. In an instant all the sycophants, who had lately been
ready to lie for him, to forge for him, to pander for him, to poison for him, hasten to
purchase the favor of his victorious enemies by accusing him. An Indian government
has only to let it be understood that it wishes a particular man to be ruined, and in
twenty-four hours it will be furnished with grave charges, supported by depositions so
full and circumstantial that any person unaccustomed to Asiatic mendacity would
regard them as decisive. It is well if the signature of the destined victim is not
counterfeited at the foot of some illegal compact, and if some treasonable paper is not
slipped into a hiding-place in his house."

That was nearly a century and a quarter ago. An article in one of the chief journals of
India (the Pioneer) shows that in some respects the native of to-day is just what his
ancestor was then. Here are niceties of so subtle and delicate a sort that they lift their
breed of rascality to a place among the fine arts, and almost entitle it to respect:

"The records of the Indian courts might certainly be relied upon to prove that
swindlers as a class in the East come very close to, if they do not surpass, in brilliancy of
execution and originality of design the most expert of their fraternity in Europe and
America. India in especial is the home of forgery. There are some particular districts
which are noted as marts for the finest specimens of the forger's handiwork. The
business is carried on by firms who possess stores of stamped papers to suit every
emergency. They habitually lay in a store of fresh stamped papers every year, and some
of the older and more thriving houses can supply documents for the past forty years,
bearing the proper water-mark and possessing the genuine appearance of age. Other
districts have earned notoriety for skilled perjury, a pre-eminence that excites a
respectful admiration when one thinks of the universal prevalence of the art, and
persons desirous of succeeding in false suits are ready to pay handsomely to avail
themselves of the services of these local experts as witnesses."

Various instances illustrative of the methods of these swindlers are given. They
exhibit deep cunning and total depravity on the part of the swindler and his pals, and
more obtuseness on the part of the victim than one would expect to find in a country
where suspicion of your neighbor must surely be one of the earliest things learned.
The favorite subject is the young fool who has just come into a fortune and is trying to
see how poor a use he can put it to. I will quote one example:

"Sometimes another form of confidence trick is adopted, which is invariably

successful. The particular pigeon is spotted, and, his acquaintance having been made,
he is encouraged in every form of vice. When the friendship is thoroughly established,
the swindler remarks to the young man that he has a brother who has asked him to
lend him Rs.10,000. The swindler says he has the money and would lend it; but, as the
borrower is his brother, he cannot charge interest. So he proposes that he should hand
the dupe the money, and the latter should lend it to the swindler's brother, exacting a
heavy pre-payment of interest which, it is pointed out, they may equally enjoy in
dissipation. The dupe sees no objection, and on the appointed day receives Rs.7,000
from the swindler, which he hands over to the confederate. The latter is profuse in his
thanks, and executes a promissory note for Rs.10,000, payable to bearer. The swindler
allows the scheme to remain quiescent for a time, and then suggests that, as the
money has not been repaid and as it would be unpleasant to sue his brother, it would
be better to sell the note in the bazaar. The dupe hands the note over, for the money he
advanced was not his, and, on being informed that it would be necessary to have his
signature on the back so as to render the security negotiable, he signs without any
hesitation. The swindler passes it on to confederates, and the latter employ a
respectable firm of solicitors to ask the dupe if his signature is genuine. He admits it at
once, and his fate is sealed. A suit is filed by a confederate against the dupe, two
accomplices being made co-defendants. They admit their Signatures as indorsers, and
the one swears he bought the note for value from the dupe The latter has no defense,
for no court would believe the apparently idle explanation of the manner in which he
came to endorse the note."

There is only one India! It is the only country that has a monopoly of grand and
imposing specialties. When another country has a remarkable thing, it cannot have it
all to itself—some other country has a duplicate. But India—that is different. Its
marvels are its own; the patents cannot be infringed; imitations are not possible. And
think of the size of them, the majesty of them, the weird and outlandish character of
the most of them!

There is the Plague, the Black Death: India invented it; India is the cradle of that
mighty birth.

The Car of Juggernaut was India's invention.

So was the Suttee; and within the time of men still living eight hundred widows
willingly, and, in fact, rejoicingly, burned themselves to death on the bodies of their
dead husbands in a single year. Eight hundred would do it this year if the British
government would let them.

Famine is India's specialty. Elsewhere famines are inconsequential incidents—in

India they are devastating cataclysms; in one case they annihilate hundreds; in the
other, millions.
 India has 2,000,000 gods, and worships them all. In religion all other countries are
paupers; India is the only millionaire.

With her everything is on a giant scale—even her poverty; no other country can
show anything to compare with it. And she has been used to wealth on so vast a scale
that she has to shorten to single words the expressions describing great sums. She
describes 100,000 with one word—a 'lahk'; she describes ten millions with one word—
a 'crore'.

In the bowels of the granite mountains she has patiently carved out dozens of vast
temples, and made them glorious with sculptured colonnades and stately groups of
statuary, and has adorned the eternal walls with noble paintings. She has built
fortresses of such magnitude that the show-strongholds of the rest of the world are
but modest little things by comparison; palaces that are wonders for rarity of
materials, delicacy and beauty of workmanship, and for cost; and one tomb which men
go around the globe to see. It takes eighty nations, speaking eighty languages, to
people her, and they number three hundred millions.

On top of all this she is the mother and home of that wonder of wonders—caste—
and of that mystery of mysteries, the satanic brotherhood of the Thugs.

India had the start of the whole world in the beginning of things. She had the first
civilization; she had the first accumulation of material wealth; she was populous with
deep thinkers and subtle intellects; she had mines, and woods, and a fruitful soil. It
would seem as if she should have kept the lead, and should be to-day not the meek
dependent of an alien master, but mistress of the world, and delivering law and
command to every tribe and nation in it. But, in truth, there was never any possibility
of such supremacy for her. If there had been but one India and one language—but
there were eighty of them! Where there are eighty nations and several hundred
governments, fighting and quarreling must be the common business of life; unity of
purpose and policy are impossible; out of such elements supremacy in the world
cannot come. Even caste itself could have had the defeating effect of a multiplicity of
tongues, no doubt; for it separates a people into layers, and layers, and still other
layers, that have no community of feeling with each other; and in such a condition of
things as that, patriotism can have no healthy growth.

It was the division of the country into so many States and nations that made
Thuggee possible and prosperous. It is difficult to realize the situation. But perhaps one
may approximate it by imagining the States of our Union peopled by separate nations,
speaking separate languages, with guards and custom-houses strung along all
frontiers, plenty of interruptions for travelers and traders, interpreters able to handle
all the languages very rare or non-existent, and a few wars always going on here and
there and yonder as a further embarrassment to commerce and excursioning. It would
make intercommunication in a measure ungeneral. India had eighty languages, and
more custom-houses than cats. No clever man with the instinct of a highway robber
could fail to notice what a chance for business was here offered. India was full of
clever men with the highwayman instinct, and so, quite naturally, the brotherhood of
the Thugs came into being to meet the long-felt want.

How long ago that was nobody knows—centuries, it is supposed. One of the chiefest
wonders connected with it was the success with which it kept its secret. The English
trader did business in India two hundred years and more before he ever heard of it;
and yet it was assassinating its thousands all around him every year, the whole time.
 CHAPTER XLIV.

The old saw says, "Let a sleeping dog lie." Right.... Still, when there is much at stake
it is better to get a newspaper to do it.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

FROM DIARY:

January 28. I learned of an official Thug-book the other day. I was not aware before
that there was such a thing. I am allowed the temporary use of it. We are making
preparations for travel. Mainly the preparations are purchases of bedding. This is to be
used in sleeping berths in the trains; in private houses sometimes; and in nine-tenths
of the hotels. It is not realizable; and yet it is true. It is a survival; an apparently
unnecessary thing which in some strange way has outlived the conditions which once
made it necessary. It comes down from a time when the railway and the hotel did not
exist; when the occasional white traveler went horseback or by bullock-cart, and
stopped over night in the small dak-bungalow provided at easy distances by the
government—a shelter, merely, and nothing more. He had to carry bedding along, or
do without. The dwellings of the English residents are spacious and comfortable and
commodiously furnished, and surely it must be an odd sight to see half a dozen guests
come filing into such a place and dumping blankets and pillows here and there and
everywhere. But custom makes incongruous things congruous.

One buys the bedding, with waterproof hold-all for it at almost any shop—there is
no difficulty about it.

January 30. What a spectacle the railway station was, at train-time! It was a very
large station, yet when we arrived it seemed as if the whole world was present—half
of it inside, the other half outside, and both halves, bearing mountainous head-loads
of bedding and other freight, trying simultaneously to pass each other, in opposing
floods, in one narrow door. These opposing floods were patient, gentle, long-suffering
natives, with whites scattered among them at rare intervals; and wherever a white
man's native servant appeared, that native seemed to have put aside his natural
gentleness for the time and invested himself with the white man's privilege of making
a way for himself by promptly shoving all intervening black things out of it. In these
exhibitions of authority Satan was scandalous. He was probably a Thug in one of his
former incarnations.
 Inside the great station, tides upon tides of rainbow-costumed natives swept along,
this way and that, in massed and bewildering confusion, eager, anxious, belated,
distressed; and washed up to the long trains and flowed into them with their packs
and bundles, and disappeared, followed at once by the next wash, the next wave. And
here and there, in the midst of this hurly-burly, and seemingly undisturbed by it, sat
great groups of natives on the bare stone floor,—young, slender brown women, old,
gray wrinkled women, little soft brown babies, old men, young men, boys; all poor
people, but all the females among them, both big and little, bejeweled with cheap and
showy nose-rings, toe-rings, leglets, and armlets, these things constituting all their
wealth, no doubt. These silent crowds sat there with their humble bundles and baskets
and small household gear about them, and patiently waited—for what? A train that
was to start at some time or other during the day or night! They hadn't timed
themselves well, but that was no matter—the thing had been so ordered from on high,
therefore why worry? There was plenty of time, hours and hours of it, and the thing
that was to happen would happen—there was no hurrying it.

The natives traveled third class, and at marvelously cheap rates. They were packed
and crammed into cars that held each about fifty; and it was said that often a Brahmin
of the highest caste was thus brought into personal touch, and consequent defilement,
with persons of the lowest castes—no doubt a very shocking thing if a body could
understand it and properly appreciate it. Yes, a Brahmin who didn't own a rupee and
couldn't borrow one, might have to touch elbows with a rich hereditary lord of inferior
caste, inheritor of an ancient title a couple of yards long, and he would just have to
stand it; for if either of the two was allowed to go in the cars where the sacred white
people were, it probably wouldn't be the august poor Brahmin. There was an immense
string of those third-class cars, for the natives travel by hordes; and a weary hard night
of it the occupants would have, no doubt.

When we reached our car, Satan and Barney had already arrived there with their
train of porters carrying bedding and parasols and cigar boxes, and were at work. We
named him Barney for short; we couldn't use his real name, there wasn't time.

It was a car that promised comfort; indeed, luxury. Yet the cost of it—well, economy
could no further go; even in France; not even in Italy. It was built of the plainest and
cheapest partially-smoothed boards, with a coating of dull paint on them, and there
was nowhere a thought of decoration. The floor was bare, but would not long remain
so when the dust should begin to fly. Across one end of the compartment ran a netting
for the accommodation of hand-baggage; at the other end was a door which would
shut, upon compulsion, but wouldn't stay shut; it opened into a narrow little closet
which had a wash-bowl in one end of it, and a place to put a towel, in case you had
one with you—and you would be sure to have towels, because you buy them with the
bedding, knowing that the railway doesn't furnish them. On each side of the car, and
running fore and aft, was a broad leather-covered sofa to sit on in the day and sleep on
at night. Over each sofa hung, by straps, a wide, flat, leather-covered shelf—to sleep
on. In the daytime you can hitch it up against the wall, out of the way—and then you
have a big unencumbered and most comfortable room to spread out in. No car in any
country is quite its equal for comfort (and privacy) I think. For usually there are but two
persons in it; and even when there are four there is but little sense of impaired privacy.
Our own cars at home can surpass the railway world in all details but that one: they
have no cosiness; there are too many people together.

At the foot of each sofa was a side-door, for entrance and exit. Along the whole
length of the sofa on each side of the car ran a row of large single-plate windows, of a
blue tint—blue to soften the bitter glare of the sun and protect one's eyes from
torture. These could be let down out of the way when one wanted the breeze. In the
roof were two oil lamps which gave a light strong enough to read by; each had a green-
cloth attachment by which it could be covered when the light should be no longer
needed.

While we talked outside with friends, Barney and Satan placed the hand-baggage,
books, fruits, and soda-bottles in the racks, and the hold-alls and heavy baggage in the
closet, hung the overcoats and sun-helmets and towels on the hooks, hoisted the two
bed-shelves up out of the way, then shouldered their bedding and retired to the third
class.

Now then, you see what a handsome, spacious, light, airy, homelike place it was,
wherein to walk up and down, or sit and write, or stretch out and read and smoke. A
central door in the forward end of the compartment opened into a similar
compartment. It was occupied by my wife and daughter. About nine in the evening,
while we halted a while at a station, Barney and Satan came and undid the clumsy big
hold-alls, and spread the bedding on the sofas in both compartments—mattresses,
sheets, gay coverlets, pillows, all complete; there are no chambermaids in India—
apparently it was an office that was never heard of. Then they closed the
communicating door, nimbly tidied up our place, put the night-clothing on the beds
and the slippers under them, then returned to their own quarters.

January 31. It was novel and pleasant, and I stayed awake as long as I could, to enjoy
it, and to read about those strange people the Thugs. In my sleep they remained with
me, and tried to strangle me. The leader of the gang was that giant Hindoo who was
such a picture in the strong light when we were leaving those Hindoo betrothal
festivities at two o'clock in the morning—Rao Bahadur Baskirao Balinkanje Pitale,
Vakeel to the Gaikwar of Baroda. It was he that brought me the invitation from his
master to go to Baroda and lecture to that prince—and now he was misbehaving in my
dreams. But all things can happen in dreams. It is indeed as the Sweet Singer of
Michigan says—irrelevantly, of course, for the one and unfailing great quality which
distinguishes her poetry from Shakespeare's and makes it precious to us is its stern and
simple irrelevancy:

My heart was gay and happy,

This was ever in my mind,

There is better times a coming,

And I hope some day to find

Myself capable of composing,

It was my heart's delight

To compose on a sentimental subject

If it came in my mind just right.

—["The Sentimental Song Book," p. 49; theme, "The Author's Early Life," 19th
stanza.]

Barroda. Arrived at 7 this morning. The dawn was just beginning to show. It was
forlorn to have to turn out in a strange place at such a time, and the blinking lights in
the station made it seem night still. But the gentlemen who had come to receive us
were there with their servants, and they make quick work; there was no lost time. We
were soon outside and moving swiftly through the soft gray light, and presently were
comfortably housed—with more servants to help than we were used to, and with
rather embarassingly important officials to direct them. But it was custom; they spoke
Ballarat English, their bearing was charming and hospitable, and so all went well.

Breakfast was a satisfaction. Across the lawns was visible in the distance through the
open window an Indian well, with two oxen tramping leisurely up and down long
inclines, drawing water; and out of the stillness came the suffering screech of the
machinery—not quite musical, and yet soothingly melancholy and dreamy and
reposeful—a wail of lost spirits, one might imagine. And commemorative and
reminiscent, perhaps; for of course the Thugs used to throw people down that well
when they were done with them.

After breakfast the day began, a sufficiently busy one. We were driven by winding
roads through a vast park, with noble forests of great trees, and with tangles and
jungles of lovely growths of a humbler sort; and at one place three large gray apes
came out and pranced across the road—a good deal of a surprise and an unpleasant
one, for such creatures belong in the menagerie, and they look artificial and out of
place in a wilderness.

We came to the city, by and by, and drove all through it. Intensely Indian, it was, and
crumbly, and mouldering, and immemorially old, to all appearance. And the houses—
oh, indescribably quaint and curious they were, with their fronts an elaborate lace-
work of intricate and beautiful wood-carving, and now and then further adorned with
rude pictures of elephants and princes and gods done in shouting colors; and all the
ground floors along these cramped and narrow lanes occupied as shops—shops
unbelievably small and impossibly packed with merchantable rubbish, and with nine-
tenths-naked natives squatting at their work of hammering, pounding, brazing,
soldering, sewing, designing, cooking, measuring out grain, grinding it, repairing idols—
and then the swarm of ragged and noisy humanity under the horses' feet and
everywhere, and the pervading reek and fume and smell! It was all wonderful and
delightful.

Imagine a file of elephants marching through such a crevice of a street and scraping
the paint off both sides of it with their hides. How big they must look, and how little
they must make the houses look; and when the elephants are in their glittering court
costume, what a contrast they must make with the humble and sordid surroundings.
And when a mad elephant goes raging through, belting right and left with his trunk,
how do these swarms of people get out of the way? I suppose it is a thing which
happens now and then in the mad season (for elephants have a mad season).

I wonder how old the town is. There are patches of building—massive structures,
monuments, apparently—that are so battered and worn, and seemingly so tired and
so burdened with the weight of age, and so dulled and stupefied with trying to
remember things they forgot before history began, that they give one the feeling that
they must have been a part of original Creation. This is indeed one of the oldest of the
princedoms of India, and has always been celebrated for its barbaric pomps and
splendors, and for the wealth of its princes.
 CHAPTER XLV.

It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart; the
one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Out of the town again; a long drive through open country, by winding roads among
secluded villages nestling in the inviting shade of tropic vegetation, a Sabbath stillness
everywhere, sometimes a pervading sense of solitude, but always barefoot natives
gliding by like spirits, without sound of footfall, and others in the distance dissolving
away and vanishing like the creatures of dreams. Now and then a string of stately
camels passed by—always interesting things to look at—and they were velvet-shod by
nature, and made no noise. Indeed, there were no noises of any sort in this paradise.
Yes, once there was one, for a moment: a file of native convicts passed along in charge
of an officer, and we caught the soft clink of their chains. In a retired spot, resting
himself under a tree, was a holy person—a naked black fakeer, thin and skinny, and
whitey-gray all over with ashes.

By and by to the elephant stables, and I took a ride; but it was by request—I did not
ask for it, and didn't want it; but I took it, because otherwise they would have thought I
was afraid, which I was. The elephant kneels down, by command—one end of him at a
time—and you climb the ladder and get into the howdah, and then he gets up, one
end at a time, just as a ship gets up over a wave; and after that, as he strides
monstrously about, his motion is much like a ship's motion. The mahout bores into the
back of his head with a great iron prod and you wonder at his temerity and at the
elephant's patience, and you think that perhaps the patience will not last; but it does,
and nothing happens. The mahout talks to the elephant in a low voice all the time, and
the elephant seems to understand it all and to be pleased with it; and he obeys every
order in the most contented and docile way. Among these twenty-five elephants were
two which were larger than any I had ever seen before, and if I had thought I could
learn to not be afraid, I would have taken one of them while the police were not
looking.

In the howdah-house there were many howdahs that were made of silver, one of
gold, and one of old ivory, and equipped with cushions and canopies of rich and costly
stuffs. The wardrobe of the elephants was there, too; vast velvet covers stiff and heavy
with gold embroidery; and bells of silver and gold; and ropes of these metals for
fastening the things on—harness, so to speak; and monster hoops of massive gold for
the elephant to wear on his ankles when he is out in procession on business of state.

But we did not see the treasury of crown jewels, and that was a disappointment, for
in mass and richness it ranks only second in India. By mistake we were taken to see the
new palace instead, and we used up the last remnant of our spare time there. It was a
pity, too; for the new palace is mixed modern American-European, and has not a merit
except costliness. It is wholly foreign to India, and impudent and out of place. The
architect has escaped. This comes of overdoing the suppression of the Thugs; they had
their merits. The old palace is oriental and charming, and in consonance with the
country. The old palace would still be great if there were nothing of it but the spacious
and lofty hall where the durbars are held. It is not a good place to lecture in, on
account of the echoes, but it is a good place to hold durbars in and regulate the affairs
of a kingdom, and that is what it is for. If I had it I would have a durbar every day,
instead of once or twice a year.

The prince is an educated gentleman. His culture is European. He has been in Europe
five times. People say that this is costly amusement for him, since in crossing the sea
he must sometimes be obliged to drink water from vessels that are more or less public,
and thus damage his caste. To get it purified again he must make pilgrimage to some
renowned Hindoo temples and contribute a fortune or two to them. His people are like
the other Hindoos, profoundly religious; and they could not be content with a master
who was impure.

We failed to see the jewels, but we saw the gold cannon and the silver one—they
seemed to be six-pounders. They were not designed for business, but for salutes upon
rare and particularly important state occasions. An ancestor of the present Gaikwar
had the silver one made, and a subsequent ancestor had the gold one made, in order
to outdo him.

This sort of artillery is in keeping with the traditions of Baroda, which was of old
famous for style and show. It used to entertain visiting rajahs and viceroys with tiger-
fights, elephant-fights, illuminations, and elephant-processions of the most glittering
and gorgeous character.

It makes the circus a pale, poor thing.

 In the train, during a part of the return journey from Baroda, we had the company of
a gentleman who had with him a remarkable looking dog. I had not seen one of its kind
before, as far as I could remember; though of course I might have seen one and not
noticed it, for I am not acquainted with dogs, but only with cats. This dog's coat was
smooth and shiny and black, and I think it had tan trimmings around the edges of the
dog, and perhaps underneath. It was a long, low dog, with very short, strange legs—
legs that curved inboard, something like parentheses turned the wrong way (. Indeed,
it was made on the plan of a bench for length and lowness. It seemed to be satisfied,
but I thought the plan poor, and structurally weak, on account of the distance between
the forward supports and those abaft. With age the dog's back was likely to sag; and it
seemed to me that it would have been a stronger and more practicable dog if it had
had some more legs. It had not begun to sag yet, but the shape of the legs showed that
the undue weight imposed upon them was beginning to tell. It had a long nose, and
floppy ears that hung down, and a resigned expression of countenance. I did not like to
ask what kind of a dog it was, or how it came to be deformed, for it was plain that the
gentleman was very fond of it, and naturally he could be sensitive about it. From
delicacy I thought it best not to seem to notice it too much. No doubt a man with a dog
like that feels just as a person does who has a child that is out of true. The gentleman
was not merely fond of the dog, he was also proud of it—just the same again, as a
mother feels about her child when it is an idiot. I could see that he was proud of it,
not-withstanding it was such a long dog and looked so resigned and pious. It had been
all over the world with him, and had been pilgriming like that for years and years. It
had traveled 50,000 miles by sea and rail, and had ridden in front of him on his horse
8,000. It had a silver medal from the Geographical Society of Great Britain for its
travels, and I saw it. It had won prizes in dog shows, both in India and in England—I
saw them. He said its pedigree was on record in the Kennel Club, and that it was a
well-known dog. He said a great many people in London could recognize it the
moment they saw it. I did not say anything, but I did not think it anything strange; I
should know that dog again, myself, yet I am not careful about noticing dogs. He said
that when he walked along in London, people often stopped and looked at the dog. Of
course I did not say anything, for I did not want to hurt his feelings, but I could have
explained to him that if you take a great long low dog like that and waddle it along the
street anywhere in the world and not charge anything, people will stop and look. He
was gratified because the dog took prizes. But that was nothing; if I were built like that
I could take prizes myself. I wished I knew what kind of a dog it was, and what it was
for, but I could not very well ask, for that would show that I did not know. Not that I
want a dog like that, but only to know the secret of its birth.
 I think he was going to hunt elephants with it, because I know, from remarks
dropped by him, that he has hunted large game in India and Africa, and likes it. But I
think that if he tries to hunt elephants with it, he is going to be disappointed.

I do not believe that it is suited for elephants. It lacks energy, it lacks force of
character, it lacks bitterness. These things all show in the meekness and resignation of
its expression. It would not attack an elephant, I am sure of it. It might not run if it saw
one coming, but it looked to me like a dog that would sit down and pray.

I wish he had told me what breed it was, if there are others; but I shall know the dog
next time, and then if I can bring myself to it I will put delicacy aside and ask. If I seem
strangely interested in dogs, I have a reason for it; for a dog saved me from an
embarrassing position once, and that has made me grateful to these animals; and if by
study I could learn to tell some of the kinds from the others, I should be greatly
pleased. I only know one kind apart, yet, and that is the kind that saved me that time. I
always know that kind when I meet it, and if it is hungry or lost I take care of it. The
matter happened in this way:

It was years and years ago. I had received a note from Mr. Augustin Daly of the Fifth
Avenue Theatre, asking me to call the next time I should be in New York. I was writing
plays, in those days, and he was admiring them and trying to get me a chance to get
them played in Siberia. I took the first train—the early one—the one that leaves
Hartford at 8.29 in the morning. At New Haven I bought a paper, and found it filled
with glaring display-lines about a "bench-show" there. I had often heard of bench-
shows, but had never felt any interest in them, because I supposed they were lectures
that were not well attended. It turned out, now, that it was not that, but a dog-show.
There was a double-leaded column about the king-feature of this one, which was
called a Saint Bernard, and was worth $10,000, and was known to be the largest and
finest of his species in the world. I read all this with interest, because out of my school-
boy readings I dimly remembered how the priests and pilgrims of St. Bernard used to
go out in the storms and dig these dogs out of the snowdrifts when lost and exhausted,
and give them brandy and save their lives, and drag them to the monastery and
restore them with gruel.

Also, there was a picture of this prize-dog in the paper, a noble great creature with a
benignant countenance, standing by a table. He was placed in that way so that one
could get a right idea of his great dimensions. You could see that he was just a shade
higher than the table—indeed, a huge fellow for a dog. Then there was a description
which went into the details. It gave his enormous weight—150 1/2 pounds, and his
length 4 feet 2 inches, from stem to stern-post; and his height—3 feet 1 inch, to the
top of his back. The pictures and the figures so impressed me, that I could see the
beautiful colossus before me, and I kept on thinking about him for the next two hours;
then I reached New York, and he dropped out of my mind.

In the swirl and tumult of the hotel lobby I ran across Mr. Daly's comedian, the late
James Lewis, of beloved memory, and I casually mentioned that I was going to call
upon Mr. Daly in the evening at 8. He looked surprised, and said he reckoned not. For
answer I handed him Mr. Daly's note. Its substance was: "Come to my private den,
over the theater, where we cannot be interrupted. And come by the back way, not the
front. No. 642 Sixth Avenue is a cigar shop; pass through it and you are in a paved
court, with high buildings all around; enter the second door on the left, and come up
stairs."

"Is this all?"

"Yes," I said.

"Well, you'll never get in"

"Why?"

"Because you won't. Or if you do you can draw on me for a hundred dollars; for you
will be the first man that has accomplished it in twenty-five years. I can't think what
Mr. Daly can have been absorbed in. He has forgotten a most important detail, and he
will feel humiliated in the morning when he finds that you tried to get in and couldn't."

"Why, what is the trouble?"

"I'll tell you. You see——"

At that point we were swept apart by the crowd, somebody detained me with a
moment's talk, and we did not get together again. But it did not matter; I believed he
was joking, anyway.

At eight in the evening I passed through the cigar shop and into the court and
knocked at the second door.
 "Come in!"

I entered. It was a small room, carpetless, dusty, with a naked deal table, and two
cheap wooden chairs for furniture. A giant Irishman was standing there, with shirt
collar and vest unbuttoned, and no coat on. I put my hat on the table, and was about
to say something, when the Irishman took the innings himself. And not with marked
courtesy of tone:

"Well, sor, what will you have?"

I was a little disconcerted, and my easy confidence suffered a shrinkage. The man
stood as motionless as Gibraltar, and kept his unblinking eye upon me. It was very
embarrassing, very humiliating. I stammered at a false start or two; then——

"I have just run down from——"

"Av ye plaze, ye'll not smoke here, ye understand."

I laid my cigar on the window-ledge; chased my flighty thoughts a moment, then

said in a placating manner:

"I—I have come to see Mr. Daly."

"Oh, ye have, have ye?"

"Yes"

"Well, ye'll not see him."

"But he asked me to come."

"Oh, he did, did he?"

"Yes, he sent me this note, and——"

"Lemme see it."

For a moment I fancied there would be a change in the atmosphere, now; but this
idea was premature. The big man was examining the note searchingly under the gas-
jet. A glance showed me that he had it upside down—disheartening evidence that he
could not read.

"Is ut his own handwrite?"

"Yes—he wrote it himself."

"He did, did he?"

"Yes."

"H'm. Well, then, why ud he write it like that?"

"How do you mean?"

"I mane, why wudn't he put his naime to ut?"

"His name is to it. That's not it—you are looking at my name."

I thought that that was a home shot, but he did not betray that he had been hit. He
said:

"It's not an aisy one to spell; how do you pronounce ut?"

"Mark Twain."

"H'm. H'm. Mike Train. H'm. I don't remember ut. What is it ye want to see him
about?"

"It isn't I that want to see him, he wants to see me."

"Oh, he does, does he?"

"Yes."

"What does he want to see ye about?"

"I don't know."

"Ye don't know! And ye confess it, becod! Well, I can tell ye wan thing—ye'll not see
him. Are ye in the business?"
 "What business?"

"The show business."

A fatal question. I recognized that I was defeated. If I answered no, he would cut the
matter short and wave me to the door without the grace of a word—I saw it in his
uncompromising eye; if I said I was a lecturer, he would despise me, and dismiss me
with opprobrious words; if I said I was a dramatist, he would throw me out of the
window. I saw that my case was hopeless, so I chose the course which seemed least
humiliating: I would pocket my shame and glide out without answering. The silence
was growing lengthy.

"I'll ask ye again. Are ye in the show business yerself?"

"Yes!"

I said it with splendid confidence; for in that moment the very twin of that grand
New Haven dog loafed into the room, and I saw that Irishman's eye light eloquently
with pride and affection.

"Ye are? And what is it?"

"I've got a bench-show in New Haven."

The weather did change then.

"You don't say, sir! And that's your show, sir! Oh, it's a grand show, it's a wonderful
show, sir, and a proud man I am to see your honor this day. And ye'll be an expert, sir,
and ye'll know all about dogs—more than ever they know theirselves, I'll take me oath
to ut."

I said, with modesty:

"I believe I have some reputation that way. In fact, my business requires it."

"Ye have some reputation, your honor! Bedad I believe you! There's not a jintleman
in the worrld that can lay over ye in the judgmint of a dog, sir. Now I'll vinture that
your honor'll know that dog's dimensions there better than he knows them his own
self, and just by the casting of your educated eye upon him. Would you mind giving a
guess, if ye'll be so good?"
 I knew that upon my answer would depend my fate. If I made this dog bigger than
the prize-dog, it would be bad diplomacy, and suspicious; if I fell too far short of the
prizedog, that would be equally damaging. The dog was standing by the table, and I
believed I knew the difference between him and the one whose picture I had seen in
the newspaper to a shade. I spoke promptly up and said:

"It's no trouble to guess this noble creature's figures: height, three feet; length, four
feet and three-quarters of an inch; weight, a hundred and forty-eight and a quarter."

The man snatched his hat from its peg and danced on it with joy, shouting:

"Ye've hardly missed it the hair's breadth, hardly the shade of a shade, your honor!
Oh, it's the miraculous eye ye've got, for the judgmint of a dog!"

And still pouring out his admiration of my capacities, he snatched off his vest and
scoured off one of the wooden chairs with it, and scrubbed it and polished it, and said:

"There, sit down, your honor, I'm ashamed of meself that I forgot ye were standing
all this time; and do put on your hat, ye mustn't take cold, it's a drafty place; and here
is your cigar, sir, a getting cold, I'll give ye a light. There. The place is all yours, sir, and if
ye'll just put your feet on the table and make yourself at home, I'll stir around and get
a candle and light ye up the ould crazy stairs and see that ye don't come to anny harm,
for be this time Mr. Daly'll be that impatient to see your honor that he'll be taking the
roof off."

He conducted me cautiously and tenderly up the stairs, lighting the way and
protecting me with friendly warnings, then pushed the door open and bowed me in
and went his way, mumbling hearty things about my wonderful eye for points of a dog.
Mr. Daly was writing and had his back to me. He glanced over his shoulder presently,
then jumped up and said—

"Oh, dear me, I forgot all about giving instructions. I was just writing you to beg a
thousand pardons. But how is it you are here? How did you get by that Irishman? You
are the first man that's done it in five and twenty years. You didn't bribe him, I know
that; there's not money enough in New York to do it. And you didn't persuade him; he
is all ice and iron: there isn't a soft place nor a warm one in him anywhere. What is
your secret? Look here; you owe me a hundred dollars for unintentionally giving you a
chance to perform a miracle—for it is a miracle that you've done."
 "That is all right," I said, "collect it of Jimmy Lewis."

That good dog not only did me that good turn in the time of my need, but he won
for me the envious reputation among all the theatrical people from the Atlantic to the
Pacific of being the only man in history who had ever run the blockade of Augustin
Daly's back door.
 CHAPTER XLVI.

If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would
escape hanging.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

On the Train. Fifty years ago, when I was a boy in the then remote and sparsely
peopled Mississippi valley, vague tales and rumors of a mysterious body of
professional murderers came wandering in from a country which was constructively as
far from us as the constellations blinking in space—India; vague tales and rumors of a
sect called Thugs, who waylaid travelers in lonely places and killed them for the
contentment of a god whom they worshiped; tales which everybody liked to listen to
and nobody believed, except with reservations. It was considered that the stories had
gathered bulk on their travels. The matter died down and a lull followed. Then Eugene
Sue's "Wandering Jew" appeared, and made great talk for a while. One character in it
was a chief of Thugs—"Feringhea"—a mysterious and terrible Indian who was as
slippery and sly as a serpent, and as deadly; and he stirred up the Thug interest once
more. But it did not last. It presently died again this time to stay dead.

At first glance it seems strange that this should have happened; but really it was not
strange—on the contrary—it was natural; I mean on our side of the water. For the
source whence the Thug tales mainly came was a Government Report, and without
doubt was not republished in America; it was probably never even seen there.
Government Reports have no general circulation. They are distributed to the few, and
are not always read by those few. I heard of this Report for the first time a day or two
ago, and borrowed it. It is full of fascinations; and it turns those dim, dark fairy tales of
my boyhood days into realities.

The Report was made in 1839 by Major Sleeman, of the Indian Service, and was
printed in Calcutta in 1840. It is a clumsy, great, fat, poor sample of the printer's art,
but good enough for a government printing-office in that old day and in that remote
region, perhaps. To Major Sleeman was given the general superintendence of the giant
task of ridding India of Thuggee, and he and his seventeen assistants accomplished it.
It was the Augean Stables over again. Captain Vallancey, writing in a Madras journal in
those old times, makes this remark:
 "The day that sees this far-spread evil eradicated from India and known only in
name, will greatly tend to immortalize British rule in the East."

He did not overestimate the magnitude and difficulty of the work, nor the
immensity of the credit which would justly be due to British rule in case it was
accomplished.

Thuggee became known to the British authorities in India about 1810, but its wide
prevalence was not suspected; it was not regarded as a serious matter, and no
systematic measures were taken for its suppression until about 1830. About that time
Major Sleeman captured Eugene Sue's Thug-chief, "Feringhea," and got him to turn
King's evidence. The revelations were so stupefying that Sleeman was not able to
believe them. Sleeman thought he knew every criminal within his jurisdiction, and that
the worst of them were merely thieves; but Feringhea told him that he was in reality
living in the midst of a swarm of professional murderers; that they had been all about
him for many years, and that they buried their dead close by. These seemed insane
tales; but Feringhea said come and see—and he took him to a grave and dug up a
hundred bodies, and told him all the circumstances of the killings, and named the
Thugs who had done the work. It was a staggering business. Sleeman captured some of
these Thugs and proceeded to examine them separately, and with proper precautions
against collusion; for he would not believe any Indian's unsupported word. The
evidence gathered proved the truth of what Feringhea had said, and also revealed the
fact that gangs of Thugs were plying their trade all over India. The astonished
government now took hold of Thuggee, and for ten years made systematic and
relentless war upon it, and finally destroyed it. Gang after gang was captured, tried,
and punished. The Thugs were harried and hunted from one end of India to the other.
The government got all their secrets out of them; and also got the names of the
members of the bands, and recorded them in a book, together with their birthplaces
and places of residence.

The Thugs were worshipers of Bhowanee; and to this god they sacrificed anybody
that came handy; but they kept the dead man's things themselves, for the god cared
for nothing but the corpse. Men were initiated into the sect with solemn ceremonies.
Then they were taught how to strangle a person with the sacred choke-cloth, but were
not allowed to perform officially with it until after long practice. No half-educated
strangler could choke a man to death quickly enough to keep him from uttering a
sound—a muffled scream, gurgle, gasp, moan, or something of the sort; but the
expert's work was instantaneous: the cloth was whipped around the victim's neck,
there was a sudden twist, and the head fell silently forward, the eyes starting from the
sockets; and all was over. The Thug carefully guarded against resistance. It was usual to
to get the victims to sit down, for that was the handiest position for business.

If the Thug had planned India itself it could not have been more conveniently
arranged for the needs of his occupation.

There were no public conveyances. There were no conveyances for hire. The
traveler went on foot or in a bullock cart or on a horse which he bought for the
purpose. As soon as he was out of his own little State or principality he was among
strangers; nobody knew him, nobody took note of him, and from that time his
movements could no longer be traced. He did not stop in towns or villages, but
camped outside of them and sent his servants in to buy provisions. There were no
habitations between villages. Whenever he was between villages he was an easy prey,
particularly as he usually traveled by night, to avoid the heat. He was always being
overtaken by strangers who offered him the protection of their company, or asked for
the protection of his—and these strangers were often Thugs, as he presently found out
to his cost. The landholders, the native police, the petty princes, the village officials,
the customs officers were in many cases protectors and harborers of the Thugs, and
betrayed travelers to them for a share of the spoil. At first this condition of things
made it next to impossible for the government to catch the marauders; they were
spirited away by these watchful friends. All through a vast continent, thus infested,
helpless people of every caste and kind moved along the paths and trails in couples
and groups silently by night, carrying the commerce of the country—treasure, jewels,
money, and petty batches of silks, spices, and all manner of wares. It was a paradise
for the Thug.

When the autumn opened, the Thugs began to gather together by pre-concert.
Other people had to have interpreters at every turn, but not the Thugs; they could talk
together, no matter how far apart they were born, for they had a language of their
own, and they had secret signs by which they knew each other for Thugs; and they
were always friends. Even their diversities of religion and caste were sunk in devotion
to their calling, and the Moslem and the high-caste and low-caste Hindoo were
staunch and affectionate brothers in Thuggery.

When a gang had been assembled, they had religious worship, and waited for an
omen. They had definite notions about the omens. The cries of certain animals were
good omens, the cries of certain other creatures were bad omens. A bad omen would
stop proceedings and send the men home.

The sword and the strangling-cloth were sacred emblems. The Thugs worshiped the
sword at home before going out to the assembling-place; the strangling-cloth was
worshiped at the place of assembly. The chiefs of most of the bands performed the
religious ceremonies themselves; but the Kaets delegated them to certain official
stranglers (Chaurs). The rites of the Kaets were so holy that no one but the Chaur was
allowed to touch the vessels and other things used in them.

Thug methods exhibit a curious mixture of caution and the absence of it; cold
business calculation and sudden, unreflecting impulse; but there were two details
which were constant, and not subject to caprice: patient persistence in following up
the prey, and pitilessness when the time came to act.

Caution was exhibited in the strength of the bands. They never felt comfortable and
confident unless their strength exceeded that of any party of travelers they were likely
to meet by four or fivefold. Yet it was never their purpose to attack openly, but only
when the victims were off their guard. When they got hold of a party of travelers they
often moved along in their company several days, using all manner of arts to win their
friendship and get their confidence. At last, when this was accomplished to their
satisfaction, the real business began. A few Thugs were privately detached and sent
forward in the dark to select a good killing-place and dig the graves. When the rest
reached the spot a halt was called, for a rest or a smoke. The travelers were invited to
sit. By signs, the chief appointed certain Thugs to sit down in front of the travelers as if
to wait upon them, others to sit down beside them and engage them in conversation,
and certain expert stranglers to stand behind the travelers and be ready when the
signal was given. The signal was usually some commonplace remark, like "Bring the
tobacco." Sometimes a considerable wait ensued after all the actors were in their
places—the chief was biding his time, in order to make everything sure. Meantime, the
talk droned on, dim figures moved about in the dull light, peace and tranquility
reigned, the travelers resigned themselves to the pleasant reposefulness and comfort
of the situation, unconscious of the death-angels standing motionless at their backs.
The time was ripe, now, and the signal came: "Bring the tobacco." There was a mute
swift movement, all in the same instant the men at each victim's sides seized his
hands, the man in front seized his feet, and pulled, the man at his back whipped the
cloth around his neck and gave it a twist—the head sunk forward, the tragedy was
over. The bodies were stripped and covered up in the graves, the spoil packed for
transportation, then the Thugs gave pious thanks to Bhowanee, and departed on
further holy service.

The Report shows that the travelers moved in exceedingly small groups—twos,
threes, fours, as a rule; a party with a dozen in it was rare. The Thugs themselves seem
to have been the only people who moved in force. They went about in gangs of 10, 15,
25, 40, 60, 100, 150, 200, 250, and one gang of 310 is mentioned. Considering their
numbers, their catch was not extraordinary—particularly when you consider that they
were not in the least fastidious, but took anybody they could get, whether rich or poor,
and sometimes even killed children. Now and then they killed women, but it was
considered sinful to do it, and unlucky. The "season" was six or eight months long. One
season the half dozen Bundelkand and Gwalior gangs aggregated 712 men, and they
murdered 210 people. One season the Malwa and Kandeish gangs aggregated 702
men, and they murdered 232. One season the Kandeish and Berar gangs aggregated
963 men, and they murdered 385 people.

Here is the tally-sheet of a gang of sixty Thugs for a whole season—gang under two
noted chiefs, "Chotee and Sheik Nungoo from Gwalior":

"Left Poora, in Jhansee, and on arrival at Sarora murdered a traveler.

"On nearly reaching Bhopal, met 3 Brahmins, and murdered them.

"Cross the Nerbudda; at a village called Hutteea, murdered a Hindoo.

"Went through Aurungabad to Walagow; there met a Havildar of the barber caste
and 5 sepoys (native soldiers); in the evening came to Jokur, and in the morning killed
them near the place where the treasure-bearers were killed the year before.

"Between Jokur and Dholeea met a sepoy of the shepherd caste; killed him in the
jungle.

"Passed through Dholeea and lodged in a village; two miles beyond, on the road to
Indore, met a Byragee (beggar-holy mendicant); murdered him at the Thapa.

"In the morning, beyond the Thapa, fell in with 3 Marwarie travelers; murdered
them.
 "Near a village on the banks of the Taptee met 4 travelers and killed them.

"Between Choupra and Dhoreea met a Marwarie; murdered him.

"At Dhoreea met 3 Marwaries; took them two miles and murdered them.

"Two miles further on, overtaken by three treasure-bearers; took them two miles and
murdered them in the jungle.

"Came on to Khurgore Bateesa in Indore, divided spoil, and dispersed.

"A total of 27 men murdered on one expedition."

Chotee (to save his neck) was informer, and furnished these facts. Several things are
noticeable about his resume. 1. Business brevity; 2, absence of emotion; 3, smallness
of the parties encountered by the 60; 4, variety in character and quality of the game
captured; 5, Hindoo and Mohammedan chiefs in business together for Bhowanee; 6,
the sacred caste of the Brahmins not respected by either; 7, nor yet the character of
that mendicant, that Byragee.

A beggar is a holy creature, and some of the gangs spared him on that account, no
matter how slack business might be; but other gangs slaughtered not only him, but
even that sacredest of sacred creatures, the fakeer—that repulsive skin-and-bone
thing that goes around naked and mats his bushy hair with dust and dirt, and so
beflours his lean body with ashes that he looks like a specter. Sometimes a fakeer
trusted a shade too far in the protection of his sacredness. In the middle of a tally-
sheet of Feringhea's, who had been out with forty Thugs, I find a case of the kind. After
the killing of thirty-nine men and one woman, the fakeer appears on the scene:

"Approaching Doregow, met 3 pundits; also a fakeer, mounted on a pony; he was

plastered over with sugar to collect flies, and was covered with them. Drove off the
fakeer, and killed the other three.

"Leaving Doregow, the fakeer joined again, and went on in company to Raojana;
met 6 Khutries on their way from Bombay to Nagpore. Drove off the fakeer with stones,
and killed the 6 men in camp, and buried them in the grove.

"Next day the fakeer joined again; made him leave at Mana. Beyond there, fell in
with two Kahars and a sepoy, and came on towards the place selected for the murder.
When near it, the fakeer came again. Losing all patience with him, gave Mithoo, one of
the gang, 5 rupees ($2.50) to murder him, and take the sin upon himself. All four were
strangled, including the fakeer. Surprised to find among the fakeer's effects 30 pounds
of coral, 350 strings of small pearls, 15 strings of large pearls, and a gilt necklace."

It it curious, the little effect that time has upon a really interesting circumstance.
This one, so old, so long ago gone down into oblivion, reads with the same freshness
and charm that attach to the news in the morning paper; one's spirits go up, then
down, then up again, following the chances which the fakeer is running; now you
hope, now you despair, now you hope again; and at last everything comes out right,
and you feel a great wave of personal satisfaction go weltering through you, and
without thinking, you put out your hand to pat Mithoo on the back, when—puff! the
whole thing has vanished away, there is nothing there; Mithoo and all the crowd have
been dust and ashes and forgotten, oh, so many, many, many lagging years! And then
comes a sense of injury: you don't know whether Mithoo got the swag, along with the
sin, or had to divide up the swag and keep all the sin himself. There is no literary art
about a government report. It stops a story right in the most interesting place.

These reports of Thug expeditions run along interminably in one monotonous tune:
"Met a sepoy—killed him; met 5 pundits—killed them; met 4 Rajpoots and a woman—
killed them"—and so on, till the statistics get to be pretty dry. But this small trip of
Feringhea's Forty had some little variety about it. Once they came across a man hiding
in a grave—a thief; he had stolen 1,100 rupees from Dhunroj Seith of Parowtee. They
strangled him and took the money. They had no patience with thieves. They killed two
treasure-bearers, and got 4,000 rupees. They came across two bullocks "laden with
copper pice," and killed the four drivers and took the money. There must have been
half a ton of it. I think it takes a double handful of pice to make an anna, and 16 annas
to make a rupee; and even in those days the rupee was worth only half a dollar.
Coming back over their tracks from Baroda, they had another picturesque stroke of
luck: "'The Lohars of Oodeypore' put a traveler in their charge for safety." Dear, dear,
across this abyssmal gulf of time we still see Feringhea's lips uncover his teeth, and
through the dim haze we catch the incandescent glimmer of his smile. He accepted
that trust, good man; and so we know what went with the traveler.

Even Rajahs had no terrors for Feringhea; he came across an elephant-driver

belonging to the Rajah of Oodeypore and promptly strangled him.

"A total of 100 men and 5 women murdered on this expedition."

 Among the reports of expeditions we find mention of victims of almost every quality
and estate:

Native soldiers.

