It engaged the unceasing labor of 20,000 men for seventeen years to complete the Taj; and like that other great tomb, the Cheops Pyramid in Egypt, it was reared chiefly by forced labor, unpaid and uncared for, and thereby produced great suffering and mortality. This is the chief blemish attaching to the project that gave to art the mausoleum overlooking the Jumna.

According to native accounts the cost of the Taj was lakhs of rupees having to-day a value of $20,000,000; and local tradition affirms that not half this sum was ever paid by the emperor—this is a blot upon the sincerity and strict uprightness of the magnificent grandson of Akbar.

The Taj garden is perhaps a half mile square, and is surrounded by a strikingly beautiful wall of masonry. It is an orderly wilderness of rich vegetations, to be found only in Asia, and the deep greens and rich browns of the avenues of foliage unquestionably accentuate the whiteness of the Temple of Death. As the garden helps the tomb, so the tomb gives expression to the garden.

The great gateway of red sandstone, whose roof is adorned by Moorish arches and pavilions, is in itself one of India's most perfect buildings. From its summit a perfect view of the Taj is had, with the Jumna flowing sluggishly beneath its marble platform; and from there the grounds are spread before the visitor in a perfect panorama. The paved avenues, all leading to the magnificent pile, miles of marble acqueducts filled with ornamental fish, playing fountains—all breathe the superlative of art, every fluttering leaf whispers of the East.

Not by its size is Arjamand's tomb commanding, for its dimensions are very moderate. Imagine a plinth of flawless marble, 313 feet square, and rising eighteen feet from the ground—that is the foundation of the wondrous structure. The Taj is 186 feet square, with dome rising to an extreme height of 220 feet; that is all. At each corner of the plinth stands a tapering minaret rearing its crown 137 feet;

"—four tall court ladies tending their princess."



No building carries the idea of personality further than the Taj, a feminine personality, as it should be, for it contains no suggestion of the rugged grandeur of a tomb for a great man. The Taj is the antithesis of Akbar's mausoleum, of the Parthenon, of Napoleon's resting-place, of Grant's robust mausoleum on the Hudson. A sepulcher fashioned after ordinary architectural canons can only be conventional: the Taj is different from all other buildings in the world; it is symbolical of womanly grace and purity—is the jewel, the ideal itself; is India's noble tribute to the grace of Indian womanhood, a tribute perhaps to the Venus de Milo of the East.

The grace of the Taj, as do the achievements of every form of perfect art, rests in its simplicity. A spectator marvels that so much beauty can come from so little apparent effort. Yet nothing is wanting, there is nothing in excess; we cannot alter a single stone and claim that the result would be better. And Oriental designers, working for an Eastern despot, might easily have struck a jarring note and rendered the Taj garish—the wonder is that they did not. The Taj consequently is the objective of most travelers making the pilgrimage to India.

It is easier to tell what the Taj is than to speculate upon the ideals and motives of its builders, and it should be a brave writer who attempts to describe it. Kipling, who saw the structure first from the window of a train nearing Agra, called it "an opal tinted cloud on the horizon"; and after studying the building at close range he wrote, "Let those who scoff at overmuch enthusiasm look at the Taj and thenceforward be dumb; ... each must view it for himself with his own eyes, working out his own interpretation of the sight." Another great English writer has said, "Words are worthless in describing a building which is absolutely faultless." And it taxed the talents of Sir Edwin Arnold, critic and poet, to frame in language an adequate picture of Arjamand's death couch.

If a man possesses the sentiment of form and proportion, the Taj will satisfy him. The stately portal seems to harmonize with the grandeur of an Eastern queen; and the aerial dome, higher than its breadth, rests upon its base as if possessing no weight, yet is of solid marble. Heroic in treatment are the quotations from the Koran framing every doorway and aperture, wrought in inlay or sculptured in relief—and these modify the pearly monotony of the marble.

One enters reverently the burial-place of Shah Jahan's queen, whose cenotaph is of the whitest marble, placed in the precise center of the building, and surrounded by an octagonal screen of alabaster that is pierced and interwoven like lace. Every foot of the walls, every column and panel, is elaborately embellished with flowers, leaves, scrolls, and sentences, and these are inlaid in jasper, bloodstone, jade, onyx, and precious stones. Arjamand's tomb blossoms with never-fading Persian flowers and Arabic sentences extolling her character, and is as marvelous in workmanship as if produced by Florentine inlayers of the present time. The sarcophagus was originally inclosed by a fence of gold, studded with gems; but this was early replaced by the screen of marble, local history asserts.

The supposition is that one Austin de Bordeaux, a French goldsmith, who had been summoned to Agra by Shah Jahan to construct the celebrated Peacock throne, had much to do with the treatment of the Taj's interior. The building originally possessed two wonderful silver doors, of his designing, but these were looted by Jat invaders in 1764 and melted down. It is said that eight years were consumed by the artists intrusted with the making and beautifying of Arjamand's cenotaph; and further, that the Koran's every line and every word is reproduced by inlay or relief carving on the interior and exterior of the Taj.

To the left of Arjamand's tomb is that of her lord and lover, its location proving that it was placed there obviously from necessity and as an afterthought. It is a span larger than his consort's stone, and occupies nearly all the space allowed by the position of the grilled inclosure—but is a sentimentally fitting intruder upon the general design.

It is a curious bit of history that Shah Jahan, conscious of triumph as the author of the Taj, long contemplated constructing a similar shrine on the opposite bank of the Jumna, wherein his own body was to be placed. It was to be constructed of dark-colored marble, but otherwise to be a counterpart of Arjamand's tomb. The foundations were placed, and the arangements for supplying labor and materials well advanced, when a son of Jahan—Aurangzeb—who had long plotted for the Mogul throne, secured control of the military forces, and overthrew his father's rule.

Aurangzeb promptly adopted Delhi as his capital, leaving his parent to languish as a political prisoner in the palace within the fort of Agra. In a suite of very small rooms, and attended by a devoted daughter, the great Shah Jahan there dreamed away the last seven years of his life—but these apartments overlooked the Taj Mahal, two miles away, let it be known. The heartbroken Jahan outlived his splendid wife by thirty-seven years.

In this manner destiny willed that two great personages forever lie side by side in death; and consequently the Taj is enriched as a temple of sentiment; but—they do not sleep within the marble caskets the traveler beholds. There is a vault deep underneath the floor, and there, in positions agreeing with the monuments above, are the royal remains enclosed in unornamented masonry.

In Jahan's plan for a somber reproduction of the Taj, a monumental bridge was to span the Jumna and link the shrines of emperor and empress. Instead of this fair dream, there is now only a flat, sandcovered shore, upon which lazy tortoises range themselves under the warming sun, and long-legged water fowl indulge in peaceful meditation and slumber.



The curious acoustics of the Taj are observable to the visitor going often to Arjamand's shrine. A harsh voice is echoed harshly back and ceases quickly; but a woman's tones raised gently in song are echoed many times, diversified and amplified in strange combinations of melody. Such a voice reverberates from every side, seemingly ascends, and its force finally dies away to silence like the notes of a flying wood-dove in a forest.

This gem of Agra is worshiped as fervently by Hindus as by those of the Moslem faith, and Indian artists in a few years almost destroy their eyesight trying to portray in miniature upon ivory the architectural perfection and delicacy of this marvel of the world.

When invading hordes have swept Central India, or alien garrisons been quartered in Agra fort, the Taj has always suffered mutilation. The Mahrattas looted it of everything movable and systematically wrenched precious stones from their places in the design ornamenting the fabric of the interior. After the Mutiny came the red-coated soldier, who relieved the tedium of garrison duty by appropriating any attractive piece of inlay overlooked by the Mahrattas—these pretty bits made interesting souvenirs of India for sending home to the British Isles.

For twenty years the British government has been repairing this desecration, under guidance of its viceroys. The great chamber of the Taj now seems perfect in its embellishment—but there are no diamonds, no rubies, and no emeralds, as of old. Bits of colored glass fill their places.

But the Taj's exterior is to-day as perfect as it could have been two centuries ago; and the dignity and sovereign chastity of its marble surfaces—spoiled by no misplaced ornamentation, and unsullied by vandal—make of this poetic shrine an offering to love surpassed in beauty by nothing in all the world fashioned or reared by man.

Nowheres on God's footstool has any queen such a monument, and it is even more beautiful in the silver dress of moonlight than in the golden robes of the midday sun. By day or night alike it makes an impression on the mind that time can never obliterate. Shah Jahan erected the Jami Masjid mosque at Delhi, and the costly Muti Masjid mosque in Agra Fort, as well as the splendid Khas Mahal, the Diwan-i-ain, and the Diwan-i-khas, likewise in the fort—but more satisfying art is represented in the Taj than in all the other structures of his reign.



CHAPTER IX

BENARES, SACRED CITY OF THE HINDUS

Unique among Indian cities is Benares, and for the Hindu the sacred capital on the Ganges has a significance similar to that of Mecca for the Mohammedan, and a greater attracting power than Jerusalem has for the Christian. Benares is the home and shrine of the complex religion that binds the Hindu nations, and is the very soul and heart of Hinduism.

