We were greatly puzzled at the time over this striking exception to the Japanese political programme of concentrating streams of immigrants on our Pacific coasts. Without a word of warning a thousand Japanese coolies were shipped to Brazil, where they accepted starvation wages greatly to the disgust and indignation of the German and Italian workmen—not to speak of the lazy Brazilians themselves. This isolated advance of the Japs into Brazil struck observers as a dissipation of energy, but the Government in Tokio continued to carry out its plans, undisturbed by our expressions of astonishment. Silently, but no less surely, the diligent hands of the coolies and the industrious spirit of Japanese merchants in Brazil created funds with which the two warships were paid at least in part. The public interpreted it as an act of commendable patriotism when, in June, the one thousand four hundred Japs turned their backs on their new home, in order to defend their country's flag. They left Rio in six transport-steamers.
Brazil thereupon sold her two battleships to a Greek inn-keeper at Santos, named Petrokakos, and he turned them over to the merchant Pietro Alvares Cortes di Mendoza at Bahia. This noble Don was on board one of the transport-steamers with the Japanese "volunteers," and on board this Glasgow steamer, the Kirkwall, the bill of sale was signed on July 14th, by the terms of which the "armed steamers" Kure and Sasebo passed into the possession of Japan. The Brazilian crews and some English engineers went on board the transports and were landed quietly two weeks later at various Brazilian ports.
These one thousand four hundred Japanese plantation-laborers, traders, artisans, and engineers—in reality they were trained men belonging to the naval reserve—at once took over the management of the two mighty ships, and set out immediately in the direction of the West Indies. At Kingston (Jamaica) a friendly steamer supplied them with the latest news of the departure of the American transports from Cuba, and the latter met their fate, as we saw, in the roads of Corpus Christi.
A terrible panic seized all our cities on the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast, as the Japanese monsters were heard from, now here, now there. For example, several shells exploded suddenly in the middle of the night in the harbor of Galveston when not a warship had been observed in the neighborhood, and again several American merchant-vessels were sent to the bottom by the mysterious ships, which began constantly to assume more gigantic proportions in the reports of the sailors. At last a squadron was dispatched from Newport News to seek and destroy the enemy, whereupon the phantom-ships disappeared as suddenly as they had come. Not until Admiral Dayton ferreted out the Japanese cruisers at the Falkland Islands did our sailors again set eyes on the two battleships.
Chapter XVIII
THE BATTLE OF THE BLUE MOUNTAINS
It had been found expedient to send a few militia regiments to the front in May, and these regiments, together with what still remained of our regular army, made a brave stand against the Japanese outposts in the mountains. Insufficiently trained and poorly fed as they were, they nevertheless accomplished some excellent work under the guidance of efficient officers; but the continual engagements with the enemy soon thinned their ranks. These regiments got to know what it means to face a brave, trained enemy of over half a million soldiers with a small force of fifty thousand; they learned what it means to be always in the minority on the field of battle, and thus constant experience on the battle-field soon transformed these men into splendid soldiers. Especially the rough-riders from the prairies and the mountains, from which the cavalry regiments were largely recruited, and the exceedingly useful Indian and half-breed scouts, to whom all the tricks of earlier days seemed to return instinctively, kept the Japanese outposts busy. Their machine-guns, which were conveyed from place to place on the backs of horses, proved a very handy weapon. But their numbers were few, and although this sort of skirmishing might tire the enemy, it could not effectually break up his strong positions.
Ever on the track of the enemy, surprising their sentries and bivouacs, rushing upon the unsuspecting Japs like a whirlwind and then pursuing them across scorching plains and through the dark, rocky defiles of the Rockies, always avoiding large detachments and attacking their commissariat and ammunition columns from the rear, popping up here, there and everywhere on their indefatigable horses and disappearing with the speed of lightning, this is how those weather-beaten rough-riders in their torn uniforms kept up the war and stood faithful guard! Brave fellows they were, ever ready to push on vigorously, even when the blood from their torn feet dyed the rocks a deep red! No matter how weary they were, the sound of the bugle never failed to endow their limbs with renewed energy, and they could be depended on to the last man to do whatever was required of them.
It was on these endless marches, these reckless rides through rocky wastes and silent forests—to the accompaniment of the tramp of horses, the creaking of saddles and the rush and roar of rolling stones on lonely mountain-trails—that those strange, weird rhythms and melodies arose, which lived on long afterwards in the minds and hearts of the people.