Fakeers.

Mendicants.

Holy-water carriers.

Carpenters.

Peddlers.

Tailors.

Blacksmiths.

Policemen (native).

Pastry cooks.

Grooms.

Mecca pilgrims.

Chuprassies.

Treasure-bearers.

Children.

Cowherds.

Gardeners.

Shopkeepers.

Palanquin-bearers.

Farmers.
 Bullock-drivers.

Male servants seeking work.

Women servants seeking work.

Shepherds.

Archers.

Table-waiters.

Weavers.

Priests.

Bankers.

Boatmen.

Merchants.

Grass-cutters.

Also a prince's cook; and even the water-carrier of that sublime lord of lords and
king of kings, the Governor-General of India! How broad they were in their tastes!
They also murdered actors—poor wandering barnstormers. There are two instances
recorded; the first one by a gang of Thugs under a chief who soils a great name borne
by a better man—Kipling's deathless "Gungadin":

"After murdering 4 sepoys, going on toward Indore, met 4 strolling players, and
persuaded them to come with us, on the pretense that we would see their
performance at the next stage. Murdered them at a temple near Bhopal."

Second instance:

"At Deohuttee, joined by comedians. Murdered them eastward of that place."

But this gang was a particularly bad crew. On that expedition they murdered a
fakeer and twelve beggars. And yet Bhowanee protected them; for once when they
were strangling a man in a wood when a crowd was going by close at hand and the
noose slipped and the man screamed, Bhowanee made a camel burst out at the same
moment with a roar that drowned the scream; and before the man could repeat it the
breath was choked out of his body.

The cow is so sacred in India that to kill her keeper is an awful sacrilege, and even
the Thugs recognized this; yet now and then the lust for blood was too strong, and so
they did kill a few cow-keepers. In one of these instances the witness who killed the
cowherd said, "In Thuggee this is strictly forbidden, and is an act from which no good
can come. I was ill of a fever for ten days afterward. I do believe that evil will follow
the murder of a man with a cow. If there be no cow it does not signify." Another Thug
said he held the cowherd's feet while this witness did the strangling. He felt no
concern, "because the bad fortune of such a deed is upon the strangler and not upon
the assistants; even if there should be a hundred of them."

There were thousands of Thugs roving over India constantly, during many
generations. They made Thuggee a hereditary vocation and taught it to their sons and
to their son's sons. Boys were in full membership as early as 16 years of age; veterans
were still at work at 70. What was the fascination, what was the impulse? Apparently,
it was partly piety, largely gain, and there is reason to suspect that the sport afforded
was the chiefest fascination of all. Meadows Taylor makes a Thug in one of his books
claim that the pleasure of killing men was the white man's beast-hunting instinct
enlarged, refined, ennobled. I will quote the passage:
 CHAPTER XLVII.

Simple rules for saving money: To save half, when you are fired by an eager impulse
to contribute to a charity, wait, and count forty. To save three-quarters, count sixty. To
save it all, count sixty-five.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

The Thug said:

"How many of you English are passionately devoted to sporting! Your days and
months are passed in its excitement. A tiger, a panther, a buffalo or a hog rouses your
utmost energies for its destruction—you even risk your lives in its pursuit. How much
higher game is a Thug's!"

That must really be the secret of the rise and development of Thuggee. The joy of
killing! the joy of seeing killing done—these are traits of the human race at large. We
white people are merely modified Thugs; Thugs fretting under the restraints of a not
very thick skin of civilization; Thugs who long ago enjoyed the slaughter of the Roman
arena, and later the burning of doubtful Christians by authentic Christians in the public
squares, and who now, with the Thugs of Spain and Nimes, flock to enjoy the blood
and misery of the bullring. We have no tourists of either sex or any religion who are
able to resist the delights of the bull-ring when opportunity offers; and we are gentle
Thugs in the hunting-season, and love to chase a tame rabbit and kill it. Still, we have
made some progress-microscopic, and in truth scarcely worth mentioning, and
certainly nothing to be proud of—still, it is progress: we no longer take pleasure in
slaughtering or burning helpless men. We have reached a little altitude where we may
look down upon the Indian Thugs with a complacent shudder; and we may even hope
for a day, many centuries hence, when our posterity will look down upon us in the
same way.

There are many indications that the Thug often hunted men for the mere sport of it;
that the fright and pain of the quarry were no more to him than are the fright and pain
of the rabbit or the stag to us; and that he was no more ashamed of beguiling his game
with deceits and abusing its trust than are we when we have imitated a wild animal's
call and shot it when it honored us with its confidence and came to see what we
wanted:
 "Madara, son of Nihal, and I, Ramzam, set out from Kotdee in the cold weather and
followed the high road for about twenty days in search of travelers, until we came to
Selempore, where we met a very old man going to the east. We won his confidence in
this manner: he carried a load which was too heavy for his old age; I said to him, 'You
are an old man, I will aid you in carrying your load, as you are from my part of the
country.' He said, 'Very well, take me with you.' So we took him with us to Selempore,
where we slept that night. We woke him next morning before dawn and set out, and at
the distance of three miles we seated him to rest while it was still very dark. Madara
was ready behind him, and strangled him. He never spoke a word. He was about 60 or
70 years of age."

Another gang fell in with a couple of barbers and persuaded them to come along in
their company by promising them the job of shaving the whole crew—30 Thugs. At the
place appointed for the murder 15 got shaved, and actually paid the barbers for their
work. Then killed them and took back the money.

A gang of forty-two Thugs came across two Brahmins and a shopkeeper on the road,
beguiled them into a grove and got up a concert for their entertainment. While these
poor fellows were listening to the music the stranglers were standing behind them;
and at the proper moment for dramatic effect they applied the noose.

The most devoted fisherman must have a bite at least as often as once a week or his
passion will cool and he will put up his tackle. The tiger-sportsman must find a tiger at
least once a fortnight or he will get tired and quit. The elephant-hunter's enthusiasm
will waste away little by little, and his zeal will perish at last if he plod around a month
without finding a member of that noble family to assassinate.

But when the lust in the hunter's heart is for the noblest of all quarries, man, how
different is the case! and how watery and poor is the zeal and how childish the
endurance of those other hunters by comparison. Then, neither hunger, nor thirst, nor
fatigue, nor deferred hope, nor monotonous disappointment, nor leaden-footed lapse
of time can conquer the hunter's patience or weaken the joy of his quest or cool the
splendid rage of his desire. Of all the hunting-passions that burn in the breast of man,
there is none that can lift him superior to discouragements like these but the one—the
royal sport, the supreme sport, whose quarry is his brother. By comparison, tiger-
hunting is a colorless poor thing, for all it has been so bragged about.
 Why, the Thug was content to tramp patiently along, afoot, in the wasting heat of
India, week after week, at an average of nine or ten miles a day, if he might but hope
to find game some time or other and refresh his longing soul with blood. Here is an
instance:

"I (Ramzam) and Hyder set out, for the purpose of strangling travelers, from
Guddapore, and proceeded via the Fort of Julalabad, Newulgunge, Bangermow, on the
banks of the Ganges (upwards of 100 miles), from whence we returned by another
route. Still no travelers! till we reached Bowaneegunge, where we fell in with a traveler,
a boatman; we inveigled him and about two miles east of there Hyder strangled him as
he stood—for he was troubled and afraid, and would not sit. We then made a long
journey (about 130 miles) and reached Hussunpore Bundwa, where at the tank we fell
in with a traveler—he slept there that night; next morning we followed him and tried to
win his confidence; at the distance of two miles we endeavored to induce him to sit
down—but he would not, having become aware of us. I attempted to strangle him as
he walked along, but did not succeed; both of us then fell upon him, he made a great
outcry, 'They are murdering me!' at length we strangled him and flung his body into a
well. After this we returned to our homes, having been out a month and traveled about
260 miles. A total of two men murdered on the expedition."

And here is another case-related by the terrible Futty Khan, a man with a
tremendous record, to be re-mentioned by and by:

"I, with three others, traveled for about 45 days a distance of about 200 miles in
search of victims along the highway to Bundwa and returned by Davodpore (another
200 miles) during which journey we had only one murder, which happened in this
manner. Four miles to the east of Noubustaghat we fell in with a traveler, an old man.
I, with Koshal and Hyder, inveigled him and accompanied him that day within 3 miles of
Rampoor, where, after dark, in a lonely place, we got him to sit down and rest; and
while I kept him in talk, seated before him, Hyder behind strangled him: he made no
resistance. Koshal stabbed him under the arms and in the throat, and we flung the
body into a running stream. We got about 4 or 5 rupees each ($2 or $2.50). We then
proceeded homewards. A total of one man murdered on this expedition."

There. They tramped 400 miles, were gone about three months, and harvested two
dollars and a half apiece. But the mere pleasure of the hunt was sufficient. That was
pay enough. They did no grumbling.
 Every now and then in this big book one comes across that pathetic remark: "we
tried to get him to sit down but he would not." It tells the whole story. Some accident
had awakened the suspicion in him that these smooth friends who had been petting
and coddling him and making him feel so safe and so fortunate after his forlorn and
lonely wanderings were the dreaded Thugs; and now their ghastly invitation to "sit and
rest" had confirmed its truth. He knew there was no help for him, and that he was
looking his last upon earthly things, but "he would not sit." No, not that—it was too
awful to think of!

There are a number of instances which indicate that when a man had once tasted
the regal joys of man-hunting he could not be content with the dull monotony of a
crimeless life after ward. Example, from a Thug's testimony:

"We passed through to Kurnaul, where we found a former Thug named Junooa, an
old comrade of ours, who had turned religious mendicant and become a disciple and
holy. He came to us in the serai and weeping with joy returned to his old trade."

Neither wealth nor honors nor dignities could satisfy a reformed Thug for long. He
would throw them all away, someday, and go back to the lurid pleasures of hunting
men, and being hunted himself by the British.

Ramzam was taken into a great native grandee's service and given authority over
five villages. "My authority extended over these people to summons them to my
presence, to make them stand or sit. I dressed well, rode my pony, and had two
sepoys, a scribe and a village guard to attend me. During three years I used to pay each
village a monthly visit, and no one suspected that I was a Thug! The chief man used to
wait on me to transact business, and as I passed along, old and young made their
salaam to me."

And yet during that very three years he got leave of absence "to attend a wedding,"
and instead went off on a Thugging lark with six other Thugs and hunted the highway
for fifteen days!—with satisfactory results.

Afterwards he held a great office under a Rajah. There he had ten miles of country
under his command and a military guard of fifteen men, with authority to call out
2,000 more upon occasion. But the British got on his track, and they crowded him so
that he had to give himself up. See what a figure he was when he was gotten up for
style and had all his things on: "I was fully armed—a sword, shield, pistols, a matchlock
musket and a flint gun, for I was fond of being thus arrayed, and when so armed feared
not though forty men stood before me."

He gave himself up and proudly proclaimed himself a Thug. Then by request he

agreed to betray his friend and pal, Buhram, a Thug with the most tremendous record
in India. "I went to the house where Buhram slept (often has he led our gangs!) I woke
him, he knew me well, and came outside to me. It was a cold night, so under pretence
of warming myself, but in reality to have light for his seizure by the guards, I lighted
some straw and made a blaze. We were warming our hands. The guards drew around
us. I said to them, 'This is Buhram,' and he was seized just as a cat seizes a mouse.
Then Buhram said, 'I am a Thug! my father was a Thug, my grandfather was a Thug,
and I have thugged with many!'"

So spoke the mighty hunter, the mightiest of the mighty, the Gordon Cumming of
his day. Not much regret noticeable in it.—["Having planted a bullet in the shoulder-
bone of an elephant, and caused the agonized creature to lean for support against a
tree, I proceeded to brew some coffee. Having refreshed myself, taking observations of
the elephant's spasms and writhings between the sips, I resolved to make experiments
on vulnerable points, and, approaching very near, I fired several bullets at different
parts of his enormous skull. He only acknowledged the shots by a salaam-like
movement of his trunk, with the point of which he gently touched the wounds with a
striking and peculiar action. Surprised and shocked to find that I was only prolonging
the suffering of the noble beast, which bore its trials with such dignified composure, I
resolved to finish the proceeding with all possible despatch, and accordingly opened
fire upon him from the left side. Aiming at the shoulder, I fired six shots with the two-
grooved rifle, which must have eventually proved mortal, after which I fired six shots
at the same part with the Dutch six-founder. Large tears now trickled down from his
eyes, which he slowly shut and opened, his colossal frame shivered convulsively, and
falling on his side he expired."—Gordon Cumming.]

So many many times this Official Report leaves one's curiosity unsatisfied. For
instance, here is a little paragraph out of the record of a certain band of 193 Thugs,
which has that defect:

"Fell in with Lall Sing Subahdar and his family, consisting of nine persons. Traveled
with them two days, and the third put them all to death except the two children, little
boys of one and a half years old."
 There it stops. What did they do with those poor little fellows? What was their
subsequent history? Did they purpose training them up as Thugs? How could they take
care of such little creatures on a march which stretched over several months? No one
seems to have cared to ask any questions about the babies. But I do wish I knew.

One would be apt to imagine that the Thugs were utterly callous, utterly destitute of
human feelings, heartless toward their own families as well as toward other people's;
but this was not so. Like all other Indians, they had a passionate love for their kin. A
shrewd British officer who knew the Indian character, took that characteristic into
account in laying his plans for the capture of Eugene Sue's famous Feringhea. He found
out Feringhea's hiding-place, and sent a guard by night to seize him, but the squad was
awkward and he got away. However, they got the rest of the family—the mother, wife,
child, and brother—and brought them to the officer, at Jubbulpore; the officer did not
fret, but bided his time: "I knew Feringhea would not go far while links so dear to him
were in my hands." He was right. Feringhea knew all the danger he was running by
staying in the neighborhood, still he could not tear himself away. The officer found
that he divided his time between five villages where be had relatives and friends who
could get news for him from his family in Jubbulpore jail; and that he never slept two
consecutive nights in the same village. The officer traced out his several haunts, then
pounced upon all the five villages on the one night and at the same hour, and got his
man.

Another example of family affection. A little while previously to the capture of

Feringhea's family, the British officer had captured Feringhea's foster-brother, leader
of a gang of ten, and had tried the eleven and condemned them to be hanged.
Feringhea's captured family arrived at the jail the day before the execution was to take
place. The foster-brother, Jhurhoo, entreated to be allowed to see the aged mother
and the others. The prayer was granted, and this is what took place—it is the British
officer who speaks:

"In the morning, just before going to the scaffold, the interview took place before
me. He fell at the old woman's feet and begged that she would relieve him from the
obligations of the milk with which she had nourished him from infancy, as he was about
to die before he could fulfill any of them. She placed her hands on his head, and he
knelt, and she said she forgave him all, and bid him die like a man."

If a capable artist should make a picture of it, it would be full of dignity and
solemnity and pathos; and it could touch you. You would imagine it to be anything but
what it was. There is reverence there, and tenderness, and gratefulness, and
compassion, and resignation, and fortitude, and self-respect—and no sense of
disgrace, no thought of dishonor. Everything is there that goes to make a noble
parting, and give it a moving grace and beauty and dignity. And yet one of these
people is a Thug and the other a mother of Thugs! The incongruities of our human
nature seem to reach their limit here.

I wish to make note of one curious thing while I think of it. One of the very
commonest remarks to be found in this bewildering array of Thug confessions is this:

"Strangled him and threw him in a well!" In one case they threw sixteen into a
well—and they had thrown others in the same well before. It makes a body thirsty to
read about it.

And there is another very curious thing. The bands of Thugs had private graveyards.
They did not like to kill and bury at random, here and there and everywhere. They
preferred to wait, and toll the victims along, and get to one of their regular burying-
places ('bheels') if they could. In the little kingdom of Oude, which was about half as
big as Ireland and about as big as the State of Maine, they had two hundred and
seventy-four 'bheels'. They were scattered along fourteen hundred miles of road, at an
average of only five miles apart, and the British government traced out and located
each and every one of them and set them down on the map.

The Oude bands seldom went out of their own country, but they did a thriving
business within its borders. So did outside bands who came in and helped. Some of the
Thug leaders of Oude were noted for their successful careers. Each of four of them
confessed to above 300 murders; another to nearly 400; our friend Ramzam to 604—
he is the one who got leave of absence to attend a wedding and went thugging
instead; and he is also the one who betrayed Buhram to the British.

But the biggest records of all were the murder-lists of Futty Khan and Buhram. Futty
Khan's number is smaller than Ramzam's, but he is placed at the head because his
average is the best in Oude-Thug history per year of service. His slaughter was 508
men in twenty years, and he was still a young man when the British stopped his
industry. Buhram's list was 931 murders, but it took him forty years. His average was
one man and nearly all of another man per month for forty years, but Futty Khan's
average was two men and a little of another man per month during his twenty years of
usefulness.
 There is one very striking thing which I wish to call attention to. You have surmised
from the listed callings followed by the victims of the Thugs that nobody could travel
the Indian roads unprotected and live to get through; that the Thugs respected no
quality, no vocation, no religion, nobody; that they killed every unarmed man that
came in their way. That is wholly true—with one reservation. In all the long file of Thug
confessions an English traveler is mentioned but once—and this is what the Thug says
of the circumstance:

"He was on his way from Mhow to Bombay. We studiously avoided him. He
proceeded next morning with a number of travelers who had sought his protection, and
they took the road to Baroda."

We do not know who he was; he flits across the page of this rusty old book and
disappears in the obscurity beyond; but he is an impressive figure, moving through
that valley of death serene and unafraid, clothed in the might of the English name.

We have now followed the big official book through, and we understand what
Thuggee was, what a bloody terror it was, what a desolating scourge it was. In 1830
the English found this cancerous organization imbedded in the vitals of the empire,
doing its devastating work in secrecy, and assisted, protected, sheltered, and hidden
by innumerable confederates—big and little native chiefs, customs officers, village
officials, and native police, all ready to lie for it, and the mass of the people, through
fear, persistently pretending to know nothing about its doings; and this condition of
things had existed for generations, and was formidable with the sanctions of age and
old custom. If ever there was an unpromising task, if ever there was a hopeless task in
the world, surely it was offered here—the task of conquering Thuggee. But that little
handful of English officials in India set their sturdy and confident grip upon it, and
ripped it out, root and branch! How modest do Captain Vallancey's words sound now,
when we read them again, knowing what we know:

"The day that sees this far-spread evil completely eradicated from India, and known
only in name, will greatly tend to immortalize British rule in the East."

It would be hard to word a claim more modestly than that for this most noble work.
 CHAPTER XLVIII.

Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have
somebody to divide it with.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

We left Bombay for Allahabad by a night train. It is the custom of the country to
avoid day travel when it can conveniently be done. But there is one trouble: while you
can seemingly "secure" the two lower berths by making early application, there is no
ticket as witness of it, and no other producible evidence in case your proprietorship
shall chance to be challenged. The word "engaged" appears on the window, but it
doesn't state who the compartment is engaged, for. If your Satan and your Barney
arrive before somebody else's servants, and spread the bedding on the two sofas and
then stand guard till you come, all will be well; but if they step aside on an errand, they
may find the beds promoted to the two shelves, and somebody else's demons standing
guard over their master's beds, which in the meantime have been spread upon your
sofas.

You do not pay anything extra for your sleeping place; that is where the trouble lies.
If you buy a fare-ticket and fail to use it, there is room thus made available for
someone else; but if the place were secured to you it would remain vacant, and yet
your ticket would secure you another place when you were presently ready to travel.

However, no explanation of such a system can make it seem quite rational to a

person who has been used to a more rational system. If our people had the arranging
of it, we should charge extra for securing the place, and then the road would suffer no
loss if the purchaser did not occupy it.

The present system encourages good manners—and also discourages them. If a

young girl has a lower berth and an elderly lady comes in, it is usual for the girl to offer
her place to this late comer; and it is usual for the late comer to thank her courteously
and take it. But the thing happens differently sometimes. When we were ready to
leave Bombay my daughter's satchels were holding possession of her berth—a lower
one. At the last moment, a middle-aged American lady swarmed into the
compartment, followed by native porters laden with her baggage. She was growling
and snarling and scolding, and trying to make herself phenomenally disagreeable; and
succeeding. Without a word, she hoisted the satchels into the hanging shelf, and took
possession of that lower berth.

On one of our trips Mr. Smythe and I got out at a station to walk up and down, and
when we came back Smythe's bed was in the hanging shelf and an English cavalry
officer was in bed on the sofa which he had lately been occupying. It was mean to be
glad about it, but it is the way we are made; I could not have been gladder if it had
been my enemy that had suffered this misfortune. We all like to see people in trouble,
if it doesn't cost us anything. I was so happy over Mr. Smythe's chagrin that I couldn't
go to sleep for thinking of it and enjoying it. I knew he supposed the officer had
committed the robbery himself, whereas without a doubt the officer's servant had
done it without his knowledge. Mr. Smythe kept this incident warm in his heart, and
longed for a chance to get even with somebody for it. Sometime afterward the
opportunity came, in Calcutta. We were leaving on a 24-hour journey to Darjeeling.
Mr. Barclay, the general superintendent, has made special provision for our
accommodation, Mr. Smythe said; so there was no need to hurry about getting to the
train; consequently, we were a little late.

When we arrived, the usual immense turmoil and confusion of a great Indian station
were in full blast. It was an immoderately long train, for all the natives of India were
going by it somewhither, and the native officials were being pestered to frenzy by
belated and anxious people. They didn't know where our car was, and couldn't
remember having received any orders about it. It was a deep disappointment;
moreover, it looked as if our half of our party would be left behind altogether. Then
Satan came running and said he had found a compartment with one shelf and one sofa
unoccupied, and had made our beds and had stowed our baggage. We rushed to the
place, and just as the train was ready to pull out and the porters were slamming the
doors to, all down the line, an officer of the Indian Civil Service, a good friend of ours,
put his head in and said:—

"I have been hunting for you everywhere. What are you doing here? Don't you
know——"

The train started before he could finish. Mr. Smythe's opportunity was come. His
bedding, on the shelf, at once changed places with the bedding—a stranger's—that
was occupying the sofa that was opposite to mine. About ten o'clock we stopped
somewhere, and a large Englishman of official military bearing stepped in. We
pretended to be asleep. The lamps were covered, but there was light enough for us to
note his look of surprise. He stood there, grand and fine, peering down at Smythe, and
wondering in silence at the situation. After a bit he said:—

"Well!" And that was all.

But that was enough. It was easy to understand. It meant: "This is extraordinary.
This is high-handed. I haven't had an experience like this before."

He sat down on his baggage, and for twenty minutes we watched him through our
eyelashes, rocking and swaying there to the motion of the train. Then we came to a
station, and he got up and went out, muttering: "I must find a lower berth, or wait
over." His servant came presently and carried away his things.

Mr. Smythe's sore place was healed, his hunger for revenge was satisfied. But he
couldn't sleep, and neither could I; for this was a venerable old car, and nothing about
it was taut. The closet door slammed all night, and defied every fastening we could
invent. We got up very much jaded, at dawn, and stepped out at a way station; and,
while we were taking a cup of coffee, that Englishman ranged up alongside, and
somebody said to him:

"So you didn't stop off, after all?"

"No. The guard found a place for me that had been engaged and not occupied. I had
a whole saloon car all to myself—oh, quite palatial! I never had such luck in my life."

That was our car, you see. We moved into it, straight off, the family and all. But I
asked the English gentleman to remain, and he did. A pleasant man, an infantry
colonel; and doesn't know, yet, that Smythe robbed him of his berth, but thinks it was
done by Smythe's servant without Smythe's knowledge. He was assisted in gathering
this impression.

The Indian trains are manned by natives exclusively. The Indian stations except very
large and important ones—are manned entirely by natives, and so are the posts and
telegraphs. The rank and file of the police are natives. All these people are pleasant
and accommodating. One day I left an express train to lounge about in that perennially
ravishing show, the ebb and flow and whirl of gaudy natives, that is always surging up
and down the spacious platform of a great Indian station; and I lost myself in the
ecstasy of it, and when I turned, the train was moving swiftly away. I was going to sit
down and wait for another train, as I would have done at home; I had no thought of
any other course. But a native official, who had a green flag in his hand, saw me, and
said politely:

"Don't you belong in the train, sir?"

"Yes." I said.

He waved his flag, and the train came back! And he put me aboard with as much
ceremony as if I had been the General Superintendent. They are kindly people, the
natives. The face and the bearing that indicate a surly spirit and a bad heart seemed to
me to be so rare among Indians—so nearly non-existent, in fact—that I sometimes
wondered if Thuggee wasn't a dream, and not a reality. The bad hearts are there, but I
believe that they are in a small, poor minority. One thing is sure: They are much the
most interesting people in the world—and the nearest to being incomprehensible. At
any rate, the hardest to account for. Their character and their history, their customs
and their religion, confront you with riddles at every turn-riddles which are a trifle
more perplexing after they are explained than they were before. You can get the facts
of a custom—like caste, and Suttee, and Thuggee, and so on—and with the facts a
theory which tries to explain, but never quite does it to your satisfaction. You can
never quite understand how so strange a thing could have been born, nor why.

For instance—the Suttee. This is the explanation of it:

A woman who throws away her life when her husband dies is instantly joined to him
again, and is forever afterward happy with him in heaven; her family will build a little
monument to her, or a temple, and will hold her in honor, and, indeed, worship her
memory always; they will themselves be held in honor by the public; the woman's self-
sacrifice has conferred a noble and lasting distinction upon her posterity. And, besides,
see what she has escaped: If she had elected to live, she would be a disgraced person;
she could not remarry; her family would despise her and disown her; she would be a
friendless outcast, and miserable all her days.

Very well, you say, but the explanation is not complete yet. How did people come to
drift into such a strange custom? What was the origin of the idea? "Well, nobody
knows; it was probably a revelation sent down by the gods." One more thing: Why was
such a cruel death chosen—why wouldn't a gentle one have answered? "Nobody
knows; maybe that was a revelation, too."
 No—you can never understand it. It all seems impossible. You resolve to believe that
a widow never burnt herself willingly, but went to her death because she was afraid to
defy public opinion. But you are not able to keep that position. History drives you from
it. Major Sleeman has a convincing case in one of his books. In his government on the
Nerbudda he made a brave attempt on the 28th of March, 1828, to put down Suttee
on his own hook and without warrant from the Supreme Government of India. He
could not foresee that the Government would put it down itself eight months later.
The only backing he had was a bold nature and a compassionate heart. He issued his
proclamation abolishing the Suttee in his district. On the morning of Tuesday—note
the day of the week—the 24th of the following November, Ummed Singh Upadhya,
head of the most respectable and most extensive Brahmin family in the district, died,
and presently came a deputation of his sons and grandsons to beg that his old widow
might be allowed to burn herself upon his pyre. Sleeman threatened to enforce his
order, and punish severely any man who assisted; and he placed a police guard to see
that no one did so. From the early morning the old widow of sixty-five had been sitting
on the bank of the sacred river by her dead, waiting through the long hours for the
permission; and at last the refusal came instead. In one little sentence Sleeman gives
you a pathetic picture of this lonely old gray figure: all day and all night "she remained
sitting by the edge of the water without eating or drinking." The next morning the
body of the husband was burned to ashes in a pit eight feet square and three or four
feet deep, in the view of several thousand spectators. Then the widow waded out to a
bare rock in the river, and everybody went away but her sons and other relations. All
day she sat there on her rock in the blazing sun without food or drink, and with no
clothing but a sheet over her shoulders.

The relatives remained with her and all tried to persuade her to desist from her
purpose, for they deeply loved her. She steadily refused. Then a part of the family
went to Sleeman's house, ten miles away, and tried again to get him to let her burn
herself. He refused, hoping to save her yet.

All that day she scorched in her sheet on the rock, and all that night she kept her
vigil there in the bitter cold. Thursday morning, in the sight of her relatives, she went
through a ceremonial which said more to them than any words could have done; she
put on the dhaja (a coarse red turban) and broke her bracelets in pieces. By these acts
she became a dead person in the eye of the law, and excluded from her caste forever.
By the iron rule of ancient custom, if she should now choose to live she could never
return to her family. Sleeman was in deep trouble. If she starved herself to death her
family would be disgraced; and, moreover, starving would be a more lingering misery
than the death by fire. He went back in the evening thoroughly worried. The old
woman remained on her rock, and there in the morning he found her with her dhaja
still on her head. "She talked very collectedly, telling me that she had determined to
mix her ashes with those of her departed husband, and should patiently wait my
permission to do so, assured that God would enable her to sustain life till that was
given, though she dared not eat or drink. Looking at the sun, then rising before her
over a long and beautiful reach of the river, she said calmly, 'My soul has been for five
days with my husband's near that sun; nothing but my earthly frame is left; and this, I
know, you will in time suffer to be mixed with his ashes in yonder pit, because it is not
in your nature or usage wantonly to prolong the miseries of a poor old woman.'"

He assured her that it was his desire and duty to save her, and to urge her to live,
and to keep her family from the disgrace of being thought her murderers. But she said
she "was not afraid of their being thought so; that they had all, like good children,
done everything in their power to induce her to live, and to abide with them; and if I
should consent I know they would love and honor me, but my duties to them have
now ended. I commit them all to your care, and I go to attend my husband, Ummed
Singh Upadhya, with whose ashes on the funeral pile mine have been already three
times mixed."

She believed that she and he had been upon the earth three several times as wife
and husband, and that she had burned herself to death three times upon his pyre. That
is why she said that strange thing. Since she had broken her bracelets and put on the
red turban she regarded herself as a corpse; otherwise she would not have allowed
herself to do her husband the irreverence of pronouncing his name. "This was the first
time in her long life that she had ever uttered her husband's name, for in India no
woman, high or low, ever pronounces the name of her husband."

Major Sleeman still tried to shake her purpose. He promised to build her a fine
house among the temples of her ancestors upon the bank of the river and make
handsome provision for her out of rent-free lands if she would consent to live; and if
she wouldn't he would allow no stone or brick to ever mark the place where she died.
But she only smiled and said, "My pulse has long ceased to beat, my spirit has
departed; I shall suffer nothing in the burning; and if you wish proof, order some fire
and you shall see this arm consumed without giving me any pain."
 Sleeman was now satisfied that he could not alter her purpose. He sent for all the
chief members of the family and said he would suffer her to burn herself if they would
enter into a written engagement to abandon the suttee in their family thenceforth.
They agreed; the papers were drawn out and signed, and at noon, Saturday, word was
sent to the poor old woman. She seemed greatly pleased. The ceremonies of bathing
were gone through with, and by three o'clock she was ready and the fire was briskly
burning in the pit. She had now gone without food or drink during more than four days
and a half. She came ashore from her rock, first wetting her sheet in the waters of the
sacred river, for without that safeguard any shadow which might fall upon her would
convey impurity to her; then she walked to the pit, leaning upon one of her sons and a
nephew—the distance was a hundred and fifty yards.

"I had sentries placed all around, and no other person was allowed to approach
within five paces. She came on with a calm and cheerful countenance, stopped once,
and casting her eyes upwards, said, 'Why have they kept me five days from thee, my
husband?' On coming to the sentries her supporters stopped and remained standing;
she moved on, and walked once around the pit, paused a moment, and while
muttering a prayer, threw some flowers into the fire. She then walked up deliberately
and steadily to the brink, stepped into the centre of the flame, sat down, and leaning
back in the midst as if reposing upon a couch, was consumed without uttering a shriek
or betraying one sign of agony."

It is fine and beautiful. It compels one's reverence and respect—no, has it freely, and
without compulsion. We see how the custom, once started, could continue, for the
soul of it is that stupendous power, Faith; faith brought to the pitch of effectiveness by
the cumulative force of example and long use and custom; but we cannot understand
how the first widows came to take to it. That is a perplexing detail.

Sleeman says that it was usual to play music at the suttee, but that the white man's
notion that this was to drown the screams of the martyr is not correct; that it had a
quite different purpose. It was believed that the martyr died prophecying; that the
prophecies sometimes foretold disaster, and it was considered a kindness to those
upon whom it was to fall to drown the voice and keep them in ignorance of the
misfortune that was to come.
 CHAPTER XLIX.

He had had much experience of physicians, and said "the only way to keep your
health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd
druther not."

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

It was a long journey—two nights, one day, and part of another day, from Bombay
eastward to Allahabad; but it was always interesting, and it was not fatiguing. At first
the night travel promised to be fatiguing, but that was on account of pyjamas. This
foolish night-dress consists of jacket and drawers. Sometimes they are made of silk,
sometimes of a raspy, scratchy, slazy woolen material with a sandpaper surface. The
drawers are loose elephant-legged and elephant-waisted things, and instead of
buttoning around the body there is a drawstring to produce the required shrinkage.
The jacket is roomy, and one buttons it in front. Pyjamas are hot on a hot night and
cold on a cold night—defects which a nightshirt is free from. I tried the pyjamas in
order to be in the fashion; but I was obliged to give them up, I couldn't stand them.
There was no sufficient change from day-gear to night-gear. I missed the refreshing
and luxurious sense, induced by the night-gown, of being undressed, emancipated, set
free from restraints and trammels. In place of that, I had the worried, confined,
oppressed, suffocated sense of being abed with my clothes on. All through the warm
half of the night the coarse surfaces irritated my skin and made it feel baked and
feverish, and the dreams which came in the fitful flurries of slumber were such as
distress the sleep of the damned, or ought to; and all through the cold other half of the
night I could get no time for sleep because I had to employ it all in stealing blankets.
But blankets are of no value at such a time; the higher they are piled the more
effectively they cork the cold in and keep it from getting out. The result is that your
legs are ice, and you know how you will feel by and by when you are buried. In a sane
interval I discarded the pyjamas, and led a rational and comfortable life thenceforth.

Out in the country in India, the day begins early. One sees a plain, perfectly flat,
dust-colored and brick-yardy, stretching limitlessly away on every side in the dim gray
light, striped everywhere with hard-beaten narrow paths, the vast flatness broken at
wide intervals by bunches of spectral trees that mark where villages are; and along all
the paths are slender women and the black forms of lanky naked men moving, to their
work, the women with brass water-jars on their heads, the men carrying hoes. The
man is not entirely naked; always there is a bit of white rag, a loin-cloth; it amounts to
a bandage, and is a white accent on his black person, like the silver band around the
middle of a pipe-stem. Sometimes he also wears a fluffy and voluminous white turban,
and this adds a second accent. He then answers properly to Miss Gordon Cumming's
flash-light picture of him—as a person who is dressed in "a turban and a pocket
handkerchief."

All day long one has this monotony of dust-colored dead levels and scattering
bunches of trees and mud villages. You soon realize that India is not beautiful; still
there is an enchantment about it that is beguiling, and which does not pall. You cannot
tell just what it is that makes the spell, perhaps, but you feel it and confess it,
nevertheless. Of course, at bottom, you know in a vague way that it is history; it is that
that affects you, a haunting sense of the myriads of human lives that have blossomed,
and withered, and perished here, repeating and repeating and repeating, century after
century, and age after age, the barren and meaningless process; it is this sense that
gives to this forlorn, uncomely land power to speak to the spirit and make friends with
it; to speak to it with a voice bitter with satire, but eloquent with melancholy. The
deserts of Australia and the ice-barrens of Greenland have no speech, for they have no
venerable history; with nothing to tell of man and his vanities, his fleeting glories and
his miseries, they have nothing wherewith to spiritualize their ugliness and veil it with
a charm.

There is nothing pretty about an Indian village—a mud one—and I do not remember
that we saw any but mud ones on that long flight to Allahabad. It is a little bunch of
dirt-colored mud hovels jammed together within a mud wall. As a rule, the rains had
beaten down parts of some of the houses, and this gave the village the aspect of a
mouldering and hoary ruin. I believe the cattle and the vermin live inside the wall; for I
saw cattle coming out and cattle going in; and whenever I saw a villager, he was
scratching. This last is only circumstantial evidence, but I think it has value. The village
has a battered little temple or two, big enough to hold an idol, and with custom
enough to fat-up a priest and keep him comfortable. Where there are Mohammedans
there are generally a few sorry tombs outside the village that have a decayed and
neglected look. The villages interested me because of things which Major Sleeman says
about them in his books—particularly what he says about the division of labor in them.
He says that the whole face of India is parceled out into estates of villages; that nine-
tenths of the vast population of the land consist of cultivators of the soil; that it is
these cultivators who inhabit the villages; that there are certain "established" village
servants—mechanics and others who are apparently paid a wage by the village at
large, and whose callings remain in certain families and are handed down from father
to son, like an estate. He gives a list of these established servants: Priest, blacksmith,
carpenter, accountant, washerman, basketmaker, potter, watchman, barber,
shoemaker, brazier, confectioner, weaver, dyer, etc. In his day witches abounded, and
it was not thought good business wisdom for a man to marry his daughter into a family
that hadn't a witch in it, for she would need a witch on the premises to protect her
children from the evil spells which would certainly be cast upon them by the witches
connected with the neighboring families.

The office of midwife was hereditary in the family of the basket-maker. It belonged
to his wife. She might not be competent, but the office was hers, anyway. Her pay was
not high—25 cents for a boy, and half as much for a girl. The girl was not desired,
because she would be a disastrous expense by and by. As soon as she should be old
enough to begin to wear clothes for propriety's sake, it would be a disgrace to the
family if she were not married; and to marry her meant financial ruin; for by custom
the father must spend upon feasting and wedding-display everything he had and all he
could borrow—in fact, reduce himself to a condition of poverty which he might never
more recover from.

It was the dread of this prospective ruin which made the killing of girl-babies so
prevalent in India in the old days before England laid the iron hand of her prohibitions
upon the piteous slaughter. One may judge of how prevalent the custom was, by one
of Sleeman's casual electrical remarks, when he speaks of children at play in villages—
where girl-voices were never heard!

The wedding-display folly is still in full force in India, and by consequence the
destruction of girl-babies is still furtively practiced; but not largely, because of the
vigilance of the government and the sternness of the penalties it levies.

In some parts of India the village keeps in its pay three other servants: an astrologer
to tell the villager when he may plant his crop, or make a journey, or marry a wife, or
strangle a child, or borrow a dog, or climb a tree, or catch a rat, or swindle a neighbor,
without offending the alert and solicitous heavens; and what his dream means, if he
has had one and was not bright enough to interpret it himself by the details of his
dinner; the two other established servants were the tiger-persuader and the hailstorm
discourager. The one kept away the tigers if he could, and collected the wages anyway,
and the other kept off the hailstorms, or explained why he failed. He charged the same
for explaining a failure that he did for scoring a success. A man is an idiot who can't
earn a living in India.

Major Sleeman reveals the fact that the trade union and the boycott are antiquities
in India. India seems to have originated everything. The "sweeper" belongs to the
bottom caste; he is the lowest of the low—all other castes despise him and scorn his
office. But that does not trouble him. His caste is a caste, and that is sufficient for him,
and so he is proud of it, not ashamed. Sleeman says:

"It is perhaps not known to many of my countrymen, even in India, that in every
town and city in the country the right of sweeping the houses and streets is a
monopoly, and is supported entirely by the pride of castes among the scavengers, who
are all of the lowest class. The right of sweeping within a certain range is recognized by
the caste to belong to a certain member; and if any other member presumes to sweep
within that range, he is excommunicated—no other member will smoke out of his pipe
or drink out of his jug; and he can get restored to caste only by a feast to the whole
body of sweepers. If any housekeeper within a particular circle happens to offend the
sweeper of that range, none of his filth will be removed till he pacifies him, because no
other sweeper will dare to touch it; and the people of a town are often more tyrannized
over by these people than by any other."

A footnote by Major Sleeman's editor, Mr. Vincent Arthur Smith, says that in our day
this tyranny of the sweepers' guild is one of the many difficulties which bar the
progress of Indian sanitary reform. Think of this:

"The sweepers cannot be readily coerced, because no Hindoo or Mussulman would

do their work to save his life, nor will he pollute himself by beating the refractory
scavenger."

They certainly do seem to have the whip-hand; it would be difficult to imagine a

more impregnable position. "The vested rights described in the text are so fully
recognized in practice that they are frequently the subject of sale or mortgage."

Just like a milk-route; or like a London crossing-sweepership. It is said that the

London crossing-sweeper's right to his crossing is recognized by the rest of the guild;
that they protect him in its possession; that certain choice crossings are valuable
property, and are saleable at high figures. I have noticed that the man who sweeps in
front of the Army and Navy Stores has a wealthy South African aristocratic style about
him; and when he is off his guard, he has exactly that look on his face which you
always see in the face of a man who is saving up his daughter to marry her to a duke.

It appears from Sleeman that in India the occupation of elephant-driver is confined

to Mohammedans. I wonder why that is. The water-carrier ('bheestie') is a
Mohammedan, but it is said that the reason of that is, that the Hindoo's religion does
not allow him to touch the skin of dead kine, and that is what the water-sack is made
of; it would defile him. And it doesn't allow him to eat meat; the animal that furnished
the meat was murdered, and to take any creature's life is a sin. It is a good and gentle
religion, but inconvenient.

A great Indian river, at low water, suggests the familiar anatomical picture of a
skinned human body, the intricate mesh of interwoven muscles and tendons to stand
for water-channels, and the archipelagoes of fat and flesh inclosed by them to stand
for the sandbars. Somewhere on this journey we passed such a river, and on a later
journey we saw in the Sutlej the duplicate of that river. Curious rivers they are; low
shores a dizzy distance apart, with nothing between but an enormous acreage of sand-
flats with sluggish little veins of water dribbling around amongst them; Saharas of
sand, smallpox-pitted with footprints punctured in belts as straight as the equator
clear from the one shore to the other (barring the channel-interruptions)—a dry-shod
ferry, you see. Long railway bridges are required for this sort of rivers, and India has
them. You approach Allahabad by a very long one. It was now carrying us across the
bed of the Jumna, a bed which did not seem to have been slept in for one while or
more. It wasn't all river-bed—most of it was overflow ground.

Allahabad means "City of God." I get this from the books. From a printed curiosity—
a letter written by one of those brave and confident Hindoo strugglers with the English
tongue, called a "babu"—I got a more compressed translation: "Godville." It is
perfectly correct, but that is the most that can be said for it.

We arrived in the forenoon, and short-handed; for Satan got left behind somewhere
that morning, and did not overtake us until after nightfall. It seemed very peaceful
without him. The world seemed asleep and dreaming.

I did not see the native town, I think. I do not remember why; for an incident
connects it with the Great Mutiny, and that is enough to make any place interesting.
But I saw the English part of the city. It is a town of wide avenues and noble distances,
and is comely and alluring, and full of suggestions of comfort and leisure, and of the
serenity which a good conscience buttressed by a sufficient bank account gives. The
bungalows (dwellings) stand well back in the seclusion and privacy of large enclosed
compounds (private grounds, as we should say) and in the shade and shelter of trees.
Even the photographer and the prosperous merchant ply their industries in the elegant
reserve of big compounds, and the citizens drive in there upon their business
occasions. And not in cabs—no; in the Indian cities cabs are for the drifting stranger; all
the white citizens have private carriages; and each carriage has a flock of white-
turbaned black footmen and drivers all over it. The vicinity of a lecture-hall looks like a
snowstorm,—and makes the lecturer feel like an opera. India has many names, and
they are correctly descriptive. It is the Land of Contradictions, the Land of Subtlety and
Superstition, the Land of Wealth and Poverty, the Land of Splendor and Desolation, the
Land of Plague and Famine, the Land of the Thug and the Poisoner, and of the Meek
and the Patient, the Land of the Suttee, the Land of the Unreinstatable Widow, the
Land where All Life is Holy, the Land of Cremation, the Land where the Vulture is a
Grave and a Monument, the Land of the Multitudinous Gods; and if signs go for
anything, it is the Land of the Private Carriage.

In Bombay the forewoman of a millinery shop came to the hotel in her private
carriage to take the measure for a gown—not for me, but for another. She had come
out to India to make a temporary stay, but was extending it indefinitely; indeed, she
was purposing to end her days there. In London, she said, her work had been hard, her
hours long; for economy's sake she had had to live in shabby rooms and far away from
the shop, watch the pennies, deny herself many of the common comforts of life,
restrict herself in effect to its bare necessities, eschew cabs, travel third-class by
underground train to and from her work, swallowing coal-smoke and cinders all the
way, and sometimes troubled with the society of men and women who were less
desirable than the smoke and the cinders. But in Bombay, on almost any kind of
wages, she could live in comfort, and keep her carriage, and have six servants in place
of the woman-of-all-work she had had in her English home. Later, in Calcutta, I found
that the Standard Oil clerks had small one-horse vehicles, and did no walking; and I
was told that the clerks of the other large concerns there had the like equipment. But
to return to Allahabad.

I was up at dawn, the next morning. In India the tourist's servant does not sleep in a
room in the hotel, but rolls himself up head and ears in his blanket and stretches
himself on the veranda, across the front of his master's door, and spends the night
there. I don't believe anybody's servant occupies a room. Apparently, the bungalow
servants sleep on the veranda; it is roomy, and goes all around the house. I speak of
menservants; I saw none of the other sex. I think there are none, except child-nurses. I
was up at dawn, and walked around the veranda, past the rows of sleepers. In front of
one door a Hindoo servant was squatting, waiting for his master to call him. He had
polished the yellow shoes and placed them by the door, and now he had nothing to do
but wait. It was freezing cold, but there he was, as motionless as a sculptured image,
and as patient. It troubled me. I wanted to say to him, "Don't crouch there like that
and freeze; nobody requires it of you; stir around and get warm." But I hadn't the
words.

I thought of saying 'jeldy jow', but I couldn't remember what it meant, so I didn't say
it. I knew another phrase, but it wouldn't come to my mind. I moved on, purposing to
dismiss him from my thoughts, but his bare legs and bare feet kept him there. They
kept drawing me back from the sunny side to a point whence I could see him. At the
end of an hour he had not changed his attitude in the least degree. It was a curious
and impressive exhibition of meekness and patience, or fortitude or indifference, I did
not know which. But it worried me, and it was spoiling my morning. In fact, it spoiled
two hours of it quite thoroughly. I quitted this vicinity, then, and left him to punish
himself as much as he might want to. But up to that time the man had not changed his
attitude a hair. He will always remain with me, I suppose; his figure never grows vague
in my memory. Whenever I read of Indian resignation, Indian patience under wrongs,
hardships, and misfortunes, he comes before me. He becomes a personification, and
stands for India in trouble. And for untold ages India in trouble has been pursued with
the very remark which I was going to utter but didn't, because its meaning had slipped
me: "Jeldy jow!" ("Come, shove along!")

Why, it was the very thing.