No other place where men congregate can compete with deified Benares in the matter of divine merit that may be conferred on the pilgrim entering its gates and threading its narrow and filth-smeared streets. There two hundred thousand people live and fatten upon the half million devotees coming annually to the idolatrous fountainhead. The sacred city attracts this tide of pious humanity from all the tribes and nations of many-peopled India: they journey to Benares brimming with love and trustfulness, and after a season spent in her temples, at her shrines, and by her sacred stream, she sends them forth overflowing with merit and zeal, to carry her fame to the outposts of the faith, even to Afghanistan and Baluchistan, and to the nomadic tribes peopling Tibet and other lands beyond the mighty Himalayas.



Somebody with a gift for nebulous mathematics has stated that more than two hundred thousand gods of the Hindu religion are represented at Benares. Whether the count be valid matters little, for the city is pre-eminent as the special domain of the fundamental god of India's slavish religion, Siva, whose ensign—a gilt trident and perforated disk—flashes from the pinnacles of hundreds of temples and palaces. This uncanny city on the Ganges is naturally the Brahmins' paradise, for these devotees constitute a governing force in the city's control, and from this fountainhead spread their influence throughout the land of Hind. These insinuating men of religion line the river bank, and infest the temples, sitting like spiders waiting for their prey. Their emissaries are everywhere in India, promoting pilgrimages, or hovering about the entrances to the city to make certain of the arrival of the unwary enthusiast with well lined purse. Rich and poor, high caste and low, all come to the sacred city. Some travel in state by lordly elephant or camel caravan, others by railway; but none follow a surer avenue to eternal grace than those who plod on foot over the Great Trunk highway, sweeping diagonally across India, after the manner of Kipling's holy man from Thibet whose footsteps were watched over by Kim. The "business" of Benares being the bestowal of holiness, the manufacture of brass goods appealing to tourists is incidental in importance and revenue. No other city of its population can have a more insignificant trade measureable by statistics.

For three miles the religious section of Benares runs along the brow of the plateau overlooking the chocolate-hued stream, and every foot of this distance is curious and interesting. Falling below the disgusting temple resorted to by pilgrims from Nepal, the Hindu region beyond India's frontier and "the snows," is the ghat (a ghat is a large stone stairway descending to the river), where the good Hindu gives his dead to the flames, and the muddy inlet from the Ganges where this occurs is dedicated to Vishnu, "the sleeper on the waters," a name singularly appropriate to a place where the ashes of the dead are consigned to the bosom of "Mother Ganga."

A visitor observes a number of platform-like structures of masonry that are decorated with roughly carved figures of men and women standing hand in hand. Upon these, until British rule put a stop to the custom, thousands of fanatical wives underwent suttee and were burned alive with their dead husbands. It is but seldom that a cremation is not in progress at the burning ghat. From the deck of a native boat moored not forty feet away I saw in a single hour eight corpses in varying stages of consumption by fire. The traveler hardened to gruesome spectacles by much journeying in Africa and Asia experiences but little of the sickening sensation through witnessing a primitive incineration at Benares that is caused by a visit to the Parsee towers at Bombay. The Benares operation is sanitary and practical, and something may be said on the side of sentimental appropriateness in having a corpse borne to the riverside by one's relatives and friends, and there consumed by the burning of a pyre constructed by the hands of these. The dramatic entities become apparent to every thoughtful spectator, probably.

A clatter of brass cymbals reaches the ear, and a cortege appears at the top of the ghat, while desultory cries of "Rama, nama, satya hai"—"the name of Rama is true"—are heard. The corpse, fastened upon a simple bier of bamboo sticks and carried on the shoulders of four relatives, is swathed in white if a male, or in red if a female. The bearers hasten almost frantically down the decline and clumsily drop their burden in the water, feet foremost, and make certain that the current will have undisturbed play upon the corpse without sweeping it away. The mourners repair to the place where dry wood is sold and enter upon spirited bargaining for fuel sufficient to consume their relative, whose body is being laved and cleansed of spiritual imperfections not a few rods away by the sacred Ganges. Only six or eight logs are required. The dealer demands three rupees for them—and the grief-stricken Hindus offer one. A bargain is finally struck at two rupees, with a stick of sandal-wood for the head of the pyre thrown in.



The logs are quickly conveyed to the burning-ground, a satisfactory site for the sad office is expeditiously chosen, and the mourners with their own hands construct the pile. Now sanctified by Mother Ganga, the corpse is fetched from the strand and placed on the structure, feet ever directed toward the precious river. The pyre is soon ready for the torch, and here occurs a curious incident, one that illustrates the monopolistic importance of a man wearing only a loin-cloth, who has been taking an indifferent interest in the proceedings from an elevation close by. He is a Dom, of a caste so degraded that should he inadvertently touch a corpse it would be contaminated beyond remedy. But immemorial custom requires that the fire be obtained from him, and he may demand payment therefor in keeping with his estimate of the worldly position of the applicants. Ordinarily a rupee is sufficient, although for a grandee's cremation a fee of a thousand rupees has sometimes been demanded and paid.

The dicker with the Dom being concluded, the chief mourner lights a handful of dried reeds at his fire, hurries to the waiting pyre, walks seven times around it, and with the blazing reeds held in the right hand lights the mass at head and foot. The mourners then withdraw to a shaded spot beside a suttee structure, and silently watch the conflagration. In an hour all is over, and the ashes then are strewn far out on the surface of the Ganges and are borne from sight by the current.

From ten to fifteen corpses are disposed of at the burning-ghat daily, and several cremations are usually simultaneously in process. Now and then there is some demonstration of grief, but not often. I saw two men wade to a body in the river, when they pulled away the covering from the face and bathed it with handfuls of water scooped from beloved Ganga, and their every movement denoted affection. Again, I witnessed a tottering and sobbing old man place with every expression of tenderness a garland of yellow and white flowers about the neck of a corpse swathed in red, and imagined it the last office of love to an idolized daughter. I also observed the bare corpse of a man who an hour before had died of plague brought to the ghat by two public scavengers, and committed to the flames of a few logs much too short, until the slender legs had been doubled beneath the body. No sandal-wood perfumed this pauper's pyre, and no interment in potter's field was ever more perfunctory than his burning.

Social distinctions are as marked at the Benares burning-ghat as in the modern American cemetery. An hour spent on the Ganges bank supplies sufficient food to the mind for weeks of serious reflection.

One of the greatest spectacles of India is that of pilgrims bathing in the Ganges. From several ghats devoted to sacred ablutions numerous wooden piers extend into the worshiped stream, and these teem with pilgrims from every section of Hindustan, in every variety of costume, every stage of dress and undress, there to purge themselves of unclean thoughts and wicked deeds, and to wash away bodily impurities. Preaching canopies, shrines for rich and powerful rajahs, and stone recesses for those demanding solitary meditation, make of the river front a place literally teeming with humanity. Devotees are everywhere. Here a pundit is reading the holy law to a half hundred approving Hindus; there a stately chieftain from remote Kashmir ceaselessly mutters prayers beneath a huge spreading umbrella of thatched straw, hired from a Brahmin for an hour; and ten feet away a holy ascetic, naked in the scorching sun, smears his skin with the gray ashes of penitence.

Below this grotesque medley is the multitude of men, women and children, breast deep in the sanctifying Ganges. Thousands have come on foot from far-away villages of this boundless land of paganism; and from all goes up a continuous murmur of prayer and adoration, like a moaning wind emerging from a distant forest. Eye and ear alike are flooded with an indescribable rush of sensations, and the heart is oppressed with the august meanings which lie behind the awe-inspiring sight. All the Hindu-cults are here—the Ganges welds them in her holy embrace. But conspicuous above all others is the Brahmin priest, attracting annas and rupees in devious ways from enthusiasts dazed by the realization that they have bathed in Mother Ganga—some want a certificate of purity, others want seals placed on vessels of water to be carried to loved ones suffering from infirmities. The Brahmin gives certificate, places seals, and performs other acts enabling him to garner a harvest of silver and gold.

Now and again a moribund believer, whose friends seek for him something that may be construed as a last blessing, is hurried to the river's edge. It is a sacrament that cannot be delayed many minutes—and the Brahmin fortunate enough to be appealed to charges at emergency rates. When business slackens this harpy composes his nearly-naked body on a plank overlapping the river, and executes with studied deliberation a program of purification marvelous in detail. Receptacles of brass and silver are brought him, and for an hour or longer he rubs his handsome frame with unguents and perfumes, slowly stripes forehead, biceps and breast with the ash-marks of sanctity, and places a wafer of his caste on his forehead. Later he climbs the ghat to his favorite temple, probably content with the emoluments thrust upon him at the water side, or may be he goes to the bazaar to learn the latest gossip of religious and political India. It is in no sense a losing game to be a member of the Brahministic ring controlling things in Benares, for the flow of coin from the two hundred million Hindus is ceaseless.



A curious sight in Benares is the Monkey Temple, a pretentious and not inartistic structure of carved red sandstone dedicated to Kali, the goddess wife of Siva. The image of Kali within the temple is a black fury of hideous countenance, whose red tongue droops to the waist. She is dripping with blood, and crowned with snakes, while hanging from her neck is a garland of human skulls. Kali wants blood, and if not propitiated daily therewith something horrible is expected to happen. Every Indian town has a temple to this monster; and everywhere throughout what Kipling calls "the great, gray, formless India," sacrifices are made each morning to this ogress with insatiable appetite for blood.

The entrance to the Monkey Temple is slime-covered and the air heavy with sickening odors. Through a stone doorway the goddess may be seen enshrined, grinning demoniacally. Twenty horrible men, harmonizing in appearance to a reader's conception of thugs, gather in the court, to give each batch of visitors the performance that most have come to witness. The frontal region of their heads is shaven smooth, and each loathsome Indian drools betel-nut saliva that looks like blood. A goat is led into the enclosure and tied to a stone post, and the evil-looking men form a circle about the helpless animal. One of them holds the rear legs of the beast clear of the ground. A chant issues from the betel-stained mouths, and a human fiend forces through the circle, brandishing a straight-bladed sword, heavy and keen-edged, that has just been blessed before the altar of Kali. He is the official executioner.

This functionary makes a sign of readiness, swings the blade at arm's length for a moment—and lands a blow on the underside of the animal's throat that severs the head from the body. The gushing blood is directed to the Siva emblem close by, the head is borne triumphantly to the feet of Kali, and each thug-looking man smears his face with blood taken from the Siva symbol, and then dances madly around the carcass. Assuming that the spectacle has favorably impressed the visitor, the high executioner begs a donation with which to purchase a goat for a second sacrifice. You decline, probably feeling that you would subscribe bountifully if a priest might be substituted for the helpless beast.

On important days in the Hindu calendar many goats and sheep are sacrificed, and sometimes buffaloes as well. In time of pestilence or famine it is not unusual to find a child's head deposited in the early morn at Kali's feet, it is claimed.

The inner court of the Monkey Temple, like the ceremony of the slaughter, is open to the heavens, and is surrounded by a cloister lined with cell-like niches for solitary meditation and introspection. On the terrace, on every protruding bit of architecture, on every window ledge—wherever foothold may be gained—are monkeys, loathsomely fat, and made more disgusting from years of pampering than are the human freaks on the pavement. Great tamarind trees overhanging the temple are alive with monkeys. They drop to the ground, run between your legs, and dash before you at every turning. You are entreated to pay for basins of parched corn thrown to the revolting creatures by your priestly guide, and do so, but are glad when the monkeys show their appreciation from a distance. From three to four hundred of these mangy animals belong to the temple, and are held to be sacred. At Benares everything specially nasty or repulsive is protected by the cloak of sanctity.

You are glad to get back to your carriage, so thankful that you throw a couple of rupees to the mob of appealing "priests," in your heart possibly wishing that the money might be invested in soap and scrubbing brushes—and in poison for the monkeys. Urging the coachman to drive speedily for the open space and pure air of Benares cantonments, you wonder as you proceed what place in religion can reasonably be occupied by the revolting customs and beings to be witnessed at the Monkey Temple, and it is with no regret that you learn from eminent authority that in less than a hundred years every temple and shrine perched on the brink of the plateau crowning the Ganges will be undermined and its descent not arrested until the structure reaches the river's bed. Those responsible for locating Benares on the outer periphery of a great bend in the Ganges proved themselves to possess no engineering foresight. But India's controlling religion can receive no setback by the destruction of a few score tawdry buildings consecrated to its gods, for they will be replaced by better shrines and temples, rising from places beyond even the iconoclasm of the sacred Ganges.

Investigation reveals sufficient merit in the religio-philosophies of Mohammedanism and Buddhism to explain their adoption by teeming millions. Each faith offers admirable precepts and teachings, and prolonged study of them produces a feeling of respect for all true believers. But a season of travel in India, entered upon with the desire to dispassionately study the Hindu religion in the land of its overweening strength, produces only bewilderment and mental nausea. The more determined one may be to lay bare the gems of this faith and its administration by the Brahmins, the keener will be his disappointment, for not a redeeming feature will he find, and he may quit India smarting with regret over wasted time. To such an investigator Hinduism must forever be remembered as paganism steeped in idolatry. More, its gruesome sacrifices will provoke only disgust, perhaps equaled by that called forth by the unspeakably coarse temple carvings and ornamentation of the cars of juggernaut. I have been acquainted with Indian gentlemen proud to be known as Hindus, and have been amazed to hear them avow devotion to the hideous idolatry that absorbs a great part of the time of two hundred million people in India alone. If the strong arm of England were not raised over the great empire of the East the suttee rite and child sacrifice would unquestionably prevail to-day. To a westerner Hinduism seems the greatest abomination of the earth.



CHAPTER X

INDIA'S MODERN CAPITAL

Kipling, who has gracefully lured roamers to India by saying, "It is good for every man to see some little of the great Indian Empire and the strange folk who move about it," obligingly prepares those entering by the gateway of Calcutta for an olfactory affront. The stenches of Calcutta are numerous and pervading, surely; but the tourist who has crawled up the Bay of Bengal in a caravel of the Peninsular & Oriental Company cheerfully accepts them. The "P. & O." line is one of Britain's venerated institutions; consequently English people would as soon commit a felony as criticize this antiquated concern. In these times ten-knot passenger steamers are hard to find outside the Calcutta service of the "P. & O." Company and in marine junk yards.

As a great commercial port, Calcutta is unfortunately located. It is on the Hooghly river, one of the outlets of the sacred Ganges, and ninety miles from its mouth. The Hooghly is a tortuous stream of mud that can be navigated by large vessels only by daylight and with favoring conditions of tide, for its channel is seldom two days alike. This demands expert piloting, and explains why Hooghly pilots are selected with great caution. A Hooghly pilot is the very maximum of a nautical swell, and one's boarding of a ship attended by man-servant and a mass of belongings partakes somewhat of the character of a function.

This Calcutta pilot is a fine fellow—well-bred, educated, and entitled to the splendid compensation and social position which he enjoys. Since the days of the East India Company, the forerunner of British rule in India, the pilots of the Hooghly have been esteemed as personages and they have taken rank but slightly lower than officers of the navy, and much ahead of ordinary commercial people and mariners. When off duty in Calcutta the pilot goes to his club and drives on the Maidan with other Anglo-Indians of quality, and never is seen about hotel bars and cafes like the ruck of seafaring men having a spare day on shore.



The Hooghly is charted practically every twenty-four hours, and on his way upstream the pilot gets his information pertaining to depths and bars by signals from stations on shore. The river presents nothing of interest to the traveler until a point twenty miles from Calcutta is reached; thereafter it is a stream of many attractions. Fortifications with visible native troops and an occasional red-coated English soldier occur frequently; then come scores of enormous cotton and jute mills, attended by strange-looking stern-wheel steamboats, most of them with huge cargo barges on either side. At last Calcutta is in sight. Tall factory chimneys and domed public buildings pronounce it a city of size and importance. The last two miles of the journey are made through a flotilla of shipping, a bewildering medley of sailing vessels and steamers, flying the flags of all the maritime nations of the earth—all but the Stars and Stripes of Uncle Sam.

Bombay, on the other side of India, and immediately on the sea, would make a better capital than Calcutta. But the malodorous city of the Hooghly will probably ever be the seat of Britain's rule.

While the names of Warren Hastings and Clive dominate the printed page dealing with modern India, Calcutta fairly throbs with recollections of Job Charnock, the audacious Englishman who raised the red flag of Britain just two hundred and seventeen years ago over a collection of mud hovels and straw huts on the site of what to-day is the capital of the Indian Empire.

Charnock, perhaps the founder of England's rule in the East, was the agent of the old East Indian Company. Having been granted permission by the Mogul rulers to establish a post on the Hooghly convenient for trading purposes, he chose a spot having the advantage of a generous shade tree. The spot and neighborhood now is Calcutta, the chief city of India, with over a million inhabitants. A Hindu village in the vicinity of the place where Charnock established his trading post was called Khali-ghat—these words, corrupted by use, have come to mean "Calcutta." The quaint pioneer obviously had no realization of the part he was playing in empire-making, and Great Britain has never made adequate acknowledgment of the gratitude clearly this man's due. Calcutta residents delight to recount Charnock's exploits, and they take visitors to St. John's churchyard to view the substantial monument beneath which rest his bones. The inscription states that he died January 10, 1693.

A single story proves Charnock's independence of character. He went with his ordinary guard of soldiers to witness the burning of the body of a Hindu grandee, whose wife was reputed more than passing fair. It was known that the rite of the suttee was to be performed—the widow was to sacrifice herself upon the blazing pyre of the deceased, in keeping with Hindu custom. Charnock was so impressed by the young widow's charms that he ordered his soldiers to rescue her and by force take her to his home. They were speedily married, had several children and lived happily for many years. Instead of converting her to Christianity, she made him a proselyte to paganism, and the only shred of Christianity thereafter remarkable in him was the burying of her decently when she was removed by death; but Charnock is said to have observed in true pagan manner each anniversary of her demise, even to making animal sacrifices before the image of the goddess Khali.



Calcutta has improved greatly since Kipling wrote of it as the "City of Dreadful Night"; but it is yet a place of striking contrasts, of official splendor and native squalor, of garish palaces abutting in rear allies upon filthy hovels. The good is extremely good—that is for the British official; the bad is worse than awful—and that is for the native.

Viewed superficially, Calcutta looks like a prosperous city in Europe, perhaps in England; but rear streets and suburbs are as filthy and congested as any town in vast India. What the average tourist beholds is spick and span in a modern sense; and what he doesn't see is intensely Asiatic, with all that the word can mean. Being a city of extremes, the visitor may be brought to his front windows by the warning cries of the footmen of a sojourning maharajah driving in state to a function, while through the rear windows float the plaintive notes of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayers from the minaret of a Mohammedan mosque close by.