In the early brightness we made a long drive out to the Fort. Part of the way was
beautiful. It led under stately trees and through groups of native houses and by the
usual village well, where the picturesque gangs are always flocking to and fro and
laughing and chattering; and this time brawny men were deluging their bronze bodies
with the limpid water, and making a refreshing and enticing show of it; enticing, for
the sun was already transacting business, firing India up for the day. There was plenty
of this early bathing going on, for it was getting toward breakfast time, and with an
unpurified body the Hindoo must not eat.
 Then we struck into the hot plain, and found the roads crowded with pilgrims of
both sexes, for one of the great religious fairs of India was being held, just beyond the
Fort, at the junction of the sacred rivers, the Ganges and the Jumna. Three sacred
rivers, I should have said, for there is a subterranean one. Nobody has seen it, but that
doesn't signify. The fact that it is there is enough. These pilgrims had come from all
over India; some of them had been months on the way, plodding patiently along in the
heat and dust, worn, poor, hungry, but supported and sustained by an unwavering
faith and belief; they were supremely happy and content, now; their full and sufficient
reward was at hand; they were going to be cleansed from every vestige of sin and
corruption by these holy waters which make utterly pure whatsoever thing they touch,
even the dead and rotten. It is wonderful, the power of a faith like that, that can make
multitudes upon multitudes of the old and weak and the young and frail enter without
hesitation or complaint upon such incredible journeys and endure the resultant
miseries without repining. It is done in love, or it is done in fear; I do not know which it
is. No matter what the impulse is, the act born of it is beyond imagination marvelous
to our kind of people, the cold whites. There are choice great natures among us that
could exhibit the equivalent of this prodigious self-sacrifice, but the rest of us know
that we should not be equal to anything approaching it. Still, we all talk self-sacrifice,
and this makes me hope that we are large enough to honor it in the Hindoo.

Two millions of natives arrive at this fair every year. How many start, and die on the
road, from age and fatigue and disease and scanty nourishment, and how many die on
the return, from the same causes, no one knows; but the tale is great, one may say
enormous. Every twelfth year is held to be a year of peculiar grace; a greatly
augmented volume of pilgrims results then. The twelfth year has held this distinction
since the remotest times, it is said. It is said also that there is to be but one more
twelfth year—for the Ganges. After that, that holiest of all sacred rivers will cease to
be holy, and will be abandoned by the pilgrim for many centuries; how many, the wise
men have not stated. At the end of that interval it will become holy again. Meantime,
the data will be arranged by those people who have charge of all such matters, the
great chief Brahmins. It will be like shutting down a mint. At a first glance it looks most
unbrahminically uncommercial, but I am not disturbed, being soothed and tranquilized
by their reputation. "Brer fox he lay low," as Uncle Remus says; and at the judicious
time he will spring something on the Indian public which will show that he was not
financially asleep when he took the Ganges out of the market.
 Great numbers of the natives along the roads were bringing away holy water from
the rivers. They would carry it far and wide in India and sell it. Tavernier, the French
traveler (17th century), notes that Ganges water is often given at weddings, "each
guest receiving a cup or two, according to the liberality of the host; sometimes 2,000
or 3,000 rupees' worth of it is consumed at a wedding."

The Fort is a huge old structure, and has had a large experience in religions. In its
great court stands a monolith which was placed there more than 2,000 years ago to
preach (Budhism) by its pious inscription; the Fort was built three centuries ago by a
Mohammedan Emperor—a resanctification of the place in the interest of that religion.
There is a Hindoo temple, too, with subterranean ramifications stocked with shrines
and idols; and now the Fort belongs to the English, it contains a Christian Church.
Insured in all the companies.

From the lofty ramparts one has a fine view of the sacred rivers. They join at that
point—the pale blue Jumna, apparently clean and clear, and the muddy Ganges, dull
yellow and not clean. On a long curved spit between the rivers, towns of tents were
visible, with a multitude of fluttering pennons, and a mighty swarm of pilgrims. It was a
troublesome place to get down to, and not a quiet place when you arrived; but it was
interesting. There was a world of activity and turmoil and noise, partly religious, partly
commercial; for the Mohammedans were there to curse and sell, and the Hindoos to
buy and pray. It is a fair as well as a religious festival. Crowds were bathing, praying,
and drinking the purifying waters, and many sick pilgrims had come long journeys in
palanquins to be healed of their maladies by a bath; or if that might not be, then to die
on the blessed banks and so make sure of heaven. There were fakeers in plenty, with
their bodies dusted over with ashes and their long hair caked together with cow-dung;
for the cow is holy and so is the rest of it; so holy that the good Hindoo peasant
frescoes the walls of his hut with this refuse, and also constructs ornamental figures
out of it for the gracing of his dirt floor. There were seated families, fearfully and
wonderfully painted, who by attitude and grouping represented the families of certain
great gods. There was a holy man who sat naked by the day and by the week on a
cluster of iron spikes, and did not seem to mind it; and another holy man, who stood
all day holding his withered arms motionless aloft, and was said to have been doing it
for years. All of these performers have a cloth on the ground beside them for the
reception of contributions, and even the poorest of the people give a trifle and hope
that the sacrifice will be blessed to him. At last came a procession of naked holy people
marching by and chanting, and I wrenched myself away.
 CHAPTER L.

The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that wears a fig-
leaf.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

The journey to Benares was all in daylight, and occupied but a few hours. It was
admirably dusty. The dust settled upon you in a thick ashy layer and turned you into a
fakeer, with nothing lacking to the role but the cow manure and the sense of holiness.
There was a change of cars about mid-afternoon at Moghul-serai—if that was the
name—and a wait of two hours there for the Benares train. We could have found a
carriage and driven to the sacred city, but we should have lost the wait. In other
countries a long wait at a station is a dull thing and tedious, but one has no right to
have that feeling in India. You have the monster crowd of bejeweled natives, the stir,
the bustle, the confusion, the shifting splendors of the costumes—dear me, the delight
of it, the charm of it are beyond speech. The two-hour wait was over too soon. Among
other satisfying things to look at was a minor native prince from the backwoods
somewhere, with his guard of honor, a ragged but wonderfully gaudy gang of fifty dark
barbarians armed with rusty flint-lock muskets. The general show came so near to
exhausting variety that one would have said that no addition to it could be
conspicuous, but when this Falstaff and his motleys marched through it one saw that
that seeming impossibility had happened.

We got away by and by, and soon reached the outer edge of Benares; then there
was another wait; but, as usual, with something to look at. This was a cluster of little
canvas-boxes—palanquins. A canvas-box is not much of a sight—when empty; but
when there is a lady in it, it is an object of interest. These boxes were grouped apart, in
the full blaze of the terrible sun during the three-quarters of an hour that we tarried
there. They contained zenana ladies. They had to sit up; there was not room enough to
stretch out. They probably did not mind it. They are used to the close captivity of their
dwellings all their lives; when they go a journey they are carried to the train in these
boxes; in the train they have to be secluded from inspection. Many people pity them,
and I always did it myself and never charged anything; but it is doubtful if this
compassion is valued. While we were in India some good-hearted Europeans in one of
the cities proposed to restrict a large park to the use of zenana ladies, so that they
could go there and in assured privacy go about unveiled and enjoy the sunshine and air
as they had never enjoyed them before. The good intentions back of the proposition
were recognized, and sincere thanks returned for it, but the proposition itself met with
a prompt declination at the hands of those who were authorized to speak for the
zenana ladies. Apparently, the idea was shocking to the ladies—indeed, it was quite
manifestly shocking. Was that proposition the equivalent of inviting European ladies to
assemble scantily and scandalously clothed in the seclusion of a private park? It
seemed to be about that.

Without doubt modesty is nothing less than a holy feeling; and without doubt the
person whose rule of modesty has been transgressed feels the same sort of wound
that he would feel if something made holy to him by his religion had suffered a
desecration. I say "rule of modesty" because there are about a million rules in the
world, and this makes a million standards to be looked out for. Major Sleeman
mentions the case of some high-caste veiled ladies who were profoundly scandalized
when some English young ladies passed by with faces bare to the world; so scandalized
that they spoke out with strong indignation and wondered that people could be so
shameless as to expose their persons like that. And yet "the legs of the objectors were
naked to mid-thigh." Both parties were clean-minded and irreproachably modest,
while abiding by their separate rules, but they couldn't have traded rules for a change
without suffering considerable discomfort. All human rules are more or less idiotic, I
suppose. It is best so, no doubt. The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane
people, but if we tried to shut up the insane we should run out of building materials.

You have a long drive through the outskirts of Benares before you get to the hotel.
And all the aspects are melancholy. It is a vision of dusty sterility, decaying temples,
crumbling tombs, broken mud walls, shabby huts. The whole region seems to ache
with age and penury. It must take ten thousand years of want to produce such an
aspect. We were still outside of the great native city when we reached the hotel. It was
a quiet and homelike house, inviting, and manifestly comfortable. But we liked its
annex better, and went thither. It was a mile away, perhaps, and stood in the midst of
a large compound, and was built bungalow fashion, everything on the ground floor,
and a veranda all around. They have doors in India, but I don't know why. They don't
fasten, and they stand open, as a rule, with a curtain hanging in the doorspace to keep
out the glare of the sun. Still, there is plenty of privacy, for no white person will come
in without notice, of course. The native men servants will, but they don't seem to
count. They glide in, barefoot and noiseless, and are in the midst before one knows it.
At first this is a shock, and sometimes it is an embarrassment; but one has to get used
to it, and does.
 There was one tree in the compound, and a monkey lived in it. At first I was strongly
interested in the tree, for I was told that it was the renowned peepul—the tree in
whose shadow you cannot tell a lie. This one failed to stand the test, and I went away
from it disappointed. There was a softly creaking well close by, and a couple of oxen
drew water from it by the hour, superintended by two natives dressed in the usual
"turban and pocket-handkerchief." The tree and the well were the only scenery, and so
the compound was a soothing and lonesome and satisfying place; and very restful
after so many activities. There was nobody in our bungalow but ourselves; the other
guests were in the next one, where the table d'hote was furnished. A body could not
be more pleasantly situated. Each room had the customary bath attached—a room ten
or twelve feet square, with a roomy stone-paved pit in it and abundance of water. One
could not easily improve upon this arrangement, except by furnishing it with cold
water and excluding the hot, in deference to the fervency of the climate; but that is
forbidden. It would damage the bather's health. The stranger is warned against taking
cold baths in India, but even the most intelligent strangers are fools, and they do not
obey, and so they presently get laid up. I was the most intelligent fool that passed
through, that year. But I am still more intelligent now. Now that it is too late.

I wonder if the 'dorian', if that is the name of it, is another superstition, like the
peepul tree. There was a great abundance and variety of tropical fruits, but the dorian
was never in evidence. It was never the season for the dorian. It was always going to
arrive from Burma sometime or other, but it never did. By all accounts it was a most
strange fruit, and incomparably delicious to the taste, but not to the smell. Its rind was
said to exude a stench of so atrocious a nature that when a dorian was in the room
even the presence of a polecat was a refreshment. We found many who had eaten the
dorian, and they all spoke of it with a sort of rapture. They said that if you could hold
your nose until the fruit was in your mouth a sacred joy would suffuse you from head
to foot that would make you oblivious to the smell of the rind, but that if your grip
slipped and you caught the smell of the rind before the fruit was in your mouth, you
would faint. There is a fortune in that rind. Some day somebody will import it into
Europe and sell it for cheese.

Benares was not a disappointment. It justified its reputation as a curiosity. It is on

high ground, and overhangs a grand curve of the Ganges. It is a vast mass of building,
compactly crusting a hill, and is cloven in all directions by an intricate confusion of
cracks which stand for streets. Tall, slim minarets and beflagged temple-spires rise out
of it and give it picturesqueness, viewed from the river. The city is as busy as an ant-
hill, and the hurly-burly of human life swarming along the web of narrow streets
reminds one of the ants. The sacred cow swarms along, too, and goes whither she
pleases, and takes toll of the grain-shops, and is very much in the way, and is a good
deal of a nuisance, since she must not be molested.

Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks
twice as old as all of them put together. From a Hindoo statement quoted in Rev. Mr.
Parker's compact and lucid Guide to Benares, I find that the site of the town was the
beginning-place of the Creation. It was merely an upright "lingam," at first, no larger
than a stove-pipe, and stood in the midst of a shoreless ocean. This was the work of
the God Vishnu. Later he spread the lingam out till its surface was ten miles across. Still
it was not large enough for the business; therefore he presently built the globe around
it. Benares is thus the center of the earth. This is considered an advantage.

It has had a tumultuous history, both materially and spiritually. It started

Brahminically, many ages ago; then by and by Buddha came in recent times 2,500
years ago, and after that it was Buddhist during many centuries—twelve, perhaps—but
the Brahmins got the upper hand again, then, and have held it ever since. It is
unspeakably sacred in Hindoo eyes, and is as unsanitary as it is sacred, and smells like
the rind of the dorian. It is the headquarters of the Brahmin faith, and one-eighth of
the population are priests of that church. But it is not an overstock, for they have all
India as a prey. All India flocks thither on pilgrimage, and pours its savings into the
pockets of the priests in a generous stream, which never fails. A priest with a good
stand on the shore of the Ganges is much better off than the sweeper of the best
crossing in London. A good stand is worth a world of money. The holy proprietor of it
sits under his grand spectacular umbrella and blesses people all his life, and collects his
commission, and grows fat and rich; and the stand passes from father to son, down
and down and down through the ages, and remains a permanent and lucrative estate
in the family. As Mr. Parker suggests, it can become a subject of dispute, at one time or
another, and then the matter will be settled, not by prayer and fasting and
consultations with Vishnu, but by the intervention of a much more puissant power—an
English court. In Bombay I was told by an American missionary that in India there are
640 Protestant missionaries at work. At first it seemed an immense force, but of
course that was a thoughtless idea. One missionary to 500,000 natives—no, that is not
a force; it is the reverse of it; 640 marching against an intrenched camp of
300,000,000—the odds are too great. A force of 640 in Benares alone would have its
hands over-full with 8,000 Brahmin priests for adversary. Missionaries need to be well
equipped with hope and confidence, and this equipment they seem to have always
had in all parts of the world. Mr. Parker has it. It enables him to get a favorable outlook
out of statistics which might add up differently with other mathematicians. For
instance:

"During the past few years competent observers declare that the number of pilgrims
to Benares has increased."

And then he adds up this fact and gets this conclusion:

"But the revival, if so it may be called, has in it the marks of death. It is a spasmodic
struggle before dissolution."

In this world we have seen the Roman Catholic power dying, upon these same
terms, for many centuries. Many a time we have gotten all ready for the funeral and
found it postponed again, on account of the weather or something. Taught by
experience, we ought not to put on our things for this Brahminical one till we see the
procession move. Apparently one of the most uncertain things in the world is the
funeral of a religion.

I should have been glad to acquire some sort of idea of Hindoo theology, but the
difficulties were too great, the matter was too intricate. Even the mere A, B, C of it is
baffling.

There is a trinity—Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu—independent powers, apparently,

though one cannot feel quite sure of that, because in one of the temples there is an
image where an attempt has been made to concentrate the three in one person. The
three have other names and plenty of them, and this makes confusion in one's mind.
The three have wives and the wives have several names, and this increases the
confusion. There are children, the children have many names, and thus the confusion
goes on and on. It is not worth while to try to get any grip upon the cloud of minor
gods, there are too many of them.

It is even a justifiable economy to leave Brahma, the chiefest god of all, out of your
studies, for he seems to cut no great figure in India. The vast bulk of the national
worship is lavished upon Shiva and Vishnu and their families. Shiva's symbol—the
"lingam" with which Vishnu began the Creation—is worshiped by everybody,
apparently. It is the commonest object in Benares. It is on view everywhere, it is
garlanded with flowers, offerings are made to it, it suffers no neglect. Commonly it is
an upright stone, shaped like a thimble—sometimes like an elongated thimble. This
priapus-worship, then, is older than history. Mr. Parker says that the lingams in
Benares "outnumber the inhabitants."

In Benares there are many Mohammedan mosques. There are Hindoo temples
without number—these quaintly shaped and elaborately sculptured little stone jugs
crowd all the lanes. The Ganges itself and every individual drop of water in it are
temples. Religion, then, is the business of Benares, just as gold-production is the
business of Johannesburg. Other industries count for nothing as compared with the
vast and all-absorbing rush and drive and boom of the town's specialty. Benares is the
sacredest of sacred cities. The moment you step across the sharply-defined line which
separates it from the rest of the globe, you stand upon ineffably and unspeakably holy
ground. Mr. Parker says: "It is impossible to convey any adequate idea of the intense
feelings of veneration and affection with which the pious Hindoo regards 'Holy Kashi'
(Benares)." And then he gives you this vivid and moving picture:

"Let a Hindoo regiment be marched through the district, and as soon as they cross
the line and enter the limits of the holy place they rend the air with cries of 'Kashi ji ki
jai jai jai! (Holy Kashi! Hail to thee! Hail! Hail! Hail)'. The weary pilgrim scarcely able to
stand, with age and weakness, blinded by the dust and heat, and almost dead with
fatigue, crawls out of the oven-like railway carriage and as soon as his feet touch the
ground he lifts up his withered hands and utters the same pious exclamation. Let a
European in some distant city in casual talk in the bazar mention the fact that he has
lived at Benares, and at once voices will be raised to call down blessings on his head,
for a dweller in Benares is of all men most blessed."

It makes our own religious enthusiasm seem pale and cold. Inasmuch as the life of
religion is in the heart, not the head, Mr. Parker's touching picture seems to promise a
sort of indefinite postponement of that funeral.
 CHAPTER LI.

Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its
songs either.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Yes, the city of Benares is in effect just a big church, a religious hive, whose every
cell is a temple, a shrine or a mosque, and whose every conceivable earthly and
heavenly good is procurable under one roof, so to speak—a sort of Army and Navy
Stores, theologically stocked.

I will make out a little itinerary for the pilgrim; then you will see how handy the
system is, how convenient, how comprehensive. If you go to Benares with a serious
desire to spiritually benefit yourself, you will find it valuable. I got some of the facts
from conversations with the Rev. Mr. Parker and the others from his Guide to Benares;
they are therefore trustworthy.

1. Purification. At sunrise you must go down to the Ganges and bathe, pray, and
drink some of the water. This is for your general purification.

2. Protection against Hunger. Next, you must fortify yourself against the sorrowful
earthly ill just named. This you will do by worshiping for a moment in the Cow Temple.
By the door of it you will find an image of Ganesh, son of Shiva; it has the head of an
elephant on a human body; its face and hands are of silver. You will worship it a little,
and pass on, into a covered veranda, where you will find devotees reciting from the
sacred books, with the help of instructors. In this place are groups of rude and dismal
idols. You may contribute something for their support; then pass into the temple, a
grim and stenchy place, for it is populous with sacred cows and with beggars. You will
give something to the beggars, and "reverently kiss the tails" of such cows as pass
along, for these cows are peculiarly holy, and this act of worship will secure you from
hunger for the day.

3. "The Poor Man's Friend." You will next worship this god. He is at the bottom of a
stone cistern in the temple of Dalbhyeswar, under the shade of a noble peepul tree on
the bluff overlooking the Ganges, so you must go back to the river. The Poor Man's
Friend is the god of material prosperity in general, and the god of the rain in particular.
You will secure material prosperity, or both, by worshiping him. He is Shiva, under a
new alias, and he abides in the bottom of that cistern, in the form of a stone lingam.
You pour Ganges water over him, and in return for this homage you get the promised
benefits. If there is any delay about the rain, you must pour water in until the cistern is
full; the rain will then be sure to come.

4. Fever. At the Kedar Ghat you will find a long flight of stone steps leading down to
the river. Half way down is a tank filled with sewage. Drink as much of it as you want. It
is for fever.

5. Smallpox. Go straight from there to the central Ghat. At its upstream end you will
find a small whitewashed building, which is a temple sacred to Sitala, goddess of
smallpox. Her under-study is there—a rude human figure behind a brass screen. You
will worship this for reasons to be furnished presently.

6. The Well of Fate. For certain reasons you will next go and do homage at this well.
You will find it in the Dandpan Temple, in the city. The sunlight falls into it from a
square hole in the masonry above. You will approach it with awe, for your life is now at
stake. You will bend over and look. If the fates are propitious, you will see your face
pictured in the water far down in the well. If matters have been otherwise ordered, a
sudden cloud will mask the sun and you will see nothing. This means that you have not
six months to live. If you are already at the point of death, your circumstances are now
serious. There is no time to lose. Let this world go, arrange for the next one. Handily
situated, at your very elbow, is opportunity for this. You turn and worship the image of
Maha Kal, the Great Fate, and happiness in the life to come is secured. If there is
breath in your body yet, you should now make an effort to get a further lease of the
present life. You have a chance. There is a chance for everything in this admirably
stocked and wonderfully systemized Spiritual and Temporal Army and Navy Store. You
must get yourself carried to the

7. Well of Long Life. This is within the precincts of the mouldering and venerable
Briddhkal Temple, which is one of the oldest in Benares. You pass in by a stone image
of the monkey god, Hanuman, and there, among the ruined courtyards, you will find a
shallow pool of stagnant sewage. It smells like the best limburger cheese, and is filthy
with the washings of rotting lepers, but that is nothing, bathe in it; bathe in it gratefully
and worshipfully, for this is the Fountain of Youth; these are the Waters of Long Life.
Your gray hairs will disappear, and with them your wrinkles and your rheumatism, the
burdens of care and the weariness of age, and you will come out young, fresh, elastic,
and full of eagerness for the new race of life. Now will come flooding upon you the
manifold desires that haunt the dear dreams of the morning of life. You will go whither
you will find

8. Fulfillment of Desire. To wit, to the Kameshwar Temple, sacred to Shiva as the

Lord of Desires. Arrange for yours there. And if you like to look at idols among the pack
and jam of temples, there you will find enough to stock a museum. You will begin to
commit sins now with a fresh, new vivacity; therefore, it will be well to go frequently
to a place where you can get

9. Temporary Cleansing from Sin. To wit, to the Well of the Earring. You must
approach this with the profoundest reverence, for it is unutterably sacred. It is, indeed,
the most sacred place in Benares, the very Holy of Holies, in the estimation of the
people. It is a railed tank, with stone stairways leading down to the water. The water is
not clean. Of course it could not be, for people are always bathing in it. As long as you
choose to stand and look, you will see the files of sinners descending and ascending—
descending soiled with sin, ascending purged from it. "The liar, the thief, the murderer,
and the adulterer may here wash and be clean," says the Rev. Mr. Parker, in his book.
Very well. I know Mr. Parker, and I believe it; but if anybody else had said it, I should
consider him a person who had better go down in the tank and take another wash. The
god Vishnu dug this tank. He had nothing to dig with but his "discus." I do not know
what a discus is, but I know it is a poor thing to dig tanks with, because, by the time
this one was finished, it was full of sweat—Vishnu's sweat. He constructed the site that
Benares stands on, and afterward built the globe around it, and thought nothing of it,
yet sweated like that over a little thing like this tank. One of these statements is
doubtful. I do not know which one it is, but I think it difficult not to believe that a god
who could build a world around Benares would not be intelligent enough to build it
around the tank too, and not have to dig it. Youth, long life, temporary purification
from sin, salvation through propitiation of the Great Fate—these are all good. But you
must do something more. You must

10. Make Salvation Sure. There are several ways. To get drowned in the Ganges is
one, but that is not pleasant. To die within the limits of Benares is another; but that is
a risky one, because you might be out of town when your time came. The best one of
all is the Pilgrimage Around the City. You must walk; also, you must go barefoot. The
tramp is forty-four miles, for the road winds out into the country a piece, and you will
be marching five or six days. But you will have plenty of company. You will move with
throngs and hosts of happy pilgrims whose radiant costumes will make the spectacle
beautiful and whose glad songs and holy pans of triumph will banish your fatigues and
cheer your spirit; and at intervals there will be temples where you may sleep and be
refreshed with food. The pilgrimage completed, you have purchased salvation, and
paid for it. But you may not get it unless you

11. Get Your Redemption Recorded. You can get this done at the Sakhi Binayak
Temple, and it is best to do it, for otherwise you might not be able to prove that you
had made the pilgrimage in case the matter should some day come to be disputed.
That temple is in a lane back of the Cow Temple. Over the door is a red image of
Ganesh of the elephant head, son and heir of Shiva, and Prince of Wales to the
Theological Monarchy, so to speak. Within is a god whose office it is to record your
pilgrimage and be responsible for you. You will not see him, but you will see a Brahmin
who will attend to the matter and take the money. If he should forget to collect the
money, you can remind him. He knows that your salvation is now secure, but of course
you would like to know it yourself. You have nothing to do but go and pray, and pay at
the

12. Well of the Knowledge of Salvation. It is close to the Golden Temple. There you
will see, sculptured out of a single piece of black marble, a bull which is much larger
than any living bull you have ever seen, and yet is not a good likeness after all. And
there also you will see a very uncommon thing—an image of Shiva. You have seen his
lingam fifty thousand times already, but this is Shiva himself, and said to be a good
likeness. It has three eyes. He is the only god in the firm that has three. "The well is
covered by a fine canopy of stone supported by forty pillars," and around it you will
find what you have already seen at almost every shrine you have visited in Benares, a
mob of devout and eager pilgrims. The sacred water is being ladled out to them; with it
comes to them the knowledge, clear, thrilling, absolute, that they are saved; and you
can see by their faces that there is one happiness in this world which is supreme, and
to which no other joy is comparable. You receive your water, you make your deposit,
and now what more would you have? Gold, diamonds, power, fame? All in a single
moment these things have withered to dirt, dust, ashes. The world has nothing to give
you now. For you it is bankrupt.

I do not claim that the pilgrims do their acts of worship in the order and sequence
above charted out in this Itinerary of mine, but I think logic suggests that they ought to
do so. Instead of a helter-skelter worship, we then have a definite starting-place, and a
march which carries the pilgrim steadily forward by reasoned and logical progression
to a definite goal. Thus, his Ganges bath in the early morning gives him an appetite; he
kisses the cow-tails, and that removes it. It is now business hours, and longings for
material prosperity rise in his mind, and he goes and pours water over Shiva's symbol;
this insures the prosperity, but also brings on a rain, which gives him a fever. Then he
drinks the sewage at the Kedar Ghat to cure the fever; it cures the fever but gives him
the smallpox. He wishes to know how it is going to turn out; he goes to the Dandpan
Temple and looks down the well. A clouded sun shows him that death is near. Logically
his best course for the present, since he cannot tell at what moment he may die, is to
secure a happy hereafter; this he does, through the agency of the Great Fate. He is
safe, now, for heaven; his next move will naturally be to keep out of it as long as he
can. Therefore he goes to the Briddhkal Temple and secures Youth and long life by
bathing in a puddle of leper-pus which would kill a microbe. Logically, Youth has re-
equipped him for sin and with the disposition to commit it; he will naturally go to the
fane which is consecrated to the Fulfillment of Desires, and make arrangements.
Logically, he will now go to the Well of the Earring from time to time to unload and
freshen up for further banned enjoyments. But first and last and all the time he is
human, and therefore in his reflective intervals he will always be speculating in
"futures." He will make the Great Pilgrimage around the city and so make his salvation
absolutely sure; he will also have record made of it, so that it may remain absolutely
sure and not be forgotten or repudiated in the confusion of the Final Settlement.
Logically, also, he will wish to have satisfying and tranquilizing personal knowledge that
that salvation is secure; therefore he goes to the Well of the Knowledge of Salvation,
adds that completing detail, and then goes about his affairs serene and content;
serene and content, for he is now royally endowed with an advantage which no
religion in this world could give him but his own; for henceforth he may commit as
many million sins as he wants to and nothing can come of it.

Thus the system, properly and logically ordered, is neat, compact, clearly defined,
and covers the whole ground. I desire to recommend it to such as find the other
systems too difficult, exacting, and irksome for the uses of this fretful brief life of ours.

However, let me not deceive any one. My Itinerary lacks a detail. I must put it in. The
truth is, that after the pilgrim has faithfully followed the requirements of the Itinerary
through to the end and has secured his salvation and also the personal knowledge of
that fact, there is still an accident possible to him which can annul the whole thing. If
he should ever cross to the other side of the Ganges and get caught out and die there
he would at once come to life again in the form of an ass. Think of that, after all this
trouble and expense. You see how capricious and uncertain salvation is there. The
Hindoo has a childish and unreasoning aversion to being turned into an ass. It is hard
to tell why. One could properly expect an ass to have an aversion to being turned into
a Hindoo. One could understand that he could lose dignity by it; also self-respect, and
nine-tenths of his intelligence. But the Hindoo changed into an ass wouldn't lose
anything, unless you count his religion. And he would gain much—release from his
slavery to two million gods and twenty million priests, fakeers, holy mendicants, and
other sacred bacilli; he would escape the Hindoo hell; he would also escape the Hindoo
heaven. These are advantages which the Hindoo ought to consider; then he would go
over and die on the other side.

Benares is a religious Vesuvius. In its bowels the theological forces have been
heaving and tossing, rumbling, thundering and quaking, boiling, and weltering and
flaming and smoking for ages. But a little group of missionaries have taken post at its
base, and they have hopes. There are the Baptist Missionary Society, the Church
Missionary Society, the London Missionary Society, the Wesleyan Missionary Society,
and the Zenana Bible and Medical Mission. They have schools, and the principal work
seems to be among the children. And no doubt that part of the work prospers best, for
grown people everywhere are always likely to cling to the religion they were brought
up in.
 CHAPTER LII.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

In one of those Benares temples we saw a devotee working for salvation in a curious
way. He had a huge wad of clay beside him and was making it up into little wee gods
no bigger than carpet tacks. He stuck a grain of rice into each—to represent the
lingam, I think. He turned them out nimbly, for he had had long practice and had
acquired great facility. Every day he made 2,000 gods, then threw them into the holy
Ganges. This act of homage brought him the profound homage of the pious—also their
coppers. He had a sure living here, and was earning a high place in the hereafter.

The Ganges front is the supreme show-place of Benares. Its tall bluffs are solidly
caked from water to summit, along a stretch of three miles, with a splendid jumble of
massive and picturesque masonry, a bewildering and beautiful confusion of stone
platforms, temples, stair-flights, rich and stately palaces—nowhere a break, nowhere a
glimpse of the bluff itself; all the long face of it is compactly walled from sight by this
crammed perspective of platforms, soaring stairways, sculptured temples, majestic
palaces, softening away into the distances; and there is movement, motion, human life
everywhere, and brilliantly costumed—streaming in rainbows up and down the lofty
stairways, and massed in metaphorical flower-gardens on the miles of great platforms
at the river's edge.

All this masonry, all this architecture represents piety. The palaces were built by
native princes whose homes, as a rule, are far from Benares, but who go there from
time to time to refresh their souls with the sight and touch of the Ganges, the river of
their idolatry. The stairways are records of acts of piety; the crowd of costly little
temples are tokens of money spent by rich men for present credit and hope of future
reward. Apparently, the rich Christian who spends large sums upon his religion is
conspicuous with us, by his rarity, but the rich Hindoo who doesn't spend large sums
upon his religion is seemingly non-existent. With us the poor spend money on their
religion, but they keep back some to live on. Apparently, in India, the poor bankrupt
themselves daily for their religion. The rich Hindoo can afford his pious outlays; he gets
much glory for his spendings, yet keeps back a sufficiency of his income for temporal
purposes; but the poor Hindoo is entitled to compassion, for his spendings keep him
poor, yet get him no glory.
 We made the usual trip up and down the river, seated in chairs under an awning on
the deck of the usual commodious hand-propelled ark; made it two or three times, and
could have made it with increasing interest and enjoyment many times more; for, of
course, the palaces and temples would grow more and more beautiful every time one
saw them, for that happens with all such things; also, I think one would not get tired of
the bathers, nor their costumes, nor of their ingenuities in getting out of them and into
them again without exposing too much bronze, nor of their devotional gesticulations
and absorbed bead-tellings.

But I should get tired of seeing them wash their mouths with that dreadful water
and drink it. In fact, I did get tired of it, and very early, too. At one place where we
halted for a while, the foul gush from a sewer was making the water turbid and murky
all around, and there was a random corpse slopping around in it that had floated down
from up country. Ten steps below that place stood a crowd of men, women, and
comely young maidens waist deep in the water-and they were scooping it up in their
hands and drinking it. Faith can certainly do wonders, and this is an instance of it.
Those people were not drinking that fearful stuff to assuage thirst, but in order to
purify their souls and the interior of their bodies. According to their creed, the Ganges
water makes everything pure that it touches—instantly and utterly pure. The sewer
water was not an offence to them, the corpse did not revolt them; the sacred water
had touched both, and both were now snow-pure, and could defile no one. The
memory of that sight will always stay by me; but not by request.

A word further concerning the nasty but all-purifying Ganges water. When we went
to Agra, by and by, we happened there just in time to be in at the birth of a marvel—a
memorable scientific discovery—the discovery that in certain ways the foul and
derided Ganges water is the most puissant purifier in the world! This curious fact, as I
have said, had just been added to the treasury of modern science. It had long been
noted as a strange thing that while Benares is often afflicted with the cholera she does
not spread it beyond her borders. This could not be accounted for. Mr. Henkin, the
scientist in the employ of the government of Agra, concluded to examine the water. He
went to Benares and made his tests. He got water at the mouths of the sewers where
they empty into the river at the bathing ghats; a cubic centimetre of it contained
millions of germs; at the end of six hours they were all dead. He caught a floating
corpse, towed it to the shore, and from beside it he dipped up water that was
swarming with cholera germs; at the end of six hours they were all dead. He added
swarm after swarm of cholera germs to this water; within the six hours they always
died, to the last sample. Repeatedly, he took pure well water which was barren of
animal life, and put into it a few cholera germs; they always began to propagate at
once, and always within six hours they swarmed—and were numberable by millions
upon millions.

For ages and ages the Hindoos have had absolute faith that the water of the Ganges
was absolutely pure, could not be defiled by any contact whatsoever, and infallibly
made pure and clean whatsoever thing touched it. They still believe it, and that is why
they bathe in it and drink it, caring nothing for its seeming filthiness and the floating
corpses. The Hindoos have been laughed at, these many generations, but the laughter
will need to modify itself a little from now on. How did they find out the water's secret
in those ancient ages? Had they germ-scientists then? We do not know. We only know
that they had a civilization long before we emerged from savagery. But to return to
where I was before; I was about to speak of the burning-ghat.

They do not burn fakeers—those revered mendicants. They are so holy that they can
get to their place without that sacrament, provided they be consigned to the
consecrating river. We saw one carried to mid-stream and thrown overboard. He was
sandwiched between two great slabs of stone.

We lay off the cremation-ghat half an hour and saw nine corpses burned. I should
not wish to see any more of it, unless I might select the parties. The mourners follow
the bier through the town and down to the ghat; then the bier-bearers deliver the
body to some low-caste natives—Doms—and the mourners turn about and go back
home. I heard no crying and saw no tears, there was no ceremony of parting.
Apparently, these expressions of grief and affection are reserved for the privacy of the
home. The dead women came draped in red, the men in white. They are laid in the
water at the river's edge while the pyre is being prepared.

The first subject was a man. When the Doms unswathed him to wash him, he
proved to be a sturdily built, well-nourished and handsome old gentleman, with not a
sign about him to suggest that he had ever been ill. Dry wood was brought and built up
into a loose pile; the corpse was laid upon it and covered over with fuel. Then a naked
holy man who was sitting on high ground a little distance away began to talk and shout
with great energy, and he kept up this noise right along. It may have been the funeral
sermon, and probably was. I forgot to say that one of the mourners remained behind
when the others went away. This was the dead man's son, a boy of ten or twelve,
brown and handsome, grave and self-possessed, and clothed in flowing white. He was
there to burn his father. He was given a torch, and while he slowly walked seven times
around the pyre the naked black man on the high ground poured out his sermon more
clamorously than ever. The seventh circuit completed, the boy applied the torch at his
father's head, then at his feet; the flames sprang briskly up with a sharp crackling
noise, and the lad went away. Hindoos do not want daughters, because their weddings
make such a ruinous expense; but they want sons, so that at death they may have
honorable exit from the world; and there is no honor equal to the honor of having
one's pyre lighted by one's son. The father who dies sonless is in a grievous situation
indeed, and is pitied. Life being uncertain, the Hindoo marries while he is still a boy, in
the hope that he will have a son ready when the day of his need shall come. But if he
have no son, he will adopt one. This answers every purpose.

Meantime the corpse is burning, also several others. It is a dismal business. The
stokers did not sit down in idleness, but moved briskly about, punching up the fires
with long poles, and now and then adding fuel. Sometimes they hoisted the half of a
skeleton into the air, then slammed it down and beat it with the pole, breaking it up so
that it would burn better. They hoisted skulls up in the same way and banged and
battered them. The sight was hard to bear; it would have been harder if the mourners
had stayed to witness it. I had but a moderate desire to see a cremation, so it was soon
satisfied. For sanitary reasons it would be well if cremation were universal; but this
form is revolting, and not to be recommended.

The fire used is sacred, of course—for there is money in it. Ordinary fire is
forbidden; there is no money in it. I was told that this sacred fire is all furnished by one
person, and that he has a monopoly of it and charges a good price for it. Sometimes a
rich mourner pays a thousand rupees for it. To get to paradise from India is an
expensive thing. Every detail connected with the matter costs something, and helps to
fatten a priest. I suppose it is quite safe to conclude that that fire-bug is in holy orders.

Close to the cremation-ground stand a few time-worn stones which are

remembrances of the suttee. Each has a rough carving upon it, representing a man and
a woman standing or walking hand in hand, and marks the spot where a widow went
to her death by fire in the days when the suttee flourished. Mr. Parker said that
widows would burn themselves now if the government would allow it. The family that
can point to one of these little memorials and say: "She who burned herself there was
an ancestress of ours," is envied.
 It is a curious people. With them, all life seems to be sacred except human life. Even
the life of vermin is sacred, and must not be taken. The good Jain wipes off a seat
before using it, lest he cause the death of-some valueless insect by sitting down on it.
It grieves him to have to drink water, because the provisions in his stomach may not
agree with the microbes. Yet India invented Thuggery and the Suttee. India is a hard
country to understand. We went to the temple of the Thug goddess, Bhowanee, or
Kali, or Durga. She has these names and others. She is the only god to whom living
sacrifices are made. Goats are sacrificed to her. Monkeys would be cheaper.

There are plenty of them about the place. Being sacred, they make themselves very
free, and scramble around wherever they please. The temple and its porch are
beautifully carved, but this is not the case with the idol. Bhowanee is not pleasant to
look at. She has a silver face, and a projecting swollen tongue painted a deep red. She
wears a necklace of skulls.

In fact, none of the idols in Benares are handsome or attractive. And what a swarm
of them there is! The town is a vast museum of idols—and all of them crude,
misshapen, and ugly. They flock through one's dreams at night, a wild mob of
nightmares. When you get tired of them in the temples and take a trip on the river,
you find idol giants, flashily painted, stretched out side by side on the shore. And
apparently wherever there is room for one more lingam, a lingam is there. If Vishnu
had foreseen what his town was going to be, he would have called it Idolville or
Lingamburg.

The most conspicuous feature of Benares is the pair of slender white minarets which
tower like masts from the great Mosque of Aurangzeb. They seem to be always in
sight, from everywhere, those airy, graceful, inspiring things. But masts is not the right
word, for masts have a perceptible taper, while these minarets have not. They are 142
feet high, and only 8 1/2 feet in diameter at the base, and 7 1/2 at the summit—
scarcely any taper at all. These are the proportions of a candle; and fair and fairylike
candles these are. Will be, anyway, some day, when the Christians inherit them and
top them with the electric light. There is a great view from up there—a wonderful
view. A large gray monkey was part of it, and damaged it. A monkey has no judgment.
This one was skipping about the upper great heights of the mosque—skipping across
empty yawning intervals which were almost too wide for him, and which he only just
barely cleared, each time, by the skin of his teeth. He got me so nervous that I couldn't
look at the view. I couldn't look at anything but him. Every time he went sailing over
one of those abysses my breath stood still, and when he grabbed for the perch he was
going for, I grabbed too, in sympathy. And he was perfectly indifferent, perfectly
unconcerned, and I did all the panting myself. He came within an ace of losing his life a
dozen times, and I was so troubled about him that I would have shot him if I had had
anything to do it with. But I strongly recommend the view. There is more monkey than
view, and there is always going to be more monkey while that idiot survives, but what
view you get is superb. All Benares, the river, and the region round about are spread
before you. Take a gun, and look at the view.

The next thing I saw was more reposeful. It was a new kind of art. It was a picture
painted on water. It was done by a native. He sprinkled fine dust of various colors on
the still surface of a basin of water, and out of these sprinklings a dainty and pretty
picture gradually grew, a picture which a breath could destroy. Somehow it was
impressive, after so much browsing among massive and battered and decaying fanes
that rest upon ruins, and those ruins upon still other ruins, and those upon still others
again. It was a sermon, an allegory, a symbol of Instability. Those creations in stone
were only a kind of water pictures, after all.

A prominent episode in the Indian career of Warren Hastings had Benares for its
theater. Wherever that extraordinary man set his foot, he left his mark. He came to
Benares in 1781 to collect a fine of L500,000 which he had levied upon its Rajah, Cheit
Singh, on behalf of the East India Company. Hastings was a long way from home and
help. There were, probably, not a dozen Englishmen within reach; the Rajah was in his
fort with his myriads around him. But no matter. From his little camp in a neighboring
garden, Hastings sent a party to arrest the sovereign. He sent on this daring mission a
couple of hundred native soldiers— sepoys—under command of three young English
lieutenants. The Rajah submitted without a word. The incident lights up the Indian
situation electrically, and gives one a vivid sense of the strides which the English had
made and the mastership they had acquired in the land since the date of Clive's great
victory. In a quarter of a century, from being nobodies, and feared by none, they were
become confessed lords and masters, feared by all, sovereigns included, and served by
all, sovereigns included. It makes the fairy tales sound true. The English had not been
afraid to enlist native soldiers to fight against their own people and keep them
obedient. And now Hastings was not afraid to come away out to this remote place with
a handful of such soldiers and send them to arrest a native sovereign.
 The lieutenants imprisoned the Rajah in his own fort. It was beautiful, the pluckiness
of it, the impudence of it. The arrest enraged the Rajah's people, and all Benares came
storming about the place and threatening vengeance. And yet, but for an accident,
nothing important would have resulted, perhaps. The mob found out a most strange
thing, an almost incredible thing—that this handful of soldiers had come on this hardy
errand with empty guns and no ammunition. This has been attributed to
thoughtlessness, but it could hardly have been that, for in such large emergencies as
this, intelligent people do think. It must have been indifference, an over-confidence
born of the proved submissiveness of the native character, when confronted by even
one or two stern Britons in their war paint. But, however that may be, it was a fatal
discovery that the mob had made. They were full of courage, now, and they broke into
the fort and massacred the helpless soldiers and their officers. Hastings escaped from
Benares by night and got safely away, leaving the principality in a state of wild
insurrection; but he was back again within the month, and quieted it down in his
prompt and virile way, and took the Rajah's throne away from him and gave it to
another man. He was a capable kind of person was Warren Hastings. This was the only
time he was ever out of ammunition. Some of his acts have left stains upon his name
which can never be washed away, but he saved to England the Indian Empire, and that
was the best service that was ever done to the Indians themselves, those wretched
heirs of a hundred centuries of pitiless oppression and abuse.
 CHAPTER LIII.

True irreverence is disrespect for another man's god.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

It was in Benares that I saw another living god. That makes two. I believe I have seen
most of the greater and lesser wonders of the world, but I do not remember that any
of them interested me so overwhelmingly as did that pair of gods.

When I try to account for this effect I find no difficulty about it. I find that, as a rule,
when a thing is a wonder to us it is not because of what we see in it, but because of
what others have seen in it. We get almost all our wonders at second hand. We are
eager to see any celebrated thing—and we never fail of our reward; just the deep
privilege of gazing upon an object which has stirred the enthusiasm or evoked the
reverence or affection or admiration of multitudes of our race is a thing which we
value; we are profoundly glad that we have seen it, we are permanently enriched from
having seen it, we would not part with the memory of that experience for a great
price. And yet that very spectacle may be the Taj. You cannot keep your enthusiasms
down, you cannot keep your emotions within bounds when that soaring bubble of
marble breaks upon your view. But these are not your enthusiasms and emotions—
they are the accumulated emotions and enthusiasms of a thousand fervid writers, who
have been slowly and steadily storing them up in your heart day by day and year by
year all your life; and now they burst out in a flood and overwhelm you; and you could
not be a whit happier if they were your very own. By and by you sober down, and then
you perceive that you have been drunk on the smell of somebody else's cork. For ever
and ever the memory of my distant first glimpse of the Taj will compensate me for
creeping around the globe to have that great privilege.

But the Taj—with all your inflation of delusive emotions, acquired at second-hand
from people to whom in the majority of cases they were also delusions acquired at
second-hand—a thing which you fortunately did not think of or it might have made
you doubtful of what you imagined were your own what is the Taj as a marvel, a
spectacle and an uplifting and overpowering wonder, compared with a living,
breathing, speaking personage whom several millions of human beings devoutly and
sincerely and unquestioningly believe to be a God, and humbly and gratefully worship
as a God?
 He was sixty years old when I saw him. He is called Sri 108 Swami Bhaskarananda
Saraswati. That is one form of it. I think that that is what you would call him in
speaking to him—because it is short. But you would use more of his name in
addressing a letter to him; courtesy would require this. Even then you would not have
to use all of it, but only this much:

Sri 108 Matparamahansrzpairivrajakacharyaswamibhaskaranandasaraswati.

You do not put "Esq." after it, for that is not necessary. The word which opens the
volley is itself a title of honor "Sri." The "108" stands for the rest of his names, I
believe. Vishnu has 108 names which he does not use in business, and no doubt it is a
custom of gods and a privilege sacred to their order to keep 108 extra ones in stock.
Just the restricted name set down above is a handsome property, without the 108. By
my count it has 58 letters in it. This removes the long German words from competition;
they are permanently out of the race.

Sri 108 S. B. Saraswati has attained to what among the Hindoos is called the "state
of perfection." It is a state which other Hindoos reach by being born again and again,
and over and over again into this world, through one re-incarnation after another—a
tiresome long job covering centuries and decades of centuries, and one that is full of
risks, too, like the accident of dying on the wrong side of the Ganges some time or
other and waking up in the form of an ass, with a fresh start necessary and the
numerous trips to be made all over again. But in reaching perfection, Sri 108 S. B. S.
has escaped all that. He is no longer a part or a feature of this world; his substance has
changed, all earthiness has departed out of it; he is utterly holy, utterly pure; nothing
can desecrate this holiness or stain this purity; he is no longer of the earth, its concerns
are matters foreign to him, its pains and griefs and troubles cannot reach him. When
he dies, Nirvana is his; he will be absorbed into the substance of the Supreme Deity
and be at peace forever.

The Hindoo Scriptures point out how this state is to be reached, but it is only once in
a thousand years, perhaps, that candidate accomplishes it. This one has traversed the
course required, stage by stage, from the beginning to the end, and now has nothing
left to do but wait for the call which shall release him from a world in which he has
now no part nor lot. First, he passed through the student stage, and became learned in
the holy books. Next he became citizen, householder, husband, and father. That was
the required second stage. Then—like John Bunyan's Christian he bade perpetual
good-bye to his family, as required, and went wandering away. He went far into the
desert and served a term as hermit. Next, he became a beggar, "in accordance with
the rites laid down in the Scriptures," and wandered about India eating the bread of
mendicancy. A quarter of a century ago he reached the stage of purity. This needs no
garment; its symbol is nudity; he discarded the waist-cloth which he had previously
worn. He could resume it now if he chose, for neither that nor any other contact can
defile him; but he does not choose.