The Indian metropolis presents an array of fine homes, bungalows and stucco villas, put up when the rupee was worth two shillings and a penny, wherein unhappiness may now dwell, because the rupee has depreciated to a shilling and fourpence. The parade of fashion on the Maidan late in the afternoon presents every variety of equipage and livery known to the East, The horse-flesh of Calcutta is uniformly fine. Better animals than are daily grouped around the band stand, or along the rail of the race-course, cannot be found short of Europe. The viceroy is often seen driving a mail phaeton, preceded by two native lancers and followed by four others. The automobile has many devotees in Calcutta, and bicycle-riding natives are everywhere. The babu is exceedingly fond of wheeling on the Maidan whenever he can escape from his account books. Nearly every carriage on the Maidan in the afternoon has two men on the box and two footmen behind, all gorgeously dressed—servants are cheap in India. At sundown nowadays half the pianos in Chowringee—where Calcutta's officials and prosperous commercial people reside—seem to be playing airs from American light operas, and not infrequently a regimental band compliments the United States by playing "Hiawatha" or one of Sousa's compositions.

It is compensating to a person burdened with the habit of wondering where words come from, to discover that Dum-dum is a suburb of Calcutta, and is important as a military post and as the seat of an ammunition factory and arsenal.



The sights of Calcutta are unimportant. The general post-office occupies the site of the native prison whose horrors of the Black Hole stain chapters of Indian history; and a description of the burning of human bodies on the bank of the Hooghly, and of the animal sacrifices at the old Hindu temple at Khali-ghat, would be disagreeably gruesome. The gaudy Jain temple interests for a few minutes, and the exterior of Fort William impresses the casual spectator. The zooelogical garden is conventional, and the feature of the botanical garden is probably the largest banyan tree in the world. Calcutta hotels, deplorably poor, have been fitly described as of two kinds—bad and adjectively bad. All that interests the visitor within the modern capital of ancient India is the movement of official and social life, and the parade of races forming the population of the marvelous, mysterious country.

There, across the esplanade, with imposing gates and approaches, is Government House, winter seat of the Viceroy of India—whose most distinguished incumbent in recent years was His Excellency the Right Honorable the Baron Curzon of Kedleston, P. C., G. M. S. I., G. M. I. E., etc., etc. Few traveling Americans had the time to speak of him in a manner honoring all these designations. Visitors from Chicago used to refer to him, it was claimed, with naive simplicity as "Mary Leiter's husband," and let it go at that. A person of extraordinary ability was this husband of an American queen, and it is generally believed that he may some day be prime minister of England. The viceroyship is the highest appointive office in the world. Its compensation is the equivalent of $80,000 per annum, but the allowances for entertaining European functionaries, an army of native servants, and a stableful of horses and elephants for State ceremonials, swells the amount two or threefold. Both at Government House in Calcutta and at the summer home in Simla the viceroy is surrounded by a court equalled in splendor by few royalties in Europe. Compared with the increment and disbursements of India's viceroy, those of the President of the United States appear insignificant. But oriental show and parade are expensive, so expensive in fact, that a viceroy is forced to make liberal drafts upon his private purse.

India may have had as capable rulers in the past as Lord Curzon, but rarely one more tactful or courageous, and never one having the assistance of a vicereine possessing the charm and lovable qualities of the late Lady Curzon. Her splendid work in behalf of the natives, especially the women, endeared her to all Indians. The Delhi durbar in 1903 honored Edward VII in a degree unsurpassed, but was a greater personal triumph for Viceroy Curzon and his accomplished consort from Chicago. His administration had many perplexing situations to deal with and one of them forced his resignation. The constant nightmare of a viceroy of India is famine, and twice Lord Curzon had to deal with this—one visitation alone cost the Indian Government fifty million pounds sterling. His understanding of frontier technicalities, and the ways and wiles of native rulers—none too loyal to British rule, assisted mightily in the successful administration of his high office. Under the Curzons' regime Government House balls and garden parties were counted the most brilliant occurring in the East.

A mighty personage in present-day Calcutta is General Viscount Kitchener, commander-in-chief of the Indian army. In Egypt he reformed the nature of the Nile peasant to the extent of making good fighters of the sons of the cravens of Tel-el-Kebir; good enough, when led by British officers, to annihilate the army of the Khalifa; and in South Africa Kitchener wound up with success a war that had been horribly bungled by others. Military critics had long been aware that the army of India was antiquated, honeycombed with dry-rot, and largely ruled by favorites sitting in high places at Whitehall. Consequently, Kitchener was sent to India with instructions conferring almost plenary power to reorganize the forces, British as well as native. He prefers work to participating in the social game.

In England there is a growing desire that finds expression frequently in the newspapers for Kitchener's translation from Calcutta to the War Office in London, from whence the British army as a whole might profit by the trenchant efforts of the Irish soldier who has seldom blundered. As commander in India Lord Kitchener is paid a lakh of rupees a year—$32,000, and heads an army of 242,000 men—77,000 British and 165,000 native troops.

The lieutenant-governor of Bengal, always spoken of as the "L. G." resides in Calcutta and works in close relationship with the viceroy. This British functionary administers the affairs of a territory but one twentieth the area of the United States, but which possesses 75,000,000 people.

And what is this India, governed by Great Britain through its delegated officials? It is a country greater than all Europe, omitting Russia, and fully half as large as the United States. Its population numbers 300,000,000, and is the most heterogeneous of any land in the world—were there homogeneity, or anything approaching it, a mere handful of Britons could not hope to control a fifth part of the people of the earth. India is made up of a multiplicity of races and tribes, professing every religion of paganism; and these are separated by thousands upon thousands of castes each going its own distinct and peculiar way. Great Britain's control of these teeming millions is unique in the history of oversea rule. India is almost exclusively agricultural, and in sections of Bengal averages 900 people to the square mile. At the beginning of 1906 the government had brought 14,000,000 acres of waste land under cultivation by irrigation upon an expenditure of $135,000,000. India now has 215 cotton mills, which employ a capital of $70,000,000, and last year's jute product of Bengal alone was valued at $70,000,000. The Indian Empire is ponderous and complex from any point of view. Possessing but half the area of the United States, it represents one seventh of the British Empire, and more than seven times the combined population of Great Britain and Ireland. It should not be assumed that the whole of India is under British rule, for practically a third of the country is still governed by independent native princes. With almost four times the population of the United States, India supports less than 29,000 miles of railway, as against 215,000 miles in the great republic—and this difference makes the contrast between Asiatic conservatism and New World progress.



The person demanding physical statistics gets enough pabulum in a day's search to keep the machinery of the mind going for months, and must be amazed when learning that there are seven hundred and twenty-one distinct languages and dialects spoken in India; that the population has trebled with the British occupation; that for every insane person in India there are thirteen in Europe,—the words "placid East" purveying the explanation. Taking the country by and large it is claimed that only one male in ten and only one female out of a hundred and forty-four, can read and write; and it is said by British residents in the land that the native knows no such thing as scholarship—he learns everything by rote, even to the extent of perfect recitation, without comprehending the meaning of the wards he is uttering. It is the nature of illiterate Hindus to resort to the extremest extravagance in nearly every statement, and it is not uncommon for report to have it that an Englishman has spoken abusively of a hundred thousand good Hindus, when that individual has merely intimated to a native servant that he would like his morning meal served with more punctuality. The illiterate Hindu, it is interesting to know, believes that the human soul passes through eight million reincarnations. When this child of the East deals with numbers his tongue runs into meaningless extravagance, and there appears to be no communion between his intellect and speech.

While marriage is universal in India, if not obligatory, the custom forbidding the remarriage of widows works an injustice to the sex amounting to national disgrace. A Hindu maiden who at twelve or thirteen is unmarried brings social obloquy on her family and entails retrospective damnation on three generations of ancestors. A Hindu man must marry and beget children to make certain of his funeral rites, lest his spirit wander uneasily in the waste places of the earth or be precipitated into the temporary hell called Put. The last available census discloses the astonishing fact that there are twenty-six million widows in India, meaning that out of every hundred women at least fourteen have been bereft of their husbands, and consequently are no better than human derelicts upon the earth. It is a teaching of the abominable Hindu faith that the bridegroom cometh but once. A pundit of the belief will argue that the practical reason for prohibiting remarriage is to prevent the crowding of the marriage market—and this is the only "reason" that can be extracted from one claiming to speak with knowledge on the unfortunate subject. The enlightened Gaekwar of Baroda, devoting influence and fortune to the moral uplifting of the people of his land, pronounces the custom forbidding the remarriage of widows to be a national curse exceeded only by that compassed by the word "caste."

A statistical paper on India issued recently by the British Government shows that there were killed in that country last year by snakes and wild beasts 24,034 persons—21,880 by snake bites, 796 by tigers, 399 by leopards, and the rest by other animals. The number of cattle destroyed by snakes and wild beasts was 98,582.

The other side of the account shows that 65,146 snakes and 16,121 wild animals were killed, for which rewards aggregating $37,000 were paid.



CHAPTER XI

ISLAND LINKS IN BRITAIN'S CHAIN OF EMPIRE

If one be a sufferer from anglophobia, a tour of the globe by conventional paths may produce rather more irritation than is good for man—to such a traveler the British Empire is a chronic nightmare, for the red flag is everywhere. Every harbor seems choked with English shipping, if not guarded by a British warship; and Tommy Atkins is the first man met ashore. If your prejudice against Great Britain be unjustly conceived, you will probably revise your judgment before the earth is half circled; at least you must confess that Britain is great from the standpoint of area.