There are several other stages, I believe, but I do not remember what they are. But
he has been through them. Throughout the long course he was perfecting himself in
holy learning, and writing commentaries upon the sacred books. He was also
meditating upon Brahma, and he does that now.

White marble relief-portraits of him are sold all about India. He lives in a good house
in a noble great garden in Benares, all meet and proper to his stupendous rank.
Necessarily he does not go abroad in the streets. Deities would never be able to move
about handily in any country. If one whom we recognized and adored as a god should
go abroad in our streets, and the day it was to happen were known, all traffic would be
blocked and business would come to a standstill.

This god is comfortably housed, and yet modestly, all things considered, for if he
wanted to live in a palace he would only need to speak and his worshipers would
gladly build it. Sometimes he sees devotees for a moment, and comforts them and
blesses them, and they kiss his feet and go away happy. Rank is nothing to him, he
being a god. To him all men are alike. He sees whom he pleases and denies himself to
whom he pleases. Sometimes he sees a prince and denies himself to a pauper; at other
times he receives the pauper and turns the prince away. However, he does not receive
many of either class. He has to husband his time for his meditations. I think he would
receive Rev. Mr. Parker at any time. I think he is sorry for Mr. Parker, and I think Mr.
Parker is sorry for him; and no doubt this compassion is good for both of them.

When we arrived we had to stand around in the garden a little while and wait, and
the outlook was not good, for he had been turning away Maharajas that day and
receiving only the riff-raff, and we belonged in between, somewhere. But presently, a
servant came out saying it was all right, he was coming.

And sure enough, he came, and I saw him—that object of the worship of millions. It
was a strange sensation, and thrilling. I wish I could feel it stream through my veins
again. And yet, to me he was not a god, he was only a Taj. The thrill was not my thrill,
but had come to me secondhand from those invisible millions of believers. By a hand-
shake with their god I had ground-circuited their wire and got their monster battery's
whole charge.

He was tall and slender, indeed emaciated. He had a clean cut and conspicuously
intellectual face, and a deep and kindly eye. He looked many years older than he really
was, but much study and meditation and fasting and prayer, with the arid life he had
led as hermit and beggar, could account for that. He is wholly nude when he receives
natives, of whatever rank they may be, but he had white cloth around his loins now, a
concession to Mr. Parker's European prejudices, no doubt.

As soon as I had sobered down a little we got along very well together, and I found
him a most pleasant and friendly deity. He had heard a deal about Chicago, and
showed a quite remarkable interest in it, for a god. It all came of the World's Fair and
the Congress of Religions. If India knows about nothing else American, she knows
about those, and will keep them in mind one while.

He proposed an exchange of autographs, a delicate attention which made me

believe in him, but I had been having my doubts before. He wrote his in his book, and I
have a reverent regard for that book, though the words run from right to left, and so I
can't read it. It was a mistake to print in that way. It contains his voluminous
comments on the Hindoo holy writings, and if I could make them out I would try for
perfection myself. I gave him a copy of Huckleberry Finn. I thought it might rest him up
a little to mix it in along with his meditations on Brahma, for he looked tired, and I
knew that if it didn't do him any good it wouldn't do him any harm.

He has a scholar meditating under him—Mina Bahadur Rana—but we did not see
him. He wears clothes and is very imperfect. He has written a little pamphlet about his
master, and I have that. It contains a wood-cut of the master and himself seated on a
rug in the garden. The portrait of the master is very good indeed. The posture is
exactly that which Brahma himself affects, and it requires long arms and limber legs,
and can be accumulated only by gods and the india-rubber man. There is a life-size
marble relief of Shri 108, S.B.S. in the garden. It represents him in this same posture.

Dear me! It is a strange world. Particularly the Indian division of it. This pupil, Mina
Bahadur Rana, is not a commonplace person, but a man of distinguished capacities and
attainments, and, apparently, he had a fine worldly career in front of him. He was
serving the Nepal Government in a high capacity at the Court of the Viceroy of India,
twenty years ago. He was an able man, educated, a thinker, a man of property. But the
longing to devote himself to a religious life came upon him, and he resigned his place,
turned his back upon the vanities and comforts of the world, and went away into the
solitudes to live in a hut and study the sacred writings and meditate upon virtue and
holiness and seek to attain them. This sort of religion resembles ours. Christ
recommended the rich to give away all their property and follow Him in poverty, not in
worldly comfort. American and English millionaires do it every day, and thus verify and
confirm to the world the tremendous forces that lie in religion. Yet many people scoff
at them for this loyalty to duty, and many will scoff at Mina Bahadur Rana and call him
a crank. Like many Christians of great character and intellect, he has made the study of
his Scriptures and the writing of books of commentaries upon them the loving labor of
his life. Like them, he has believed that his was not an idle and foolish waste of his life,
but a most worthy and honorable employment of it. Yet, there are many people who
will see in those others, men worthy of homage and deep reverence, but in him merely
a crank. But I shall not. He has my reverence. And I don't offer it as a common thing
and poor, but as an unusual thing and of value. The ordinary reverence, the reverence
defined and explained by the dictionary costs nothing. Reverence for one's own sacred
things—parents, religion, flag, laws, and respect for one's own beliefs—these are
feelings which we cannot even help. They come natural to us; they are involuntary, like
breathing. There is no personal merit in breathing. But the reverence which is difficult,
and which has personal merit in it, is the respect which you pay, without compulsion,
to the political or religious attitude of a man whose beliefs are not yours. You can't
revere his gods or his politics, and no one expects you to do that, but you could respect
his belief in them if you tried hard enough; and you could respect him, too, if you tried
hard enough. But it is very, very difficult; it is next to impossible, and so we hardly ever
try. If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. I mean
it does nowadays, because now we can't burn him.

We are always canting about people's "irreverence," always charging this offense
upon somebody or other, and thereby intimating that we are better than that person
and do not commit that offense ourselves. Whenever we do this we are in a lying
attitude, and our speech is cant; for none of us are reverent—in a meritorious way;
deep down in our hearts we are all irreverent. There is probably not a single exception
to this rule in the earth. There is probably not one person whose reverence rises higher
than respect for his own sacred things; and therefore, it is not a thing to boast about
and be proud of, since the most degraded savage has that—and, like the best of us,
has nothing higher. To speak plainly, we despise all reverences and all objects of
reverence which are outside the pale of our own list of sacred things. And yet, with
strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things
which are holy to us. Suppose we should meet with a paragraph like the following, in
the newspapers:

"Yesterday a visiting party of the British nobility had a picnic at Mount Vernon, and
in the tomb of Washington they ate their luncheon, sang popular songs, played games,
and danced waltzes and polkas."

Should we be shocked? Should we feel outraged? Should we be amazed? Should we

call the performance a desecration? Yes, that would all happen. We should denounce
those people in round terms, and call them hard names.

And suppose we found this paragraph in the newspapers:

"Yesterday a visiting party of American pork-millionaires had a picnic in Westminster

Abbey, and in that sacred place they ate their luncheon, sang popular songs, played
games, and danced waltzes and polkas."

Would the English be shocked? Would they feel outraged? Would they be amazed?
Would they call the performance a desecration? That would all happen. The pork-
millionaires would be denounced in round terms; they would be called hard names.

In the tomb at Mount Vernon lie the ashes of America's most honored son; in the
Abbey, the ashes of England's greatest dead; the tomb of tombs, the costliest in the
earth, the wonder of the world, the Taj, was built by a great Emperor to honor the
memory of a perfect wife and perfect mother, one in whom there was no spot or
blemish, whose love was his stay and support, whose life was the light of the world to
him; in it her ashes lie, and to the Mohammedan millions of India it is a holy place; to
them it is what Mount Vernon is to Americans, it is what the Abbey is to the English.

Major Sleeman wrote forty or fifty years ago (the italics are mine):

"I would here enter my humble protest against the quadrille and lunch parties which
are sometimes given to European ladies and gentlemen of the station at this imperial
tomb; drinking and dancing are no doubt very good things in their season, but they are
sadly out of place in a sepulchre."
 Were there any Americans among those lunch parties? If they were invited, there
were.

If my imagined lunch-parties in Westminster and the tomb of Washington should

take place, the incident would cause a vast outbreak of bitter eloquence about
Barbarism and Irreverence; and it would come from two sets of people who would go
next day and dance in the Taj if they had a chance.

As we took our leave of the Benares god and started away we noticed a group of
natives waiting respectfully just within the gate—a Rajah from somewhere in India,
and some people of lesser consequence. The god beckoned them to come, and as we
passed out the Rajah was kneeling and reverently kissing his sacred feet.

If Barnum—but Barnum's ambitions are at rest. This god will remain in the holy
peace and seclusion of his garden, undisturbed. Barnum could not have gotten him,
anyway. Still, he would have found a substitute that would answer.
 CHAPTER LIV.

Do not undervalue the headache. While it is at its sharpest it seems a bad

investment; but when relief begins, the unexpired remainder is worth $4 a minute.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

A comfortable railway journey of seventeen and a half hours brought us to the

capital of India, which is likewise the capital of Bengal—Calcutta. Like Bombay, it has a
population of nearly a million natives and a small gathering of white people. It is a
huge city and fine, and is called the City of Palaces. It is rich in historical memories; rich
in British achievement—military, political, commercial; rich in the results of the
miracles done by that brace of mighty magicians, Clive and Hastings. And has a cloud
kissing monument to one Ochterlony.

It is a fluted candlestick 250 feet high. This lingam is the only large monument in
Calcutta, I believe. It is a fine ornament, and will keep Ochterlony in mind.

Wherever you are, in Calcutta, and for miles around, you can see it; and always
when you see it you think of Ochterlony. And so there is not an hour in the day that
you do not think of Ochterlony and wonder who he was. It is good that Clive cannot
come back, for he would think it was for Plassey; and then that great spirit would be
wounded when the revelation came that it was not. Clive would find out that it was for
Ochterlony; and he would think Ochterlony was a battle. And he would think it was a
great one, too, and he would say, "With three thousand I whipped sixty thousand and
founded the Empire—and there is no monument; this other soldier must have
whipped a billion with a dozen and saved the world."

But he would be mistaken. Ochterlony was a man, not a battle. And he did good and
honorable service, too; as good and honorable service as has been done in India by
seventy-five or a hundred other Englishmen of courage, rectitude, and distinguished
capacity. For India has been a fertile breeding-ground of such men, and remains so;
great men, both in war and in the civil service, and as modest as great. But they have
no monuments, and were not expecting any. Ochterlony could not have been
expecting one, and it is not at all likely that he desired one—certainly not until Clive
and Hastings should be supplied. Every day Clive and Hastings lean on the battlements
of heaven and look down and wonder which of the two the monument is for; and they
fret and worry because they cannot find out, and so the peace of heaven is spoiled for
them and lost. But not for Ochterlony. Ochterlony is not troubled. He doesn't suspect
that it is his monument. Heaven is sweet and peaceful to him. There is a sort of
unfairness about it all.

Indeed, if monuments were always given in India for high achievements, duty
straitly performed, and smirchless records, the landscape would be monotonous with
them. The handful of English in India govern the Indian myriads with apparent ease,
and without noticeable friction, through tact, training, and distinguished
administrative ability, reinforced by just and liberal laws—and by keeping their word to
the native whenever they give it.

England is far from India and knows little about the eminent services performed by
her servants there, for it is the newspaper correspondent who makes fame, and he is
not sent to India but to the continent, to report the doings of the princelets and the
dukelets, and where they are visiting and whom they are marrying. Often a British
official spends thirty or forty years in India, climbing from grade to grade by services
which would make him celebrated anywhere else, and finishes as a vice-sovereign,
governing a great realm and millions of subjects; then he goes home to England
substantially unknown and unheard of, and settles down in some modest corner, and
is as one extinguished. Ten years later there is a twenty-line obituary in the London
papers, and the reader is paralyzed by the splendors of a career which he is not sure
that he had ever heard of before. But meanwhile he has learned all about the
continental princelets and dukelets.

The average man is profoundly ignorant of countries that lie remote from his own.
When they are mentioned in his presence one or two facts and maybe a couple of
names rise like torches in his mind, lighting up an inch or two of it and leaving the rest
all dark. The mention of Egypt suggests some Biblical facts and the Pyramids-nothing
more. The mention of South Africa suggests Kimberly and the diamonds and there an
end. Formerly the mention, to a Hindoo, of America suggested a name—George
Washington—with that his familiarity with our country was exhausted. Latterly his
familiarity with it has doubled in bulk; so that when America is mentioned now, two
torches flare up in the dark caverns of his mind and he says, "Ah, the country of the
great man Washington; and of the Holy City—Chicago." For he knows about the
Congress of Religion, and this has enabled him to get an erroneous impression of
Chicago.
 When India is mentioned to the citizen of a far country it suggests Clive, Hastings,
the Mutiny, Kipling, and a number of other great events; and the mention of Calcutta
infallibly brings up the Black Hole. And so, when that citizen finds himself in the capital
of India he goes first of all to see the Black Hole of Calcutta—and is disappointed.

The Black Hole was not preserved; it is gone, long, long ago. It is strange. Just as it
stood, it was itself a monument; a ready-made one. It was finished, it was complete, its
materials were strong and lasting, it needed no furbishing up, no repairs; it merely
needed to be let alone. It was the first brick, the Foundation Stone, upon which was
reared a mighty Empire—the Indian Empire of Great Britain. It was the ghastly episode
of the Black Hole that maddened the British and brought Clive, that young military
marvel, raging up from Madras; it was the seed from which sprung Plassey; and it was
that extraordinary battle, whose like had not been seen in the earth since Agincourt,
that laid deep and strong the foundations of England's colossal Indian sovereignty.

And yet within the time of men who still live, the Black Hole was torn down and
thrown away as carelessly as if its bricks were common clay, not ingots of historic gold.
There is no accounting for human beings.

The supposed site of the Black Hole is marked by an engraved plate. I saw that; and
better that than nothing. The Black Hole was a prison—a cell is nearer the right word—
eighteen feet square, the dimensions of an ordinary bedchamber; and into this place
the victorious Nabob of Bengal packed 146 of his English prisoners. There was hardly
standing room for them; scarcely a breath of air was to be got; the time was night, the
weather sweltering hot. Before the dawn came, the captives were all dead but twenty-
three. Mr. Holwell's long account of the awful episode was familiar to the world a
hundred years ago, but one seldom sees in print even an extract from it in our day.
Among the striking things in it is this. Mr. Holwell, perishing with thirst, kept himself
alive by sucking the perspiration from his sleeves. It gives one a vivid idea of the
situation. He presently found that while he was busy drawing life from one of his
sleeves a young English gentleman was stealing supplies from the other one. Holwell
was an unselfish man, a man of the most generous impulses; he lived and died famous
for these fine and rare qualities; yet when he found out what was happening to that
unwatched sleeve, he took the precaution to suck that one dry first. The miseries of
the Black Hole were able to change even a nature like his. But that young gentleman
was one of the twenty-three survivors, and he said it was the stolen perspiration that
saved his life. From the middle of Mr. Holwell's narrative I will make a brief excerpt:
 "Then a general prayer to Heaven, to hasten the approach of the flames to the right
and left of us, and put a period to our misery. But these failing, they whose strength
and spirits were quite exhausted laid themselves down and expired quietly upon their
fellows: others who had yet some strength and vigor left made a last effort at the
windows, and several succeeded by leaping and scrambling over the backs and heads
of those in the first rank, and got hold of the bars, from which there was no removing
them. Many to the right and left sunk with the violent pressure, and were soon
suffocated; for now a steam arose from the living and the dead, which affected us in all
its circumstances as if we were forcibly held with our heads over a bowl full of strong
volatile spirit of hartshorn, until suffocated; nor could the effluvia of the one be
distinguished from the other, and frequently, when I was forced by the load upon my
head and shoulders to hold my face down, I was obliged, near as I was to the window,
instantly to raise it again to avoid suffocation. I need not, my dear friend, ask your
commiseration, when I tell you, that in this plight, from half an hour past eleven till
near two in the morning, I sustained the weight of a heavy man, with his knees in my
back, and the pressure of his whole body on my head. A Dutch surgeon who had taken
his seat upon my left shoulder, and a Topaz (a black Christian soldier) bearing on my
right; all which nothing could have enabled me to support but the props and pressure
equally sustaining me all around. The two latter I frequently dislodged by shifting my
hold on the bars and driving my knuckles into their ribs; but my friend above stuck fast,
held immovable by two bars.

"I exerted anew my strength and fortitude; but the repeated trials and efforts I made
to dislodge the insufferable incumbrances upon me at last quite exhausted me; and
towards two o'clock, finding I must quit the window or sink where I was, I resolved on
the former, having bore, truly for the sake of others, infinitely more for life than the
best of it is worth. In the rank close behind me was an officer of one of the ships, whose
name was Cary, and who had behaved with much bravery during the siege (his wife, a
fine woman, though country born, would not quit him, but accompanied him into the
prison, and was one who survived). This poor wretch had been long raving for water
and air; I told him I was determined to give up life, and recommended his gaining my
station. On my quitting it he made a fruitless attempt to get my place; but the Dutch
surgeon, who sat on my shoulder, supplanted him. Poor Cary expressed his
thankfulness, and said he would give up life too; but it was with the utmost labor we
forced our way from the window (several in the inner ranks appearing to me dead
standing, unable to fall by the throng and equal pressure around). He laid himself down
to die; and his death, I believe, was very sudden; for he was a short, full, sanguine man.
His strength was great; and, I imagine, had he not retired with me, I should never have
been able to force my way. I was at this time sensible of no pain, and little uneasiness; I
can give you no better idea of my situation than by repeating my simile of the bowl of
spirit of hartshorn. I found a stupor coming on apace, and laid myself down by that
gallant old man, the Rev. Mr. Jervas Bellamy, who laid dead with his son, the
lieutenant, hand in hand, near the southernmost wall of the prison. When I had lain
there some little time, I still had reflection enough to suffer some uneasiness in the
thought that I should be trampled upon, when dead, as I myself had done to others.
With some difficulty I raised myself, and gained the platform a second time, where I
presently lost all sensation; the last trace of sensibility that I have been able to recollect
after my laying down, was my sash being uneasy about my waist, which I untied, and
threw from me. Of what passed in this interval, to the time of my resurrection from this
hole of horrors, I can give you no account."

There was plenty to see in Calcutta, but there was not plenty of time for it. I saw the
fort that Clive built; and the place where Warren Hastings and the author of the Junius
Letters fought their duel; and the great botanical gardens; and the fashionable
afternoon turnout in the Maidan; and a grand review of the garrison in a great plain at
sunrise; and a military tournament in which great bodies of native soldiery exhibited
the perfection of their drill at all arms, a spectacular and beautiful show occupying
several nights and closing with the mimic storming of a native fort which was as good
as the reality for thrilling and accurate detail, and better than the reality for security
and comfort; we had a pleasure excursion on the 'Hoogly' by courtesy of friends, and
devoted the rest of the time to social life and the Indian museum. One should spend a
month in the museum, an enchanted palace of Indian antiquities. Indeed, a person
might spend half a year among the beautiful and wonderful things without exhausting
their interest.

It was winter. We were of Kipling's "hosts of tourists who travel up and down India
in the cold weather showing how things ought to be managed." It is a common
expression there, "the cold weather," and the people think there is such a thing. It is
because they have lived there half a lifetime, and their perceptions have become
blunted. When a person is accustomed to 138 in the shade, his ideas about cold
weather are not valuable. I had read, in the histories, that the June marches made
between Lucknow and Cawnpore by the British forces in the time of the Mutiny were
made in that kind of weather—138 in the shade—and had taken it for historical
embroidery. I had read it again in Serjeant-Major Forbes-Mitchell's account of his
military experiences in the Mutiny—at least I thought I had—and in Calcutta I asked
him if it was true, and he said it was. An officer of high rank who had been in the thick
of the Mutiny said the same. As long as those men were talking about what they knew,
they were trustworthy, and I believed them; but when they said it was now "cold
weather," I saw that they had traveled outside of their sphere of knowledge and were
floundering. I believe that in India "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and
has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between
weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy.
It was observable that brass ones were in use while I was in Calcutta, showing that it
was not yet time to change to porcelain; I was told the change to porcelain was not
usually made until May. But this cold weather was too warm for us; so we started to
Darjeeling, in the Himalayas—a twenty-four hour journey.
 CHAPTER LV.

There are 869 different forms of lying, but only one of them has been squarely
forbidden. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

FROM DIARY:

February 14. We left at 4:30 P.M. Until dark we moved through rich vegetation, then
changed to a boat and crossed the Ganges.

February 15. Up with the sun. A brilliant morning, and frosty. A double suit of
flannels is found necessary. The plain is perfectly level, and seems to stretch away and
away and away, dimming and softening, to the uttermost bounds of nowhere. What a
soaring, strenuous, gushing fountain spray of delicate greenery a bunch of bamboo is!
As far as the eye can reach, these grand vegetable geysers grace the view, their
spoutings refined to steam by distance. And there are fields of bananas, with the
sunshine glancing from the varnished surface of their drooping vast leaves. And there
are frequent groves of palm; and an effective accent is given to the landscape by
isolated individuals of this picturesque family, towering, clean-stemmed, their plumes
broken and hanging ragged, Nature's imitation of an umbrella that has been out to see
what a cyclone is like and is trying not to look disappointed. And everywhere through
the soft morning vistas we glimpse the villages, the countless villages, the myriad
villages, thatched, built of clean new matting, snuggling among grouped palms and
sheaves of bamboo; villages, villages, no end of villages, not three hundred yards
apart, and dozens and dozens of them in sight all the time; a mighty City, hundreds of
miles long, hundreds of miles broad, made all of villages, the biggest city in the earth,
and as populous as a European kingdom. I have seen no such city as this before. And
there is a continuously repeated and replenished multitude of naked men in view on
both sides and ahead. We fly through it mile after mile, but still it is always there, on
both sides and ahead—brown-bodied, naked men and boys, plowing in the fields. But
not a woman. In these two hours I have not seen a woman or a girl working in the
fields.

Those are beautiful verses, and they have remained in my memory all my life. But if
the closing lines are true, let us hope that when we come to answer the call and
deliver the land from its errors, we shall secrete from it some of our high-civilization
ways, and at the same time borrow some of its pagan ways to enrich our high system
with. We have a right to do this. If we lift those people up, we have a right to lift
ourselves up nine or ten grades or so, at their expense. A few years ago I spent several
weeks at Tolz, in Bavaria. It is a Roman Catholic region, and not even Benares is more
deeply or pervasively or intelligently devout. In my diary of those days I find this:

"We took a long drive yesterday around about the lovely country roads. But it was a
drive whose pleasure was damaged in a couple of ways: by the dreadful shrines and by
the shameful spectacle of gray and venerable old grandmothers toiling in the fields.
The shrines were frequent along the roads—figures of the Saviour nailed to the cross
and streaming with blood from the wounds of the nails and the thorns.

"When missionaries go from here do they find fault with the pagan idols? I saw many
women seventy and even eighty years old mowing and binding in the fields, and
pitchforking the loads into the wagons."

I was in Austria later, and in Munich. In Munich I saw gray old women pushing trucks
up hill and down, long distances, trucks laden with barrels of beer, incredible loads. In
my Austrian diary I find this:

"In the fields I often see a woman and a cow harnessed to the plow, and a man
driving.

"In the public street of Marienbad to-day, I saw an old, bent, gray-fheaded woman,
in harness with a dog, drawing a laden sled over bare dirt roads and bare pavements;
and at his ease walked the driver, smoking his pipe, a hale fellow not thirty years old."

Five or six years ago I bought an open boat, made a kind of a canvas wagon-roof
over the stern of it to shelter me from sun and rain; hired a courier and a boatman,
and made a twelve-day floating voyage down the Rhone from Lake Bourget to
Marseilles. In my diary of that trip I find this entry. I was far down the Rhone then:

"Passing St. Etienne, 2:15 P.M. On a distant ridge inland, a tall openwork structure
commandingly situated, with a statue of the Virgin standing on it. A devout country. All
down this river, wherever there is a crag there is a statue of the Virgin on it. I believe I
have seen a hundred of them. And yet, in many respects, the peasantry seem to be
mere pagans, and destitute of any considerable degree of civilization.
 " . . . . We reached a not very promising looking village about 4 o'clock, and I
concluded to tie up for the day; munching fruit and fogging the hood with pipe-smoke
had grown monotonous; I could not have the hood furled, because the floods of rain fell
unceasingly. The tavern was on the river bank, as is the custom. It was dull there, and
melancholy—nothing to do but look out of the window into the drenching rain, and
shiver; one could do that, for it was bleak and cold and windy, and country France
furnishes no fire. Winter overcoats did not help me much; they had to be supplemented
with rugs. The raindrops were so large and struck the river with such force that they
knocked up the water like pebble-splashes.

"With the exception of a very occasional woodenshod peasant, nobody was abroad
in this bitter weather—I mean nobody of our sex. But all weathers are alike to the
women in these continental countries. To them and the other animals, life is serious;
nothing interrupts their slavery. Three of them were washing clothes in the river under
the window when I arrived, and they continued at it as long as there was light to work
by. One was apparently thirty; another—the mother!—above fifty; the third—
grandmother!—so old and worn and gray she could have passed for eighty; I took her
to be that old. They had no waterproofs nor rubbers, of course; over their shoulders
they wore gunnysacks—simply conductors for rivers of water; some of the volume
reached the ground; the rest soaked in on the way.

"At last a vigorous fellow of thirty-five arrived, dry and comfortable, smoking his pipe
under his big umbrella in an open donkey-cart-husband, son, and grandson of those
women! He stood up in the cart, sheltering himself, and began to superintend, issuing
his orders in a masterly tone of command, and showing temper when they were not
obeyed swiftly enough.

"Without complaint or murmur the drowned women patiently carried out the orders,
lifting the immense baskets of soggy, wrung-out clothing into the cart and stowing
them to the man's satisfaction. There were six of the great baskets, and a man of mere
ordinary strength could not have lifted any one of them. The cart being full now, the
Frenchman descended, still sheltered by his umbrella, entered the tavern, and the
women went drooping homeward, trudging in the wake of the cart, and soon were
blended with the deluge and lost to sight.

"When I went down into the public room, the Frenchman had his bottle of wine and
plate of food on a bare table black with grease, and was 'chomping' like a horse. He
had the little religious paper which is in everybody's hands on the Rhone borders, and
was enlightening himself with the histories of French saints who used to flee to the
desert in the Middle Ages to escape the contamination of woman. For two hundred
years France has been sending missionaries to other savage lands. To spare to the
needy from poverty like hers is fine and true generosity."

But to get back to India—where, as my favorite poem says—

"Every prospect pleases,

And only man is vile."

It is because Bavaria and Austria and France have not introduced their civilization to
him yet. But Bavaria and Austria and France are on their way. They are coming. They
will rescue him; they will refine the vileness out of him.

Some time during the forenoon, approaching the mountains, we changed from the
regular train to one composed of little canvas-sheltered cars that skimmed along
within a foot of the ground and seemed to be going fifty miles an hour when they were
really making about twenty. Each car had seating capacity for half-a-dozen persons;
and when the curtains were up one was substantially out of doors, and could see
everywhere, and get all the breeze, and be luxuriously comfortable. It was not a
pleasure excursion in name only, but in fact.

After a while we stopped at a little wooden coop of a station just within the curtain
of the sombre jungle, a place with a deep and dense forest of great trees and scrub
and vines all about it. The royal Bengal tiger is in great force there, and is very bold and
unconventional. From this lonely little station a message once went to the railway
manager in Calcutta: "Tiger eating station-master on front porch; telegraph
instructions."

It was there that I had my first tiger hunt. I killed thirteen. We were presently away
again, and the train began to climb the mountains. In one place seven wild elephants
crossed the track, but two of them got away before I could overtake them. The railway
journey up the mountain is forty miles, and it takes eight hours to make it. It is so wild
and interesting and exciting and enchanting that it ought to take a week. As for the
vegetation, it is a museum. The jungle seemed to contain samples of every rare and
curious tree and bush that we had ever seen or heard of. It is from that museum, I
think, that the globe must have been supplied with the trees and vines and shrubs that
it holds precious.
 The road is infinitely and charmingly crooked. It goes winding in and out under lofty
cliffs that are smothered in vines and foliage, and around the edges of bottomless
chasms; and all the way one glides by files of picturesque natives, some carrying
burdens up, others going down from their work in the tea-gardens; and once there
was a gaudy wedding procession, all bright tinsel and color, and a bride, comely and
girlish, who peeped out from the curtains of her palanquin, exposing her face with that
pure delight which the young and happy take in sin for sin's own sake.

By and by we were well up in the region of the clouds, and from that breezy height
we looked down and afar over a wonderful picture—the Plains of India, stretching to
the horizon, soft and fair, level as a floor, shimmering with heat, mottled with cloud-
shadows, and cloven with shining rivers. Immediately below us, and receding down,
down, down, toward the valley, was a shaven confusion of hilltops, with ribbony roads
and paths squirming and snaking cream-yellow all over them and about them, every
curve and twist sharply distinct.

At an elevation of 6,000 feet we entered a thick cloud, and it shut out the world and
kept it shut out. We climbed 1,000 feet higher, then began to descend, and presently
got down to Darjeeling, which is 6,000 feet above the level of the Plains.

We had passed many a mountain village on the way up, and seen some new kinds of
natives, among them many samples of the fighting Ghurkas. They are not large men,
but they are strong and resolute. There are no better soldiers among Britain's native
troops. And we had passed shoals of their women climbing the forty miles of steep
road from the valley to their mountain homes, with tall baskets on their backs hitched
to their foreheads by a band, and containing a freightage weighing—I will not say how
many hundreds of pounds, for the sum is unbelievable. These were young women, and
they strode smartly along under these astonishing burdens with the air of people out
for a holiday. I was told that a woman will carry a piano on her back all the way up the
mountain; and that more than once a woman had done it. If these were old women I
should regard the Ghurkas as no more civilized than the Europeans. At the railway
station at Darjeeling you find plenty of cab-substitutes—open coffins, in which you sit,
and are then borne on men's shoulders up the steep roads into the town.

Up there we found a fairly comfortable hotel, the property of an indiscriminate and

incoherent landlord, who looks after nothing, but leaves everything to his army of
Indian servants. No, he does look after the bill—to be just to him—and the tourist
cannot do better than follow his example. I was told by a resident that the summit of
Kinchinjunga is often hidden in the clouds, and that sometimes a tourist has waited
twenty-two days and then been obliged to go away without a sight of it. And yet went
not disappointed; for when he got his hotel bill he recognized that he was now seeing
the highest thing in the Himalayas. But this is probably a lie.

After lecturing I went to the Club that night, and that was a comfortable place. It is
loftily situated, and looks out over a vast spread of scenery; from it you can see where
the boundaries of three countries come together, some thirty miles away; Thibet is
one of them, Nepaul another, and I think Herzegovina was the other. Apparently, in
every town and city in India the gentlemen of the British civil and military service have
a club; sometimes it is a palatial one, always it is pleasant and homelike. The hotels are
not always as good as they might be, and the stranger who has access to the Club is
grateful for his privilege and knows how to value it.

Next day was Sunday. Friends came in the gray dawn with horses, and my party rode
away to a distant point where Kinchinjunga and Mount Everest show up best, but I
stayed at home for a private view; for it was very cold, and I was not acquainted with
the horses, any way. I got a pipe and a few blankets and sat for two hours at the
window, and saw the sun drive away the veiling gray and touch up the snow-peaks one
after another with pale pink splashes and delicate washes of gold, and finally flood the
whole mighty convulsion of snow-mountains with a deluge of rich splendors.

Kinchinjunga's peak was but fitfully visible, but in the between times it was vividly
clear against the sky—away up there in the blue dome more than 28,000 feet above
sea level—the loftiest land I had ever seen, by 12,000 feet or more. It was 45 miles
away. Mount Everest is a thousand feet higher, but it was not a part of that sea of
mountains piled up there before me, so I did not see it; but I did not care, because I
think that mountains that are as high as that are disagreeable.

I changed from the back to the front of the house and spent the rest of the morning
there, watching the swarthy strange tribes flock by from their far homes in the
Himalayas. All ages and both sexes were represented, and the breeds were quite new
to me, though the costumes of the Thibetans made them look a good deal like
Chinamen. The prayer-wheel was a frequent feature. It brought me near to these
people, and made them seem kinfolk of mine. Through our preacher we do much of
our praying by proxy. We do not whirl him around a stick, as they do, but that is merely
a detail.
 The swarm swung briskly by, hour after hour, a strange and striking pageant. It was
wasted there, and it seemed a pity. It should have been sent streaming through the
cities of Europe or America, to refresh eyes weary of the pale monotonies of the
circus-pageant. These people were bound for the bazar, with things to sell. We went
down there, later, and saw that novel congress of the wild peoples, and plowed here
and there through it, and concluded that it would be worth coming from Calcutta to
see, even if there were no Kinchinjunga and Everest.
 CHAPTER LVI.

There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate: when he can't
afford it, and when he can.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

On Monday and Tuesday at sunrise we again had fair-to-middling views of the

stupendous mountains; then, being well cooled off and refreshed, we were ready to
chance the weather of the lower world once more.

We traveled up hill by the regular train five miles to the summit, then changed to a
little canvas-canopied hand-car for the 35-mile descent. It was the size of a sleigh, it
had six seats and was so low that it seemed to rest on the ground. It had no engine or
other propelling power, and needed none to help it fly down those steep inclines. It
only needed a strong brake, to modify its flight, and it had that. There was a story of a
disastrous trip made down the mountain once in this little car by the Lieutenant-
Governor of Bengal, when the car jumped the track and threw its passengers over a
precipice. It was not true, but the story had value for me, for it made me nervous, and
nervousness wakes a person up and makes him alive and alert, and heightens the thrill
of a new and doubtful experience. The car could really jump the track, of course; a
pebble on the track, placed there by either accident or malice, at a sharp curve where
one might strike it before the eye could discover it, could derail the car and fling it
down into India; and the fact that the lieutenant-governor had escaped was no proof
that I would have the same luck. And standing there, looking down upon the Indian
Empire from the airy altitude of 7,000 feet, it seemed unpleasantly far, dangerously
far, to be flung from a handcar.

But after all, there was but small danger—for me. What there was, was for Mr.
Pugh, inspector of a division of the Indian police, in whose company and protection we
had come from Calcutta. He had seen long service as an artillery officer, was less
nervous than I was, and so he was to go ahead of us in a pilot hand-car, with a Ghurka
and another native; and the plan was that when we should see his car jump over a
precipice we must put on our (break) and send for another pilot. It was a good
arrangement. Also Mr. Barnard, chief engineer of the mountain-division of the road,
was to take personal charge of our car, and he had been down the mountain in it many
a time.
 Everything looked safe. Indeed, there was but one questionable detail left: the
regular train was to follow us as soon as we should start, and it might run over us.
Privately, I thought it would.

The road fell sharply down in front of us and went corkscrewing in and out around
the crags and precipices, down, down, forever down, suggesting nothing so exactly or
so uncomfortably as a crooked toboggan slide with no end to it. Mr. Pugh waved his
flag and started, like an arrow from a bow, and before I could get out of the car we
were gone too. I had previously had but one sensation like the shock of that departure,
and that was the gaspy shock that took my breath away the first time that I was
discharged from the summit of a toboggan slide. But in both instances the sensation
was pleasurable—intensely so; it was a sudden and immense exaltation, a mixed
ecstasy of deadly fright and unimaginable joy. I believe that this combination makes
the perfection of human delight.

The pilot car's flight down the mountain suggested the swoop of a swallow that is
skimming the ground, so swiftly and smoothly and gracefully it swept down the long
straight reaches and soared in and out of the bends and around the corners. We raced
after it, and seemed to flash by the capes and crags with the speed of light; and now
and then we almost overtook it—and had hopes; but it was only playing with us; when
we got near, it released its brake, made a spring around a corner, and the next time it
spun into view, a few seconds later, it looked as small as a wheelbarrow, it was so far
away. We played with the train in the same way. We often got out to gather flowers or
sit on a precipice and look at the scenery, then presently we would hear a dull and
growing roar, and the long coils of the train would come into sight behind and above
us; but we did not need to start till the locomotive was close down upon us—then we
soon left it far behind. It had to stop at every station, therefore it was not an
embarrassment to us. Our brake was a good piece of machinery; it could bring the car
to a standstill on a slope as steep as a house-roof.

The scenery was grand and varied and beautiful, and there was no hurry; we could
always stop and examine it. There was abundance of time. We did not need to hamper
the train; if it wanted the road, we could switch off and let it go by, then overtake it
and pass it later. We stopped at one place to see the Gladstone Cliff, a great crag
which the ages and the weather have sculptured into a recognizable portrait of the
venerable statesman. Mr. Gladstone is a stockholder in the road, and Nature began
this portrait ten thousand years ago, with the idea of having the compliment ready in
time for the event.

We saw a banyan tree which sent down supporting stems from branches which
were sixty feet above the ground. That is, I suppose it was a banyan; its bark
resembled that of the great banyan in the botanical gardens at Calcutta, that spider-
legged thing with its wilderness of vegetable columns. And there were frequent
glimpses of a totally leafless tree upon whose innumerable twigs and branches a cloud
of crimson butterflies had lighted—apparently. In fact these brilliant red butterflies
were flowers, but the illusion was good. Afterward in South Africa, I saw another
splendid effect made by red flowers. This flower was probably called the torch-plant—
should have been so named, anyway. It had a slender stem several feet high, and from
its top stood up a single tongue of flame, an intensely red flower of the size and shape
of a small corn-cob. The stems stood three or four feet apart all over a great hill-slope
that was a mile long, and make one think of what the Place de la Concorde would be if
its myriad lights were red instead of white and yellow.

A few miles down the mountain we stopped half an hour to see a Thibetan dramatic
performance. It was in the open air on the hillside. The audience was composed of
Thibetans, Ghurkas, and other unusual people. The costumes of the actors were in the
last degree outlandish, and the performance was in keeping with the clothes. To an
accompaniment of barbarous noises the actors stepped out one after another and
began to spin around with immense swiftness and vigor and violence, chanting the
while, and soon the whole troupe would be spinning and chanting and raising the dust.
They were performing an ancient and celebrated historical play, and a Chinaman
explained it to me in pidjin English as it went along. The play was obscure enough
without the explanation; with the explanation added, it was (opake). As a drama this
ancient historical work of art was defective, I thought, but as a wild and barbarous
spectacle the representation was beyond criticism. Far down the mountain we got out
to look at a piece of remarkable loop-engineering—a spiral where the road curves
upon itself with such abruptness that when the regular train came down and entered
the loop, we stood over it and saw the locomotive disappear under our bridge, then in
a few moments appear again, chasing its own tail; and we saw it gain on it, overtake it,
draw ahead past the rear cars, and run a race with that end of the train. It was like a
snake swallowing itself.
 Half-way down the mountain we stopped about an hour at Mr. Barnard's house for
refreshments, and while we were sitting on the veranda looking at the distant
panorama of hills through a gap in the forest, we came very near seeing a leopard kill a
calf.—[It killed it the day before.]—It is a wild place and lovely. From the woods all
about came the songs of birds,—among them the contributions of a couple of birds
which I was not then acquainted with: the brain-fever bird and the coppersmith. The
song of the brain-fever demon starts on a low but steadily rising key, and is a spiral
twist which augments in intensity and severity with each added spiral, growing sharper
and sharper, and more and more painful, more and more agonizing, more and more
maddening, intolerable, unendurable, as it bores deeper and deeper and deeper into
the listener's brain, until at last the brain fever comes as a relief and the man dies. I am
bringing some of these birds home to America. They will be a great curiosity there, and
it is believed that in our climate they will multiply like rabbits.

The coppersmith bird's note at a certain distance away has the ring of a sledge on
granite; at a certain other distance the hammering has a more metallic ring, and you
might think that the bird was mending a copper kettle; at another distance it has a
more woodeny thump, but it is a thump that is full of energy, and sounds just like
starting a bung. So he is a hard bird to name with a single name; he is a stone-breaker,
coppersmith, and bung-starter, and even then he is not completely named, for when
he is close by you find that there is a soft, deep, melodious quality in his thump, and
for that no satisfying name occurs to you. You will not mind his other notes, but when
he camps near enough for you to hear that one, you presently find that his measured
and monotonous repetition of it is beginning to disturb you; next it will weary you,
soon it will distress you, and before long each thump will hurt your head; if this goes
on, you will lose your mind with the pain and misery of it, and go crazy. I am bringing
some of these birds home to America. There is nothing like them there. They will be a
great surprise, and it is said that in a climate like ours they will surpass expectation for
fecundity.

I am bringing some nightingales, too, and some cue-owls. I got them in Italy. The
song of the nightingale is the deadliest known to ornithology. That demoniacal shriek
can kill at thirty yards. The note of the cue-owl is infinitely soft and sweet—soft and
sweet as the whisper of a flute. But penetrating—oh, beyond belief; it can bore
through boiler-iron. It is a lingering note, and comes in triplets, on the one unchanging
key: hoo-o-o, hoo-o-o, hoo-o-o; then a silence of fifteen seconds, then the triplet
again; and so on, all night. At first it is divine; then less so; then trying; then distressing;
then excruciating; then agonizing, and at the end of two hours the listener is a maniac.

And so, presently we took to the hand-car and went flying down the mountain
again; flying and stopping, flying and stopping, till at last we were in the plain once
more and stowed for Calcutta in the regular train. That was the most enjoyable day I
have spent in the earth. For rousing, tingling, rapturous pleasure there is no holiday
trip that approaches the bird-flight down the Himalayas in a hand-car. It has no fault,
no blemish, no lack, except that there are only thirty-five miles of it instead of five
hundred.
 CHAPTER LVII.

She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would
call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or Nature,
to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his round. Nothing
seems to have been forgotten, nothing over looked. Always, when you think you have
come to the end of her tremendous specialties and have finished hanging tags upon
her as the Land of the Thug, the Land of the Plague, the Land of Famine, the Land of
Giant Illusions, the Land of Stupendous Mountains, and so forth, another specialty
crops up and another tag is required. I have been overlooking the fact that India is by
an unapproachable supremacy—the Land of Murderous Wild Creatures. Perhaps it will
be simplest to throw away the tags and generalize her with one all-comprehensive
name, as the Land of Wonders.

For many years the British Indian Government has been trying to destroy the
murderous wild creatures, and has spent a great deal of money in the effort. The
annual official returns show that the undertaking is a difficult one.

These returns exhibit a curious annual uniformity in results; the sort of uniformity
which you find in the annual output of suicides in the world's capitals, and the
proportions of deaths by this, that, and the other disease. You can always come close
to foretelling how many suicides will occur in Paris, London, and New York, next year,
and also how many deaths will result from cancer, consumption, dog-bite, falling out
of the window, getting run over by cabs, etc., if you know the statistics of those
matters for the present year. In the same way, with one year's Indian statistics before
you, you can guess closely at how many people were killed in that Empire by tigers
during the previous year, and the year before that, and the year before that, and at
how many were killed in each of those years by bears, how many by wolves, and how
many by snakes; and you can also guess closely at how many people are going to be
killed each year for the coming five years by each of those agencies. You can also guess
closely at how many of each agency the government is going to kill each year for the
next five years.
 I have before me statistics covering a period of six consecutive years. By these, I
know that in India the tiger kills something over 800 persons every year, and that the
government responds by killing about double as many tigers every year. In four of the
six years referred to, the tiger got 800 odd; in one of the remaining two years he got
only 700, but in the other remaining year he made his average good by scoring 917. He
is always sure of his average. Anyone who bets that the tiger will kill 2,400 people in
India in any three consecutive years has invested his money in a certainty; anyone who
bets that he will kill 2,600 in any three consecutive years, is absolutely sure to lose.

As strikingly uniform as are the statistics of suicide, they are not any more so than
are those of the tiger's annual output of slaughtered human beings in India. The
government's work is quite uniform, too; it about doubles the tiger's average. In six
years the tiger killed 5,000 persons, minus 50; in the same six years 10,000 tigers were
killed, minus 400.

The wolf kills nearly as many people as the tiger—700 a year to the tiger's 800 odd—
but while he is doing it, more than 5,000 of his tribe fall.

The leopard kills an average of 230 people per year, but loses 3,300 of his own mess
while he is doing it.

The bear kills 100 people per year at a cost of 1,250 of his own tribe.

The tiger, as the figures show, makes a very handsome fight against man. But it is
nothing to the elephant's fight. The king of beasts, the lord of the jungle, loses four of
his mess per year, but he kills forty—five persons to make up for it.

But when it comes to killing cattle, the lord of the jungle is not interested. He kills
but 100 in six years—horses of hunters, no doubt—but in the same six the tiger kills
more than 84,000, the leopard 100,000, the bear 4,000, the wolf 70,000, the hyena
more than 13,000, other wild beasts 27,000, and the snakes 19,000, a grand total of
more than 300,000; an average of 50,000 head per year.

In response, the government kills, in the six years, a total of 3,201,232 wild beasts
and snakes. Ten for one.

It will be perceived that the snakes are not much interested in cattle; they kill only
3,000 odd per year. The snakes are much more interested in man. India swarms with
deadly snakes. At the head of the list is the cobra, the deadliest known to the world, a
snake whose bite kills where the rattlesnake's bite merely entertains.

In India, the annual man-killings by snakes are as uniform, as regular, and as

forecastable as are the tiger-average and the suicide-average. Anyone who bets that in
India, in any three consecutive years the snakes will kill 49,500 persons, will win his
bet; and anyone who bets that in India in any three consecutive years, the snakes will
kill 53,500 persons, will lose his bet. In India the snakes kill 17,000 people a year; they
hardly ever fall short of it; they as seldom exceed it. An insurance actuary could take
the Indian census tables and the government's snake tables and tell you within
sixpence how much it would be worth to insure a man against death by snake-bite
there. If I had a dollar for every person killed per year in India, I would rather have it
than any other property, as it is the only property in the world not subject to
shrinkage.

I should like to have a royalty on the government-end of the snake business, too,
and am in London now trying to get it; but when I get it it is not going to be as regular
an income as the other will be if I get that; I have applied for it. The snakes transact
their end of the business in a more orderly and systematic way than the government
transacts its end of it, because the snakes have had a long experience and know all
about the traffic. You can make sure that the government will never kill fewer than
110,000 snakes in a year, and that it will newer quite reach 300,000—too much room
for oscillation; good speculative stock, to bear or bull, and buy and sell long and short,
and all that kind of thing, but not eligible for investment like the other. The man that
speculates in the government's snake crop wants to go carefully. I would not advise a
man to buy a single crop at all—I mean a crop of futures for the possible wobble is
something quite extraordinary. If he can buy six future crops in a bunch, seller to
deliver 1,500,000 altogether, that is another matter. I do not know what snakes are
worth now, but I know what they would be worth then, for the statistics show that the
seller could not come within 427,000 of carrying out his contract. However, I think that
a person who speculates in snakes is a fool, anyway. He always regrets it afterwards.

To finish the statistics. In six years the wild beasts kill 20,000 persons, and the
snakes kill 103,000. In the same six the government kills 1,073,546 snakes. Plenty left.

There are narrow escapes in India. In the very jungle where I killed sixteen tigers and
all those elephants, a cobra bit me but it got well; everyone was surprised. This could
not happen twice in ten years, perhaps. Usually death would result in fifteen minutes.
 We struck out westward or northwestward from Calcutta on an itinerary of a zig-zag
sort, which would in the course of time carry us across India to its northwestern corner
and the border of Afghanistan. The first part of the trip carried us through a great
region which was an endless garden—miles and miles of the beautiful flower from
whose juices comes the opium, and at Muzaffurpore we were in the midst of the
indigo culture; thence by a branch road to the Ganges at a point near Dinapore, and by
a train which would have missed the connection by a week but for the thoughtfulness
of some British officers who were along, and who knew the ways of trains that are run
by natives without white supervision. This train stopped at every village; for no
purpose connected with business, apparently. We put out nothing, we took nothing
aboard. The train bands stepped ashore and gossiped with friends a quarter of an
hour, then pulled out and repeated this at the succeeding villages. We had thirty-five
miles to go and six hours to do it in, but it was plain that we were not going to make it.
It was then that the English officers said it was now necessary to turn this gravel train
into an express. So they gave the engine-driver a rupee and told him to fly. It was a
simple remedy. After that we made ninety miles an hour. We crossed the Ganges just
at dawn, made our connection, and went to Benares, where we stayed twenty-four
hours and inspected that strange and fascinating piety-hive again; then left for
Lucknow, a city which is perhaps the most conspicuous of the many monuments of
British fortitude and valor that are scattered about the earth.

The heat was pitiless, the flat plains were destitute of grass, and baked dry by the
sun they were the color of pale dust, which was flying in clouds. But it was much hotter
than this when the relieving forces marched to Lucknow in the time of the Mutiny.
Those were the days of 138 deg. in the shade.
 CHAPTER LVIII.

Make it a point to do something every day that you don't want to do. This is the
golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

It seems to be settled, now, that among the many causes from which the Great
Mutiny sprang, the main one was the annexation of the kingdom of Oudh by the East
India Company—characterized by Sir Henry Lawrence as "the most unrighteous act
that was ever committed." In the spring of 1857, a mutinous spirit was observable in
many of the native garrisons, and it grew day by day and spread wider and wider. The
younger military men saw something very serious in it, and would have liked to take
hold of it vigorously and stamp it out promptly; but they were not in authority. Old
men were in the high places of the army—men who should have been retired long
before, because of their great age—and they regarded the matter as a thing of no
consequence. They loved their native soldiers, and would not believe that anything
could move them to revolt. Everywhere these obstinate veterans listened serenely to
the rumbling of the volcanoes under them, and said it was nothing.

And so the propagators of mutiny had everything their own way. They moved from
camp to camp undisturbed, and painted to the native soldier the wrongs his people
were suffering at the hands of the English, and made his heart burn for revenge. They
were able to point to two facts of formidable value as backers of their persuasions: In
Clive's day, native armies were incoherent mobs, and without effective arms;
therefore, they were weak against Clive's organized handful of well-armed men, but
the thing was the other way, now. The British forces were native; they had been
trained by the British, organized by the British, armed by the British, all the power was
in their hands—they were a club made by British hands to beat out British brains with.
There was nothing to oppose their mass, nothing but a few weak battalions of British
soldiers scattered about India, a force not worth speaking of. This argument, taken
alone, might not have succeeded, for the bravest and best Indian troops had a
wholesome dread of the white soldier, whether he was weak or strong; but the
agitators backed it with their second and best point— prophecy—a prophecy a
hundred years old. The Indian is open to prophecy at all times; argument may fail to
convince him, but not prophecy. There was a prophecy that a hundred years from the
year of that battle of Clive's which founded the British Indian Empire, the British power
would be overthrown and swept away by the natives.
 The Mutiny broke out at Meerut on the 10th of May, 1857, and fired a train of
tremendous historical explosions. Nana Sahib's massacre of the surrendered garrison
of Cawnpore occurred in June, and the long siege of Lucknow began. The military
history of England is old and great, but I think it must be granted that the crushing of
the Mutiny is the greatest chapter in it. The British were caught asleep and
unprepared. They were a few thousands, swallowed up in an ocean of hostile
populations. It would take months to inform England and get help, but they did not
falter or stop to count the odds, but with English resolution and English devotion they
took up their task, and went stubbornly on with it, through good fortune and bad, and
fought the most unpromising fight that one may read of in fiction or out of it, and won
it thoroughly.

The Mutiny broke out so suddenly, and spread with such rapidity that there was but
little time for occupants of weak outlying stations to escape to places of safety.
Attempts were made, of course, but they were attended by hardships as bitter as
death in the few cases which were successful; for the heat ranged between 120 and
138 in the shade; the way led through hostile peoples, and food and water were hardly
to be had. For ladies and children accustomed to ease and comfort and plenty, such a
journey must have been a cruel experience. Sir G. O. Trevelyan quotes an example:

"This is what befell Mrs. M——, the wife of the surgeon at a certain station on the
southern confines of the insurrection. 'I heard,' she says, 'a number of shots fired, and,
looking out, I saw my husband driving furiously from the mess-house, waving his whip.
I ran to him, and, seeing a bearer with my child in his arms, I caught her up, and got
into the buggy. At the mess-house we found all the officers assembled, together with
sixty sepoys, who had remained faithful. We went off in one large party, amidst a
general conflagration of our late homes. We reached the caravanserai at Chattapore
the next morning, and thence started for Callinger. At this point our sepoy escort
deserted us. We were fired upon by match-lockmen, and one officer was shot dead. We
heard, likewise, that the people had risen at Callinger, so we returned and walked back
ten miles that day. M—— and I carried the child alternately. Presently Mrs. Smalley
died of sunstroke. We had no food amongst us. An officer kindly lent us a horse. We
were very faint. The Major died, and was buried; also the Sergeant-major and some
women. The bandsmen left us on the nineteenth of June. We were fired at again by
match-lockmen, and changed direction for Allahabad. Our party consisted of nine
gentlemen, two children, the sergeant and his wife. On the morning of the twentieth,
Captain Scott took Lottie on to his horse. I was riding behind my husband, and she was
so crushed between us. She was two years old on the first of the month. We were both
weak through want of food and the effect of the sun. Lottie and I had no head covering.
M—— had a sepoy's cap I found on the ground. Soon after sunrise we were followed by
villagers armed with clubs and spears. One of them struck Captain Scott's horse on the
leg. He galloped off with Lottie, and my poor husband never saw his child again. We
rode on several miles, keeping away from villages, and then crossed the river. Our thirst
was extreme. M—— had dreadful cramps, so that I had to hold him on the horse. I was
very uneasy about him. The day before I saw the drummer's wife eating chupatties, and
asked her to give a piece to the child, which she did. I now saw water in a ravine. The
descent was steep, and our only drinking-vessel was M——'s cap. Our horse got water,
and I bathed my neck. I had no stockings, and my feet were torn and blistered. Two
peasants came in sight, and we were frightened and rode off. The sergeant held our
horse, and M—— put me up and mounted. I think he must have got suddenly faint, for
I fell and he over me, on the road, when the horse started off. Some time before he
said, and Barber, too, that he could not live many hours. I felt he was dying before we
came to the ravine. He told me his wishes about his children and myself, and took
leave. My brain seemed burnt up. No tears came. As soon as we fell, the sergeant let go
the horse, and it went off; so that escape was cut off. We sat down on the ground
waiting for death. Poor fellow! he was very weak; his thirst was frightful, and I went to
get him water. Some villagers came, and took my rupees and watch. I took off my
wedding-ring, and twisted it in my hair, and replaced the guard. I tore off the skirt of
my dress to bring water in, but was no use, for when I returned my beloved's eyes were
fixed, and, though I called and tried to restore him, and poured water into his mouth, it
only rattled in his throat. He never spoke to me again. I held him in my arms till he sank
gradually down. I felt frantic, but could not cry. I was alone. I bound his head and face
in my dress, for there was no earth to bury him. The pain in my hands and feet was
dreadful. I went down to the ravine, and sat in the water on a stone, hoping to get off
at night and look for Lottie. When I came back from the water, I saw that they had not
taken her little watch, chain, and seals, so I tied them under my petticoat. In an hour,
about thirty villagers came, they dragged me out of the ravine, and took off my jacket,
and found the little chain. They then dragged me to a village, mocking me all the way,
and disputing as to whom I was to belong to. The whole population came to look at
me. I asked for a bedstead, and lay down outside the door of a hut. They had a dozen of
cows, and yet refused me milk. When night came, and the village was quiet, some old
woman brought me a leafful of rice. I was too parched to eat, and they gave me water.
The morning after a neighboring Rajah sent a palanquin and a horseman to fetch me,
who told me that a little child and three Sahibs had come to his master's house. And so
the poor mother found her lost one, 'greatly blistered,' poor little creature. It is not for
Europeans in India to pray that their flight be not in the winter."

In the first days of June the aged general, Sir Hugh Wheeler commanding the forces
at Cawnpore, was deserted by his native troops; then he moved out of the fort and
into an exposed patch of open flat ground and built a four-foot mud wall around it. He
had with him a few hundred white soldiers and officers, and apparently more women
and children than soldiers. He was short of provisions, short of arms, short of
ammunition, short of military wisdom, short of everything but courage and devotion to
duty. The defense of that open lot through twenty-one days and nights of hunger,
thirst, Indian heat, and a never-ceasing storm of bullets, bombs, and cannon-balls—a
defense conducted, not by the aged and infirm general, but by a young officer named
Moore—is one of the most heroic episodes in history. When at last the Nana found it
impossible to conquer these starving men and women with powder and ball, he
resorted to treachery, and that succeeded. He agreed to supply them with food and
send them to Allahabad in boats. Their mud wall and their barracks were in ruins, their
provisions were at the point of exhaustion, they had done all that the brave could do,
they had conquered an honorable compromise,—their forces had been fearfully
reduced by casualties and by disease, they were not able to continue the contest
longer. They came forth helpless but suspecting no treachery, the Nana's host closed
around them, and at a signal from a trumpet the massacre began. About two hundred
women and children were spared—for the present—but all the men except three or
four were killed. Among the incidents of the massacre quoted by Sir G. O. Trevelyan, is
this:

"When, after the lapse of some twenty minutes, the dead began to outnumber the
living;—when the fire slackened, as the marks grew few and far between; then the
troopers who had been drawn up to the right of the temple plunged into the river,
sabre between teeth, and pistol in hand. Thereupon two half-caste Christian women,
the wives of musicians in the band of the Fifty-sixth, witnessed a scene which should
not be related at second-hand. 'In the boat where I was to have gone,' says Mrs.
Bradshaw, confirmed throughout by Mrs. Setts, 'was the school-mistress and twenty-
two misses. General Wheeler came last in a palkee. They carried him into the water
near the boat. I stood close by. He said, 'Carry me a little further towards the boat.' But
a trooper said, 'No, get out here.' As the General got out of the palkee, head-foremost,
the trooper gave him a cut with his sword into the neck, and he fell into the water. My
son was killed near him. I saw it; alas! alas! Some were stabbed with bayonets; others
cut down. Little infants were torn in pieces. We saw it; we did; and tell you only what
we saw. Other children were stabbed and thrown into the river. The schoolgirls were
burnt to death. I saw their clothes and hair catch fire. In the water, a few paces off, by
the next boat, we saw the youngest daughter of Colonel Williams. A sepoy was going to
kill her with his bayonet. She said, 'My father was always kind to sepoys.' He turned
away, and just then a villager struck her on the head with a club, and she fell into the
water. These people likewise saw good Mr. Moncrieff, the clergyman, take a book from
his pocket that he never had leisure to open, and heard him commence a prayer for
mercy which he was not permitted to conclude. Another deponent observed an
European making for a drain like a scared water-rat, when some boatmen, armed with
cudgels, cut off his retreat, and beat him down dead into the mud."

The women and children who had been reserved from the massacre were
imprisoned during a fortnight in a small building, one story high—a cramped place, a
slightly modified Black Hole of Calcutta. They were waiting in suspense; there was
none who could forecaste their fate. Meantime the news of the massacre had traveled
far and an army of rescuers with Havelock at its head was on its way—at least an army
which hoped to be rescuers. It was crossing the country by forced marches, and
strewing its way with its own dead—men struck down by cholera, and by a heat which
reached 135 deg. It was in a vengeful fury, and it stopped for nothing—neither heat,
nor fatigue, nor disease, nor human opposition. It tore its impetuous way through
hostile forces, winning victory after victory, but still striding on and on, not halting to
count results. And at last, after this extraordinary march, it arrived before the walls of
Cawnpore, met the Nana's massed strength, delivered a crushing defeat, and entered.

But too late—only a few hours too late. For at the last moment the Nana had
decided upon the massacre of the captive women and children, and had commissioned
three Mohammedans and two Hindoos to do the work. Sir G. O. Trevelyan says:

"Thereupon the five men entered. It was the short gloaming of Hindostan—the hour
when ladies take their evening drive. She who had accosted the officer was standing in
the doorway. With her were the native doctor and two Hindoo menials. That much of
the business might be seen from the veranda, but all else was concealed amidst the
interior gloom. Shrieks and scuffling acquainted those without that the journeymen
were earning their hire. Survur Khan soon emerged with his sword broken off at the
hilt. He procured another from the Nana's house, and a few minutes after appeared
again on the same errand. The third blade was of better temper; or perhaps the thick of
the work was already over. By the time darkness had closed in, the men came forth and
locked up the house for the night. Then the screams ceased, but the groans lasted till
morning.

"The sun rose as usual. When he had been up nearly three hours the five repaired to
the scene of their labors over night. They were attended by a few sweepers, who
proceeded to transfer the contents of the house to a dry well situated behind some
trees which grew hard by. 'The bodies,' says one who was present throughout, 'were
dragged out, most of them by the hair of the head. Those who had clothing worth
taking were stripped. Some of the women were alive. I cannot say how many; but three
could speak. They prayed for the sake of God that an end might be put to their
sufferings. I remarked one very stout woman, a half-caste, who was severely wounded
in both arms, who entreated to be killed. She and two or three others were placed
against the bank of the cut by which bullocks go down in drawing water. The dead
were first thrown in. Yes: there was a great crowd looking on; they were standing along
the walls of the compound. They were principally city people and villagers. Yes: there
were also sepoys. Three boys were alive. They were fair children. The eldest, I think,
must have been six or seven, and the youngest five years. They were running around
the well (where else could they go to?), and there was none to save them. No one said
a word or tried to save them.'

"At length the smallest of them made an infantile attempt to get away. The little
thing had been frightened past bearing by the murder of one of the surviving ladies. He
thus attracted the observation of a native who flung him and his companions down the
well."

The soldiers had made a march of eighteen days, almost without rest, to save the
women and the children, and now they were too late—all were dead and the assassin
had flown. What happened then, Trevelyan hesitated to put into words. "Of what took
place, the less said is the better."

Then he continues:

"But there was a spectacle to witness which might excuse much. Those who, straight
from the contested field, wandered sobbing through the rooms of the ladies' house,
saw what it were well could the outraged earth have straightway hidden. The inner
apartment was ankle-deep in blood. The plaster was scored with sword-cuts; not high
up as where men have fought, but low down, and about the corners, as if a creature
had crouched to avoid the blow. Strips of dresses, vainly tied around the handles of the
doors, signified the contrivance to which feminine despair had resorted as a means of
keeping out the murderers. Broken combs were there, and the frills of children's
trousers, and torn cuffs and pinafores, and little round hats, and one or two shoes with
burst latchets, and one or two daguerreotype cases with cracked glasses. An officer
picked up a few curls, preserved in a bit of cardboard, and marked 'Ned's hair, with
love'; but around were strewn locks, some near a yard in length, dissevered, not as a
keepsake, by quite other scissors."

The battle of Waterloo was fought on the 18th of June, 1815. I do not state this fact
as a reminder to the reader, but as news to him. For a forgotten fact is news when it
comes again. Writers of books have the fashion of whizzing by vast and renowned
historical events with the remark, "The details of this tremendous episode are too
familiar to the reader to need repeating here." They know that that is not true. It is a
low kind of flattery. They know that the reader has forgotten every detail of it, and
that nothing of the tremendous event is left in his mind but a vague and formless
luminous smudge. Aside from the desire to flatter the reader, they have another
reason for making the remark-two reasons, indeed. They do not remember the details
themselves, and do not want the trouble of hunting them up and copying them out;
also, they are afraid that if they search them out and print them they will be scoffed at
by the book-reviewers for retelling those worn old things which are familiar to
everybody. They should not mind the reviewer's jeer; he doesn't remember any of the
worn old things until the book which he is reviewing has retold them to him.

I have made the quoted remark myself, at one time and another, but I was not doing
it to flatter the reader; I was merely doing it to save work. If I had known the details
without brushing up, I would have put them in; but I didn't, and I did not want the
labor of posting myself; so I said, "The details of this tremendous episode are too
familiar to the reader to need repeating here." I do not like that kind of a lie; still, it
does save work.

I am not trying to get out of repeating the details of the Siege of Lucknow in fear of
the reviewer; I am not leaving them out in fear that they would not interest the
reader; I am leaving them out partly to save work; mainly for lack of room. It is a pity,
too; for there is not a dull place anywhere in the great story.

Ten days before the outbreak (May 10th) of the Mutiny, all was serene at Lucknow,
the huge capital of Oudh, the kingdom which had recently been seized by the India
Company. There was a great garrison, composed of about 7,000 native troops and
between 700 and 800 whites. These white soldiers and their families were probably
the only people of their race there; at their elbow was that swarming population of
warlike natives, a race of born soldiers, brave, daring, and fond of fighting. On high
ground just outside the city stood the palace of that great personage, the Resident, the
representative of British power and authority. It stood in the midst of spacious
grounds, with its due complement of outbuildings, and the grounds were enclosed by a
wall—a wall not for defense, but for privacy. The mutinous spirit was in the air, but the
whites were not afraid, and did not feel much troubled.

Then came the outbreak at Meerut, then the capture of Delhi by the mutineers; in
June came the three-weeks leaguer of Sir Hugh Wheeler in his open lot at Cawnpore—
40 miles distant from Lucknow—then the treacherous massacre of that gallant little
garrison; and now the great revolt was in full flower, and the comfortable condition of
things at Lucknow was instantly changed.

There was an outbreak there, and Sir Henry Lawrence marched out of the Residency
on the 30th of June to put it down, but was defeated with heavy loss, and had
difficulty in getting back again. That night the memorable siege of the Residency—
called the siege of Lucknow—began. Sir Henry was killed three days later, and
Brigadier Inglis succeeded him in command.

Outside of the Residency fence was an immense host of hostile and confident native
besiegers; inside it were 480 loyal native soldiers, 730 white ones, and 500 women and
children.

In those days the English garrisons always managed to hamper themselves

sufficiently with women and children.

The natives established themselves in houses close at hand and began to rain bullets
and cannon-balls into the Residency; and this they kept up, night and day, during four
months and a half, the little garrison industriously replying all the time. The women
and children soon became so used to the roar of the guns that it ceased to disturb
their sleep. The children imitated siege and defense in their play. The women—with
any pretext, or with none—would sally out into the storm-swept grounds. The defense
was kept up week after week, with stubborn fortitude, in the midst of death, which
came in many forms—by bullet, small-pox, cholera, and by various diseases induced by
unpalatable and insufficient food, by the long hours of wearying and exhausting
overwork in the daily and nightly battle in the oppressive Indian heat, and by the
broken rest caused by the intolerable pest of mosquitoes, flies, mice, rats, and fleas.

Six weeks after the beginning of the siege more than one-half of the original force of
white soldiers was dead, and close upon three-fifths of the original native force.

But the fighting went on just the same. The enemy mined, the English counter-
mined, and, turn about, they blew up each other's posts. The Residency grounds were
honey-combed with the enemy's tunnels. Deadly courtesies were constantly
exchanged—sorties by the English in the night; rushes by the enemy in the night—
rushes whose purpose was to breach the walls or scale them; rushes which cost
heavily, and always failed.

The ladies got used to all the horrors of war—the shrieks of mutilated men, the sight
of blood and death. Lady Inglis makes this mention in her diary:

"Mrs. Bruere's nurse was carried past our door to-day, wounded in the eye. To
extract the bullet it was found necessary to take out the eye—a fearful operation. Her
mistress held her while it was performed."

The first relieving force failed to relieve. It was under Havelock and Outram; and
arrived when the siege had been going on for three months. It fought its desperate
way to Lucknow, then fought its way through the city against odds of a hundred to
one, and entered the Residency; but there was not enough left of it, then, to do any
good. It lost more men in its last fight than it found in the Residency when it got in. It
became captive itself.

The fighting and starving and dying by bullets and disease went steadily on. Both
sides fought with energy and industry. Captain Birch puts this striking incident in
evidence. He is speaking of the third month of the siege:

"As an instance of the heavy firing brought to bear on our position this month may
be mentioned the cutting down of the upper story of a brick building simply by
musketry firing. This building was in a most exposed position. All the shots which just
missed the top of the rampart cut into the dead wall pretty much in a straight line, and
at length cut right through and brought the upper story tumbling down. The upper
structure on the top of the brigade-mess also fell in. The Residency house was a wreck.
Captain Anderson's post had long ago been knocked down, and Innes' post also fell in.
These two were riddled with round shot. As many as 200 were picked up by Colonel
Masters."

The exhausted garrison fought doggedly on all through the next month—October.
Then, November 2d, news came Sir Colin Campbell's relieving force would soon be on
its way from Cawnpore.

On the 12th the boom of his guns was heard.

On the 13th the sounds came nearer—he was slowly, but steadily, cutting his way
through, storming one stronghold after another.

On the 14th he captured the Martiniere College, and ran up the British flag there. It
was seen from the Residency.

Next he took the Dilkoosha.

On the 17th he took the former mess-house of the 32d regiment—a fortified
building, and very strong. "A most exciting, anxious day," writes Lady Inglis in her diary.
"About 4 P.M., two strange officers walked through our yard, leading their horses"—
and by that sign she knew that communication was established between the forces,
that the relief was real, this time, and that the long siege of Lucknow was ended.

The last eight or ten miles of Sir Colin Campbell's march was through seas of blood.
The weapon mainly used was the bayonet, the fighting was desperate. The way was
mile-stoned with detached strong buildings of stone, fortified, and heavily garrisoned,
and these had to be taken by assault. Neither side asked for quarter, and neither gave
it. At the Secundrabagh, where nearly two thousand of the enemy occupied a great
stone house in a garden, the work of slaughter was continued until every man was
killed. That is a sample of the character of that devastating march.

There were but few trees in the plain at that time, and from the Residency the
progress of the march, step by step, victory by victory, could be noted; the ascending
clouds of battle-smoke marked the way to the eye, and the thunder of the guns
marked it to the ear.
 Sir Colin Campbell had not come to Lucknow to hold it, but to save the occupants of
the Residency, and bring them away. Four or five days after his arrival the secret
evacuation by the troops took place, in the middle of a dark night, by the principal
gate, (the Bailie Guard). The two hundred women and two hundred and fifty children
had been previously removed. Captain Birch says:

"And now commenced a movement of the most perfect arrangement and successful
generalship—the withdrawal of the whole of the various forces, a combined movement
requiring the greatest care and skill. First, the garrison in immediate contact with the
enemy at the furthest extremity of the Residency position was marched out. Every
other garrison in turn fell in behind it, and so passed out through the Bailie Guard gate,
till the whole of our position was evacuated. Then Havelock's force was similarly
withdrawn, post by post, marching in rear of our garrison. After them in turn came the
forces of the Commander-in-Chief, which joined on in the rear of Havelock's force.
Regiment by regiment was withdrawn with the utmost order and regularity. The whole
operation resembled the movement of a telescope. Stern silence was kept, and the
enemy took no alarm."

Lady Inglis, referring to her husband and to General Sir James Outram, sets down
the closing detail of this impressive midnight retreat, in darkness and by stealth, of this
shadowy host through the gate which it had defended so long and so well:

"At twelve precisely they marched out, John and Sir James Outram remaining till all
had passed, and then they took off their hats to the Bailie Guard, the scene of as noble
a defense as I think history will ever have to relate."
 CHAPTER LIX.

Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist but you have
ceased to live.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

We were driven over Sir Colin Campbell's route by a British officer, and when I
arrived at the Residency I was so familiar with the road that I could have led a retreat
over it myself; but the compass in my head has been out of order from my birth, and
so, as soon as I was within the battered Bailie Guard and turned about to review the
march and imagine the relieving forces storming their way along it, everything was
upside down and wrong end first in a moment, and I was never able to get
straightened out again. And now, when I look at the battle-plan, the confusion
remains. In me the east was born west, the battle-plans which have the east on the
right-hand side are of no use to me.

The Residency ruins are draped with flowering vines, and are impressive and
beautiful. They and the grounds are sacred now, and will suffer no neglect nor be
profaned by any sordid or commercial use while the British remain masters of India.
Within the grounds are buried the dead who gave up their lives there in the long siege.

After a fashion, I was able to imagine the fiery storm that raged night and day over
the place during so many months, and after a fashion I could imagine the men moving
through it, but I could not satisfactorily place the 200 women, and I could do nothing
at all with the 250 children. I knew by Lady Inglis' diary that the children carried on
their small affairs very much as if blood and carnage and the crash and thunder of a
siege were natural and proper features of nursery life, and I tried to realize it; but
when her little Johnny came rushing, all excitement, through the din and smoke,
shouting, "Oh, mamma, the white hen has laid an egg!" I saw that I could not do it.
Johnny's place was under the bed. I could imagine him there, because I could imagine
myself there; and I think I should not have been interested in a hen that was laying an
egg; my interest would have been with the parties that were laying the bombshells. I
sat at dinner with one of those children in the Club's Indian palace, and I knew that all
through the siege he was perfecting his teething and learning to talk; and while to me
he was the most impressive object in Lucknow after the Residency ruins, I was not able
to imagine what his life had been during that tempestuous infancy of his, nor what sort
of a curious surprise it must have been to him to be marched suddenly out into a
strange dumb world where there wasn't any noise, and nothing going on. He was only
forty-one when I saw him, a strangely youthful link to connect the present with so
ancient an episode as the Great Mutiny.

By and by we saw Cawnpore, and the open lot which was the scene of Moore's
memorable defense, and the spot on the shore of the Ganges where the massacre of
the betrayed garrison occurred, and the small Indian temple whence the bugle-signal
notified the assassins to fall on. This latter was a lonely spot, and silent. The sluggish
river drifted by, almost currentless. It was dead low water, narrow channels with vast
sandbars between, all the way across the wide bed; and the only living thing in sight
was that grotesque and solemn bald-headed bird, the Adjutant, standing on his six-
foot stilts, solitary on a distant bar, with his head sunk between his shoulders, thinking;
thinking of his prize, I suppose—the dead Hindoo that lay awash at his feet, and
whether to eat him alone or invite friends. He and his prey were a proper accent to
that mournful place. They were in keeping with it, they emphasized its loneliness and
its solemnity.

And we saw the scene of the slaughter of the helpless women and children, and also
the costly memorial that is built over the well which contains their remains. The Black
Hole of Calcutta is gone, but a more reverent age is come, and whatever
remembrancer still exists of the moving and heroic sufferings and achievements of the
garrisons of Lucknow and Cawnpore will be guarded and preserved.

In Agra and its neighborhood, and afterwards at Delhi, we saw forts, mosques, and
tombs, which were built in the great days of the Mohammedan emperors, and which
are marvels of cost, magnitude, and richness of materials and ornamentation,
creations of surpassing grandeur, wonders which do indeed make the like things in the
rest of the world seem tame and inconsequential by comparison. I am not purposing to
describe them. By good fortune I had not read too much about them, and therefore
was able to get a natural and rational focus upon them, with the result that they
thrilled, blessed, and exalted me. But if I had previously overheated my imagination by
drinking too much pestilential literary hot Scotch, I should have suffered
disappointment and sorrow.
 I mean to speak of only one of these many world-renowned buildings, the Taj
Mahal, the most celebrated construction in the earth. I had read a great deal too much
about it. I saw it in the daytime, I saw it in the moonlight, I saw it near at hand, I saw it
from a distance; and I knew all the time, that of its kind it was the wonder of the world,
with no competitor now and no possible future competitor; and yet, it was
not my Taj. My Taj had been built by excitable literary people; it was solidly lodged in
my head, and I could not blast it out.

I wish to place before the reader some of the usual descriptions of the Taj, and ask
him to take note of the impressions left in his mind. These descriptions do really state
the truth—as nearly as the limitations of language will allow. But language is a
treacherous thing, a most unsure vehicle, and it can seldom arrange descriptive words
in such a way that they will not inflate the facts—by help of the reader's imagination,
which is always ready to take a hand, and work for nothing, and do the bulk of it at
that.

I will begin with a few sentences from the excellent little local guide-book of Mr.
Satya Chandra Mukerji. I take them from here and there in his description:

"The inlaid work of the Taj and the flowers and petals that are to be found on all
sides on the surface of the marble evince a most delicate touch."

That is true.

"The inlaid work, the marble, the flowers, the buds, the leaves, the petals, and the
lotus stems are almost without a rival in the whole of the civilized world."

"The work of inlaying with stones and gems is found in the highest perfection in the
Taj."

Gems, inlaid flowers, buds, and leaves to be found on all sides. What do you see
before you? Is the fairy structure growing? Is it becoming a jewel casket?

"The whole of the Taj produces a wonderful effect that is equally sublime and
beautiful."

Then Sir William Wilson Hunter:

 "The Taj Mahal with its beautiful domes, 'a dream of marble,' rises on the river
bank."

"The materials are white marble and red sandstone."

"The complexity of its design and the delicate intricacy of the workmanship baffle
description."

Sir William continues. I will italicize some of his words:

"The mausoleum stands on a raised marble platform at each of whose corners rises a
tall and slender minaret of graceful proportions and of exquisite beauty. Beyond the
platform stretch the two wings, one of which is itself a mosque of great architectural
merit. In the center of the whole design the mausoleum occupies a square of 186 feet,
with the angles deeply truncated so as to form an unequal octagon. The main feature
in this central pile is the great dome, which swells upward to nearly two-thirds of a
sphere and tapers at its extremity into a pointed spire crowned by a crescent. Beneath
it an enclosure of marble trellis-work surrounds the tomb of the princess and of her
husband, the Emperor. Each corner of the mausoleum is covered by a similar though
much smaller dome erected on a pediment pierced with graceful Saracenic arches.
Light is admitted into the interior through a double screen of pierced marble, which
tempers the glare of an Indian sky while its whiteness prevents the mellow effect from
degenerating into gloom. The internal decorations consist of inlaid work in precious
stones, such as agate, jasper, etc., with which every squandril or salient point in the
architecture is richly fretted. Brown and violet marble is also freely employed in
wreaths, scrolls, and lintels to relieve the monotony of white wall. In regard to color
and design, the interior of the Taj may rank first in the world for purely decorative
workmanship; while the perfect symmetry of its exterior, once seen can never be
forgotten, nor the aerial grace of its domes, rising like marble bubbles into the clear
sky. The Taj represents the most highly elaborated stage of ornamentation reached by
the Indo-Mohammedan builders, the stage in which the architect ends and the jeweler
begins. In its magnificent gateway the diagonal ornamentation at the corners, which
satisfied the designers of the gateways of Itimad-ud-doulah and Sikandra mausoleums
is superseded by fine marble cables, in bold twists, strong and handsome. The
triangular insertions of white marble and large flowers have in like manner given place
to fine inlaid work. Firm perpendicular lines in black marble with well proportioned
panels of the same material are effectively used in the interior of the gateway. On its
top the Hindu brackets and monolithic architraves of Sikandra are replaced by Moorish
carped arches, usually single blocks of red sandstone, in the Kiosks and pavilions which
adorn the roof. From the pillared pavilions a magnificent view is obtained of the Taj
gardens below, with the noble Jumna river at their farther end, and the city and fort of
Agra in the distance. From this beautiful and splendid gateway one passes up a straight
alley shaded by evergreen trees cooled by a broad shallow piece of water running along
the middle of the path to the Taj itself. The Taj is entirely of marble and gems. The red
sandstone of the other Mohammedan buildings has entirely disappeared, or rather the
red sandstone which used to form the thickness of the walls, is in the Taj itself overlaid
completely with white marble, and the white marble is itself inlaid with precious stones
arranged in lovely patterns of flowers. A feeling of purity impresses itself on the eye
and the mind from the absence of the coarser material which forms so invariable a
material in Agra architecture. The lower wall and panels are covered with tulips,
oleanders, and fullblown lilies, in flat carving on the white marble; and although the
inlaid work of flowers done in gems is very brilliant when looked at closely, there is on
the whole but little color, and the all-prevailing sentiment is one of whiteness, silence,
and calm. The whiteness is broken only by the fine color of the inlaid gems, by lines in
black marble, and by delicately written inscriptions, also in black, from the Koran.
Under the dome of the vast mausoleum a high and beautiful screen of open tracery in
white marble rises around the two tombs, or rather cenotaphs of the emperor and his
princess; and in this marvel of marble the carving has advanced from the old
geometrical patterns to a trellis-work of flowers and foliage, handled with great
freedom and spirit. The two cenotaphs in the center of the exquisite enclosure have no
carving except the plain Kalamdan or oblong pen-box on the tomb of Emperor Shah
Jehan. But both cenotaphs are inlaid with flowers made of costly gems, and with the
ever graceful oleander scroll."

Bayard Taylor, after describing the details of the Taj, goes on to say:

"On both sides the palm, the banyan, and the feathery bamboo mingle their foliage;
the song of birds meets your ears, and the odor of roses and lemon flowers sweetens
the air. Down such a vista and over such a foreground rises the Taj. There is no mystery,
no sense of partial failure about the Taj. A thing of perfect beauty and of absolute finish
in every detail, it might pass for the work of genii who knew naught of the weaknesses
and ills with which mankind are beset."

All of these details are true. But, taken together, they state a falsehood—to you. You
cannot add them up correctly. Those writers know the values of their words and
phrases, but to you the words and phrases convey other and uncertain values. To
those writers their phrases have values which I think I am now acquainted with; and
for the help of the reader I will here repeat certain of those words and phrases, and
follow them with numerals which shall represent those values—then we shall see the
difference between a writer's ciphering and a mistaken reader's:

Precious stones, such as agate, jasper, etc.—5.

With which every salient point is richly fretted—5.

First in the world for purely decorative workmanship—9.

The Taj represents the stage where the architect ends and the jeweler begins—5.

The Taj is entirely of marble and gems—7.

Inlaid with precious stones in lovely patterns of flowers—5.

The inlaid work of flowers done in gems is very brilliant (followed by a most
important modification which the reader is sure to read too carelessly)—2.

The vast mausoleum—5.

This marvel of marble—5.

The exquisite enclosure—5.

Inlaid with flowers made of costly gems—5.

A thing of perfect beauty and absolute finish—5.

Those details are correct; the figures which I have placed after them represent quite
fairly their individual values. Then why, as a whole, do they convey a false impression
to the reader? It is because the reader—beguiled by his heated imagination—masses
them in the wrong way. The writer would mass the first three figures in the following
way, and they would speak the truth.

Total—19

But the reader masses them thus—and then they tell a lie—559.
 The writer would add all of his twelve numerals together, and then the sum would
express the whole truth about the Taj, and the truth only—63.

But the reader—always helped by his imagination—would put the figures in a row
one after the other, and get this sum, which would tell him a noble big lie:

559575255555.

You must put in the commas yourself; I have to go on with my work.

The reader will always be sure to put the figures together in that wrong way, and
then as surely before him will stand, sparkling in the sun, a gem-crusted Taj tall as the
Matterhorn.

I had to visit Niagara fifteen times before I succeeded in getting my imaginary Falls
gauged to the actuality and could begin to sanely and wholesomely wonder at them
for what they were, not what I had expected them to be. When I first approached
them it was with my face lifted toward the sky, for I thought I was going to see an
Atlantic ocean pouring down thence over cloud-vexed Himalayan heights, a sea-green
wall of water sixty miles front and six miles high, and so, when the toy reality came
suddenly into view—that beruffled little wet apron hanging out to dry—the shock was
too much for me, and I fell with a dull thud.

Yet slowly, surely, steadily, in the course of my fifteen visits, the proportions
adjusted themselves to the facts, and I came at last to realize that a waterfall a
hundred and sixty-five feet high and a quarter of a mile wide was an impressive thing.
It was not a dipperful to my vanished great vision, but it would answer.

I know that I ought to do with the Taj as I was obliged to do with Niagara—see it
fifteen times, and let my mind gradually get rid of the Taj built in it by its describers, by
help of my imagination, and substitute for it the Taj of fact. It would be noble and fine,
then, and a marvel; not the marvel which it replaced, but still a marvel, and fine
enough. I am a careless reader, I suppose—an impressionist reader; an impressionist
reader of what is not an impressionist picture; a reader who overlooks the informing
details or masses their sum improperly, and gets only a large splashy, general effect—
an effect which is not correct, and which is not warranted by the particulars placed
before me—particulars which I did not examine, and whose meanings I did not
cautiously and carefully estimate. It is an effect which is some thirty-five or forty times
finer than the reality, and is therefore a great deal better and more valuable than the
reality; and so, I ought never to hunt up the reality, but stay miles away from it, and
thus preserve undamaged my own private mighty Niagara tumbling out of the vault of
heaven, and my own ineffable Taj, built of tinted mists upon jeweled arches of
rainbows supported by colonnades of moonlight. It is a mistake for a person with an
unregulated imagination to go and look at an illustrious world's wonder.

I suppose that many, many years ago I gathered the idea that the Taj's place in the
achievements of man was exactly the place of the ice-storm in the achievements of
Nature; that the Taj represented man's supremest possibility in the creation of grace
and beauty and exquisiteness and splendor, just as the ice-storm represents Nature's
supremest possibility in the combination of those same qualities. I do not know how
long ago that idea was bred in me, but I know that I cannot remember back to a time
when the thought of either of these symbols of gracious and unapproachable
perfection did not at once suggest the other. If I thought of the ice-storm, the Taj rose
before me divinely beautiful; if I thought of the Taj, with its encrustings and inlayings
of jewels, the vision of the ice-storm rose. And so, to me, all these years, the Taj has
had no rival among the temples and palaces of men, none that even remotely
approached it—it was man's architectural ice-storm.

Here in London the other night I was talking with some Scotch and English friends,
and I mentioned the ice-storm, using it as a figure—a figure which failed, for none of
them had heard of the ice-storm. One gentleman, who was very familiar with
American literature, said he had never seen it mentioned in any book. That is strange.
And I, myself, was not able to say that I had seen it mentioned in a book; and yet the
autumn foliage, with all other American scenery, has received full and competent
attention.

The oversight is strange, for in America the ice-storm is an event. And it is not an
event which one is careless about. When it comes, the news flies from room to room
in the house, there are bangings on the doors, and shoutings, "The ice-storm! the ice-
storm!" and even the laziest sleepers throw off the covers and join the rush for the
windows. The ice-storm occurs in midwinter, and usually its enchantments are
wrought in the silence and the darkness of the night. A fine drizzling rain falls hour
after hour upon the naked twigs and branches of the trees, and as it falls it freezes. In
time the trunk and every branch and twig are incased in hard pure ice; so that the tree
looks like a skeleton tree made all of glass—glass that is crystal-clear. All along the
underside of every branch and twig is a comb of little icicles—the frozen drip.
Sometimes these pendants do not quite amount to icicles, but are round beads—
frozen tears.

The weather clears, toward dawn, and leaves a brisk pure atmosphere and a sky
without a shred of cloud in it—and everything is still, there is not a breath of wind. The
dawn breaks and spreads, the news of the storm goes about the house, and the little
and the big, in wraps and blankets, flock to the window and press together there, and
gaze intently out upon the great white ghost in the grounds, and nobody says a word,
nobody stirs. All are waiting; they know what is coming, and they are waiting waiting
for the miracle. The minutes drift on and on and on, with not a sound but the ticking of
the clock; at last the sun fires a sudden sheaf of rays into the ghostly tree and turns it
into a white splendor of glittering diamonds. Everybody catches his breath, and feels a
swelling in his throat and a moisture in his eyes-but waits again; for he knows what is
coming; there is more yet. The sun climbs higher, and still higher, flooding the tree
from its loftiest spread of branches to its lowest, turning it to a glory of white fire; then
in a moment, without warning, comes the great miracle, the supreme miracle, the
miracle without its fellow in the earth; a gust of wind sets every branch and twig to
swaying, and in an instant turns the whole white tree into a spouting and spraying
explosion of flashing gems of every conceivable color; and there it stands and sways
this way and that, flash! flash! flash! a dancing and glancing world of rubies, emeralds,
diamonds, sapphires, the most radiant spectacle, the most blinding spectacle, the
divinest, the most exquisite, the most intoxicating vision of fire and color and
intolerable and unimaginable splendor that ever any eye has rested upon in this world,
or will ever rest upon outside of the gates of heaven.

By all my senses, all my faculties, I know that the icestorm is Nature's supremest
achievement in the domain of the superb and the beautiful; and by my reason, at
least, I know that the Taj is man's ice-storm.

In the ice-storm every one of the myriad ice-beads pendant from twig and branch is
an individual gem, and changes color with every motion caused by the wind; each tree
carries a million, and a forest-front exhibits the splendors of the single tree multiplied
by a thousand.

It occurs to me now that I have never seen the ice-storm put upon canvas, and have
not heard that any painter has tried to do it. I wonder why that is. Is it that paint
cannot counterfeit the intense blaze of a sun-flooded jewel? There should be, and
must be, a reason, and a good one, why the most enchanting sight that Nature has
created has been neglected by the brush.

Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth. The
describers of the Taj have used the word gem in its strictest sense—its scientific sense.
In that sense it is a mild word, and promises but little to the eye—nothing bright,
nothing brilliant, nothing sparkling, nothing splendid in the way of color. It accurately
describes the sober and unobtrusive gem-work of the Taj; that is, to the very highly-
educated one person in a thousand; but it most falsely describes it to the 999. But the
999 are the people who ought to be especially taken care of, and to them it does not
mean quiet-colored designs wrought in carnelians, or agates, or such things; they know
the word in its wide and ordinary sense only, and so to them it means diamonds and
rubies and opals and their kindred, and the moment their eyes fall upon it in print they
see a vision of glorious colors clothed in fire.

These describers are writing for the "general," and so, in order to make sure of being
understood, they ought to use words in their ordinary sense, or else explain. The word
fountain means one thing in Syria, where there is but a handful of people; it means
quite another thing in North America, where there are 75,000,000. If I were describing
some Syrian scenery, and should exclaim, "Within the narrow space of a quarter of a
mile square I saw, in the glory of the flooding moonlight, two hundred noble
fountains—imagine the spectacle!" the North American would have a vision of
clustering columns of water soaring aloft, bending over in graceful arches, bursting in
beaded spray and raining white fire in the moonlight-and he would be deceived. But
the Syrian would not be deceived; he would merely see two hundred fresh-water
springs—two hundred drowsing puddles, as level and unpretentious and unexcited as
so many door-mats, and even with the help of the moonlight he would not lose his grip
in the presence of the exhibition. My word "fountain" would be correct; it would speak
the strict truth; and it would convey the strict truth to the handful of Syrians, and the
strictest misinformation to the North American millions. With their gems—and gems—
and more gems—and gems again—and still other gems—the describers of the Taj are
within their legal but not their moral rights; they are dealing in the strictest scientific
truth; and in doing it they succeed to admiration in telling "what ain't so."
 CHAPTER LX.

SATAN (impatiently) to NEW-COMER. The trouble with you Chicago people is, that
you think you are the best people down here; whereas you are merely the most
numerous.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

We wandered contentedly around here and there in India; to Lahore, among other
places, where the Lieutenant-Governor lent me an elephant. This hospitality stands
out in my experiences in a stately isolation. It was a fine elephant, affable,
gentlemanly, educated, and I was not afraid of it. I even rode it with confidence
through the crowded lanes of the native city, where it scared all the horses out of their
senses, and where children were always just escaping its feet. It took the middle of the
road in a fine independent way, and left it to the world to get out of the way or take
the consequences. I am used to being afraid of collisions when I ride or drive, but when
one is on top of an elephant that feeling is absent. I could have ridden in comfort
through a regiment of runaway teams. I could easily learn to prefer an elephant to any
other vehicle, partly because of that immunity from collisions, and partly because of
the fine view one has from up there, and partly because of the dignity one feels in that
high place, and partly because one can look in at the windows and see what is going on
privately among the family. The Lahore horses were used to elephants, but they were
rapturously afraid of them just the same. It seemed curious. Perhaps the better they
know the elephant the more they respect him in that peculiar way. In our own case—
we are not afraid of dynamite till we get acquainted with it.

We drifted as far as Rawal Pindi, away up on the Afghan frontier—I think it was the
Afghan frontier, but it may have been Hertzegovina—it was around there
somewhere—and down again to Delhi, to see the ancient architectural wonders there
and in Old Delhi and not describe them, and also to see the scene of the illustrious
assault, in the Mutiny days, when the British carried Delhi by storm, one of the marvels
of history for impudent daring and immortal valor.

We had a refreshing rest, there in Delhi, in a great old mansion which possessed
historical interest. It was built by a rich Englishman who had become orientalized—so
much so that he had a zenana. But he was a broadminded man, and remained so. To
please his harem he built a mosque; to please himself he built an English church. That
kind of a man will arrive, somewhere. In the Mutiny days the mansion was the British
general's headquarters. It stands in a great garden—oriental fashion—and about it are
many noble trees. The trees harbor monkeys; and they are monkeys of a watchful and
enterprising sort, and not much troubled with fear. They invade the house whenever
they get a chance, and carry off everything they don't want. One morning the master
of the house was in his bath, and the window was open. Near it stood a pot of yellow
paint and a brush. Some monkeys appeared in the window; to scare them away, the
gentleman threw his sponge at them. They did not scare at all; they jumped into the
room and threw yellow paint all over him from the brush, and drove him out; then
they painted the walls and the floor and the tank and the windows and the furniture
yellow, and were in the dressing-room painting that when help arrived and routed
them.

Two of these creatures came into my room in the early morning, through a window
whose shutters I had left open, and when I woke one of them was before the glass
brushing his hair, and the other one had my note-book, and was reading a page of
humorous notes and crying. I did not mind the one with the hair-brush, but the
conduct of the other one hurt me; it hurts me yet. I threw something at him, and that
was wrong, for my host had told me that the monkeys were best left alone. They
threw everything at me that they could lift, and then went into the bathroom to get
some more things, and I shut the door on them.