A globe-trotter who has had "Britannia Rules the Wave" ringing in his ears from Gibraltar to Ceylon, connects again with the "thin red line" the moment his ship emerges from the Bay of Bengal. Penang then is the link in the interminable chain of colonies upon which the sun never sets. "Well, this is but an island, and a small one at that; consequently I won't let it worry me," soliloquizes the anglophobe.

Penang is doubly remarkable. Firstly, the tourist is there made to understand that he has finished with that great division of the earth known as "the East," and is at the portal of the Far East, the realm wherein the Chinaman, Malay and Japanese teem in uncounted millions. Besides, Penang is the premier tin port of the universe. Seven tenths of this metal used by the world starts for market from Penang and its neighboring ports in the Malacca Straits.

"Rule Britannia" is played next at Singapore, likewise an island, and, as is Penang, a place almost wholly given over to Chinese and their shops. Few coastal towns in China possess a greater percentage of Celestials than England's city at the tip end of the Malay peninsula and abutting on the equator. Sir Stamford Raffles placed Englishmen—and Chinamen—under everlasting obligation when he brought Singapore into being. Raffles possessed the empire-building instinct, surely, and earned the honor of interment in Westminster Abbey.

Singapore harbor commands one of the greatest natural turnstiles of commerce. Shipping has no other option than to use it. While Englishmen have administered the port and city since Raffles's time, thousands of Chinamen have there waxed extremely fat. The 'rickshaw coolie of Singapore, even, is physically perfect, and consequently in agreeable contrast to the Indian of calfless legs, and his Cingalese colleague of weak lungs. The Chinese 'rickshawman whisks a visitor about Singapore with the stride of a race-horse. For a city only a degree north of the equator, Singapore offers creature comforts in sufficient number to make human existence there extremely attractive.



Nabobs and well-conditioned humanity of Polynesia esteem Singapore much as Europeans and Americans regard Paris—an estimable place of consort, and scores of these men there lead a life not based on the simple ideas of Charles Wagner. Island sultans are usually as numerous in Singapore as princes in Cairo; and European adepts in equatorial government find frequent need of repairing to the gay metropolis of the Straits. An interesting potentate frequently seen is Rajah Brooke, a cultivated Englishman who is philanthropic despot over a slice of Borneo twice the area of England and Wales. Sarawak, his country, has been called the best governed tropical land in the world. Another English celebrity affecting Singapore is Governor Gueritz, administrator of the North Borneo Company, destined, maybe, to become as profitable as the East India Company of old. The Sultan of Sulu (not the hero of George Ade's comic opera) enjoys a sojourn in Singapore. He is young, wears the garb of a Mohammedan who has been to Mecca, and is not displeased by the stare of tourists. The Sultan of Johore, in the hands of money-lenders through unfortunate turf ventures, spends as much time in the city as in his Malay sultanate. A prince of the Siamese king's ministry, in Singapore to bestow orders for bridges and river steamers, goes nightly to witness a feeble production of "The Girl from Kays," and whistles "Sammy" as he promenades hotel verandas.

Down at the quays great steamships are fed with coal by Chinese coolies who toil silently and expeditiously. A Chinese swell is on the pier superintending the lading of queer-looking cases containing birds' nests, consigned to epicures in Hong Kong and Canton. The Chinaman's greatest dainty is soup made from glutinous birds' nests found in Borneo caves. A single case of moderate dimensions contains nests to the value of twelve hundred Mexican dollars—at least, it is insured for that amount.

Great Britain's next station in the Far East is Hong Kong, likewise an island, and one that might claim the long distance championship as a rain-center. Next to hills, the characterizing feature of Hong Kong is moisture—represented either by rain or humidity. The Briton professes that the climate of this crown colony is good; but for months at a stretch his clothing has to be hung daily in the open air to keep it from becoming water-logged, and everything of leather has to be denuded each morning of green mold. At the hotels one's apparel is kept in a drying-room, and issued costume at a time for use.

The globe-trotter reaching Hong Kong in March risks irreparable injury to his temper, unless he prefers dripping clouds and wet feet to warmth and sunshine. Out of a fortnight there may be a day when the elements will be accommodating enough to allow the glories of the harbor to be seen from the Peak, and two pleasant days in the fortnight would be remarkable. Official figures show that the average March has but twenty-nine and a fraction hours of sunshine. Complain of the rains and the patriotic resident will probably remark: "Rains! These are not rains—they only begin in June." Your book of local information corroborates the resident's statement, for you may read that March ordinarily has a rainfall of but three and a half inches, while June shows twenty, and August twenty-eight. On the 25th of August in 1905 the downpour registered eleven and one-quarter inches—this almost turned Hong Kong into an eastern Venice. November, December, January and February are the pleasant months, statistically, in Hong Kong.



The Briton has displayed his sturdiness of character by forcing a home in Hong Kong, for nature fashioned the north shore of this island to be an abiding-place for birds and animals. Adventurers from the British Isles have won a plateau from the sea by piling and filling in, and by executing engineering feats that have converted a precipitous mountain side to blossom with villa sites and roads and foot-paths leading to them. A railway scaling the mountain height at a topsy-turvy angle did the rest. Hong Kong is a splendid example of what determined men possessed of the colonizing spirit may accomplish. The founders of Venice did no more in the lagoons of the Adriatic. A man responsible for much of Hong Kong's filling in and excavation is Sir Paul Chator, a British subject of Armenian birth, gifted to an unusual degree with foresight. He has done more for the colony than any other person—and Hong Kong has made him a millionaire.

The legal name of the city is Victoria, but this fact apparently is known only to the postmaster and at Government House. Were a visitor to speak of Victoria, the dweller would believe that something back in England, or in Australia, was meant. When China ceded the rocky isle of Hong Kong to Great Britain in 1842 it was the haunt of fisherfolk and pirates prosecuting their callings in the estuary of the Canton River. The acquisition of Hong Kong was due to the refusal of the Chinese to allow British traders to live peaceably at Canton. Driven out of the city, they took temporary refuge in the Portuguese settlement of Macao; but, being pursued by Chinese hostility, the official trade superintendent transferred the English depot to Hong Kong, which was forthwith occupied by a British expeditionary force, and, at the end of the Opium War, finally ceded to Great Britain by the treaty of Nankin. The name "Hong Kong" is variously interpreted, but the generally accepted meaning is "Fragrant Streams."

Just as Singapore guards the south entrance into the China Sea, so does Hong Kong, fifteen hundred miles away, guard the north. On the south the entrance is through the Straits of Malacca, on the north through the Straits of Formosa. Had Great Britain, according to the usual custom of war, retained possession of Manila, which she had conquered in 1762, instead of giving it back to Spain at the end of the Seven Years' War, her hold of the China Sea would have been as firm to-day as is her hold of the Mediterranean. As the situation now stands, the acquisition of the Philippine Islands gives Uncle Sam a fortified naval base on the flank of the British line of communications between Singapore and Hong Kong. Based on Manila, and given the possession of sufficient naval force, an American admiral can strike right or left, compelling his opponents to fight where it best suits his own purposes. England and America are fortunate in being on terms of complete international amity, but none the less has the conquest of the Philippines by the United States profoundly modified the strategical conditions as they existed in the Pacific when the islands belonged to a weak naval power like Spain.

Hong Kong's population and traffic double every ten years, and no harbor has a greater tonnage. Were Hong Kong a port of origin, instead of a port of call, its commercial importance would be greater than that of London. A few years ago the British Government induced China to lease a slice of the mainland of goodly dimensions, to accommodate Hong Kong's swelling trade. There, a mile and a half across the harbor, to-day stand miles of modern docks and warehouses, and shipyards and engine-building works, that would do credit to Tyne or Clyde. This addition to Hong Kong is called Kowloon, and it has residential districts that range well into the hinterland.

Hong Kong's streets are among the most interesting in the great East, for they strike the key of true cosmopolitanism. Along them 'rickshaws pass in endless procession, electric cars roar, and sedan-chairs swing. The chair borne by four bearers provides the acme of transportation in fine weather. Eighty per cent, of Hong Kong's people are Chinese, and to this multitude the human contributions of Europe and America form necessarily a thin relief. Extremely picturesque are the compradore and taipan in costumes of the richest of silks, more so than is the poor coolie in dirty short trousers and jacket, pigtail coiled for convenience about the head, whose face is none too familiar with soap and water. In and out of the ever-moving multitude glide the tall, bright-eyed sons of India, the Sikhs, who are everywhere in the East. Soldiers in regimentals; jack tars of many nations; policemen, white, yellow, and black, are included in the picture. Here is the somber Britisher with confident stride and air of proprietorship, there the unromantic German slowly but surely capturing Oriental trade. Frenchmen and Scandinavians rub shoulders along the Queen's Road with the matter of fact American and the dark man from Italy; whilst now and then a peculiar gait or unusual costume distinguishes a South American or a son of the Philippines. Here, in short, within this congested square mile of the European quarter are daily to be picked representatives of the world's nations. A study of the crowd is an education in itself.

The splendid buildings speak of commercial prosperity—banks, shops, offices and clubs. Nearly every structure is the seat of prosperous commercial ventures in Hong Kong and China proper; and tiers of water-front warehouses locally called "godowns," are filled with foodstuffs and manufactures that in time will be distributed through every town of importance in the Flowery Kingdom. Hong Kong boasts that her docks can accommodate the largest ships afloat (a fact until the Minnesota and Dakota, loaded with American flour, vainly sought wharfage), and that she possesses the largest sugar refinery in the world. But these circumstances are subordinate to the British government's real interest in Hong Kong—to make it the base of naval power in Asia, with dockyards and repair-shops equal to any demand, and with coal-bins stacked with the prerequisite to sea-power.