At Jeypore, in Rajputana, we made a considerable stay. We were not in the native

city, but several miles from it, in the small European official suburb. There were but
few Europeans—only fourteen but they were all kind and hospitable, and it amounted
to being at home. In Jeypore we found again what we had found all about India—that
while the Indian servant is in his way a very real treasure, he will sometimes bear
watching, and the Englishman watches him. If he sends him on an errand, he wants
more than the man's word for it that he did the errand. When fruit and vegetables
were sent to us, a "chit" came with them—a receipt for us to sign; otherwise the things
might not arrive. If a gentleman sent up his carriage, the chit stated "from" such-and-
such an hour "to" such-and-such an hour—which made it unhandy for the coachman
and his two or three subordinates to put us off with a part of the allotted time and
devote the rest of it to a lark of their own.

We were pleasantly situated in a small two-storied inn, in an empty large compound

which was surrounded by a mud wall as high as a man's head. The inn was kept by nine
Hindoo brothers, its owners. They lived, with their families, in a one-storied building
within the compound, but off to one side, and there was always a long pile of their
little comely brown children loosely stacked in its veranda, and a detachment of the
parents wedged among them, smoking the hookah or the howdah, or whatever they
call it. By the veranda stood a palm, and a monkey lived in it, and led a lonesome life,
and always looked sad and weary, and the crows bothered him a good deal.

The inn cow poked about the compound and emphasized the secluded and country
air of the place, and there was a dog of no particular breed, who was always present in
the compound, and always asleep, always stretched out baking in the sun and adding
to the deep tranquility and reposefulness of the place, when the crows were away on
business. White-draperied servants were coming and going all the time, but they
seemed only spirits, for their feet were bare and made no sound. Down the lane a
piece lived an elephant in the shade of a noble tree, and rocked and rocked, and
reached about with his trunk, begging of his brown mistress or fumbling the children
playing at his feet. And there were camels about, but they go on velvet feet, and were
proper to the silence and serenity of the surroundings.

The Satan mentioned at the head of this chapter was not our Satan, but the other
one. Our Satan was lost to us. In these later days he had passed out of our life—
lamented by me, and sincerely. I was missing him; I am missing him yet, after all these
months. He was an astonishing creature to fly around and do things. He didn't always
do them quite right, but he did them, and did them suddenly. There was no time
wasted. You would say:

"Pack the trunks and bags, Satan."

"Wair good" (very good).

Then there would be a brief sound of thrashing and slashing and humming and
buzzing, and a spectacle as of a whirlwind spinning gowns and jackets and coats and
boots and things through the air, and then with bow and touch—

"Awready, master."

It was wonderful. It made one dizzy. He crumpled dresses a good deal, and he had
no particular plan about the work—at first—except to put each article into the trunk it
didn't belong in. But he soon reformed, in this matter. Not entirely; for, to the last, he
would cram into the satchel sacred to literature any odds and ends of rubbish that he
couldn't find a handy place for elsewhere. When threatened with death for this, it did
not trouble him; he only looked pleasant, saluted with soldierly grace, said "Wair
good," and did it again next day.

He was always busy; kept the rooms tidied up, the boots polished, the clothes
brushed, the wash-basin full of clean water, my dress clothes laid out and ready for the
lecture-hall an hour ahead of time; and he dressed me from head to heel in spite of my
determination to do it myself, according to my lifelong custom.

He was a born boss, and loved to command, and to jaw and dispute with inferiors
and harry them and bullyrag them. He was fine at the railway station—yes, he was at
his finest there. He would shoulder and plunge and paw his violent way through the
packed multitude of natives with nineteen coolies at his tail, each bearing a trifle of
luggage—one a trunk, another a parasol, another a shawl, another a fan, and so on;
one article to each, and the longer the procession, the better he was suited—and he
was sure to make for some engaged sleeper and begin to hurl the owner's things out
of it, swearing that it was ours and that there had been a mistake. Arrived at our own
sleeper, he would undo the bedding-bundles and make the beds and put everything to
rights and shipshape in two minutes; then put his head out at a window and have a
restful good time abusing his gang of coolies and disputing their bill until we arrived
and made him pay them and stop his noise.

Speaking of noise, he certainly was the noisest little devil in India—and that is saying
much, very much, indeed. I loved him for his noise, but the family detested him for it.
They could not abide it; they could not get reconciled to it. It humiliated them. As a
rule, when we got within six hundred yards of one of those big railway stations, a
mighty racket of screaming and shrieking and shouting and storming would break upon
us, and I would be happy to myself, and the family would say, with shame:

"There—that's Satan. Why do you keep him?"

And, sure enough, there in the whirling midst of fifteen hundred wondering people
we would find that little scrap of a creature gesticulating like a spider with the colic, his
black eyes snapping, his fez-tassel dancing, his jaws pouring out floods of billingsgate
upon his gang of beseeching and astonished coolies.
 I loved him; I couldn't help it; but the family—why, they could hardly speak of him
with patience. To this day I regret his loss, and wish I had him back; but they—it is
different with them. He was a native, and came from Surat. Twenty degrees of latitude
lay between his birthplace and Manuel's, and fifteen hundred between their ways and
characters and dispositions. I only liked Manuel, but I loved Satan. This latter's real
name was intensely Indian. I could not quite get the hang of it, but it sounded like
Bunder Rao Ram Chunder Clam Chowder. It was too long for handy use, anyway; so I
reduced it.

When he had been with us two or three weeks, he began to make mistakes which I
had difficulty in patching up for him. Approaching Benares one day, he got out of the
train to see if he could get up a misunderstanding with somebody, for it had been a
weary, long journey and he wanted to freshen up. He found what he was after, but
kept up his pow-wow a shade too long and got left. So there we were in a strange city
and no chambermaid. It was awkward for us, and we told him he must not do so any
more. He saluted and said in his dear, pleasant way, "Wair good." Then at Lucknow he
got drunk. I said it was a fever, and got the family's compassion, and solicitude
aroused; so they gave him a teaspoonful of liquid quinine and it set his vitals on fire.
He made several grimaces which gave me a better idea of the Lisbon earthquake than
any I have ever got of it from paintings and descriptions. His drunk was still
portentously solid next morning, but I could have pulled him through with the family if
he would only have taken another spoonful of that remedy; but no, although he was
stupefied, his memory still had flickerings of life; so he smiled a divinely dull smile and
said, fumblingly saluting:

"Scoose me, mem Saheb, scoose me, Missy Saheb; Satan not prefer it, please."

Then some instinct revealed to them that he was drunk. They gave him prompt
notice that next time this happened he must go. He got out a maudlin and most gentle
"Wair good," and saluted indefinitely.

Only one short week later he fell again. And oh, sorrow! not in a hotel this time, but
in an English gentleman's private house. And in Agra, of all places. So he had to go.
When I told him, he said patiently, "Wair good," and made his parting salute, and went
out from us to return no more forever. Dear me! I would rather have lost a hundred
angels than that one poor lovely devil. What style he used to put on, in a swell hotel or
in a private house—snow-white muslin from his chin to his bare feet, a crimson sash
embroidered with gold thread around his waist, and on his head a great sea-green
turban like to the turban of the Grand Turk.

He was not a liar; but he will become one if he keeps on. He told me once that he
used to crack cocoanuts with his teeth when he was a boy; and when I asked how he
got them into his mouth, he said he was upward of six feet high at that time, and had
an unusual mouth. And when I followed him up and asked him what had become of
that other foot, he said a house fell on him and he was never able to get his stature
back again. Swervings like these from the strict line of fact often beguile a truthful man
on and on until he eventually becomes a liar.

His successor was a Mohammedan, Sahadat Mohammed Khan; very dark, very tall,
very grave. He went always in flowing masses of white, from the top of his big turban
down to his bare feet. His voice was low. He glided about in a noiseless way, and
looked like a ghost. He was competent and satisfactory. But where he was, it seemed
always Sunday. It was not so in Satan's time.

Jeypore is intensely Indian, but it has two or three features which indicate the
presence of European science and European interest in the weal of the common
public, such as the liberal water-supply furnished by great works built at the State's
expense; good sanitation, resulting in a degree of healthfulness unusually high for
India; a noble pleasure garden, with privileged days for women; schools for the
instruction of native youth in advanced art, both ornamental and utilitarian; and a new
and beautiful palace stocked with a museum of extraordinary interest and value.
Without the Maharaja's sympathy and purse these beneficences could not have been
created; but he is a man of wide views and large generosities, and all such matters find
hospitality with him.

We drove often to the city from the hotel Kaiser-i-Hind, a journey which was always
full of interest, both night and day, for that country road was never quiet, never
empty, but was always India in motion, always a streaming flood of brown people
clothed in smouchings from the rainbow, a tossing and moiling flood, happy, noisy, a
charming and satisfying confusion of strange human and strange animal life and
equally strange and outlandish vehicles.

And the city itself is a curiosity. Any Indian city is that, but this one is not like any
other that we saw. It is shut up in a lofty turreted wall; the main body of it is divided
into six parts by perfectly straight streets that are more than a hundred feet wide; the
blocks of houses exhibit a long frontage of the most taking architectural quaintnesses,
the straight lines being broken everywhere by pretty little balconies, pillared and
highly ornamented, and other cunning and cozy and inviting perches and projections,
and many of the fronts are curiously pictured by the brush, and the whole of them
have the soft rich tint of strawberry ice-cream. One cannot look down the far stretch
of the chief street and persuade himself that these are real houses, and that it is all out
of doors—the impression that it is an unreality, a picture, a scene in a theater, is the
only one that will take hold.

Then there came a great day when this illusion was more pronounced than ever. A
rich Hindoo had been spending a fortune upon the manufacture of a crowd of idols
and accompanying paraphernalia whose purpose was to illustrate scenes in the life of
his especial god or saint, and this fine show was to be brought through the town in
processional state at ten in the morning. As we passed through the great public
pleasure garden on our way to the city we found it crowded with natives. That was one
sight. Then there was another. In the midst of the spacious lawns stands the palace
which contains the museum—a beautiful construction of stone which shows arched
colonnades, one above another, and receding, terrace-fashion, toward the sky. Every
one of these terraces, all the way to the top one, was packed and jammed with
natives. One must try to imagine those solid masses of splendid color, one above
another, up and up, against the blue sky, and the Indian sun turning them all to beds of
fire and flame.

Later, when we reached the city, and glanced down the chief avenue, smouldering
in its crushed-strawberry tint, those splendid effects were repeated; for every balcony,
and every fanciful bird-cage of a snuggery countersunk in the house-fronts, and all the
long lines of roofs were crowded with people, and each crowd was an explosion of
brilliant color.

Then the wide street itself, away down and down and down into the distance, was
alive with gorgeously-clothed people not still, but moving, swaying, drifting, eddying, a
delirious display of all colors and all shades of color, delicate, lovely, pale, soft, strong,
stunning, vivid, brilliant, a sort of storm of sweetpea blossoms passing on the wings of
a hurricane; and presently, through this storm of color, came swaying and swinging the
majestic elephants, clothed in their Sunday best of gaudinesses, and the long
procession of fanciful trucks freighted with their groups of curious and costly images,
and then the long rearguard of stately camels, with their picturesque riders.
 For color, and picturesqueness, and novelty, and outlandishness, and sustained
interest and fascination, it was the most satisfying show I had ever seen, and I suppose
I shall not have the privilege of looking upon its like again.
 CHAPTER LXI.

In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made School
Boards.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Suppose we applied no more ingenuity to the instruction of deaf and dumb and
blind children than we sometimes apply in our American public schools to the
instruction of children who are in possession of all their faculties? The result would be
that the deaf and dumb and blind would acquire nothing. They would live and die as
ignorant as bricks and stones. The methods used in the asylums are rational. The
teacher exactly measures the child's capacity, to begin with; and from thence onwards
the tasks imposed are nicely gauged to the gradual development of that capacity, the
tasks keep pace with the steps of the child's progress, they don't jump miles and
leagues ahead of it by irrational caprice and land in vacancy—according to the average
public-school plan. In the public school, apparently, they teach the child to spell cat,
then ask it to calculate an eclipse; when it can read words of two syllables, they require
it to explain the circulation of the blood; when it reaches the head of the infant class
they bully it with conundrums that cover the domain of universal knowledge. This
sounds extravagant—and is; yet it goes no great way beyond the facts.

I received a curious letter one day, from the Punjab (you must pronounce it
Punjawb). The handwriting was excellent, and the wording was English—English, and
yet not exactly English. The style was easy and smooth and flowing, yet there was
something subtly foreign about it—A something tropically ornate and sentimental and
rhetorical. It turned out to be the work of a Hindoo youth, the holder of a humble
clerical billet in a railway office. He had been educated in one of the numerous colleges
of India. Upon inquiry I was told that the country was full of young fellows of his like.
They had been educated away up to the snow-summits of learning—and the market
for all this elaborate cultivation was minutely out of proportion to the vastness of the
product. This market consisted of some thousands of small clerical posts under the
government—the supply of material for it was multitudinous. If this youth with the
flowing style and the blossoming English was occupying a small railway clerkship, it
meant that there were hundreds and hundreds as capable as he, or he would be in a
high place; and it certainly meant that there were thousands whose education and
capacity had fallen a little short, and that they would have to go without places.
Apparently, then, the colleges of India were doing what our high schools have long
been doing—richly over-supplying the market for highly-educated service; and thereby
doing a damage to the scholar, and through him to the country.

At home I once made a speech deploring the injuries inflicted by the high school in
making handicrafts distasteful to boys who would have been willing to make a living at
trades and agriculture if they had but had the good luck to stop with the common
school. But I made no converts. Not one, in a community overrun with educated idlers
who were above following their fathers' mechanical trades, yet could find no market
for their book-knowledge. The same mail that brought me the letter from the Punjab,
brought also a little book published by Messrs. Thacker, Spink & Co., of Calcutta, which
interested me, for both its preface and its contents treated of this matter of over-
education. In the preface occurs this paragraph from the Calcutta Review. For
"Government office" read "drygoods clerkship" and it will fit more than one region of
America:

"The education that we give makes the boys a little less clownish in their manners,
and more intelligent when spoken to by strangers. On the other hand, it has made
them less contented with their lot in life, and less willing to work with their hands. The
form which discontent takes in this country is not of a healthy kind; for, the Natives of
India consider that the only occupation worthy of an educated man is that of a
writership in some office, and especially in a Government office. The village schoolboy
goes back to the plow with the greatest reluctance; and the town schoolboy carries the
same discontent and inefficiency into his father's workshop. Sometimes these ex-
students positively refuse at first to work; and more than once parents have openly
expressed their regret that they ever allowed their sons to be inveigled to school."

The little book which I am quoting from is called "Indo-Anglian Literature," and is
well stocked with "baboo" English—clerkly English, booky English, acquired in the
schools. Some of it is very funny,—almost as funny, perhaps, as what you and I
produce when we try to write in a language not our own; but much of it is surprisingly
correct and free. If I were going to quote good English—but I am not. India is well
stocked with natives who speak it and write it as well as the best of us. I merely wish to
show some of the quaint imperfect attempts at the use of our tongue. There are many
letters in the book; poverty imploring help—bread, money, kindness, office—generally
an office, a clerkship, some way to get food and a rag out of the applicant's
unmarketable education; and food not for himself alone, but sometimes for a dozen
helpless relations in addition to his own family; for those people are astonishingly
unselfish, and admirably faithful to their ties of kinship. Among us I think there is
nothing approaching it. Strange as some of these wailing and supplicating letters are,
humble and even groveling as some of them are, and quaintly funny and confused as a
goodly number of them are, there is still a pathos about them, as a rule, that checks
the rising laugh and reproaches it. In the following letter "father" is not to be read
literally. In Ceylon a little native beggar-girl embarrassed me by calling me father,
although I knew she was mistaken. I was so new that I did not know that she was
merely following the custom of the dependent and the supplicant.

"SIR,

"I pray please to give me some action (work) for I am very poor boy I have no one to
help me even so father for it so it seemed in thy good sight, you give the Telegraph
Office, and another work what is your wish I am very poor boy, this understand what is
your wish you my father I am your son this understand what is your wish.

"Your Sirvent, P. C. B."

Through ages of debasing oppression suffered by these people at the hands of their
native rulers, they come legitimately by the attitude and language of fawning and
flattery, and one must remember this in mitigation when passing judgment upon the
native character. It is common in these letters to find the petitioner furtively trying to
get at the white man's soft religious side; even this poor boy baits his hook with a
macerated Bible-text in the hope that it may catch something if all else fail.

Here is an application for the post of instructor in English to some children:

"My Dear Sir or Gentleman, that your Petitioner has much qualification in the
Language of English to instruct the young boys; I was given to understand that your of
suitable children has to acquire the knowledge of English language."

As a sample of the flowery Eastern style, I will take a sentence or two from a long
letter written by a young native to the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal—an application
for employment:

"HONORED AND MUCH RESPECTED SIR,

"I hope your honor will condescend to hear the tale of this poor creature. I shall
overflow with gratitude at this mark of your royal condescension. The bird-like
happiness has flown away from my nest-like heart and has not hitherto returned from
the period whence the rose of my father's life suffered the autumnal breath of death, in
plain English he passed through the gates of Grave, and from that hour the phantom of
delight has never danced before me."

It is all school-English, book-English, you see; and good enough, too, all things
considered. If the native boy had but that one study he would shine, he would dazzle,
no doubt. But that is not the case. He is situated as are our public-school children—
loaded down with an over-freightage of other studies; and frequently they are as far
beyond the actual point of progress reached by him and suited to the stage of
development attained, as could be imagined by the insanest fancy. Apparently—like
our public-school boy—he must work, work, work, in school and out, and play but
little. Apparently—like our public-school boy—his "education" consists in learning
things, not the meaning of them; he is fed upon the husks, not the corn. From several
essays written by native schoolboys in answer to the question of how they spend their
day, I select one—the one which goes most into detail:

"66. At the break of day I rises from my own bed and finish my daily duty, then I
employ myself till 8 o'clock, after which I employ myself to bathe, then take for my
body some sweet meat, and just at 9 1/2 I came to school to attend my class duty, then
at 2 1/2 P. M. I return from school and engage myself to do my natural duty, then, I
engage for a quarter to take my tiffin, then I study till 5 P. M., after which I began to
play anything which comes in my head. After 8 1/2, half pass to eight we are began to
sleep, before sleeping I told a constable just 11 o' he came and rose us from half pass
eleven we began to read still morning."

It is not perfectly clear, now that I come to cipher upon it. He gets up at about 5 in
the morning, or along there somewhere, and goes to bed about fifteen or sixteen
hours afterward—that much of it seems straight; but why he should rise again three
hours later and resume his studies till morning is puzzling.

I think it is because he is studying history. History requires a world of time and bitter
hard work when your "education" is no further advanced than the cat's; when you are
merely stuffing yourself with a mixed-up mess of empty names and random incidents
and elusive dates, which no one teaches you how to interpret, and which,
uninterpreted, pay you not a farthing's value for your waste of time. Yes, I think he had
to get up at halfpast 11 P.M. in order to be sure to be perfect with his history lesson by
noon. With results as follows—from a Calcutta school examination:
 "Q. Who was Cardinal Wolsey?

"Cardinal Wolsey was an Editor of a paper named North Briton. No. 45 of his
publication he charged the King of uttering a lie from the throne. He was arrested and
cast into prison; and after releasing went to France.

"3. As Bishop of York but died in disentry in a church on his way to be blockheaded.

"8. Cardinal Wolsey was the son of Edward IV, after his father's death he himself
ascended the throne at the age of (10) ten only, but when he surpassed or when he
was fallen in his twenty years of age at that time he wished to make a journey in his
countries under him, but he was opposed by his mother to do journey, and according
to his mother's example he remained in the home, and then became King. After many
times obstacles and many confusion he become King and afterwards his brother."

There is probably not a word of truth in that.

"Q. What is the meaning of 'Ich Dien'?

"10. An honor conferred on the first or eldest sons of English Sovereigns. It is

nothing more than some feathers.

"11. Ich Dien was the word which was written on the feathers of the blind King who
came to fight, being interlaced with the bridles of the horse.

"13. Ich Dien is a title given to Henry VII by the Pope of Rome, when he forwarded
the Reformation of Cardinal Wolsy to Rome, and for this reason he was called
Commander of the faith."

A dozen or so of this kind of insane answers are quoted in the book from that
examination. Each answer is sweeping proof, all by itself, that the person uttering it
was pushed ahead of where he belonged when he was put into history; proof that he
had been put to the task of acquiring history before he had had a single lesson in the
art of acquiring it, which is the equivalent of dumping a pupil into geometry before he
has learned the progressive steps which lead up to it and make its acquirement
possible. Those Calcutta novices had no business with history. There was no excuse for
examining them in it, no excuse for exposing them and their teachers. They were
totally empty; there was nothing to "examine."
 Helen Keller has been dumb, stone deaf, and stone blind, ever since she was a little
baby a year-and-a-half old; and now at sixteen years of age this miraculous creature,
this wonder of all the ages, passes the Harvard University examination in Latin,
German, French history, belles lettres, and such things, and does it brilliantly, too, not
in a commonplace fashion. She doesn't know merely things, she is splendidly familiar
with the meanings of them. When she writes an essay on a Shakespearean character,
her English is fine and strong, her grasp of the subject is the grasp of one who knows,
and her page is electric with light. Has Miss Sullivan taught her by the methods of India
and the American public school? No, oh, no; for then she would be deafer and dumber
and blinder than she was before. It is a pity that we can't educate all the children in the
asylums.

To continue the Calcutta exposure:

"What is the meaning of a Sheriff?"

"25. Sheriff is a post opened in the time of John. The duty of Sheriff here in Calcutta,
to look out and catch those carriages which is rashly driven out by the coachman; but it
is a high post in England.

"26. Sheriff was the English bill of common prayer.

"27. The man with whom the accusative persons are placed is called Sheriff.

"28. Sheriff—Latin term for 'shrub,' we called broom, worn by the first earl of Enjue,
as an emblem of humility when they went to the pilgrimage, and from this their hairs
took their crest and surname.

"29. Sheriff is a kind of titlous sect of people, as Barons, Nobles, etc.

"30. Sheriff; a tittle given on those persons who were respective and pious in
England."

The students were examined in the following bulky matters: Geometry, the Solar
Spectrum, the Habeas Corpus Act, the British Parliament, and in Metaphysics they
were asked to trace the progress of skepticism from Descartes to Hume. It is within
bounds to say that some of the results were astonishing. Without doubt, there were
students present who justified their teacher's wisdom in introducing them to these
studies; but the fact is also evident that others had been pushed into these studies to
waste their time over them when they could have been profitably employed in hunting
smaller game. Under the head of Geometry, one of the answers is this:

"49. The whole BD = the whole CA, and so-so-so-so-so-so-so."

To me this is cloudy, but I was never well up in geometry. That was the only effort
made among the five students who appeared for examination in geometry; the other
four wailed and surrendered without a fight. They are piteous wails, too, wails of
despair; and one of them is an eloquent reproach; it comes from a poor fellow who
has been laden beyond his strength by a stupid teacher, and is eloquent in spite of the
poverty of its English. The poor chap finds himself required to explain riddles which
even Sir Isaac Newton was not able to understand:

"50. Oh my dear father examiner you my father and you kindly give a number of
pass you my great father.

"51. I am a poor boy and have no means to support my mother and two brothers
who are suffering much for want of food. I get four rupees monthly from charity fund
of this place, from which I send two rupees for their support, and keep two for my own
support. Father, if I relate the unlucky circumstance under which we are placed, then, I
think, you will not be able to suppress the tender tear.

"52. Sir which Sir Isaac Newton and other experienced mathematicians cannot
understand I being third of Entrance Class can understand these which is too
impossible to imagine. And my examiner also has put very tiresome and very heavy
propositions to prove."

We must remember that these pupils had to do their thinking in one language, and
express themselves in another and alien one. It was a heavy handicap. I have by me
"English as She is Taught"—a collection of American examinations made in the public
schools of Brooklyn by one of the teachers, Miss Caroline B. Le Row. An extract or two
from its pages will show that when the American pupil is using but one language, and
that one his own, his performance is no whit better than his Indian brother's:

"ON HISTORY.

"Christopher Columbus was called the father of his Country. Queen Isabella of Spain
sold her watch and chain and other millinery so that Columbus could discover America.
 "The Indian wars were very desecrating to the country.

"The Indians pursued their warfare by hiding in the bushes and then scalping them.

"Captain John Smith has been styled the father of his country. His life was saved by
his daughter Pochahantas.

"The Puritans found an insane asylum in the wilds of America.

"The Stamp Act was to make everybody stamp all materials so they should be null
and void.

"Washington died in Spain almost broken-hearted. His remains were taken to the
cathedral in Havana.

"Gorilla warfare was where men rode on gorillas."

In Brooklyn, as in India, they examine a pupil, and when they find out he doesn't
know anything, they put him into literature, or geometry, or astronomy, or
government, or something like that, so that he can properly display the assification of
the whole system:

"ON LITERATURE.

"'Bracebridge Hall' was written by Henry Irving.

"Edgar A. Poe was a very curdling writer.

"Beowulf wrote the Scriptures.

"Ben Johnson survived Shakespeare in some respects.

"In the 'Canterbury Tale' it gives account of King Alfred on his way to the shrine of
Thomas Bucket.

"Chaucer was the father of English pottery.

"Chaucer was succeeded by H. Wads. Longfellow."

 We will finish with a couple of samples of "literature," one from America, the other
from India. The first is a Brooklyn public-school boy's attempt to turn a few verses of
the "Lady of the Lake" into prose. You will have to concede that he did it:

"The man who rode on the horse performed the whip and an instrument made of
steel alone with strong ardor not diminishing, for, being tired from the time passed
with hard labor overworked with anger and ignorant with weariness, while every
breath for labor he drew with cries full of sorrow, the young deer made imperfect who
worked hard filtered in sight."

The following paragraph is from a little book which is famous in India—the

biography of a distinguished Hindoo judge, Onoocool Chunder Mookerjee; it was
written by his nephew, and is unintentionally funny—in fact, exceedingly so. I offer
here the closing scene. If you would like to sample the rest of the book, it can be had
by applying to the publishers, Messrs. Thacker, Spink & Co., Calcutta

"And having said these words he hermetically sealed his lips not to open them again.
All the well-known doctors of Calcutta that could be procured for a man of his position
and wealth were brought,—Doctors Payne, Fayrer, and Nilmadhub Mookerjee and
others; they did what they could do, with their puissance and knack of medical
knowledge, but it proved after all as if to milk the ram! His wife and children had not
the mournful consolation to hear his last words; he remained sotto voce for a few
hours, and then was taken from us at 6.12 P.m. according to the caprice of God which
passeth understanding."
 CHAPTER LXII.

There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined ones.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

We sailed from Calcutta toward the end of March; stopped a day at Madras; two or
three days in Ceylon; then sailed westward on a long flight for Mauritius. From my
diary:

April 7. We are far abroad upon the smooth waters of the Indian Ocean, now; it is
shady and pleasant and peaceful under the vast spread of the awnings, and life is
perfect again—ideal.

The difference between a river and the sea is, that the river looks fluid, the sea
solid—usually looks as if you could step out and walk on it.

The captain has this peculiarity—he cannot tell the truth in a plausible way. In this
he is the very opposite of the austere Scot who sits midway of the table; he cannot tell
a lie in an unplausible way. When the captain finishes a statement the passengers
glance at each other privately, as who should say, "Do you believe that?" When the
Scot finishes one, the look says, "How strange and interesting." The whole secret is in
the manner and method of the two men. The captain is a little shy and diffident, and
he states the simplest fact as if he were a little afraid of it, while the Scot delivers
himself of the most abandoned lie with such an air of stern veracity that one is forced
to believe it although one knows it isn't so. For instance, the Scot told about a pet
flying-fish he once owned, that lived in a little fountain in his conservatory, and
supported itself by catching birds and frogs and rats in the neighboring fields. It was
plain that no one at the table doubted this statement.

By and by, in the course of some talk about custom-house annoyances, the captain
brought out the following simple everyday incident, but through his infirmity of style
managed to tell it in such a way that it got no credence. He said:

"I went ashore at Naples one voyage when I was in that trade, and stood around
helping my passengers, for I could speak a little Italian. Two or three times, at intervals,
the officer asked me if I had anything dutiable about me, and seemed more and more
put out and disappointed every time I told him no. Finally a passenger whom I had
helped through asked me to come out and take something. I thanked him, but excused
myself, saying I had taken a whisky just before I came ashore.

"It was a fatal admission. The officer at once made me pay sixpence import-duty on
the whisky-just from ship to shore, you see; and he fined me L5 for not declaring the
goods, another L5 for falsely denying that I had anything dutiable about me, also L5 for
concealing the goods, and L50 for smuggling, which is the maximum penalty for
unlawfully bringing in goods under the value of sevenpence ha'penny. Altogether, sixty-
five pounds sixpence for a little thing like that."

The Scot is always believed, yet he never tells anything but lies; whereas the captain
is never believed, although he never tells a lie, so far as I can judge. If he should say his
uncle was a male person, he would probably say it in such a way that nobody would
believe it; at the same time the Scot could claim that he had a female uncle and not
stir a doubt in anybody's mind. My own luck has been curious all my literary life; I
never could tell a lie that anybody would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would
believe.

Lots of pets on board—birds and things. In these far countries the white people do
seem to run remarkably to pets. Our host in Cawnpore had a fine collection of birds—
the finest we saw in a private house in India. And in Colombo, Dr. Murray's great
compound and commodious bungalow were well populated with domesticated
company from the woods: frisky little squirrels; a Ceylon mina walking sociably about
the house; a small green parrot that whistled a single urgent note of call without
motion of its beak; also chuckled; a monkey in a cage on the back veranda, and some
more out in the trees; also a number of beautiful macaws in the trees; and various and
sundry birds and animals of breeds not known to me. But no cat. Yet a cat would have
liked that place.

April 9. Tea-planting is the great business in Ceylon, now. A passenger says it often
pays 40 per cent. on the investment. Says there is a boom.

April 10. The sea is a Mediterranean blue; and I believe that that is about the
divinest color known to nature.

It is strange and fine—Nature's lavish generosities to her creatures. At least to all of

them except man. For those that fly she has provided a home that is nobly spacious—a
home which is forty miles deep and envelops the whole globe, and has not an
obstruction in it. For those that swim she has provided a more than imperial domain—
a domain which is miles deep and covers four-fifths of the globe. But as for man, she
has cut him off with the mere odds and ends of the creation. She has given him the
thin skin, the meagre skin which is stretched over the remaining one-fifth—the naked
bones stick up through it in most places. On the one-half of this domain he can raise
snow, ice, sand, rocks, and nothing else. So the valuable part of his inheritance really
consists of but a single fifth of the family estate; and out of it he has to grub hard to
get enough to keep him alive and provide kings and soldiers and powder to extend the
blessings of civilization with. Yet man, in his simplicity and complacency and inability to
cipher, thinks Nature regards him as the important member of the family—in fact, her
favorite. Surely, it must occur to even his dull head, sometimes, that she has a curious
way of showing it.

Afternoon. The captain has been telling how, in one of his Arctic voyages, it was so
cold that the mate's shadow froze fast to the deck and had to be ripped loose by main
strength. And even then he got only about two-thirds of it back. Nobody said anything,
and the captain went away. I think he is becoming disheartened . . . .

Also, to be fair, there is another word of praise due to this ship's library: it contains
no copy of the Vicar of Wakefield, that strange menagerie of complacent hypocrites
and idiots, of theatrical cheap-john heroes and heroines, who are always showing off,
of bad people who are not interesting, and good people who are fatiguing. A singular
book. Not a sincere line in it, and not a character that invites respect; a book which is
one long waste-pipe discharge of goody-goody puerilities and dreary moralities; a book
which is full of pathos which revolts, and humor which grieves the heart. There are few
things in literature that are more piteous, more pathetic, than the celebrated
"humorous" incident of Moses and the spectacles. Jane Austen's books, too, are
absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library
out of a library that hadn't a book in it.

Customs in tropic seas. At 5 in the morning they pipe to wash down the decks, and
at once the ladies who are sleeping there turn out and they and their beds go below.
Then one after another the men come up from the bath in their pyjamas, and walk the
decks an hour or two with bare legs and bare feet. Coffee and fruit served. The ship cat
and her kitten now appear and get about their toilets; next the barber comes and flays
us on the breezy deck.
 Breakfast at 9.30, and the day begins. I do not know how a day could be more
reposeful: no motion; a level blue sea; nothing in sight from horizon to horizon; the
speed of the ship furnishes a cooling breeze; there is no mail to read and answer; no
newspapers to excite you; no telegrams to fret you or fright you—the world is far, far
away; it has ceased to exist for you—seemed a fading dream, along in the first days;
has dissolved to an unreality now; it is gone from your mind with all its businesses and
ambitions, its prosperities and disasters, its exultations and despairs, its joys and griefs
and cares and worries. They are no concern of yours any more; they have gone out of
your life; they are a storm which has passed and left a deep calm behind. The people
group themselves about the decks in their snowy white linen, and read, smoke, sew,
play cards, talk, nap, and so on. In other ships the passengers are always ciphering
about when they are going to arrive; out in these seas it is rare, very rare, to hear that
subject broached. In other ships there is always an eager rush to the bulletin board at
noon to find out what the "run" has been; in these seas the bulletin seems to attract
no interest; I have seen no one visit it; in thirteen days I have visited it only once. Then
I happened to notice the figures of the day's run. On that day there happened to be
talk, at dinner, about the speed of modern ships. I was the only passenger present who
knew this ship's gait. Necessarily, the Atlantic custom of betting on the ship's run is not
a custom here—nobody ever mentions it.

I myself am wholly indifferent as to when we are going to "get in"; if any one else
feels interested in the matter he has not indicated it in my hearing. If I had my way we
should never get in at all. This sort of sea life is charged with an indestructible charm.
There is no weariness, no fatigue, no worry, no responsibility, no work, no depression
of spirits. There is nothing like this serenity, this comfort, this peace, this deep
contentment, to be found anywhere on land. If I had my way I would sail on for ever
and never go to live on the solid ground again.

One of Kipling's ballads has delivered the aspect and sentiment of this bewitching
sea correctly:

"The Injian Ocean sets an' smiles

So sof', so bright, so bloomin' blue;
There aren't a wave for miles an' miles
Excep' the jiggle from the screw."
 April 14. It turns out that the astronomical apprentice worked off a section of the
Milky Way on me for the Magellan Clouds. A man of more experience in the business
showed one of them to me last night. It was small and faint and delicate, and looked
like the ghost of a bunch of white smoke left floating in the sky by an exploded
bombshell.

Wednesday, April 15. Mauritius. Arrived and anchored off Port Louis 2 A. M. Rugged
clusters of crags and peaks, green to their summits; from their bases to the sea a green
plain with just tilt enough to it to make the water drain off. I believe it is in 56 E. and 22
S.—a hot tropical country. The green plain has an inviting look; has scattering dwellings
nestling among the greenery. Scene of the sentimental adventure of Paul and Virginia.

Island under French control—which means a community which depends upon

quarantines, not sanitation, for its health.

Thursday, April 16. Went ashore in the forenoon at Port Louis, a little town, but with
the largest variety of nationalities and complexions we have encountered yet. French,
English, Chinese, Arabs, Africans with wool, blacks with straight hair, East Indians, half-
whites, quadroons—and great varieties in costumes and colors.

Took the train for Curepipe at 1.30—two hours' run, gradually uphill. What a
contrast, this frantic luxuriance of vegetation, with the arid plains of India; these
architecturally picturesque crags and knobs and miniature mountains, with the
monotony of the Indian dead-levels.

A native pointed out a handsome swarthy man of grave and dignified bearing, and
said in an awed tone, "That is so-and-so; has held office of one sort or another under
this government for 37 years—he is known all over this whole island and in the other
countries of the world perhaps—who knows? One thing is certain; you can speak his
name anywhere in this whole island, and you will find not one grown person that has
not heard it. It is a wonderful thing to be so celebrated; yet look at him; it makes no
change in him; he does not even seem to know it."

Curepipe (means Pincushion or Pegtown, probably). Sixteen miles (two hours) by rail
from Port Louis. At each end of every roof and on the apex of every dormer window a
wooden peg two feet high stands up; in some cases its top is blunt, in others the peg is
sharp and looks like a toothpick. The passion for this humble ornament is universal.
 Apparently, there has been only one prominent event in the history of Mauritius,
and that one didn't happen. I refer to the romantic sojourn of Paul and Virginia here. It
was that story that made Mauritius known to the world, made the name familiar to
everybody, the geographical position of it to nobody.

A clergyman was asked to guess what was in a box on a table. It was a vellum fan
painted with the shipwreck, and was "one of Virginia's wedding gifts."

April 18. This is the only country in the world where the stranger is not asked "How
do you like this place?" This is indeed a large distinction. Here the citizen does the
talking about the country himself; the stranger is not asked to help. You get all sorts of
information. From one citizen you gather the idea that Mauritius was made first, and
then heaven; and that heaven was copied after Mauritius. Another one tells you that
this is an exaggeration; that the two chief villages, Port Louis and Curepipe, fall short of
heavenly perfection; that nobody lives in Port Louis except upon compulsion, and that
Curepipe is the wettest and rainiest place in the world.

An English citizen said:

"In the early part of this century Mauritius was used by the French as a basis from
which to operate against England's Indian merchantmen; so England captured the
island and also the neighbor, Bourbon, to stop that annoyance. England gave Bourbon
back; the government in London did not want any more possessions in the West Indies.
If the government had had a better quality of geography in stock it would not have
wasted Bourbon in that foolish way. A big war will temporarily shut up the Suez Canal
some day and the English ships will have to go to India around the Cape of Good Hope
again; then England will have to have Bourbon and will take it.

"Mauritius was a crown colony until 20 years ago, with a governor appointed by the
Crown and assisted by a Council appointed by himself; but Pope Hennessey came out as
Governor then, and he worked hard to get a part of the council made elective, and
succeeded. So now the whole council is French, and in all ordinary matters of legislation
they vote together and in the French interest, not the English. The English population is
very slender; it has not votes enough to elect a legislator. Half a dozen rich French
families elect the legislature. Pope Hennessey was an Irishman, a Catholic, a Home
Ruler, M.P., a hater of England and the English, a very troublesome person and a
serious incumbrance at Westminster; so it was decided to send him out to govern
unhealthy countries, in hope that something would happen to him. But nothing did. The
first experiment was not merely a failure, it was more than a failure. He proved to be
more of a disease himself than any he was sent to encounter. The next experiment was
here. The dark scheme failed again. It was an off-season and there was nothing but
measles here at the time. Pope Hennessey's health was not affected. He worked with
the French and for the French and against the English, and he made the English very
tired and the French very happy, and lived to have the joy of seeing the flag he served
publicly hissed. His memory is held in worshipful reverence and affection by the French.

"It is a land of extraordinary quarantines. They quarantine a ship for anything or for
nothing; quarantine her for 20 and even 30 days. They once quarantined a ship because
her captain had had the smallpox when he was a boy. That and because he was
English.

"The population is very small; small to insignificance. The majority is East Indian;
then mongrels; then negroes (descendants of the slaves of the French times); then
French; then English. There was an American, but he is dead or mislaid. The mongrels
are the result of all kinds of mixtures; black and white, mulatto and white, quadroon
and white, octoroon and white. And so there is every shade of complexion; ebony, old
mahogany, horsechestnut, sorrel, molasses-candy, clouded amber, clear amber, old-
ivory white, new-ivory white, fish-belly white—this latter the leprous complexion
frequent with the Anglo-Saxon long resident in tropical climates.

"You wouldn't expect a person to be proud of being a Mauritian, now would you?
But it is so. The most of them have never been out of the island, and haven't read much
or studied much, and they think the world consists of three principal countries—Judaea,
France, and Mauritius; so they are very proud of belonging to one of the three grand
divisions of the globe. They think that Russia and Germany are in England, and that
England does not amount to much. They have heard vaguely about the United States
and the equator, but they think both of them are monarchies. They think Mount Peter
Botte is the highest mountain in the world, and if you show one of them a picture of
Milan Cathedral he will swell up with satisfaction and say that the idea of that jungle of
spires was stolen from the forest of peg-tops and toothpicks that makes the roofs of
Curepipe look so fine and prickly.

"There is not much trade in books. The newspapers educate and entertain the
people. Mainly the latter. They have two pages of large-print reading-matter-one of
them English, the other French. The English page is a translation of the French one. The
typography is super-extra primitive—in this quality it has not its equal anywhere. There
is no proof-reader now; he is dead.

"Where do they get matter to fill up a page in this little island lost in the wastes of
the Indian Ocean? Oh, Madagascar. They discuss Madagascar and France. That is the
bulk. Then they chock up the rest with advice to the Government. Also, slurs upon the
English administration. The papers are all owned and edited by creoles—French.

"The language of the country is French. Everybody speaks it—has to. You have to
know French particularly mongrel French, the patois spoken by Tom, Dick, and Harry of
the multiform complexions—or you can't get along.

"This was a flourishing country in former days, for it made then and still makes the
best sugar in the world; but first the Suez Canal severed it from the world and left it
out in the cold and next the beetroot sugar helped by bounties, captured the European
markets. Sugar is the life of Mauritius, and it is losing its grip. Its downward course was
checked by the depreciation of the rupee—for the planter pays wages in rupees but
sells his crop for gold—and the insurrection in Cuba and paralyzation of the sugar
industry there have given our prices here a life-saving lift; but the outlook has nothing
permanently favorable about it. It takes a year to mature the canes—on the high
ground three and six months longer—and there is always a chance that the annual
cyclone will rip the profit out of the crop. In recent times a cyclone took the whole
crop, as you may say; and the island never saw a finer one. Some of the noblest sugar
estates in the island are in deep difficulties. A dozen of them are investments of
English capital; and the companies that own them are at work now, trying to settle up
and get out with a saving of half the money they put in. You know, in these days, when
a country begins to introduce the tea culture, it means that its own specialty has gone
back on it. Look at Bengal; look at Ceylon. Well, they've begun to introduce the tea
culture, here.

"Many copies of Paul and Virginia are sold every year in Mauritius. No other book is
so popular here except the Bible. By many it is supposed to be a part of the Bible. All
the missionaries work up their French on it when they come here to pervert the
Catholic mongrel. It is the greatest story that was ever written about Mauritius, and
the only one."
 CHAPTER LXIII.

The principal difference between a cat and a lie is that the cat has only nine lives.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

April 20.—The cyclone of 1892 killed and crippled hundreds of people; it was
accompanied by a deluge of rain, which drowned Port Louis and produced a water
famine. Quite true; for it burst the reservoir and the water-pipes; and for a time after
the flood had disappeared there was much distress from want of water.

This is the only place in the world where no breed of matches can stand the damp.
Only one match in 16 will light.

The roads are hard and smooth; some of the compounds are spacious, some of the
bungalows commodious, and the roadways are walled by tall bamboo hedges, trim
and green and beautiful; and there are azalea hedges, too, both the white and the red;
I never saw that before.

As to healthiness: I translate from to-day's (April 20) Merchants' and Planters'

Gazette, from the article of a regular contributor, "Carminge," concerning the death of
the nephew of a prominent citizen:

"Sad and lugubrious existence, this which we lead in Mauritius; I believe there is no
other country in the world where one dies more easily than among us. The least
indisposition becomes a mortal malady; a simple headache develops into meningitis; a
cold into pneumonia, and presently, when we are least expecting it, death is a guest in
our home."

This daily paper has a meteorological report which tells you what the weather was
day before yesterday.

One is never pestered by a beggar or a peddler in this town, so far as I can see. This
is pleasantly different from India.

April 22. To such as believe that the quaint product called French civilization would
be an improvement upon the civilization of New Guinea and the like, the snatching of
Madagascar and the laying on of French civilization there will be fully justified. But why
did the English allow the French to have Madagascar? Did she respect a theft of a
couple of centuries ago? Dear me, robbery by European nations of each other's
territories has never been a sin, is not a sin to-day. To the several cabinets the several
political establishments of the world are clotheslines; and a large part of the official
duty of these cabinets is to keep an eye on each other's wash and grab what they can
of it as opportunity offers. All the territorial possessions of all the political
establishments in the earth—including America, of course—consist of pilferings from
other people's wash. No tribe, howsoever insignificant, and no nation, howsoever
mighty, occupies a foot of land that was not stolen. When the English, the French, and
the Spaniards reached America, the Indian tribes had been raiding each other's
territorial clothes-lines for ages, and every acre of ground in the continent had been
stolen and re-stolen 500 times. The English, the French, and the Spaniards went to
work and stole it all over again; and when that was satisfactorily accomplished they
went diligently to work and stole it from each other. In Europe and Asia and Africa
every acre of ground has been stolen several millions of times. A crime persevered in a
thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of
custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law. Christian governments are as
frank to-day, as open and above-board, in discussing projects for raiding each other's
clothes-lines as ever they were before the Golden Rule came smiling into this
inhospitable world and couldn't get a night's lodging anywhere. In 150 years England
has beneficently retired garment after garment from the Indian lines, until there is
hardly a rag of the original wash left dangling anywhere. In 800 years an obscure tribe
of Muscovite savages has risen to the dazzling position of Land-Robber-in-Chief; she
found a quarter of the world hanging out to dry on a hundred parallels of latitude, and
she scooped in the whole wash. She keeps a sharp eye on a multitude of little lines
that stretch along the northern boundaries of India, and every now and then she
snatches a hip-rag or a pair of pyjamas. It is England's prospective property, and Russia
knows it; but Russia cares nothing for that. In fact, in our day land-robbery, claim-
jumping, is become a European governmental frenzy. Some have been hard at it in the
borders of China, in Burma, in Siam, and the islands of the sea; and all have been at it
in Africa. Africa has been as coolly divided up and portioned out among the gang as if
they had bought it and paid for it. And now straightway they are beginning the old
game again—to steal each other's grabbings. Germany found a vast slice of Central
Africa with the English flag and the English missionary and the English trader scattered
all over it, but with certain formalities neglected—no signs up, "Keep off the grass,"
"Trespassers-forbidden," etc.—and she stepped in with a cold calm smile and put up
the signs herself, and swept those English pioneers promptly out of the country.
 There is a tremendous point there. It can be put into the form of a maxim: Get your
formalities right—never mind about the moralities.

It was an impudent thing; but England had to put up with it. Now, in the case of
Madagascar, the formalities had originally been observed, but by neglect they had
fallen into desuetude ages ago. England should have snatched Madagascar from the
French clothes-line. Without an effort she could have saved those harmless natives
from the calamity of French civilization, and she did not do it. Now it is too late.

The signs of the times show plainly enough what is going to happen. All the savage
lands in the world are going to be brought under subjection to the Christian
governments of Europe. I am not sorry, but glad. This coming fate might have been a
calamity to those savage peoples two hundred years ago; but now it will in some cases
be a benefaction. The sooner the seizure is consummated, the better for the savages.

The dreary and dragging ages of bloodshed and disorder and oppression will give
place to peace and order and the reign of law. When one considers what India was
under her Hindoo and Mohammedan rulers, and what she is now; when he
remembers the miseries of her millions then and the protections and humanities
which they enjoy now, he must concede that the most fortunate thing that has ever
befallen that empire was the establishment of British supremacy there. The savage
lands of the world are to pass to alien possession, their peoples to the mercies of alien
rulers. Let us hope and believe that they will all benefit by the change.

April 23. "The first year they gather shells; the second year they gather shells and
drink; the third year they do not gather shells." (Said of immigrants to Mauritius.)