The horse is included in no grouping in Hong Kong, where coolie takes its place as bearer of burdens and hauler of vehicles. The sights of the place are so strange and interesting that a traveler is sometimes there for days before the fact dawns upon his vision that it is a city innocent of horse-flesh. True, there are the runners and polo ponies at Happy Valley race-course. Wherever the Briton plants his abiding-place, there the horse and dog are brought—but in Hong Kong the former requires a deal of attention, for it is only used in making a Briton's holiday. The race-course is set in an intervale, and has cemeteries overlooking grand-stand and entrances. A transplanted sportsman whose every effort to name a winning steed at a Happy Valley meeting has failed signally, finds superabundance of food for introspection as he runs the gauntlet of cemetery portals on the way back to the city, and very likely indulges in mental speculation as to the purpose in giving the name of Happy Valley to a race-track whose betting ring is overshadowed by burial grounds.

The "chit" as a moral pitfall is more potent in Hong Kong than in India or other Eastern lands possessing a sprinkling of Europeans. A newcomer's ears hear little but "chit." Every sentence uttered by friends, every proposal of obsequious native merchant, is freighted with the little word. You decide at last to cast off your ignorance and be of the elect—to know what chit means and if possible become a chitter. Very disappointed are you when told that chit is simply Asian for memorandum, in popular phrase, an "I. O. U.," hurriedly penciled and given in lieu of cash.

Its purpose? Merely to pander to the European's convenience; to differentiate the white man from brown or yellow, by placing him on the unassailable pedestal of a person of honor.

"This chit idea is great," says the newcomer. "I don't load my pockets down with money any more. When I buy a cigar or drink I give a chit, and that's all there is to it. These Eastern people are away ahead of us in more ways than one." And he hourly signs innocent memoranda, because of the convenience. At hotel and club a chit brings what he wants, it sends a basket of flowers to a charming woman, produces suits of clothing that he doesn't need, even pays 'rickshaw and chair coolies.

But alas; pay-day comes at the end of the month! And scheme as he may, the newcomer cannot solve the fiscal problem of making a hundred dollars settle three hundred dollars of debts. He then comprehends that the insidious chit is loaded; is pregnant with the disgrace germ, if he cannot raise the wherewithal to redeem the sheafs of them reposing in a dozen tills—so many notes going to protest with every tick of the clock. "I'll write home for funds," he decides; "but how am I to live while awaiting the remittance?" By giving more chits, only. He does this with a bold front for another month or so, and is doubly insolvent when the remittance finally comes to hand. Then he gives still more chits, and awaits another money supply.

Hong Kong is filled with unfortunate "remittance men," good fellows at heart, whose downfall dates from their introduction to the chit. A visitor can read no announcement more pathetic than that conspicuously displayed in the waiting-rooms of the Kowloon ferry, saying "Positively no chits received"—and this ruthless pronouncement in connection with a trip costing but the equivalent of three American cents!

There is commendable practicability in the method employed by large hotels in the East for placing patrons in a position to connect with dishes on the bill of fare appealing to their appetites. In Hong Kong hotels, where young Chinamen knowing practically no English are employed as waiters, and where elaborate lists of dishes are the order, the plan is indispensable. It is this: Every dish is indicated on the margin of the card by a number, and instead of saying to the waiter, "Bring me some roast beef, mashed potatoes and a cup of tea," you give the numbers of these several articles, or point to them,—and they are fetched. It is easy enough to get a second helping, but if you desire your meat rare, or well done, or your eggs fried on both sides, then you have good cause for cursing the confounding of tongues at the Tower of Babel. A Hong Kong hotel is not a place for a person predisposed to irritability.

For keen realization of the Far East, Hong Kong, with its streets of Chinese shops, and water front massed with sampans, affords a full and most satisfying opportunity.



CHAPTER XII

CANTON, UNIQUE CITY OF CHINA

It is a steamboat journey of but ninety miles up the estuary of the Pearl River from Hong Kong to wonderful Canton, and a traveler in Asia who fails to see the city that is the commercial capital of China misses something that he may think and talk of the remainder of his life. Historians profess to trace the origin of Canton to a period antedating the Christian era, when, it is somewhere recorded, the thirty-fourth sovereign of the Chan dynasty, by name Nan Wong, who ruled for nearly sixty years, was on the Chinese throne. In those days the city bore the name of Nan-Woo-Ching, meaning "The Martial City of the South," and was encircled by a stockade formed of bamboos and river mud, tradition has it. Tradition additionally tells us that in the shadowy past Canton used to be known as the "City of the Rams," inasmuch as once upon a time five genii, each mounted on a ram carrying ears of grain in the mouth, rode into the market-place and said to the wondering people, "May famine and dearth never visit your city." This benevolent sentiment uttered, the genii are said to have instantly vanished, leaving their steeds in the market-place, and forthwith these were turned into stone. There is to-day a Temple of the Five Genii, where five clumsily sculptured rams are pointed out as the identical animals that once were flesh and blood.

Passing over twenty centuries we find the metropolis of the present time, with its two million people, the most satisfying, fascinating, and puzzling city in the Orient, if not in the whole world. Canton with its agglomeration of a primitive existence, is surely distinct and different from any other city. Its dazzling color effect, its pile of massive gilding in grotesque ornamentation, its wonderful sign-boards in bewildering hieroglyphics, and its host of odd-looking humanity—all is at variance with anything the traveler has before seen. To successfully view Canton requires some urbanity, a wealth of patience, and a stomach not readily overthrown by gruesome and unusual sights. And, further, the visitor must never forget that his vision is looking back from one to two thousand years, and that the hordes of human beings congesting the labyrinth of streets not seven feet wide, speak of a great nation as it was, which to-day is the oldest living nation on earth. You, of the fast-marching West, are viewing at its fountainhead a race for which the word "conservative" was most likely first called into use. It was the great Li Hung Chang who stingingly rebuked some patronizing Englishmen who were urging the astute old statesman to advocate certain social reforms in China, by saying: "Why, we Chinese look upon England merely as an interesting experiment in civilization, wondering where you'll be five hundred years hence."

The only impress that Europe and Christianity have visibly made upon Canton is the French cathedral of the twin spires that you see near the place where your steamer lands. In all Canton there is not a wheeled vehicle, street-car, hotel, or mouthful of food appealing to the convenience or appetite of the visitor from the West; and apart from your own coterie of sight-seers, you may for days be about the streets of the vast city without seeing a person wearing the habiliments of Europe. That section of Canton known as Shameen, in reality an island suburb, is set apart under concessions to the United States and certain European powers, and the consuls, missionaries and foreign merchants there dwell surrounded by many of the comforts of home.



Few venture upon leaving Hong Kong for Canton until satisfying reports are received assuring that no immediate outbreak is apprehended of the known Cantonese hatred for foreigners, nor until a vast amount of letter-writing and telegraphing for guide and chair-bearers has been gone through with, and the steamboat company has placed the craft of their line at your command, to be used as hotels, restaurants, and otherwise as bases of supplies. Confident that you would be met at the landing by the guide of whom you had reassuring reports, and with whom you believed you had been in correspondence, a gorgeously-clad, good-looking fellow greets you at your state-room door on the boat before your ablutions have been completed, and tells you politely but firmly that he is to be your guide. His card says he is "Ah Cum John," which is not that of the guide you had expected to meet you, and you meekly remonstrate, until the potentate tells you through the half-opened door that you will see Canton under his auspices or not at all. "Why?" "Because I am proprietor of all the sedan-chairs worth riding in, and employ every good coolie; and, besides, Ah Cum, my father, showed Canton to Rudyard Kipling twenty-five years ago. I'm the third son of Ah Cum, and my family does all the guiding that is done in Canton—nobody else speaks any English."

Whatever your degree of objection to monopolies, a single reason enumerated by the autocrat seeking to enter your employ is sufficient to swing you into a feeble acquiescence, for, to tell the truth, you are not impressed favorably by the mob of jostling, shoving yellow humanity on shore, naked to the waist, who seem to be accentuating with menacing gestures their demands upon your patronage. You wonder how long a white man can be on shore without having his throat cut, and reason that if Ah Cum John can bully a sovereign-born American into accepting him as guide, when you had wanted somebody else, why is he not the very man to control the passions of a fanatical Chinese mob? His administrative ability impresses by the manner in which he directs affairs from the instant his control is confessed by your party of seven native Americans, and after breakfast this born leader sets forth at the head of the timid pleiad longing to explore the great human warren of China—the thugs of the river bank are now your bearers and devoted subjects, four to a chair, and countless assistants and relatives trail at the end of the procession.

The cavalcade attracts good-natured attention from shopkeepers drawn to the fronts of their stalls by the yelping of forty lusty Mongol throats, commanding all and sundry wayfarers to allow honorable visitors to pass. So narrow are the filth-smeared streets that a sight-seer might help himself at will from shops on either side of the way. Hundreds of messes stewing over braziers in the thoroughfare have to be moved, and now and then the bearers of a native dignitary slide into a conveniently wide place that the procession of "foreign devils" may not be inconvenienced. But a mandarin, in his palanquin and preceded by an orderly mounted on a short-legged pony, and guarded front and rear by forty wicked-looking soldiers armed with carbines, has precedence so instantly accorded him that the clients of Ah Cum's third son are almost precipitated sideways into a row of shops. The mighty official passes without so much as casting a glance of compliment at the women of the party, thereby making it evident that Canton mandarins have a code of deportment peculiarly their own.

The products of every section of Asia are said Canton, Unique City of China to be heaped high in the warehouses of this great mart of Southern China; but the tourist sees naught of these. What he views from his sedan-chair is thousands of shops but little larger than catacomb cells, wherein everything from straw sandals for street coolies to jade bracelets for the richly endowed is offered for sale. Preserved from theft and fire in Canton's godowns and pawnshops are stored enough fabrics of silk, art-embroideries, and carvings in ivory and teakwood, to cause a person of average taste to lose his mind, could they be paraded for his benefit; and a collector would find it difficult to preserve solvency, were the treasures of the shabby-looking warehouses proffered for sale. Unusually repugnant are the stalls where food is vended, for their wares are prepared in a manner making it easy for the visitor to forget that he ever possessed an appetite. A hundred times as you are borne through Canton's streets your chair escapes by only a few feet or inches rows of cooked ducks and pigs that seem to have been finally varnished to make them appeal to the native epicure. Here and there you observe strange hunks of meat held together by a wisp of straw that your guide tells you with immobile countenance are rat hams, and in sundry shops your ready eye thereafter detects tiny dried carcasses that can only be rats. Let it be said in fairness to the sights of Canton that the display of vegetables is attractive enough to turn your thoughts to the dietary benefits of vegetarianism.

You early perceive that Ah Cum John is many kinds of a "boss" by the way he takes command of the shops at which he deigns to halt his caravan. All are charmed with the jewelry fabricated by the workers in kingfishers' feathers, and make liberal selections. But you are not permitted to pay the merchant with whom you have made a bargain, for John says, "You pay him nothing, you pay me to-night for everything"—and the purchases are carried away in his sumptuous palanquin. Pictures executed on rice-paper are next acquired on the same terms; then a cargo of daggers and swords with handles and scabbards covered with shark skin is secured after a brief dicker. When you buy a carved ivory ball representing years of labor by a genius, or a dozen bolts of Chee-fu silk, the price of which may be several hundred Mexican dollars, John insists that you are entitled to a cumsha of value. The merchant makes obeisance and proffers you a paper-cutter or a box of candied ginger. John resents this parsimony and says "Not good enough." He goes then behind the counter and pulls down a mandarin coat weighted with embroidery, or maybe an intricately carved puff-box, saying "The merchant gives you this with his compliments." Everything is dumped in the gorgeous palanquin, and your spoliation dash through commercial Canton is resumed.



Between purchases, you are taken to see innumerable temples and other objects of interest, as they fall in your path. The Temple of the Five Hundred Genii is made amusing by the scion of the house of Ah Cum explaining that a figure sculptured with hat of European pattern is "Joss Pau Low." As a reader you are aware that it is the effigy of Marco Polo, the intrepid Italian traveler supposed to have been the first European to have penetrated ancient China. The water-clock, elsewhere, is found to be out of order and not running, and you assume that the water of the Pearl River is too muddy for delicate mechanisms. The execution ground is found to be merely a quadrilateral of vacant land, employed by native potters when not required by the State when a group of criminals is to be officially put to death.

The guide is regretful that your visit is a few days too late for you to see five men beheaded in as many minutes. Employing a chair-coolie as a lay figure, John manages to give a satisfactory description of the modus operandi of a decapitation, and you let it go at that. A stalwart native is then introduced as the official headsman, and this functionary promptly tries to sell the heavy-bladed sword with which he says he struck off five heads earlier in the week. Probably three hundred malefactors are annually put to death on this spot, and it is said that the public executioner has been known to sell twice that number of swords in a year. Now and again a loaferish policeman is seen, nearly always leaning against a building or finding support from the angle of a deep-set door. Most of the police wear sandals and straw hats, and carry long batons and revolvers; but there is no sameness of apparel or armament among these guardians of the peace, attested by their wearing only a portion of their uniform at a time. The Cantonese believe their police are equipped and dressed in strict accord with the "finest" of a great city in America.

On the way to that section of the city where Cantonese of high and low degree are laid away after death, we encounter a returning funeral party that made a curious procession, and one stretching to inordinate length. In front was a ragamuffin corps of drummers and men extracting ear-racking noises from metal instruments that looked like flageolets, but were not. Twenty or thirty bedraggled Buddhist priests in pairs trotted behind, proving by their individual gaits that in China there is no union of religion and music. Interspersed in the marching medley were a dozen or more gaudily painted platforms with pole handles, carried by coolies in the way that chairs are borne. Each platform displayed a layout of varnished pigs with immovably staring eyes, plates of uncooked strips of fish, and decorative objects suggesting place in a well-to-do Chinese home. Every fifty yards or so a mustached official of uncertain rank was mounted on a Tartary pony, and at the end of the column a coolie loped along bearing across his naked shoulders the deceased's Yankee-made bicycle. No student of foreign conditions could ask more striking evidence that China was at last "waking up," was heeding the influences of Western civilization, surely. The funeral party suggested perfunctory pomp and display, and gave not a suggestion of bereavement—and that it was, for every person in the cortege was hired for the occasion. Half the food had been left at the tomb for the departed in his spirit form; the remainder was to be devoured by the mercenary mourners when the procession broke up at the door of the home from which the corpse had been carried.

Ah Cum John's clients lunch in the renowned Five-Story Pagoda, rising from the city wall to an elevation that spreads Canton at its feet; but by the time one reaches the building he is satiated with views and wants nothing but food. The Chicago "air-tights" and bottled beers and table-waters fetched from the steamer are relished to the full by appetites not always satisfied by the culinary achievements of a Delmonico.

Travelers insist that Canton is more essentially Chinese in an educational sense than any other city in China. Public speech in Hong Kong reflects the control of Britain, and in Shanghai popular opinion is held to be tainted with German or British opinion. At Pekin the game of diplomacy is played too consummately to allow an expressed utterance to have any national significance, for the capital is looked upon as a city eddying with cross currents and rival influences. Consequently, the pulse of the great Flowery Kingdom, with its more than four hundred million people, can best be taken at Canton, for the native press and native scholars there say frankly what they believe.

Cantonese opinion is potential because the capital city of the great Kwang-tung province is recognized as the center of national learning, where scholarship is prized above riches. No Canton youth who aims at the first social order thinks of setting himself to make money; to enter the service of the government is his object, and to achieve this he studies literature. There is practically no barrier in China to becoming a "literate," and the classification means all that the word "gentleman" can in Europe. For this and other reasons thousands of men in Canton wear horn-rimmed spectacles, look wise, and discuss mundane affairs in a manner brooking no contention. The literary bureaucracy of Canton wields a mighty influence in the affairs of the nation, it is insisted. A member of this class may not be able to do the simplest sum in arithmetic without the assistance of his counting-machine, but he may be able to write an essay on the meanings of ideographs, reproduce a trimetrical classic, or quote the philosophic works of Confucius and the Book of Mencius until you grow faint from listening.

Once every three years Canton teems with men, young and old, who have gathered to compete for academic degrees. Any one save the son of a barber, an actor, or the keeper of a brothel, may enter the list, provided he possesses the certificate of a high school. A certain part of the city not demanded by business or residential purposes is designated as the Examination Hall, where 10,616 cells or compartments are built of brick and wood. These cubicles, six by eight feet square, are arranged in rows, like cattle-pens at an American agricultural fair. Placed side by side they would extend eight miles. These cells have no furnishing whatever, save a plank to serve as desk and bed. The night before the examination is to begin the student is searched, and with writing materials and provisions sufficient for three days, is shut in his cell. This is repeated three times, making the examination extend to nine days. From sunrise to sunset no candidate is permitted to rise from his seat, and if one be taken ill and carried out, he cannot return for that contest. It is said that a few of the old men succumb to the strain at each examination.

The theses or essays of but eighty-three of the competitors can be accepted, and the fortunate ones are rewarded by the Bachelor of Arts degree. In time these compete near Pekin for a "Doctor" degree—and if abundantly rich, the successful scholar may bribe his way to official employment, say persons intimately knowing the customs of China. Those who pass the final degree become members of what is termed the Hon Lum College, and this furnishes China with her councilors, district rulers, and examiners of scholarships in all the provinces—at least in theory. The fortunate man standing at the head of the list in the great examination near Pekin receives the title of Chong Yuen, and is termed "the greatest scholar in the world." The entire empire reveres him, and, taking into consideration the number of the examinations he has stood, he should be respected, if not for erudition, for his tenacity of purpose and the possession of a marvelous constitution. But it is asserted that this "greatest scholar" is invariably a millionaire and a Manchu.



Even the "literate" failing to secure appointment to public office has certain valued exemptions and prerogatives. When he fulminates against the Pekin government or against the acts of an overbearing viceroy, his words are attentively listened to and carry weight. Besides, the horn-rimmed spectacles give him a local standing envied by every man who toils or has to do with business. In Canton and other cities of China, standing before many of the larger and pretentious houses, are ornamental "literary poles," and these are always in pairs and generally show respectable decay. When newly erected they are painted in colors according to the rank of the family—white for a private citizen, red for a civil functionary, and blue for the army. A mast having a single row of brackets a few feet from the top means the degree of Ku Yan, equivalent to our M. A., and called in China the degree of Promoted Men; the degree of Entered Scholar, nearly equivalent to our LL.D., called Tsun Sze, is represented by two rows of brackets; and the highest degree attainable, Hon Lum, is announced by three rows of brackets, locally termed the "Forest of Pencils." The projecting brackets make admirable perches for pigeons and other domesticated birds. As the family and not the individual is the basis of the custom, the masts are always erected in front of the ancestral home, although the distinguished scholar may live miles away. The poles are never repaired or replaced unless some other member of the family acquires academic honors. China has no custom more poetic than the indicating of an abode from which a scholar has emerged.