Population 375,000. 120 sugar factories.

Population 1851, 185,000. The increase is due mainly to the introduction of Indian
coolies. They now apparently form the great majority of the population. They are
admirable breeders; their homes are always hazy with children. Great savers of money.
A British officer told me that in India he paid his servant 10 rupees a month, and he
had 11 cousins, uncles, parents, etc., dependent upon him, and he supported them on
his wages. These thrifty coolies are said to be acquiring land a trifle at a time, and
cultivating it; and may own the island by and by.
 The Indian women do very hard labor (for wages running from 40 one hundredths of
a rupee for twelve hours' work to 50 one hundredths of a rupee.) They carry mats of
sugar on their heads (70 pounds) all day lading ships, for half a rupee, and work at
gardening all day for less.

The camaron is a fresh water creature like a cray-fish. It is regarded here as the
world's chiefest delicacy—and certainly it is good. Guards patrol the streams to
prevent poaching it. A fine of Rs.200 or 300 (they say) for poaching. Bait is thrown in
the water; the camaron goes for it; the fisher drops his loop in and works it around and
about the camaron he has selected, till he gets it over its tail; then there's a jerk or
something to certify the camaron that it is his turn now; he suddenly backs away,
which moves the loop still further up his person and draws it taut, and his days are
ended.

Another dish, called palmiste, is like raw turnip-shavings and tastes like green
almonds; is very delicate and good. Costs the life of a palm tree 12 to 20 years old—for
it is the pith.

Another dish—looks like greens or a tangle of fine seaweed—is a preparation of the

deadly nightshade. Good enough.

The monkeys live in the dense forests on the flanks of the toy mountains, and they
flock down nights and raid the sugar-fields. Also on other estates they come down and
destroy a sort of bean-crop—just for fun, apparently—tear off the pods and throw
them down.

The cyclone of 1892 tore down two great blocks of stone buildings in the center of
Port Louis—the chief architectural feature—and left the uncomely and apparently frail
blocks standing. Everywhere in its track it annihilated houses, tore off roofs, destroyed
trees and crops. The men were in the towns, the women and children at home in the
country getting crippled, killed, frightened to insanity; and the rain deluging them, the
wind howling, the thunder crashing, the lightning glaring. This for an hour or so. Then a
lull and sunshine; many ventured out of safe shelter; then suddenly here it came again
from the opposite point and renewed and completed the devastation. It is said the
Chinese fed the sufferers for days on free rice.

Whole streets in Port Louis were laid flat—wrecked. During a minute and a half the
wind blew 123 miles an hour; no official record made after that, when it may have
reached 150. It cut down an obelisk. It carried an American ship into the woods after
breaking the chains of two anchors. They now use four-two forward, two astern.
Common report says it killed 1,200 in Port Louis alone, in half an hour. Then came the
lull of the central calm—people did not know the barometer was still going down—
then suddenly all perdition broke loose again while people were rushing around
seeking friends and rescuing the wounded. The noise was comparable to nothing;
there is nothing resembling it but thunder and cannon, and these are feeble in
comparison.

What there is of Mauritius is beautiful. You have undulating wide expanses of sugar-
cane—a fine, fresh green and very pleasant to the eye; and everywhere else you have
a ragged luxuriance of tropic vegetation of vivid greens of varying shades, a wild tangle
of underbrush, with graceful tall palms lifting their crippled plumes high above it; and
you have stretches of shady dense forest with limpid streams frolicking through them,
continually glimpsed and lost and glimpsed again in the pleasantest hide-and-seek
fashion; and you have some tiny mountains, some quaint and picturesque groups of
toy peaks, and a dainty little vest-pocket Matterhorn; and here and there and now and
then a strip of sea with a white ruffle of surf breaks into the view.

That is Mauritius; and pretty enough. The details are few, the massed result is
charming, but not imposing; not riotous, not exciting; it is a Sunday landscape.
Perspective, and the enchantments wrought by distance, are wanting. There are no
distances; there is no perspective, so to speak. Fifteen miles as the crow flies is the
usual limit of vision. Mauritius is a garden and a park combined. It affects one's
emotions as parks and gardens affect them. The surfaces of one's spiritual deeps are
pleasantly played upon, the deeps themselves are not reached, not stirred.
Spaciousness, remote altitudes, the sense of mystery which haunts apparently
inaccessible mountain domes and summits reposing in the sky—these are the things
which exalt the spirit and move it to see visions and dream dreams.

The Sandwich Islands remain my ideal of the perfect thing in the matter of tropical
islands. I would add another story to Mauna Loa's 16,000 feet if I could, and make it
particularly bold and steep and craggy and forbidding and snowy; and I would make
the volcano spout its lava-floods out of its summit instead of its sides; but aside from
these non-essentials I have no corrections to suggest. I hope these will be attended to;
I do not wish to have to speak of it again.
 CHAPTER LXIV.

When your watch gets out of order you have choice of two things to do: throw it in
the fire or take it to the watch-tinker. The former is the quickest.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

The Arundel Castle is the finest boat I have seen in these seas. She is thoroughly
modern, and that statement covers a great deal of ground. She has the usual defect,
the common defect, the universal defect, the defect that has never been missing from
any ship that ever sailed—she has imperfect beds. Many ships have good beds, but no
ship has very good ones. In the matter of beds all ships have been badly edited,
ignorantly edited, from the beginning. The selection of the beds is given to some
hearty, strong-backed, self-made man, when it ought to be given to a frail woman
accustomed from girlhood to backaches and insomnia. Nothing is so rare, on either
side of the ocean, as a perfect bed; nothing is so difficult to make. Some of the hotels
on both sides provide it, but no ship ever does or ever did. In Noah's Ark the beds were
simply scandalous. Noah set the fashion, and it will endure in one degree of
modification or another till the next flood.

8 A.M. Passing Isle de Bourbon. Broken-up sky-line of volcanic mountains in the

middle. Surely it would not cost much to repair them, and it seems inexcusable neglect
to leave them as they are.

It seems stupid to send tired men to Europe to rest. It is no proper rest for the mind
to clatter from town to town in the dust and cinders, and examine galleries and
architecture, and be always meeting people and lunching and teaing and dining, and
receiving worrying cables and letters. And a sea voyage on the Atlantic is of no use—
voyage too short, sea too rough. The peaceful Indian and Pacific Oceans and the long
stretches of time are the healing thing.

May 2, AM. A fair, great ship in sight, almost the first we have seen in these weeks
of lonely voyaging. We are now in the Mozambique Channel, between Madagascar
and South Africa, sailing straight west for Delagoa Bay.

Last night, the burly chief engineer, middle-aged, was standing telling a spirited
seafaring tale, and had reached the most exciting place, where a man overboard was
washing swiftly astern on the great seas, and uplifting despairing cries, everybody
racing aft in a frenzy of excitement and fading hope, when the band, which had been
silent a moment, began impressively its closing piece, the English national anthem. As
simply as if he was unconscious of what he was doing, he stopped his story,
uncovered, laid his laced cap against his breast, and slightly bent his grizzled head. The
few bars finished, he put on his cap and took up his tale again, as naturally as if that
interjection of music had been a part of it. There was something touching and fine
about it, and it was moving to reflect that he was one of a myriad, scattered over every
part of the globe, who by turn was doing as he was doing every hour of the twenty-
four—those awake doing it while the others slept—those impressive bars forever
floating up out of the various climes, never silent and never lacking reverent listeners.

All that I remember about Madagascar is that Thackeray's little Billie went up to the
top of the mast and there knelt him upon his knee, saying, "I see

"Jerusalem and Madagascar,

And North and South Amerikee."

May 3. Sunday. Fifteen or twenty Africanders who will end their voyage to-day and
strike for their several homes from Delagoa Bay to-morrow, sat up singing on the
afterdeck in the moonlight till 3 A.M. Good fun and wholesome. And the songs were
clean songs, and some of them were hallowed by tender associations.

Finally, in a pause, a man asked, "Have you heard about the fellow that kept a diary
crossing the Atlantic?" It was a discord, a wet blanket. The men were not in the mood
for humorous dirt. The songs had carried them to their homes, and in spirit they sat by
those far hearthstones, and saw faces and heard voices other than those that were
about them. And so this disposition to drag in an old indecent anecdote got no
welcome; nobody answered. The poor man hadn't wit enough to see that he had
blundered, but asked his question again. Again there was no response. It was
embarrassing for him. In his confusion he chose the wrong course, did the wrong
thing—began the anecdote. Began it in a deep and hostile stillness, where had been
such life and stir and warm comradeship before. He delivered himself of the brief
details of the diary's first day, and did it with some confidence and a fair degree of
eagerness. It fell flat. There was an awkward pause. The two rows of men sat like
statues. There was no movement, no sound. He had to go on; there was no other way,
at least none that an animal of his calibre could think of. At the close of each day's
diary, the same dismal silence followed. When at last he finished his tale and sprung
the indelicate surprise which is wont to fetch a crash of laughter, not a ripple of sound
resulted. It was as if the tale had been told to dead men. After what seemed a long,
long time, somebody sighed, somebody else stirred in his seat; presently, the men
dropped into a low murmur of confidential talk, each with his neighbor, and the
incident was closed. There were indications that that man was fond of his anecdote;
that it was his pet, his standby, his shot that never missed, his reputation-maker. But
he will never tell it again. No doubt he will think of it sometimes, for that cannot well
be helped; and then he will see a picture, and always the same picture—the double
rank of dead men; the vacant deck stretching away in dimming perspective beyond
them, the wide desert of smooth sea all abroad; the rim of the moon spying from
behind a rag of black cloud; the remote top of the mizzenmast shearing a zigzag path
through the fields of stars in the deeps of space; and this soft picture will remind him
of the time that he sat in the midst of it and told his poor little tale and felt so
lonesome when he got through.

Fifty Indians and Chinamen asleep in a big tent in the waist of the ship forward; they
lie side by side with no space between; the former wrapped up, head and all, as in the
Indian streets, the Chinamen uncovered; the lamp and things for opium smoking in the
center.

A passenger said it was ten 2-ton truck loads of dynamite that lately exploded at
Johannesburg. Hundreds killed; he doesn't know how many; limbs picked up for miles
around. Glass shattered, and roofs swept away or collapsed 200 yards off; fragment of
iron flung three and a half miles.

It occurred at 3 p.m.; at 6, L65,000 had been subscribed. When this passenger left,
L35,000 had been voted by city and state governments and L100,000 by citizens and
business corporations. When news of the disaster was telephoned to the Exchange
L35,000 were subscribed in the first five minutes. Subscribing was still going on when
he left; the papers had ceased the names, only the amounts—too many names; not
enough room. L100,000 subscribed by companies and citizens; if this is true, it must be
what they call in Australia "a record"—the biggest instance of a spontaneous outpour
for charity in history, considering the size of the population it was drawn from, $8 or
$10 for each white resident, babies at the breast included.

Monday, May 4. Steaming slowly in the stupendous Delagoa Bay, its dim arms
stretching far away and disappearing on both sides. It could furnish plenty of room for
all the ships in the world, but it is shoal. The lead has given us 3 1/2 fathoms several
times and we are drawing that, lacking 6 inches.

A bold headland—precipitous wall, 150 feet high, very strong, red color, stretching a
mile or so. A man said it was Portuguese blood—battle fought here with the natives
last year. I think this doubtful. Pretty cluster of houses on the tableland above the red
and rolling stretches of grass and groups of trees, like England.

The Portuguese have the railroad (one passenger train a day) to the border—70
miles—then the Netherlands Company have it. Thousands of tons of freight on the
shore—no cover. This is Portuguese allover—indolence, piousness, poverty,
impotence.

Crews of small boats and tugs, all jet black woolly heads and very muscular.

Winter. The South African winter is just beginning now, but nobody but an expert
can tell it from summer. However, I am tired of summer; we have had it unbroken for
eleven months. We spent the afternoon on shore, Delagoa Bay. A small town—no
sights. No carriages. Three 'rickshas, but we couldn't get them—apparently private.
These Portuguese are a rich brown, like some of the Indians. Some of the blacks have
the long horse heads and very long chins of the negroes of the picture books; but most
of them are exactly like the negroes of our Southern States round faces, flat noses,
good-natured, and easy laughers.

Flocks of black women passed along, carrying outrageously heavy bags of freight on
their heads. The quiver of their leg as the foot was planted and the strain exhibited by
their bodies showed what a tax upon their strength the load was. They were
stevedores and doing full stevedore's work. They were very erect when unladden—
from carrying heavy loads on their heads—just like the Indian women. It gives them a
proud fine carriage.

Sometimes one saw a woman carrying on her head a laden and top-heavy basket
the shape of an inverted pyramid—its top the size of a soup-plate, its base the
diameter of a teacup. It required nice balancing—and got it.
 No bright colors; yet there were a good many Hindoos.

The Second Class Passenger came over as usual at "lights out" (11) and we lounged
along the spacious vague solitudes of the deck and smoked the peaceful pipe and
talked. He told me an incident in Mr. Barnum's life which was evidently characteristic
of that great showman in several ways:

This was Barnum's purchase of Shakespeare's birthplace, a quarter of a century ago.

The Second Class Passenger was in Jamrach's employ at the time and knew Barnum
well. He said the thing began in this way. One morning Barnum and Jamrach were in
Jamrach's little private snuggery back of the wilderness of caged monkeys and snakes
and other commonplaces of Jamrach's stock in trade, refreshing themselves after an
arduous stroke of business, Jamrach with something orthodox, Barnum with
something heterodox—for Barnum was a teetotaler. The stroke of business was in the
elephant line. Jamrach had contracted to deliver to Barnum in New York 18 elephants
for $360,000 in time for the next season's opening. Then it occurred to Mr. Barnum
that he needed a "card". He suggested Jumbo. Jamrach said he would have to think of
something else—Jumbo couldn't be had; the Zoo wouldn't part with that elephant.
Barnum said he was willing to pay a fortune for Jumbo if he could get him. Jamrach
said it was no use to think about it; that Jumbo was as popular as the Prince of Wales
and the Zoo wouldn't dare to sell him; all England would be outraged at the idea;
Jumbo was an English institution; he was part of the national glory; one might as well
think of buying the Nelson monument. Barnum spoke up with vivacity and said:

"It's a first-rate idea. I'll buy the Monument."

Jamrach was speechless for a second. Then he said, like one ashamed "You caught
me. I was napping. For a moment I thought you were in earnest."

Barnum said pleasantly—

"I was in earnest. I know they won't sell it, but no matter, I will not throw away a
good idea for all that. All I want is a big advertisement. I will keep the thing in mind,
and if nothing better turns up I will offer to buy it. That will answer every purpose. It
will furnish me a couple of columns of gratis advertising in every English and American
paper for a couple of months, and give my show the biggest boom a show ever had in
this world."
 Jamrach started to deliver a burst of admiration, but was interrupted by Barnum,
who said:

"Here is a state of things! England ought to blush."

His eye had fallen upon something in the newspaper. He read it through to himself,
then read it aloud. It said that the house that Shakespeare was born in at Stratford-on-
Avon was falling gradually to ruin through neglect; that the room where the poet first
saw the light was now serving as a butcher's shop; that all appeals to England to
contribute money (the requisite sum stated) to buy and repair the house and place it
in the care of salaried and trustworthy keepers had fallen resultless. Then Barnum said:

"There's my chance. Let Jumbo and the Monument alone for the present—they'll
keep. I'll buy Shakespeare's house. I'll set it up in my Museum in New York and put a
glass case around it and make a sacred thing of it; and you'll see all America flock there
to worship; yes, and pilgrims from the whole earth; and I'll make them take their hats
off, too. In America we know how to value anything that Shakespeare's touch has
made holy. You'll see."

In conclusion the S. C. P. said:

"That is the way the thing came about. Barnum did buy Shakespeare's house. He
paid the price asked, and received the properly attested documents of sale. Then there
was an explosion, I can tell you. England rose! That, the birthplace of the master-
genius of all the ages and all the climes—that priceless possession of Britain—to be
carted out of the country like so much old lumber and set up for sixpenny desecration
in a Yankee show-shop—the idea was not to be tolerated for a moment. England rose
in her indignation; and Barnum was glad to relinquish his prize and offer apologies.
However, he stood out for a compromise; he claimed a concession—England must let
him have Jumbo. And England consented, but not cheerfully."

It shows how, by help of time, a story can grow—even after Barnum has had the
first innings in the telling of it. Mr. Barnum told me the story himself, years ago. He
said that the permission to buy Jumbo was not a concession; the purchase was made
and the animal delivered before the public knew anything about it. Also, that the
securing of Jumbo was all the advertisement he needed. It produced many columns of
newspaper talk, free of cost, and he was satisfied. He said that if he had failed to get
Jumbo he would have caused his notion of buying the Nelson Monument to be
treacherously smuggled into print by some trusty friend, and after he had gotten a few
hundred pages of gratuitous advertising out of it, he would have come out with a
blundering, obtuse, but warm-hearted letter of apology, and in a postscript to it would
have naively proposed to let the Monument go, and take Stonehenge in place of it at
the same price.

It was his opinion that such a letter, written with well-simulated asinine innocence
and gush would have gotten his ignorance and stupidity an amount of newspaper
abuse worth six fortunes to him, and not purchasable for twice the money.

I knew Mr. Barnum well, and I placed every confidence in the account which he gave
me of the Shakespeare birthplace episode. He said he found the house neglected and
going-to decay, and he inquired into the matter and was told that many times earnest
efforts had been made to raise money for its proper repair and preservation, but
without success. He then proposed to buy it. The proposition was entertained, and a
price named—$50,000, I think; but whatever it was, Barnum paid the money down,
without remark, and the papers were drawn up and executed. He said that it had been
his purpose to set up the house in his Museum, keep it in repair, protect it from name-
scribblers and other desecrators, and leave it by bequest to the safe and perpetual
guardianship of the Smithsonian Institute at Washington.

But as soon as it was found that Shakespeare's house had passed into foreign hands
and was going to be carried across the ocean, England was stirred as no appeal from
the custodians of the relic had ever stirred England before, and protests came flowing
in—and money, too, to stop the outrage. Offers of repurchase were made—offers of
double the money that Mr. Barnum had paid for the house. He handed the house
back, but took only the sum which it had cost him—but on the condition that an
endowment sufficient for the future safeguarding and maintenance of the sacred relic
should be raised. This condition was fulfilled.

That was Barnum's account of the episode; and to the end of his days he claimed
with pride and satisfaction that not England, but America—represented by him—saved
the birthplace of Shakespeare from destruction.

At 3 P.M., May 6th, the ship slowed down, off the land, and thoughtfully and
cautiously picked her way into the snug harbor of Durban, South Africa.
 CHAPTER LXV.

In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the moralities.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

FROM DIARY:

Royal Hotel. Comfortable, good table, good service of natives and Madrasis. Curious
jumble of modern and ancient city and village, primitiveness and the other thing.
Electric bells, but they don't ring. Asked why they didn't, the watchman in the office
said he thought they must be out of order; he thought so because some of them rang,
but most of them didn't. Wouldn't it be a good idea to put them in order? He
hesitated—like one who isn't quite sure—then conceded the point.

May 7. A bang on the door at 6. Did I want my boots cleaned? Fifteen minutes later
another bang. Did we want coffee? Fifteen later, bang again, my wife's bath ready; 15
later, my bath ready. Two other bangs; I forget what they were about. Then lots of
shouting back and forth, among the servants just as in an Indian hotel.

Evening. At 4 P.M. it was unpleasantly warm. Half-hour after sunset one needed a
spring overcoat; by 8 a winter one.

Durban is a neat and clean town. One notices that without having his attention
called to it.

Rickshaws drawn by splendidly built black Zulus, so overflowing with strength,

seemingly, that it is a pleasure, not a pain, to see them snatch a rickshaw along. They
smile and laugh and show their teeth—a good-natured lot. Not allowed to drink; 2s per
hour for one person; 3s for two; 3d for a course—one person.

The chameleon in the hotel court. He is fat and indolent and contemplative; but is
business-like and capable when a fly comes about—reaches out a tongue like a
teaspoon and takes him in. He gums his tongue first. He is always pious, in his looks.
And pious and thankful both, when Providence or one of us sends him a fly. He has a
froggy head, and a back like a new grave—for shape; and hands like a bird's toes that
have been frostbitten. But his eyes are his exhibition feature. A couple of skinny cones
project from the sides of his head, with a wee shiny bead of an eye set in the apex of
each; and these cones turn bodily like pivot-guns and point every-which-way, and they
are independent of each other; each has its own exclusive machinery. When I am
behind him and C. in front of him, he whirls one eye rearwards and the other
forwards—which gives him a most Congressional expression (one eye on the
constituency and one on the swag); and then if something happens above and below
him he shoots out one eye upward like a telescope and the other downward—and this
changes his expression, but does not improve it.

Natives must not be out after the curfew bell without a pass. In Natal there are ten
blacks to one white.

Sturdy plump creatures are the women. They comb their wool up to a peak and
keep it in position by stiffening it with brown-red clay—half of this tower colored,
denotes engagement; the whole of it colored denotes marriage.

None but heathen Zulus on the police; Christian ones not allowed.

May 9. A drive yesterday with friends over the Berea. Very fine roads and lofty,
overlooking the whole town, the harbor, and the sea-beautiful views. Residences all
along, set in the midst of green lawns with shrubs and generally one or two intensely
red outbursts of poinsettia—the flaming splotch of blinding red a stunning contrast
with the world of surrounding green. The cactus tree—candelabrum-like; and one
twisted like gray writhing serpents. The "flat-crown" (should be flat-roof)—half a
dozen naked branches full of elbows, slant upward like artificial supports, and fling a
roof of delicate foliage out in a horizontal platform as flat as a floor; and you look up
through this thin floor as through a green cobweb or veil. The branches are japanesich.
All about you is a bewildering variety of unfamiliar and beautiful trees; one sort
wonderfully dense foliage and very dark green—so dark that you notice it at once,
notwithstanding there are so many orange trees. The "flamboyant"—not in flower,
now, but when in flower lives up to its name, we are told. Another tree with a lovely
upright tassel scattered among its rich greenery, red and glowing as a firecoal. Here
and there a gum-tree; half a dozen lofty Norfolk Island pines lifting their fronded arms
skyward. Groups of tall bamboo.

Saw one bird. Not many birds here, and they have no music—and the flowers not
much smell, they grow so fast.
 Everything neat and trim and clean like the town. The loveliest trees and the
greatest variety I have ever seen anywhere, except approaching Darjeeling. Have not
heard anyone call Natal the garden of South Africa, but that is what it probably is.

It was when Bishop of Natal that Colenso raised such a storm in the religious world.
The concerns of religion are a vital matter here yet. A vigilant eye is kept upon Sunday.
Museums and other dangerous resorts are not allowed to be open. You may sail on the
Bay, but it is wicked to play cricket. For a while a Sunday concert was tolerated, upon
condition that it must be admission free and the money taken by collection. But the
collection was alarmingly large and that stopped the matter. They are particular about
babies. A clergyman would not bury a child according to the sacred rites because it had
not been baptized. The Hindoo is more liberal. He burns no child under three, holding
that it does not need purifying.

The King of the Zulus, a fine fellow of 30, was banished six years ago for a term of
seven years. He is occupying Napoleon's old stand—St. Helena. The people are a little
nervous about having him come back, and they may well be, for Zulu kings have been
terrible people sometimes—like Tchaka, Dingaan, and Cetewayo.

There is a large Trappist monastery two hours from Durban, over the country roads,
and in company with Mr. Milligan and Mr. Hunter, general manager of the Natal
government railways, who knew the heads of it, we went out to see it.

There it all was, just as one reads about it in books and cannot believe that it is so—I
mean the rough, hard work, the impossible hours, the scanty food, the coarse raiment,
the Maryborough beds, the tabu of human speech, of social intercourse, of relaxation,
of amusement, of entertainment, of the presence of woman in the men's
establishment. There it all was. It was not a dream, it was not a lie. And yet with the
fact before one's face it was still incredible. It is such a sweeping suppression of human
instincts, such an extinction of the man as an individual.

La Trappe must have known the human race well. The scheme which he invented
hunts out everything that a man wants and values—and withholds it from him.
Apparently there is no detail that can help make life worth living that has not been
carefully ascertained and placed out of the Trappist's reach. La Trappe must have
known that there were men who would enjoy this kind of misery, but how did he find
it out?
 If he had consulted you or me he would have been told that his scheme lacked too
many attractions; that it was impossible; that it could never be floated. But there in
the monastery was proof that he knew the human race better than it knew itself. He
set his foot upon every desire that a man has—yet he floated his project, and it has
prospered for two hundred years, and will go on prospering forever, no doubt.

Man likes personal distinction—there in the monastery it is obliterated. He likes

delicious food—there he gets beans and bread and tea, and not enough of it. He likes
to lie softly—there he lies on a sand mattress, and has a pillow and a blanket, but no
sheet. When he is dining, in a great company of friends, he likes to laugh and chat—
there a monk reads a holy book aloud during meals, and nobody speaks or laughs.
When a man has a hundred friends about him, evenings, he likes to have a good time
and run late—there he and the rest go silently to bed at 8; and in the dark, too; there is
but a loose brown robe to discard, there are no night-clothes to put on, a light is not
needed. Man likes to lie abed late—there he gets up once or twice in the night to
perform some religious office, and gets up finally for the day at two in the morning.
Man likes light work or none at all—there he labors all day in the field, or in the
blacksmith shop or the other shops devoted to the mechanical trades, such as
shoemaking, saddlery, carpentry, and so on. Man likes the society of girls and
women—there he never has it. He likes to have his children about him, and pet them
and play with them—there he has none. He likes billiards—there is no table there. He
likes outdoor sports and indoor dramatic and musical and social entertainments—
there are none there. He likes to bet on things—I was told that betting is forbidden
there. When a man's temper is up he likes to pour it out upon somebody there this is
not allowed. A man likes animals—pets; there are none there. He likes to smoke—
there he cannot do it. He likes to read the news—no papers or magazines come there.
A man likes to know how his parents and brothers and sisters are getting along when
he is away, and if they miss him—there he cannot know. A man likes a pretty house,
and pretty furniture, and pretty things, and pretty colors—there he has nothing but
naked aridity and sombre colors. A man likes—name it yourself: whatever it is, it is
absent from that place.

From what I could learn, all that a man gets for this is merely the saving of his soul.

It all seems strange, incredible, impossible. But La Trappe knew the race. He knew
the powerful attraction of unattractiveness; he knew that no life could be imagined,
howsoever comfortless and forbidding, but somebody would want to try it.
 This parent establishment of Germans began its work fifteen years ago, strangers,
poor, and unencouraged; it owns 15,000 acres of land now, and raises grain and fruit,
and makes wines, and manufactures all manner of things, and has native apprentices
in its shops, and sends them forth able to read and write, and also well equipped to
earn their living by their trades. And this young establishment has set up eleven
branches in South Africa, and in them they are christianizing and educating and
teaching wage-yielding mechanical trades to 1,200 boys and girls. Protestant
Missionary work is coldly regarded by the commercial white colonist all over the
heathen world, as a rule, and its product is nicknamed "rice-Christians" (occupationless
incapables who join the church for revenue only), but I think it would be difficult to
pick a flaw in the work of these Catholic monks, and I believe that the disposition to
attempt it has not shown itself.

Tuesday, May 12. Transvaal politics in a confused condition. First the sentencing of
the Johannesburg Reformers startled England by its severity; on the top of this came
Kruger's exposure of the cipher correspondence, which showed that the invasion of
the Transvaal, with the design of seizing that country and adding it to the British
Empire, was planned by Cecil Rhodes and Beit—which made a revulsion in English
feeling, and brought out a storm against Rhodes and the Chartered Company for
degrading British honor. For a good while I couldn't seem to get at a clear
comprehension of it, it was so tangled. But at last by patient study I have managed it, I
believe. As I understand it, the Uitlanders and other Dutchmen were dissatisfied
because the English would not allow them to take any part in the government except
to pay taxes. Next, as I understand it, Dr. Kruger and Dr. Jameson, not having been able
to make the medical business pay, made a raid into Matabeleland with the intention of
capturing the capital, Johannesburg, and holding the women and children to ransom
until the Uitlanders and the other Boers should grant to them and the Chartered
Company the political rights which had been withheld from them. They would have
succeeded in this great scheme, as I understand it, but for the interference of Cecil
Rhodes and Mr. Beit, and other Chiefs of the Matabele, who persuaded their
countrymen to revolt and throw off their allegiance to Germany. This, in turn, as I
understand it, provoked the King of Abyssinia to destroy the Italian army and fall back
upon Johannesburg; this at the instigation of Rhodes, to bull the stock market.
 CHAPTER LXVI.

Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

When I scribbled in my note-book a year ago the paragraph which ends the
preceding chapter, it was meant to indicate, in an extravagant form, two things: the
conflicting nature of the information conveyed by the citizen to the stranger
concerning South African politics, and the resulting confusion created in the stranger's
mind thereby.

But it does not seem so very extravagant now. Nothing could in that disturbed and
excited time make South African politics clear or quite rational to the citizen of the
country because his personal interest and his political prejudices were in his way; and
nothing could make those politics clear or rational to the stranger, the sources of his
information being such as they were.

I was in South Africa some little time. When I arrived there the political pot was
boiling fiercely. Four months previously, Jameson had plunged over the Transvaal
border with about 600 armed horsemen at his back, to go to the "relief of the women
and children" of Johannesburg; on the fourth day of his march the Boers had defeated
him in battle, and carried him and his men to Pretoria, the capital, as prisoners; the
Boer government had turned Jameson and his officers over to the British government
for trial, and shipped them to England; next, it had arrested 64 important citizens of
Johannesburg as raid-conspirators, condemned their four leaders to death, then
commuted the sentences, and now the 64 were waiting, in jail, for further results.
Before midsummer they were all out excepting two, who refused to sign the petitions
for release; 58 had been fined $10,000 each and enlarged, and the four leaders had
gotten off with fines of $125,000 each with permanent exile added, in one case.

Those were wonderfully interesting days for a stranger, and I was glad to be in the
thick of the excitement. Everybody was talking, and I expected to understand the
whole of one side of it in a very little while.

I was disappointed. There were singularities, perplexities, unaccountabilities about it

which I was not able to master. I had no personal access to Boers—their side was a
secret to me, aside from what I was able to gather of it from published statements. My
sympathies were soon with the Reformers in the Pretoria jail, with their friends, and
with their cause. By diligent inquiry in Johannesburg I found out—apparently—all the
details of their side of the quarrel except one—what they expected to accomplish by
an armed rising.

Nobody seemed to know.

The reason why the Reformers were discontented and wanted some changes made,
seemed quite clear. In Johannesburg it was claimed that the Uitlanders (strangers,
foreigners) paid thirteen-fifteenths of the Transvaal taxes, yet got little or nothing for
it. Their city had no charter; it had no municipal government; it could levy no taxes for
drainage, water-supply, paving, cleaning, sanitation, policing. There was a police force,
but it was composed of Boers, it was furnished by the State Government, and the city
had no control over it. Mining was very costly; the government enormously increased
the cost by putting burdensome taxes upon the mines, the output, the machinery, the
buildings; by burdensome imposts upon incoming materials; by burdensome railway-
freight-charges. Hardest of all to bear, the government reserved to itself a monopoly in
that essential thing, dynamite, and burdened it with an extravagant price. The
detested Hollander from over the water held all the public offices. The government
was rank with corruption. The Uitlander had no vote, and must live in the State ten or
twelve years before he could get one. He was not represented in the Raad (legislature)
that oppressed him and fleeced him. Religion was not free. There were no schools
where the teaching was in English, yet the great majority of the white population of
the State knew no tongue but that. The State would not pass a liquor law; but allowed
a great trade in cheap vile brandy among the blacks, with the result that 25 per cent.
of the 50,000 blacks employed in the mines were usually drunk and incapable of
working.

There—it was plain enough that the reasons for wanting some changes made were
abundant and reasonable, if this statement of the existing grievances was correct.

What the Uitlanders wanted was reform—under the existing Republic.

What they proposed to do was to secure these reforms by, prayer, petition, and
persuasion.

They did petition. Also, they issued a Manifesto, whose very first note is a bugle-
blast of loyalty: "We want the establishment of this Republic as a true Republic."
 Could anything be clearer than the Uitlander's statement of the grievances and
oppressions under which they were suffering? Could anything be more legal and
citizen-like and law-respecting than their attitude as expressed by their Manifesto? No.
Those things were perfectly clear, perfectly comprehensible.

But at this point the puzzles and riddles and confusions begin to flock in. You have
arrived at a place which you cannot quite understand.

For you find that as a preparation for this loyal, lawful, and in every way
unexceptionable attempt to persuade the government to right their grievances, the
Uitlanders had smuggled a Maxim gun or two and 1,500 muskets into the town,
concealed in oil tanks and coal cars, and had begun to form and drill military
companies composed of clerks, merchants, and citizens generally.

What was their idea? Did they suppose that the Boers would attack them for
petitioning, for redress? That could not be.

Did they suppose that the Boers would attack them even for issuing a Manifesto
demanding relief under the existing government?

Yes, they apparently believed so, because the air was full of talk of forcing the
government to grant redress if it were not granted peacefully.

The Reformers were men of high intelligence. If they were in earnest, they were
taking extraordinary risks. They had enormously valuable properties to defend; their
town was full of women and children; their mines and compounds were packed with
thousands upon thousands of sturdy blacks. If the Boers attacked, the mines would
close, the blacks would swarm out and get drunk; riot and conflagration and the Boers
together might lose the Reformers more in a day, in money, blood, and suffering, than
the desired political relief could compensate in ten years if they won the fight and
secured the reforms.

It is May, 1897, now; a year has gone by, and the confusions of that day have been
to a considerable degree cleared away. Mr. Cecil Rhodes, Dr. Jameson, and others
responsible for the Raid, have testified before the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry
in London, and so have Mr. Lionel Phillips and other Johannesburg Reformers,
monthly-nurses of the Revolution which was born dead. These testimonies have
thrown light. Three books have added much to this light:
 "South Africa As It Is," by Mr. Statham, an able writer partial to the Boers; "The Story
of an African Crisis," by Mr. Garrett, a brilliant writer partial to Rhodes; and "A
Woman's Part in a Revolution," by Mrs. John Hays Hammond, a vigorous and vivid
diarist, partial to the Reformers. By liquifying the evidence of the prejudiced books and
of the prejudiced parliamentary witnesses and stirring the whole together and pouring
it into my own (prejudiced) moulds, I have got at the truth of that puzzling South
African situation, which is this:

1. The capitalists and other chief men of Johannesburg were fretting under various
political and financial burdens imposed by the State (the South African Republic,
sometimes called "the Transvaal") and desired to procure by peaceful means a
modification of the laws.

2. Mr. Cecil Rhodes, Premier of the British Cape Colony, millionaire, creator and
managing director of the territorially-immense and financially unproductive South
Africa Company; projector of vast schemes for the unification and consolidation of all
the South African States, one imposing commonwealth or empire under the shadow
and general protection of the British flag, thought he saw an opportunity to make
profitable use of the Uitlander discontent above mentioned—make the Johannesburg
cat help pull out one of his consolidation chestnuts for him. With this view he set
himself the task of warming the lawful and legitimate petitions and supplications of
the Uitlanders into seditious talk, and their frettings into threatenings—the final
outcome to be revolt and armed rebellion. If he could bring about a bloody collision
between those people and the Boer government, Great Britain would have to
interfere; her interference would be resisted by the Boers; she would chastise them
and add the Transvaal to her South African possessions. It was not a foolish idea, but a
rational and practical one.

After a couple of years of judicious plotting, Mr. Rhodes had his reward; the
revolutionary kettle was briskly boiling in Johannesburg, and the Uitlander leaders
were backing their appeals to the government—now hardened into demands—by
threats of force and bloodshed. By the middle of December, 1895, the explosion
seemed imminent. Mr. Rhodes was diligently helping, from his distant post in Cape
Town. He was helping to procure arms for Johannesburg; he was also arranging to
have Jameson break over the border and come to Johannesburg with 600 mounted
men at his back. Jameson—as per instructions from Rhodes, perhaps—wanted a letter
from the Reformers requesting him to come to their aid. It was a good idea. It would
throw a considerable share of the responsibility of his invasion upon the Reformers. He
got the letter—that famous one urging him to fly to the rescue of the women and
children. He got it two months before he flew. The Reformers seem to have thought it
over and concluded that they had not done wisely; for the next day after giving
Jameson the implicating document they wanted to withdraw it and leave the women
and children in danger; but they were told that it was too late. The original had gone to
Mr. Rhodes at the Cape. Jameson had kept a copy, though.

From that time until the 29th of December, a good deal of the Reformers' time was
taken up with energetic efforts to keep Jameson from coming to their assistance.
Jameson's invasion had been set for the 26th. The Reformers were not ready. The
town was not united. Some wanted a fight, some wanted peace; some wanted a new
government, some wanted the existing one reformed; apparently very few wanted the
revolution to take place in the interest and under the ultimate shelter of the Imperial
flag—British; yet a report began to spread that Mr. Rhodes's embarrassing assistance
had for its end this latter object.

Jameson was away up on the frontier tugging at his leash, fretting to burst over the
border. By hard work the Reformers got his starting-date postponed a little, and
wanted to get it postponed eleven days. Apparently, Rhodes's agents were seconding
their efforts—in fact wearing out the telegraph wires trying to hold him back. Rhodes
was himself the only man who could have effectively postponed Jameson, but that
would have been a disadvantage to his scheme; indeed, it could spoil his whole two
years' work.

Jameson endured postponement three days, then resolved to wait no longer.

Without any orders—excepting Mr. Rhodes's significant silence—he cut the telegraph
wires on the 29th, and made his plunge that night, to go to the rescue of the women
and children, by urgent request of a letter now nine days old—as per date,—a couple
of months old, in fact. He read the letter to his men, and it affected them. It did not
affect all of them alike. Some saw in it a piece of piracy of doubtful wisdom, and were
sorry to find that they had been assembled to violate friendly territory instead of to
raid native kraals, as they had supposed.

Jameson would have to ride 150 miles. He knew that there were suspicions abroad
in the Transvaal concerning him, but he expected to get through to Johannesburg
before they should become general and obstructive. But a telegraph wire had been
overlooked and not cut. It spread the news of his invasion far and wide, and a few
hours after his start the Boer farmers were riding hard from every direction to
intercept him.

As soon as it was known in Johannesburg that he was on his way to rescue the
women and children, the grateful people put the women and children in a train and
rushed them for Australia. In fact, the approach of Johannesburg's saviour created
panic and consternation there, and a multitude of males of peaceable disposition
swept to the trains like a sand-storm. The early ones fared best; they secured seats—
by sitting in them—eight hours before the first train was timed to leave.

Mr. Rhodes lost no time. He cabled the renowned Johannesburg letter of invitation
to the London press—the gray-headedest piece of ancient history that ever went over
a cable.

The new poet laureate lost no time. He came out with a rousing poem lauding
Jameson's prompt and splendid heroism in flying to the rescue of the women and
children; for the poet could not know that he did not fly until two months after the
invitation. He was deceived by the false date of the letter, which was December 20th.

Jameson was intercepted by the Boers on New Year's Day, and on the next day he
surrendered. He had carried his copy of the letter along, and if his instructions
required him—in case of emergency—to see that it fell into the hands of the Boers, he
loyally carried them out. Mrs. Hammond gives him a sharp rap for his supposed
carelessness, and emphasizes her feeling about it with burning italics: "It was picked up
on the battle-field in a leathern pouch, supposed to be Dr. Jameson's saddle-bag. Why,
in the name of all that is discreet and honorable, didn't he eat it!"

She requires too much. He was not in the service of the Reformers—excepting
ostensibly; he was in the service of Mr. Rhodes. It was the only plain English document,
undarkened by ciphers and mysteries, and responsibly signed and authenticated,
which squarely implicated the Reformers in the raid, and it was not to Mr. Rhodes's
interest that it should be eaten. Besides, that letter was not the original, it was only a
copy. Mr. Rhodes had the original—and didn't eat it. He cabled it to the London press.
It had already been read in England and America and all over Europe before Jameson
dropped it on the battlefield. If the subordinate's knuckles deserved a rap, the
principal's deserved as many as a couple of them.
 That letter is a juicily dramatic incident and is entitled to all its celebrity, because of
the odd and variegated effects which it produced. All within the space of a single week
it had made Jameson an illustrious hero in England, a pirate in Pretoria, and an ass
without discretion or honor in Johannesburg; also it had produced a poet-laureatic
explosion of colored fireworks which filled the world's sky with giddy splendors, and,
the knowledge that Jameson was coming with it to rescue the women and children
emptied Johannesburg of that detail of the population. For an old letter, this was
much. For a letter two months old, it did marvels; if it had been a year old it would
have done miracles. <<br>
 CHAPTER LXVII.

First catch your Boer, then kick him.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Those latter days were days of bitter worry and trouble for the harassed Reformers.

From Mrs. Hammond we learn that on the 31st (the day after Johannesburg heard
of the invasion), "The Reform Committee repudiates Dr. Jameson's inroad."

It also publishes its intention to adhere to the Manifesto.

It also earnestly desires that the inhabitants shall refrain from overt acts against the
Boer government.

It also "distributes arms" at the Court House, and furnishes horses "to the newly-
enrolled volunteers."

It also brings a Transvaal flag into the committee-room, and the entire body swear
allegiance to it "with uncovered heads and upraised arms."

Also "one thousand Lee-Metford rifles have been given out"—to rebels.

Also, in a speech, Reformer Lionel Phillips informs the public that the Reform
Committee Delegation has "been received with courtesy by the Government
Commission," and "been assured that their proposals shall be earnestly considered."
That "while the Reform Committee regretted Jameson's precipitate action, they would
stand by him."

Also the populace are in a state of "wild enthusiasm," and "can scarcely be
restrained; they want to go out to meet Jameson and bring him in with triumphal
outcry."

Also the British High Commissioner has issued a damnifying proclamation against
Jameson and all British abettors of his game. It arrives January 1st.

It is a difficult position for the Reformers, and full of hindrances and perplexities.
Their duty is hard, but plain:
 1. They have to repudiate the inroad, and stand by the inroader.

2. They have to swear allegiance to the Boer government, and distribute cavalry
horses to the rebels.

3. They have to forbid overt acts against the Boer government, and distribute arms
to its enemies.

4. They have to avoid collision with the British government, but still stand by
Jameson and their new oath of allegiance to the Boer government, taken, uncovered,
in presence of its flag.

They did such of these things as they could; they tried to do them all; in fact, did do
them all, but only in turn, not simultaneously. In the nature of things they could not be
made to simultane.

In preparing for armed revolution and in talking revolution, were the Reformers
"bluffing," or were they in earnest? If they were in earnest, they were taking great
risks—as has been already pointed out. A gentleman of high position told me in
Johannesburg that he had in his possession a printed document proclaiming a new
government and naming its president—one of the Reform leaders. He said that this
proclamation had been ready for issue, but was suppressed when the raid collapsed.
Perhaps I misunderstood him. Indeed, I must have misunderstood him, for I have not
seen mention of this large incident in print anywhere.

Besides, I hope I am mistaken; for, if I am, then there is argument that the
Reformers were privately not serious, but were only trying to scare the Boer
government into granting the desired reforms.

The Boer government was scared, and it had a right to be. For if Mr. Rhodes's plan
was to provoke a collision that would compel the interference of England, that was a
serious matter. If it could be shown that that was also the Reformers' plan and
purpose, it would prove that they had marked out a feasible project, at any rate,
although it was one which could hardly fail to cost them ruinously before England
should arrive. But it seems clear that they had no such plan nor desire. If, when the
worst should come to the worst, they meant to overthrow the government, they also
meant to inherit the assets themselves, no doubt.
 This scheme could hardly have succeeded. With an army of Boers at their gates and
50,000 riotous blacks in their midst, the odds against success would have been too
heavy—even if the whole town had been armed. With only 2,500 rifles in the place,
they stood really no chance.

To me, the military problems of the situation are of more interest than the political
ones, because by disposition I have always been especially fond of war. No, I mean
fond of discussing war; and fond of giving military advice. If I had been with Jameson
the morning after he started, I should have advised him to turn back. That was
Monday; it was then that he received his first warning from a Boer source not to
violate the friendly soil of the Transvaal. It showed that his invasion was known. If I had
been with him on Tuesday morning and afternoon, when he received further warnings,
I should have repeated my advice. If I had been with him the next morning—New
Year's—when he received notice that "a few hundred" Boers were waiting for him a
few miles ahead, I should not have advised, but commanded him to go back. And if I
had been with him two or three hours later—a thing not conceivable to me—I should
have retired him by force; for at that time he learned that the few hundred had now
grown to 800; and that meant that the growing would go on growing.

For, by authority of Mr. Garrett, one knows that Jameson's 600 were only 530 at
most, when you count out his native drivers, etc.; and that the 530 consisted largely of
"green" youths, "raw young fellows," not trained and war-worn British soldiers; and I
would have told Jameson that those lads would not be able to shoot effectively from
horseback in the scamper and racket of battle, and that there would not be anything
for them to shoot at, anyway, but rocks; for the Boers would be behind the rocks, not
out in the open. I would have told him that 300 Boer sharpshooters behind rocks
would be an overmatch for his 500 raw young fellows on horseback.

If pluck were the only thing essential to battle-winning, the English would lose no
battles. But discretion, as well as pluck, is required when one fights Boers and Red
Indians. In South Africa the Briton has always insisted upon standing bravely up,
unsheltered, before the hidden Boer, and taking the results: Jameson's men would
follow the custom. Jameson would not have listened to me—he would have been
intent upon repeating history, according to precedent. Americans are not acquainted
with the British-Boer war of 1881; but its history is interesting, and could have been
instructive to Jameson if he had been receptive. I will cull some details of it from
trustworthy sources mainly from "Russell's Natal." Mr. Russell is not a Boer, but a
Briton. He is inspector of schools, and his history is a text-book whose purpose is the
instruction of the Natal English youth.

After the seizure of the Transvaal and the suppression of the Boer government by
England in 1877, the Boers fretted for three years, and made several appeals to
England for a restoration of their liberties, but without result. Then they gathered
themselves together in a great mass-meeting at Krugersdorp, talked their troubles
over, and resolved to fight for their deliverance from the British yoke. (Krugersdorp—
the place where the Boers interrupted the Jameson raid.) The little handful of farmers
rose against the strongest empire in the world. They proclaimed martial law and the
re-establishment of their Republic. They organized their forces and sent them forward
to intercept the British battalions. This, although Sir Garnet Wolseley had but lately
made proclamation that "so long as the sun shone in the heavens," the Transvaal
would be and remain English territory. And also in spite of the fact that the
commander of the 94th regiment—already on the march to suppress this rebellion—
had been heard to say that "the Boers would turn tail at the first beat of the big
drum."—["South Africa As It Is," by F. Reginald Statham, page 82. London: T. Fisher
Unwin, 1897.]

Four days after the flag-raising, the Boer force which had been sent forward to
forbid the invasion of the English troops met them at Bronkhorst Spruit—246 men of
the 94th regiment, in command of a colonel, the big drum beating, the band playing—
and the first battle was fought. It lasted ten minutes. Result:

British loss, more than 150 officers and men, out of the 246. Surrender of the
remnant.

Boer loss—if any—not stated.

They are fine marksmen, the Boers. From the cradle up, they live on horseback and
hunt wild animals with the rifle. They have a passion for liberty and the Bible, and care
for nothing else.

"General Sir George Colley, Lieutenant-Governor and Commander-in-Chief in Natal,

felt it his duty to proceed at once to the relief of the loyalists and soldiers beleaguered
in the different towns of the Transvaal." He moved out with 1,000 men and some
artillery. He found the Boers encamped in a strong and sheltered position on high
ground at Laing's Nek—every Boer behind a rock. Early in the morning of the 28th
January, 1881, he moved to the attack "with the 58th regiment, commanded by
Colonel Deane, a mounted squadron of 70 men, the 60th Rifles, the Naval Brigade with
three rocket tubes, and the Artillery with six guns." He shelled the Boers for twenty
minutes, then the assault was delivered, the 58th marching up the slope in solid
column. The battle was soon finished, with this result, according to Russell—

British loss in killed and wounded, 174.

Boer loss, "trifling."

Colonel Deane was killed, and apparently every officer above the grade of lieutenant
was killed or wounded, for the 58th retreated to its camp in command of a lieutenant.
("Africa as It Is.")

That ended the second battle.

On the 7th of February General Colley discovered that the Boers were flanking his
position. The next morning he left his camp at Mount Pleasant and marched out and
crossed the Ingogo river with 270 men, started up the Ingogo heights, and there fought
a battle which lasted from noon till nightfall. He then retreated, leaving his wounded
with his military chaplain, and in recrossing the now swollen river lost some of his men
by drowning. That was the third Boer victory. Result, according to Mr. Russell—

British loss 150 out of 270 engaged.

Boer loss, 8 killed, 9 wounded—17.

There was a season of quiet, now, but at the end of about three weeks Sir George
Colley conceived the idea of climbing, with an infantry and artillery force, the steep
and rugged mountain of Amajuba in the night—a bitter hard task, but he accomplished
it. On the way he left about 200 men to guard a strategic point, and took about 400 up
the mountain with him. When the sun rose in the morning, there was an unpleasant
surprise for the Boers; yonder were the English troops visible on top of the mountain
two or three miles away, and now their own position was at the mercy of the English
artillery. The Boer chief resolved to retreat—up that mountain. He asked for
volunteers, and got them.

The storming party crossed the swale and began to creep up the steeps, "and from
behind rocks and bushes they shot at the soldiers on the skyline as if they were
stalking deer," says Mr. Russell. There was "continuous musketry fire, steady and fatal
on the one side, wild and ineffectual on the other." The Boers reached the top, and
began to put in their ruinous work. Presently the British "broke and fled for their lives
down the rugged steep." The Boers had won the battle. Result in killed and wounded,
including among the killed the British General:

British loss, 226, out of 400 engaged.

Boer loss, 1 killed, 5 wounded.

That ended the war. England listened to reason, and recognized the Boer Republic—
a government which has never been in any really awful danger since, until Jameson
started after it with his 500 "raw young fellows." To recapitulate:

The Boer farmers and British soldiers fought 4 battles, and the Boers won them all.
Result of the 4, in killed and wounded:

British loss, 700 men.

Boer loss, so far as known, 23 men.

It is interesting, now, to note how loyally Jameson and his several trained British
military officers tried to make their battles conform to precedent. Mr. Garrett's
account of the Raid is much the best one I have met with, and my impressions of the
Raid are drawn from that.

When Jameson learned that near Krugersdorp he would find 800 Boers waiting to
dispute his passage, he was not in the least disturbed. He was feeling as he had felt
two or three days before, when he had opened his campaign with a historic remark to
the same purport as the one with which the commander of the 94th had opened the
Boer-British war of fourteen years before. That Commander's remark was, that the
Boers "would turn tail at the first beat of the big drum." Jameson's was, that with his
"raw young fellows" he could kick the (persons) of the Boers "all round the Transvaal."
He was keeping close to historic precedent.

Jameson arrived in the presence of the Boers. They—according to precedent—were

not visible. It was a country of ridges, depressions, rocks, ditches, moraines of mining-
tailings—not even as favorable for cavalry work as Laing's Nek had been in the former
disastrous days. Jameson shot at the ridges and rocks with his artillery, just as General
Colley had done at the Nek; and did them no damage and persuaded no Boer to show
himself. Then about a hundred of his men formed up to charge the ridge-according to
the 58th's precedent at the Nek; but as they dashed forward they opened out in a long
line, which was a considerable improvement on the 58th's tactics; when they had
gotten to within 200 yards of the ridge the concealed Boers opened out on them and
emptied 20 saddles. The unwounded dismounted and fired at the rocks over the backs
of their horses; but the return-fire was too hot, and they mounted again, "and galloped
back or crawled away into a clump of reeds for cover, where they were shortly
afterward taken prisoners as they lay among the reeds. Some thirty prisoners were so
taken, and during the night which followed the Boers carried away another thirty killed
and wounded—the wounded to Krugersdorp hospital. "Sixty per cent. of the assaulted
force disposed of"—according to Mr. Garrett's estimate.

It was according to Amajuba precedent, where the British loss was 226 out of about
400 engaged.

Also, in Jameson's camp, that night, "there lay about 30 wounded or otherwise
disabled" men. Also during the night "some 30 or 40 young fellows got separated from
the command and straggled through into Johannesburg." Altogether a possible 150
men gone, out of his 530. His lads had fought valorously, but had not been able to get
near enough to a Boer to kick him around the Transvaal.

At dawn the next morning the column of something short of 400 whites resumed its
march. Jameson's grit was stubbornly good; indeed, it was always that. He still had
hopes. There was a long and tedious zigzagging march through broken ground, with
constant harassment from the Boers; and at last the column "walked into a sort of
trap," and the Boers "closed in upon it." "Men and horses dropped on all sides. In the
column the feeling grew that unless it could burst through the Boer lines at this point it
was done for. The Maxims were fired until they grew too hot, and, water failing for the
cool jacket, five of them jammed and went out of action. The 7-pounder was fired until
only half an hour's ammunition was left to fire with. One last rush was made, and
failed, and then the Staats Artillery came up on the left flank, and the game was up."

Jameson hoisted a white flag and surrendered.

There is a story, which may not be true, about an ignorant Boer farmer there who
thought that this white flag was the national flag of England. He had been at
Bronkhorst, and Laing's Nek, and Ingogo and Amajuba, and supposed that the English
did not run up their flag excepting at the end of a fight.

The following is (as I understand it) Mr. Garrett's estimate of Jameson's total loss in
killed and wounded for the two days:

"When they gave in they were minus some 20 per cent. of combatants. There were
76 casualties. There were 30 men hurt or sick in the wagons. There were 27 killed on
the spot or mortally wounded."

Total, 133, out of the original 530. It is just 25 per cent.—[However, I judge that the
total was really 150; for the number of wounded carried to Krugersdorp hospital was
53; not 30, as Mr. Garrett reports it. The lady whose guest I was in Krugersdorp gave
me the figures. She was head nurse from the beginning of hostilities (Jan. 1) until the
professional nurses arrived, Jan. 8th. Of the 53, "Three or four were Boers"; I quote her
words.]—This is a large improvement upon the precedents established at Bronkhorst,
Laing's Nek, Ingogo, and Amajuba, and seems to indicate that Boer marksmanship is
not so good now as it was in those days. But there is one detail in which the Raid-
episode exactly repeats history. By surrender at Bronkhorst, the whole British force
disappeared from the theater of war; this was the case with Jameson's force.

In the Boer loss, also, historical precedent is followed with sufficient fidelity. In the 4
battles named above, the Boer loss, so far as known, was an average of 6 men per
battle, to the British average loss of 175. In Jameson's battles, as per Boer official
report, the Boer loss in killed was 4. Two of these were killed by the Boers themselves,
by accident, the other by Jameson's army—one of them intentionally, the other by a
pathetic mischance. "A young Boer named Jacobz was moving forward to give a drink
to one of the wounded troopers (Jameson's) after the first charge, when another
wounded man, mistaking his intention; shot him." There were three or four wounded
Boers in the Krugersdorp hospital, and apparently no others have been reported. Mr.
Garrett, "on a balance of probabilities, fully accepts the official version, and thanks
Heaven the killed was not larger."

As a military man, I wish to point out what seems to me to be military errors in the
conduct of the campaign which we have just been considering. I have seen active
service in the field, and it was in the actualities of war that I acquired my training and
my right to speak. I served two weeks in the beginning of our Civil War, and during all
that time commanded a battery of infantry composed of twelve men. General Grant
knew the history of my campaign, for I told it him. I also told him the principle upon
which I had conducted it; which was, to tire the enemy. I tired out and disqualified
many battalions, yet never had a casualty myself nor lost a man. General Grant was
not given to paying compliments, yet he said frankly that if I had conducted the whole
war much bloodshed would have been spared, and that what the army might have lost
through the inspiriting results of collision in the field would have been amply made up
by the liberalizing influences of travel. Further endorsement does not seem to me to
be necessary.

Let us now examine history, and see what it teaches. In the 4 battles fought in 1881
and the two fought by Jameson, the British loss in killed, wounded, and prisoners, was
substantially 1,300 men; the Boer loss, as far as is ascertainable, was about 30 men.
These figures show that there was a defect somewhere. It was not in the absence of
courage. I think it lay in the absence of discretion. The Briton should have done one
thing or the other: discarded British methods and fought the Boer with Boer methods,
or augmented his own force until—using British methods—it should be large enough
to equalize results with the Boer.

To retain the British method requires certain things, determinable by arithmetic. If,
for argument's sake, we allow that the aggregate of 1,716 British soldiers engaged in
the 4 early battles was opposed by the same aggregate of Boers, we have this result:
the British loss of 700 and the Boer loss of 23 argues that in order to equalize results in
future battles you must make the British force thirty times as strong as the Boer force.
Mr. Garrett shows that the Boer force immediately opposed to Jameson was 2,000,
and that there were 6,000 more on hand by the evening of the second day. Arithmetic
shows that in order to make himself the equal of the 8,000 Boers, Jameson should
have had 240,000 men, whereas he merely had 530 boys. From a military point of
view, backed by the facts of history, I conceive that Jameson's military judgment was
at fault.

Another thing.—Jameson was encumbered by artillery, ammunition, and rifles. The

facts of the battle show that he should have had none of those things along. They were
heavy, they were in his way, they impeded his march. There was nothing to shoot at
but rocks—he knew quite well that there would be nothing to shoot at but rocks—and
he knew that artillery and rifles have no effect upon rocks. He was badly overloaded
with unessentials. He had 8 Maxims—a Maxim is a kind of Gatling, I believe, and
shoots about 500 bullets per minute; he had one 12 1/2-pounder cannon and two 7-
pounders; also, 145,000 rounds of ammunition. He worked the Maxims so hard upon
the rocks that five of them became disabled—five of the Maxims, not the rocks. It is
believed that upwards of 100,000 rounds of ammunition of the various kinds were
fired during the 21 hours that the battles lasted. One man killed. He must have been
much mutilated. It was a pity to bring those futile Maxims along. Jameson should have
furnished himself with a battery of Pudd'nhead Wilson maxims instead. They are much
more deadly than those others, and they are easily carried, because they have no
weight.

Mr. Garrett—not very carefully concealing a smile—excuses the presence of the

Maxims by saying that they were of very substantial use because their sputtering
disordered the aim of the Boers, and in that way saved lives.

Three cannon, eight Maxims, and five hundred rifles yielded a result which
emphasized a fact which had already been established—that the British system of
standing out in the open to fight Boers who are behind rocks is not wise, not
excusable, and ought to be abandoned for something more efficacious. For the
purpose of war is to kill, not merely to waste ammunition.

If I could get the management of one of those campaigns, I would know what to do,
for I have studied the Boer. He values the Bible above every other thing. The most
delicious edible in South Africa is "biltong." You will have seen it mentioned in Olive
Schreiner's books. It is what our plainsmen call "jerked beef." It is the Boer's main
standby. He has a passion for it, and he is right.

If I had the command of the campaign I would go with rifles only, no cumbersome
Maxims and cannon to spoil good rocks with. I would move surreptitiously by night to
a point about a quarter of a mile from the Boer camp, and there I would build up a
pyramid of biltong and Bibles fifty feet high, and then conceal my men all about. In the
morning the Boers would send out spies, and then the rest would come with a rush. I
would surround them, and they would have to fight my men on equal terms, in the
open. There wouldn't be any Amajuba results.

—[Just as I am finishing this book an unfortunate dispute has sprung up between Dr.
Jameson and his officers, on the one hand, and Colonel Rhodes on the other,
concerning the wording of a note which Colonel Rhodes sent from Johannesburg by a
cyclist to Jameson just before hostilities began on the memorable New Year's Day.
Some of the fragments of this note were found on the battlefield after the fight, and
these have been pieced together; the dispute is as to what words the lacking
fragments contained. Jameson says the note promised him a reinforcement of 300
men from Johannesburg. Colonel Rhodes denies this, and says he merely promised to
send out "some" men "to meet you."]

[It seems a pity that these friends should fall out over so little a thing. If the 300 had
been sent, what good would it have done? In 21 hours of industrious fighting,
Jameson's 530 men, with 8 Maxims, 3 cannon, and 145,000 rounds of ammunition,
killed an aggregate of 1 Boer. These statistics show that a reinforcement of 300
Johannesburgers, armed merely with muskets, would have killed, at the outside, only a
little over a half of another Boer. This would not have saved the day. It would not even
have seriously affected the general result. The figures show clearly, and with
mathematical violence, that the only way to save Jameson, or even give him a fair and
equal chance with the enemy, was for Johannesburg to send him 240 Maxims, 90
cannon, 600 carloads of ammunition, and 240,000 men. Johannesburg was not in a
position to do this. Johannesburg has been called very hard names for not reinforcing
Jameson. But in every instance this has been done by two classes of persons—people
who do not read history, and people, like Jameson, who do not understand what it
means, after they have read it.]
 CHAPTER LXVIII.

None of us can have as many virtues as the fountain-pen, or half its cussedness; but
we can try.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

The Duke of Fife has borne testimony that Mr. Rhodes deceived him. That is also
what Mr. Rhodes did with the Reformers. He got them into trouble, and then stayed
out himself. A judicious man. He has always been that. As to this there was a moment
of doubt, once. It was when he was out on his last pirating expedition in the Matabele
country. The cable shouted out that he had gone unarmed, to visit a party of hostile
chiefs. It was true, too; and this dare-devil thing came near fetching another
indiscretion out of the poet laureate. It would have been too bad, for when the facts
were all in, it turned out that there was a lady along, too, and she also was unarmed.

In the opinion of many people Mr. Rhodes is South Africa; others think he is only a
large part of it. These latter consider that South Africa consists of Table Mountain, the
diamond mines, the Johannesburg gold fields, and Cecil Rhodes. The gold fields are
wonderful in every way. In seven or eight years they built up, in a desert, a city of a
hundred thousand inhabitants, counting white and black together; and not the
ordinary mining city of wooden shanties, but a city made out of lasting material.
Nowhere in the world is there such a concentration of rich mines as at Johannesburg.
Mr. Bonamici, my manager there, gave me a small gold brick with some statistics
engraved upon it which record the output of gold from the early days to July, 1895,
and exhibit the strides which have been made in the development of the industry; in
1888 the output was $4,162,440; the output of the next five and a half years was
(total) $17,585,894); for the single year ending with June, 1895, it was $45,553,700.

The capital which has developed the mines came from England, the mining
engineers from America. This is the case with the diamond mines also. South Africa
seems to be the heaven of the American scientific mining engineer. He gets the
choicest places, and keeps them. His salary is not based upon what he would get in
America, but apparently upon what a whole family of him would get there.

The successful mines pay great dividends, yet the rock is not rich, from a Californian
point of view. Rock which yields ten or twelve dollars a ton is considered plenty rich
enough. It is troubled with base metals to such a degree that twenty years ago it would
have been only about half as valuable as it is now; for at that time there was no paying
way of getting anything out of such rock but the coarser-grained "free" gold; but the
new cyanide process has changed all that, and the gold fields of the world now deliver
up fifty million dollars' worth of gold per year which would have gone into the tailing-
pile under the former conditions.

The cyanide process was new to me, and full of interest; and among the costly and
elaborate mining machinery there were fine things which were new to me, but I was
already familiar with the rest of the details of the gold-mining industry. I had been a
gold miner myself, in my day, and knew substantially everything that those people
knew about it, except how to make money at it. But I learned a good deal about the
Boers there, and that was a fresh subject. What I heard there was afterwards repeated
to me in other parts of South Africa. Summed up—according to the information thus
gained—this is the Boer:

He is deeply religious, profoundly ignorant, dull, obstinate, bigoted, uncleanly in his

habits, hospitable, honest in his dealings with the whites, a hard master to his black
servant, lazy, a good shot, good horseman, addicted to the chase, a lover of political
independence, a good husband and father, not fond of herding together in towns, but
liking the seclusion and remoteness and solitude and empty vastness and silence of the
veldt; a man of a mighty appetite, and not delicate about what he appeases it with—
well-satisfied with pork and Indian corn and biltong, requiring only that the quantity
shall not be stinted; willing to ride a long journey to take a hand in a rude all-night
dance interspersed with vigorous feeding and boisterous jollity, but ready to ride twice
as far for a prayer-meeting; proud of his Dutch and Huguenot origin and its religious
and military history; proud of his race's achievements in South Africa, its bold plunges
into hostile and uncharted deserts in search of free solitudes unvexed by the pestering
and detested English, also its victories over the natives and the British; proudest of all,
of the direct and effusive personal interest which the Deity has always taken in its
affairs. He cannot read, he cannot write; he has one or two newspapers, but he is,
apparently, not aware of it; until latterly he had no schools, and taught his children
nothing, news is a term which has no meaning to him, and the thing itself he cares
nothing about. He hates to be taxed and resents it. He has stood stock still in South
Africa for two centuries and a half, and would like to stand still till the end of time, for
he has no sympathy with Uitlander notions of progress. He is hungry to be rich, for he
is human; but his preference has been for riches in cattle, not in fine clothes and fine
houses and gold and diamonds. The gold and the diamonds have brought the godless
stranger within his gates, also contamination and broken repose, and he wishes that
they had never been discovered.

I think that the bulk of those details can be found in Olive Schreiner's books, and she
would not be accused of sketching the Boer's portrait with an unfair hand.

Now what would you expect from that unpromising material? What ought you to
expect from it? Laws inimical to religious liberty? Yes. Laws denying, representation
and suffrage to the intruder? Yes. Laws unfriendly to educational institutions? Yes.
Laws obstructive of gold production? Yes. Discouragement of railway expansion? Yes.
Laws heavily taxing the intruder and overlooking the Boer? Yes.

The Uitlander seems to have expected something very different from all that. I do
not know why. Nothing different from it was rationally to be expected. A round man
cannot be expected to fit a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his
shape. The modification had begun in a detail or two, before the Raid, and was making
some progress. It has made further progress since. There are wise men in the Boer
government, and that accounts for the modification; the modification of the Boer mass
has probably not begun yet. If the heads of the Boer government had not been wise
men they would have hanged Jameson, and thus turned a very commonplace pirate
into a holy martyr. But even their wisdom has its limits, and they will hang Mr. Rhodes
if they ever catch him. That will round him and complete him and make him a saint. He
has already been called by all other titles that symbolize human grandeur, and he
ought to rise to this one, the grandest of all. It will be a dizzy jump from where he is
now, but that is nothing, it will land him in good company and be a pleasant change for
him.

Some of the things demanded by the Johannesburgers' Manifesto have been

conceded since the days of the Raid, and the others will follow in time, no doubt. It
was most fortunate for the miners of Johannesburg that the taxes which distressed
them so much were levied by the Boer government, instead of by their friend Rhodes
and his Chartered Company of highwaymen, for these latter take half of whatever their
mining victims find, they do not stop at a mere percentage. If the Johannesburg miners
were under their jurisdiction they would be in the poorhouse in twelve months.

I have been under the impression all along that I had an unpleasant paragraph about
the Boers somewhere in my notebook, and also a pleasant one. I have found them
now. The unpleasant one is dated at an interior village, and says—
 "Mr. Z. called. He is an English Afrikander; is an old resident, and has a Boer wife. He
speaks the language, and his professional business is with the Boers exclusively. He
told me that the ancient Boer families in the great region of which this village is the
commercial center are falling victims to their inherited indolence and dullness in the
materialistic latter-day race and struggle, and are dropping one by one into the grip of
the usurer—getting hopelessly in debt—and are losing their high place and retiring to
second and lower. The Boer's farm does not go to another Boer when he loses it, but
to a foreigner. Some have fallen so low that they sell their daughters to the blacks."

Under date of another South African town I find the note which is creditable to the
Boers:

"Dr. X. told me that in the Kafir war 1,500 Kafirs took refuge in a great cave in the
mountains about 90 miles north of Johannesburg, and the Boers blocked up the
entrance and smoked them to death. Dr. X. has been in there and seen the great array
of bleached skeletons—one a woman with the skeleton of a child hugged to her
breast."

The great bulk of the savages must go. The white man wants their lands, and all
must go excepting such percentage of them as he will need to do his work for him
upon terms to be determined by himself. Since history has removed the element of
guesswork from this matter and made it certainty, the humanest way of diminishing
the black population should be adopted, not the old cruel ways of the past. Mr. Rhodes
and his gang have been following the old ways.—They are chartered to rob and slay,
and they lawfully do it, but not in a compassionate and Christian spirit. They rob the
Mashonas and the Matabeles of a portion of their territories in the hallowed old style
of "purchase!" for a song, and then they force a quarrel and take the rest by the strong
hand. They rob the natives of their cattle under the pretext that all the cattle in the
country belonged to the king whom they have tricked and assassinated. They issue
"regulations" requiring the incensed and harassed natives to work for the white
settlers, and neglect their own affairs to do it. This is slavery, and is several times
worse than was the American slavery which used to pain England so much; for when
this Rhodesian slave is sick, super-annuated, or otherwise disabled, he must support
himself or starve—his master is under no obligation to support him.

The reduction of the population by Rhodesian methods to the desired limit is a

return to the old-time slow-misery and lingering-death system of a discredited time
and a crude "civilization." We humanely reduce an overplus of dogs by swift
chloroform; the Boer humanely reduced an overplus of blacks by swift suffocation; the
nameless but right-hearted Australian pioneer humanely reduced his overplus of
aboriginal neighbors by a sweetened swift death concealed in a poisoned pudding. All
these are admirable, and worthy of praise; you and I would rather suffer either of
these deaths thirty times over in thirty successive days than linger out one of the
Rhodesian twenty-year deaths, with its daily burden of insult, humiliation, and forced
labor for a man whose entire race the victim hates. Rhodesia is a happy name for that
land of piracy and pillage, and puts the right stain upon it.

Several long journeys—gave us experience of the Cape Colony railways; easy-riding,

fine cars; all the conveniences; thorough cleanliness; comfortable beds furnished for
the night trains. It was in the first days of June, and winter; the daytime was pleasant,
the nighttime nice and cold. Spinning along all day in the cars it was ecstasy to breathe
the bracing air and gaze out over the vast brown solitudes of the velvet plains, soft and
lovely near by, still softer and lovelier further away, softest and loveliest of all in the
remote distances, where dim island-hills seemed afloat, as in a sea—a sea made of
dream-stuff and flushed with colors faint and rich; and dear me, the depth of the sky,
and the beauty of the strange new cloud-forms, and the glory of the sunshine, the
lavishness, the wastefulness of it! The vigor and freshness and inspiration of the air
and the sun—well, it was all just as Olive Schreiner had made it in her books.

To me the veldt, in its sober winter garb, was surpassingly beautiful. There were
unlevel stretches where it was rolling and swelling, and rising and subsiding, and
sweeping superbly on and on, and still on and on like an ocean, toward the faraway
horizon, its pale brown deepening by delicately graduated shades to rich orange, and
finally to purple and crimson where it washed against the wooded hills and naked red
crags at the base of the sky.

Everywhere, from Cape Town to Kimberley and from Kimberley to Port Elizabeth
and East London, the towns were well populated with tamed blacks; tamed and
Christianized too, I suppose, for they wore the dowdy clothes of our Christian
civilization. But for that, many of them would have been remarkably handsome. These
fiendish clothes, together with the proper lounging gait, good-natured face, happy air,
and easy laugh, made them precise counterparts of our American blacks; often where
all the other aspects were strikingly and harmoniously and thrillingly African, a flock of
these natives would intrude, looking wholly out of place, and spoil it all, making the
thing a grating discord, half African and half American.
 One Sunday in King William's Town a score of colored women came mincing across
the great barren square dressed—oh, in the last perfection of fashion, and newness,
and expensiveness, and showy mixture of unrelated colors,—all just as I had seen it so
often at home; and in their faces and their gait was that languishing, aristocratic,
divine delight in their finery which was so familiar to me, and had always been such a
satisfaction to my eye and my heart. I seemed among old, old friends; friends of fifty
years, and I stopped and cordially greeted them. They broke into a good-fellowship
laugh, flashing their white teeth upon me, and all answered at once. I did not
understand a word they said. I was astonished; I was not dreaming that they would
answer in anything but American.

The voices, too, of the African women, were familiar to me sweet and musical, just
like those of the slave women of my early days. I followed a couple of them all over the
Orange Free State—no, over its capital—Bloemfontein, to hear their liquid voices and
the happy ripple of their laughter. Their language was a large improvement upon
American. Also upon the Zulu. It had no Zulu clicks in it; and it seemed to have no
angles or corners, no roughness, no vile s's or other hissing sounds, but was very, very
mellow and rounded and flowing.

In moving about the country in the trains, I had opportunity to see a good many
Boers of the veldt. One day at a village station a hundred of them got out of the third-
class cars to feed.

Their clothes were very interesting. For ugliness of shapes, and for miracles of ugly
colors inharmoniously associated, they were a record. The effect was nearly as exciting
and interesting as that produced by the brilliant and beautiful clothes and perfect taste
always on view at the Indian railway stations. One man had corduroy trousers of a
faded chewing gum tint. And they were new—showing that this tint did not come by
calamity, but was intentional; the very ugliest color I have ever seen. A gaunt, shackly
country lout six feet high, in battered gray slouched hat with wide brim, and old resin-
colored breeches, had on a hideous brand-new woolen coat which was imitation tiger
skin—wavy broad stripes of dazzling yellow and deep brown. I thought he ought to be
hanged, and asked the station-master if it could be arranged. He said no; and not only
that, but said it rudely; said it with a quite unnecessary show of feeling. Then he
muttered something about my being a jackass, and walked away and pointed me out
to people, and did everything he could to turn public sentiment against me. It is what
one gets for trying to do good.
 In the train that day a passenger told me some more about Boer life out in the
lonely veldt. He said the Boer gets up early and sets his "niggers" at their tasks
(pasturing the cattle, and watching them); eats, smokes, drowses, sleeps; toward
evening superintends the milking, etc.; eats, smokes, drowses; goes to bed at early
candlelight in the fragrant clothes he (and she) have worn all day and every week-day
for years. I remember that last detail, in Olive Schreiner's "Story of an African Farm."
And the passenger told me that the Boers were justly noted for their hospitality. He
told me a story about it. He said that his grace the Bishop of a certain See was once
making a business-progress through the tavernless veldt, and one night he stopped
with a Boer; after supper was shown to bed; he undressed, weary and worn out, and
was soon sound asleep; in the night he woke up feeling crowded and suffocated, and
found the old Boer and his fat wife in bed with him, one on each side, with all their
clothes on, and snoring. He had to stay there and stand it—awake and suffering—until
toward dawn, when sleep again fell upon him for an hour. Then he woke again. The
Boer was gone, but the wife was still at his side.

Those Reformers detested that Boer prison; they were not used to cramped
quarters and tedious hours, and weary idleness, and early to bed, and limited
movement, and arbitrary and irritating rules, and the absence of the luxuries which
wealth comforts the day and the night with. The confinement told upon their bodies
and their spirits; still, they were superior men, and they made the best that was to be
made of the circumstances. Their wives smuggled delicacies to them, which helped to
smooth the way down for the prison fare.

In the train Mr. B. told me that the Boer jail-guards treated the black prisoners—
even political ones—mercilessly. An African chief and his following had been kept
there nine months without trial, and during all that time they had been without shelter
from rain and sun. He said that one day the guards put a big black in the stocks for
dashing his soup on the ground; they stretched his legs painfully wide apart, and set
him with his back down hill; he could not endure it, and put back his hands upon the
slope for a support. The guard ordered him to withdraw the support and kicked him in
the back. "Then," said Mr. B., "'the powerful black wrenched the stocks asunder and
went for the guard; a Reform prisoner pulled him off, and thrashed the guard himself."
 CHAPTER LXIX.

The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

—Pudd'nhead Wilsons's New Calendar

There isn't a Parallel of Latitude but thinks it would have been the Equator if it had
had its rights.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Next to Mr. Rhodes, to me the most interesting convulsion of nature in South Africa
was the diamond-crater. The Rand gold fields are a stupendous marvel, and they make
all other gold fields small, but I was not a stranger to gold-mining; the veldt was a
noble thing to see, but it was only another and lovelier variety of our Great Plains; the
natives were very far from being uninteresting, but they were not new; and as for the
towns, I could find my way without a guide through the most of them because I had
learned the streets, under other names, in towns just like them in other lands; but the
diamond mine was a wholly fresh thing, a splendid and absorbing novelty. Very few
people in the world have seen the diamond in its home. It has but three or four homes
in the world, whereas gold has a million. It is worth while to journey around the globe
to see anything which can truthfully be called a novelty, and the diamond mine is the
greatest and most select and restricted novelty which the globe has in stock.

The Kimberley diamond deposits were discovered about 1869, I think. When
everything is taken into consideration, the wonder is that they were not discovered
five thousand years ago and made familiar to the African world for the rest of time. For
this reason the first diamonds were found on the surface of the ground. They were
smooth and limpid, and in the sunlight they vomited fire. They were the very things
which an African savage of any era would value above every other thing in the world
excepting a glass bead. For two or three centuries we have been buying his lands, his
cattle, his neighbor, and any other thing he had for sale, for glass beads and so it is
strange that he was indifferent to the diamonds—for he must have picked them up
many and many a time. It would not occur to him to try to sell them to whites, of
course, since the whites already had plenty of glass beads, and more fashionably
shaped, too, than these; but one would think that the poorer sort of black, who could
not afford real glass, would have been humbly content to decorate himself with the
imitation, and that presently the white trader would notice the things, and dimly
suspect, and carry some of them home, and find out what they were, and at once
empty a multitude of fortune-hunters into Africa. There are many strange things in
human history; one of the strangest is that the sparkling diamonds laid there so long
without exciting any one's interest.

The revelation came at last by accident. In a Boer's hut out in the wide solitude of
the plains, a traveling stranger noticed a child playing with a bright object, and was
told it was a piece of glass which had been found in the veldt. The stranger bought it
for a trifle and carried it away; and being without honor, made another stranger
believe it was a diamond, and so got $125 out of him for it, and was as pleased with
himself as if he had done a righteous thing. In Paris the wronged stranger sold it to a
pawnshop for $10,000, who sold it to a countess for $90,000, who sold it to a brewer
for $800,000, who traded it to a king for a dukedom and a pedigree, and the king "put
it up the spout."—I know these particulars to be correct.

The news flew around, and the South African diamond-boom began. The original
traveler—the dishonest one—now remembered that he had once seen a Boer
teamster chocking his wagon-wheel on a steep grade with a diamond as large as a
football, and he laid aside his occupations and started out to hunt for it, but not with
the intention of cheating anybody out of $125 with it, for he had reformed.

We now come to matters more didactic. Diamonds are not imbedded in rock ledges
fifty miles long, like the Johannesburg gold, but are distributed through the rubbish of
a filled-up well, so to speak. The well is rich, its walls are sharply defined; outside of
the walls are no diamonds. The well is a crater, and a large one. Before it had been
meddled with, its surface was even with the level plain, and there was no sign to
suggest that it was there. The pasturage covering the surface of the Kimberley crater
was sufficient for the support of a cow, and the pasturage underneath was sufficient
for the support of a kingdom; but the cow did not know it, and lost her chance.

The Kimberley crater is roomy enough to admit the Roman Coliseum; the bottom of
the crater has not been reached, and no one can tell how far down in the bowels of
the earth it goes. Originally, it was a perpendicular hole packed solidly full of blue rock
or cement, and scattered through that blue mass, like raisins in a pudding, were the
diamonds. As deep down in the earth as the blue stuff extends, so deep will the
diamonds be found.
 There are three or four other celebrated craters near by—a circle three miles in
diameter would enclose them all. They are owned by the De Beers Company, a
consolidation of diamond properties arranged by Mr. Rhodes twelve or fourteen years
ago. The De Beers owns other craters; they are under the grass, but the De Beers
knows where they are, and will open them some day, if the market should require it.

Originally, the diamond deposits were the property of the Orange Free State; but a
judicious "rectification" of the boundary line shifted them over into the British territory
of Cape Colony. A high official of the Free State told me that the sum of $400,000 was
handed to his commonwealth as a compromise, or indemnity, or something of the
sort, and that he thought his commonwealth did wisely to take the money and keep
out of a dispute, since the power was all on the one side and the weakness all on the
other. The De Beers Company dig out $400,000 worth of diamonds per week, now. The
Cape got the territory, but no profit; for Mr. Rhodes and the Rothschilds and the other
De Beers people own the mines, and they pay no taxes.

In our day the mines are worked upon scientific principles, under the guidance of
the ablest mining-engineering talent procurable in America. There are elaborate works
for reducing the blue rock and passing it through one process after another until every
diamond it contains has been hunted down and secured. I watched the
"concentrators" at work big tanks containing mud and water and invisible diamonds—
and was told that each could stir and churn and properly treat 300 car-loads of mud
per day 1,600 pounds to the car-load—and reduce it to 3 car-loads of slush. I saw the 3
carloads of slush taken to the "pulsators" and there reduced to a quarter of a load of
nice clean dark-colored sand. Then I followed it to the sorting tables and saw the men
deftly and swiftly spread it out and brush it about and seize the diamonds as they
showed up. I assisted, and once I found a diamond half as large as an almond. It is an
exciting kind of fishing, and you feel a fine thrill of pleasure every time you detect the
glow of one of those limpid pebbles through the veil of dark sand. I would like to spend
my Saturday holidays in that charming sport every now and then. Of course there are
disappointments. Sometimes you find a diamond which is not a diamond; it is only a
quartz crystal or some such worthless thing. The expert can generally distinguish it
from the precious stone which it is counterfeiting; but if he is in doubt he lays it on a
flatiron and hits it with a sledgehammer. If it is a diamond it holds its own; if it is
anything else, it is reduced to powder. I liked that experiment very much, and did not
tire of repetitions of it. It was full of enjoyable apprehensions, unmarred by any
personal sense of risk. The De Beers concern treats 8,000 carloads—about 6,000
tons—of blue rock per day, and the result is three pounds of diamonds. Value, uncut,
$50,000 to $70,000. After cutting, they will weigh considerably less than a pound, but
will be worth four or five times as much as they were before.

All the plain around that region is spread over, a foot deep, with blue rock, placed
there by the Company, and looks like a plowed field. Exposure for a length of time
make the rock easier to work than it is when it comes out of the mine. If mining should
cease now, the supply of rock spread over those fields would furnish the usual 8,000
car-loads per day to the separating works during three years. The fields are fenced and
watched; and at night they are under the constant inspection of lofty electric
searchlight. They contain fifty or sixty million dollars' worth' of diamonds, and there is
an abundance of enterprising thieves around.

In the dirt of the Kimberley streets there is much hidden wealth. Some time ago the
people were granted the privilege of a free wash-up. There was a general rush, the
work was done with thoroughness, and a good harvest of diamonds was gathered.

The deep mining is done by natives. There are many hundreds of them. They live in
quarters built around the inside of a great compound. They are a jolly and good-
natured lot, and accommodating. They performed a war-dance for us, which was the
wildest exhibition I have ever seen. They are not allowed outside of the compound
during their term of service three months, I think it is, as a rule. They go down the
shaft, stand their watch, come up again, are searched, and go to bed or to their
amusements in the compound; and this routine they repeat, day in and day out.

It is thought that they do not now steal many diamonds successfully. They used to
swallow them, and find other ways of concealing them, but the white man found ways
of beating their various games. One man cut his leg and shoved a diamond into the
wound, but even that project did not succeed. When they find a fine large diamond
they are more likely to report it than to steal it, for in the former case they get a
reward, and in the latter they are quite apt to merely get into trouble. Some years ago,
in a mine not owned by the De Beers, a black found what has been claimed to be the
largest diamond known to the world's history; and, as a reward he was released from
service and given a blanket, a horse, and five hundred dollars. It made him a
Vanderbilt. He could buy four wives, and have money left. Four wives are an ample
support for a native. With four wives he is wholly independent, and need never do a
stroke of work again.
 That great diamond weighs 97l carats. Some say it is as big as a piece of alum, others
say it is as large as a bite of rock candy, but the best authorities agree that it is almost
exactly the size of a chunk of ice. But those details are not important; and in my
opinion not trustworthy. It has a flaw in it, otherwise it would be of incredible value. As
it is, it is held to be worth $2,000,000. After cutting it ought to be worth from
$5,000,000 to $8,000,000, therefore persons desiring to save money should buy it
now. It is owned by a syndicate, and apparently there is no satisfactory market for it. It
is earning nothing; it is eating its head off. Up to this time it has made nobody rich but
the native who found it.

He found it in a mine which was being worked by contract. That is to say, a company
had bought the privilege of taking from the mine 5,000,000 carloads of blue-rock, for a
sum down and a royalty. Their speculation had not paid; but on the very day that their
privilege ran out that native found the $2,000,000-diamond and handed it over to
them. Even the diamond culture is not without its romantic episodes.

The Koh-i-Noor is a large diamond, and valuable; but it cannot compete in these
matters with three which—according to legend—are among the crown trinkets of
Portugal and Russia. One of these is held to be worth $20,000,000; another,
$25,000,000, and the third something over $28,000,000.

Those are truly wonderful diamonds, whether they exist or not; and yet they are of
but little importance by comparison with the one wherewith the Boer wagoner
chocked his wheel on that steep grade as heretofore referred to. In Kimberley I had
some conversation with the man who saw the Boer do that—an incident which had
occurred twenty-seven or twenty-eight years before I had my talk with him. He
assured me that that diamond's value could have been over a billion dollars, but not
under it. I believed him, because he had devoted twenty-seven years to hunting for it,
and was in a position to know.

A fitting and interesting finish to an examination of the tedious and laborious and
costly processes whereby the diamonds are gotten out of the deeps of the earth and
freed from the base stuffs which imprison them is the visit to the De Beers offices in
the town of Kimberley, where the result of each day's mining is brought every day,
and, weighed, assorted, valued, and deposited in safes against shipping-day. An
unknown and unaccredited person cannot get into that place; and it seemed apparent
from the generous supply of warning and protective and prohibitory signs that were
posted all about, that not even the known and accredited can steal diamonds there
without inconvenience.

We saw the day's output—shining little nests of diamonds, distributed a foot apart,
along a counter, each nest reposing upon a sheet of white paper. That day's catch was
about $70,000 worth. In the course of a year half a ton of diamonds pass under the
scales there and sleep on that counter; the resulting money is $18,000,000 or
$20,000,000. Profit, about $12,000,000.

Young girls were doing the sorting—a nice, clean, dainty, and probably distressing
employment. Every day ducal incomes sift and sparkle through the fingers of those
young girls; yet they go to bed at night as poor as they were when they got up in the
morning. The same thing next day, and all the days.

They are beautiful things, those diamonds, in their native state. They are of various
shapes; they have flat surfaces, rounded borders, and never a sharp edge. They are of
all colors and shades of color, from dewdrop white to actual black; and their smooth
and rounded surfaces and contours, variety of color, and transparent limpidity make
them look like piles of assorted candies. A very light straw color is their commonest
tint. It seemed to me that these uncut gems must be more beautiful than any cut ones
could be; but when a collection of cut ones was brought out, I saw my mistake.
Nothing is so beautiful as a rose diamond with the light playing through it, except that
uncostly thing which is just like it—wavy sea-water with the sunlight playing through it
and striking a white-sand bottom.

Before the middle of July we reached Cape Town, and the end of our African
journeyings. And well satisfied; for, towering above us was Table Mountain—a
reminder that we had now seen each and all of the great features of South Africa
except Mr. Cecil Rhodes. I realize that that is a large exception. I know quite well that
whether Mr. Rhodes is the lofty and worshipful patriot and statesman that multitudes
believe him to be, or Satan come again, as the rest of the world account him, he is still
the most imposing figure in the British empire outside of England. When he stands on
the Cape of Good Hope, his shadow falls to the Zambesi. He is the only colonial in the
British dominions whose goings and comings are chronicled and discussed under all
the globe's meridians, and whose speeches, unclipped, are cabled from the ends of the
earth; and he is the only unroyal outsider whose arrival in London can compete for
attention with an eclipse.
 That he is an extraordinary man, and not an accident of fortune, not even his
dearest South African enemies were willing to deny, so far as I heard them testify. The
whole South African world seemed to stand in a kind of shuddering awe of him, friend
and enemy alike. It was as if he were deputy-God on the one side, deputy-Satan on the
other, proprietor of the people, able to make them or ruin them by his breath,
worshiped by many, hated by many, but blasphemed by none among the judicious,
and even by the indiscreet in guarded whispers only.

What is the secret of his formidable supremacy? One says it is his prodigious
wealth—a wealth whose drippings in salaries and in other ways support multitudes
and make them his interested and loyal vassals; another says it is his personal
magnetism and his persuasive tongue, and that these hypnotize and make happy
slaves of all that drift within the circle of their influence; another says it is his majestic
ideas, his vast schemes for the territorial aggrandizement of England, his patriotic and
unselfish ambition to spread her beneficent protection and her just rule over the
pagan wastes of Africa and make luminous the African darkness with the glory of her
name; and another says he wants the earth and wants it for his own, and that the
belief that he will get it and let his friends in on the ground floor is the secret that
rivets so many eyes upon him and keeps him in the zenith where the view is
unobstructed.

One may take his choice. They are all the same price. One fact is sure: he keeps his
prominence and a vast following, no matter what he does. He "deceives" the Duke of
Fife—it is the Duke's word—but that does not destroy the Duke's loyalty to him. He
tricks the Reformers into immense trouble with his Raid, but the most of them believe
he meant well. He weeps over the harshly-taxed Johannesburgers and makes them his
friends; at the same time he taxes his Charter-settlers 50 per cent., and so wins their
affection and their confidence that they are squelched with despair at every rumor
that the Charter is to be annulled. He raids and robs and slays and enslaves the
Matabele and gets worlds of Charter-Christian applause for it. He has beguiled England
into buying Charter waste paper for Bank of England notes, ton for ton, and the
ravished still burn incense to him as the Eventual God of Plenty. He has done
everything he could think of to pull himself down to the ground; he has done more
than enough to pull sixteen common-run great men down; yet there he stands, to this
day, upon his dizzy summit under the dome of the sky, an apparent permanency, the
marvel of the time, the mystery of the age, an Archangel with wings to half the world,
Satan with a tail to the other half.
 I admire him, I frankly confess it; and when his time comes I shall buy a piece of the
rope for a keepsake.
 CONCLUSION.

I have traveled more than anyone else, and I have noticed that even the angels speak
English with an accent.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

I saw Table Rock, anyway—a majestic pile. It is 3,000 feet high. It is also 17,000 feet
high. These figures may be relied upon. I got them in Cape Town from the two best-
informed citizens, men who had made Table Rock the study of their lives. And I saw
Table Bay, so named for its levelness. I saw the Castle—built by the Dutch East India
Company three hundred years ago—where the Commanding General lives; I saw St.
Simon's Bay, where the Admiral lives. I saw the Government, also the Parliament,
where they quarreled in two languages when I was there, and agreed in none. I saw
the club. I saw and explored the beautiful sea-girt drives that wind about the
mountains and through the paradise where the villas are: Also I saw some of the fine
old Dutch mansions, pleasant homes of the early times, pleasant homes to-day, and
enjoyed the privilege of their hospitalities.

And just before I sailed I saw in one of them a quaint old picture which was a link in
a curious romance—a picture of a pale, intellectual young man in a pink coat with a
high black collar. It was a portrait of Dr. James Barry, a military surgeon who came out
to the Cape fifty years ago with his regiment. He was a wild young fellow, and was
guilty of various kinds of misbehavior. He was several times reported to headquarters
in England, and it was in each case expected that orders would come out to deal with
him promptly and severely, but for some mysterious reason no orders of any kind ever
came back—nothing came but just an impressive silence. This made him an imposing
and uncanny wonder to the town.

Next, he was promoted—away up. He was made Medical Superintendent General,

and transferred to India. Presently he was back at the Cape again and at his escapades
once more. There were plenty of pretty girls, but none of them caught him, none of
them could get hold of his heart; evidently he was not a marrying man. And that was
another marvel, another puzzle, and made no end of perplexed talk. Once he was
called in the night, an obstetric service, to do what he could for a woman who was
believed to be dying. He was prompt and scientific, and saved both mother and child.
There are other instances of record which testify to his mastership of his profession;
and many which testify to his love of it and his devotion to it. Among other adventures
of his was a duel of a desperate sort, fought with swords, at the Castle. He killed his
man.

The child heretofore mentioned as having been saved by Dr. Barry so long ago, was
named for him, and still lives in Cape Town. He had Dr. Barry's portrait painted, and
gave it to the gentleman in whose old Dutch house I saw it—the quaint figure in pink
coat and high black collar.

The story seems to be arriving nowhere. But that is because I have not finished. Dr.
Barry died in Cape Town 30 years ago. It was then discovered that he was a woman.

The legend goes that enquiries—soon silenced—developed the fact that she was a
daughter of a great English house, and that that was why her Cape wildnesses brought
no punishment and got no notice when reported to the government at home. Her
name was an alias. She had disgraced herself with her people; so she chose to change
her name and her sex and take a new start in the world.

We sailed on the 15th of July in the Norman, a beautiful ship, perfectly appointed.
The voyage to England occupied a short fortnight, without a stop except at Madeira. A
good and restful voyage for tired people, and there were several of us. I seemed to
have been lecturing a thousand years, though it was only a twelvemonth, and a
considerable number of the others were Reformers who were fagged out with their
five months of seclusion in the Pretoria prison.

Our trip around the earth ended at the Southampton pier, where we embarked
thirteen months before. It seemed a fine and large thing to have accomplished—the
circumnavigation of this great globe in that little time, and I was privately proud of it.
For a moment. Then came one of those vanity-snubbing astronomical reports from the
Observatory-people, whereby it appeared that another great body of light had lately
flamed up in the remotenesses of space which was traveling at a gait which would
enable it to do all that I had done in a minute and a half. Human pride is not worth
while; there is always something lying in wait to take the wind out of it.