While it is easy to admit the erudition of the Chinese in their own language, the tourist swung through Canton's streets perceives from his sedan-chair many signs displayed to catch the eye of the foreigner that prove the English schoolmaster to be absent. To read such announcements as "Chinese and Japanese Curious," "Blackwood Furnitures," "Meals at All Day and Night," and "Steam Laundry & Co." provoke a titter in a city where you believe yourself to be an unwelcome visitor. It is obvious that the scholars of China are not reduced to the straits of becoming sign-painters.

The greatest of all Canton sights is undeniably that of life on the boats along the river front, penetrating every creek, and extending along the paddy fields above and below the great city. There has never been a census of this "floating population," but it is estimated that more than three hundred thousand Cantonese have no other homes but the junks, sampans, "flower boats" and "snake boats," upon which they are literally born, reared, married, and die. Lining both sides of the river, extending into Shameen Creek, the sampans are everywhere. They ferry people across the stream or convey them wherever they wish to go in the neighborhood, carry light cargoes of fuel, food, or merchandise, deliver packages, and do a thousand and one services of the "odd-job" order. A sampan nearly always houses an entire family, and is rowed by the father and mother. Beneath the round covering amidships the woman conducts the domestic affairs of the family with a cleverness that is remarkable, and for cleanliness it may be said that the Canton sampan is equal to any abiding-place on shore. The cooking is done forwards over a "fire-box," flowering plants frequently are placed in the boat's stern, and within the cabin incense sticks may nearly always be seen burning before the family idol. A mother ties very young children to the deck by a long cord, while older children romp at large with a bamboo float fastened about their bodies, which serves at once for clothing and life-preserver. It is a common sight to see sampans propelled up and down stream by women, each rower having an infant strapped to her back. The good behavior of the babies of the sampan flotilla is always appreciated by visiting mothers whose nurse-maids at home have difficulty in keeping their young from crying their lungs out.

The "flower boats," moored a mile or two below the business part of Canton's foreshore, are the antithesis of the sampans, for they cater to a pleasure-loving class, to men and women possessing wobbly morals, who love good dinners and suppers and a game of fan-tan without too much publicity, with singing and dancing as adjuncts. In build these craft are like the house-boats of the Thames, and the custom of tricking them out with flowering plants suggests the scene at Henley during regatta week. Practically all the vice that a traveler learns of during a visit to Canton is confined to the flower boats, and their floral appellation comes from the reputed attractiveness of the sirens dwelling upon them. The boats are moored side by side in long rows, with planks leading from one to another. Prices on the boats are always high, and the native voluptuary pays extravagantly and the foreigner ruinously whenever he devotes an evening to the floral fleet. By night the boats are gorgeous with their mirrors and myriad lamps alight, and blackwood tables and stools inlaid with mother-of-pearl; but by the light of day they look tawdry to the point of shabbiness.

To a person interested in marine construction, especially one hailing from a land where steam has supplanted sail-power, and where gasolene and other inexpensive motors have made rowing almost obsolete, the Pearl River "hot-foot" boats, so called by Europeans, are intensely interesting. These craft connect Whampoa and other out-lying towns with Canton, run in and out of rivers, and carry passengers, freight, and sometimes the mails. They are of fairly good lines, but are propelled by huge stern-wheels, and the motive power is contributed by from ten to twenty barebacked and perspiring coolies running up a treadmill that occupies as much room amidships as boiler and engine might. When the taskmaster urges the coolies to do their best, one of these "hot-foot" boats chugs along in calm water at a five-knot gait, but ordinarily three knots an hour is the normal speed.

On the left bank of the river and close to Canton is a large leper village, where all native craft approaching the city have to pay a "Leper toll." If this is done as soon as the vessel reaches the suburb the head leper gives a pass which franks the ship through; without this, any of the numerous lepers are able to demand a fee, which has to be paid, otherwise the junk would be surrounded by these people and all work brought to a standstill.



CHAPTER XIII

MACAO, THE MONTE CARLO OF THE FAR EAST

A prettier marine journey than from Canton to Macao, is not possible in the Orient, and it is of only eighty miles and accomplished by daylight with convenient hours of departure and arrival.

As on all passenger-carrying craft plying the great estuary having Hong Kong and Macao for its base and Canton its apex, you find the native passengers on your boat confined below the deck whereon the state-rooms and dining saloon of European travelers are located, and you perceive racks of Mausers and cutlasses at convenient points of this upper deck. To American eyes it is novel to see every stairway closed by a grated iron door, and a man armed with a carbine on your side of each of these barriers. You perceive on the main deck three or four hundred Chinamen of the coolie class, some playing card games, others Smoking metal pipes with diminutive bowls, but most of them slumbering in a variety of grotesque attitudes. None of these Mongols who observe your curiosity seems to hold any feeling of resentment for the effective separation of the races, which places him, the native of the land, in a position that might be called equivocal.

The English skipper and his Scotch engineer, who take the seats of honor when tiffin is served, respond willingly to your appeal for an explanation of the doors of bar-iron and the display of weapons—every first-class passenger always asks the question, and on every trip the British seafarers tell the story of Chinese piracy as practised up to comparatively recent times in the great estuary having a dozen or more names.

And an interesting tale it is, for it recounts deeds of the sea quite as audacious and high-handed as anything performed on land by Jesse James and his stage-coach bandits. Up to fifteen or eighteen years ago the estuary bristled with Chinese pirates, and wherever native fishermen and sailors foregathered, at Hong Kong, Canton or Macao, schemes for holding-up and sacking steamers carrying bullion and valuable merchandise were hatched with a frequency that gave a phase to local commerce that was anything but comforting, and more than one brave Yankee or British sailor went to his death fighting yellow thugs against overwhelming odds. The public decapitation of a handful of these murderers appeared to place no check on the outlawry.



Once a Canton-bound steamer, carrying the mails and a considerable amount of specie, had her progress obstructed by two junks that wilfully forced her into shoal water. In the confusion that followed the grounding, a score of coolies, who up to that moment had been regarded as honest deck passengers, rushed to the pilot-house and engine-room and murdered every white man on board. Practically everything of value was then transferred to the junks, now conveniently alongside, and the spoil was landed at such points in the estuary that made official detection well-nigh impossible. This is but a sample of the stories you may hear while yellow-faced Chinamen are serving your food, and it must be confessed that it affords a sense of confidence to know that the grates of the stairways are actually locked, and that the rifles of the guards are loaded with ball ammunition. As he sips his black coffee at the termination of luncheon, the captain assures you that until within a few years a skipper was suspicious alike of every native deck passenger and every fishing junk indicating a disposition to claim more than its share of the channel; "but the old days in China," he concludes, "have disappeared forever, and piracy as an occupation has passed with them."

Getting back to the forepart of the ship, the views on land and sea are engrossingly interesting. On the shores of the mainland and on an occasional island are ancient forts which revive memories of interesting experiences of the white man's invasion of the Celestial kingdom, and the foreground of rice-fields is backed by interminable groves of mulberry-trees explaining China's preeminence as a silk producer. Numerous villages are passed, and from them the traveler obtains a fair idea of the rustic life of China. Now and again a pagoda is visible, crowning an elevation, and recalling childhood's school-book illustrations. You jump at the convenient conclusion that these structures of from six to ten stories had to do with the religion of the country, which surmise is erroneous, for the towers were reared to guard the geomantic properties of their respective neighborhoods, and in reality are relics of a bygone age of superstition.

The pioneer European settlement of the Far East—Macao—is at last in sight, and it presents immediately a visual contrast to Canton, by reason of its picturesque situation. There is something about the promontory that takes you back to Southern Europe, to the summer sea and the shores of the Mediterranean, perhaps to a brightly situated fishing port of the littoral of the Riviera. As the vessel rounds the cape and comes to anchor in the pretty crescent formed by the Praia Grande, flanked by terraced houses colored with minor tints of blue and yellow, you know instantly that this stranded Eastern rainbow is Monte Carlo—no, the Oriental equivalent of the beauty-spot of Latin Europe.

Macao is a little place large with history, in fact is an atom of Europe almost lost to public gaze by the vastness of Asia, and as much a part of the kingdom of Portugal as Lisbon itself. As the most enterprising maritime and trading nation of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese were the first to sail the Eastern seas, the first to open up commercial relations between Europe and the great empire of China, and holding the monopoly of all Oriental trade until the end of the eighteenth century. Owing to the prospect of increased gain, following on this European invasion, the waters of the Pearl River estuary soon became infested with pirates, which the Portuguese magnanimously assisted the Chinese government to subdue, and, in return, it is recorded, received in 1557 the cession of the rocky peninsula on which the Portuguese colony now stands. More than once Portugal had to maintain her rights by recourse to arms, but the colony has remained Portuguese without interruption for more than three hundred and fifty years, and is a hoary patriarch beside infantile British Hong Kong and German Tsing-tau. The oldest lighthouse on the coast of China is that of Guia, standing sentinel on the highest point of the Portuguese colony.