Of course there are many safeguards, particularly in this case, but the points of the possession of land conceded, the time for the people to recover their rights never comes.
One of the difficulties in the clearing up of the foggy chapters of the history of the Hawaiian islands is that within the lifetime of men who were young at the close of the last century, the Hawaiian tongue became a written language, and made the traditions of savages highly colored stories, in various degrees according to ignorance, prejudice and sympathy, accepted as historical. The marvels accomplished by the missionaries influenced them to deal gently with those whose conversion was a recognized triumph of Christendom, and there was an effort to condemn Captain Cook, who had affected to nod as a God, as a warning to blasphemers. Still, the truth of history is precious as the foundations of faith to men of all races and traditions, and the Englishman who surpassed the French, Spaniards and Portuguese in discoveries of islands in the vast spaces of the Pacific Ocean, should have justice at the hands of Americans who have organized states and built cities by that sea, and possess the islands that have been named its paradise because endowed surpassingly with the ample treasures of volcanic soil and tropical climate. There the trade winds bestow the freshness of the calm and mighty waters, and there is added to the bounty of boundless wealth the charms of luxuriant beauty. All Americans should find it timely to be just to Captain Cook, and claim him as one of the pioneers of our conquering civilization.
CHAPTER XXII
The Start for the Land of Corn Stalks.
Spain Clings to the Ghost of Her Colonies—The Scene of War Interest
Shifts from Manila—The Typhoon Season—General Merritt on the Way
to Paris—German Target Practice by Permission of Dewey—Poultney
Bigelow with Canoe, Typewriter and Kodak—Hongkong as a Bigger and
Brighter Gibraltar.
When Spain gave up the ghosts of her American colonies, and the war situation was unfolded to signify that the fate of the Philippines was referred to a conference, and Aguinaldo announced the removal of his seat of government to Molones, one hour and a half from Manila, the scene of greatest interest was certainly not in the city and immediate surroundings. Then it was plain the American army must remain for some time, and would have only guard duty to perform. The Spaniards had succumbed and were submissive, having laid down their arms and surrendered all places and phases of authority. The insurgents' removal of their headquarters declared that they had abandoned all claim to sharing in the occupation of the conquered city, and their opposition to the United States, if continued in theory, was not to be that in a practical way. Between the American, Spanish and Philippine forces there was no probability of disputed facts or forms that could be productive of contention of a serious nature. There was but one question left in this quarter of the world that concerned the people of the United States, and that whether they would hold their grip, snatched by Dewey with his fleet, and confirmed by his government in sending an army, making our country possessors of the physical force to sustain our policy, whatever it might be, on the land as well as on the sea. Whether we should stay or go was not even to be argued in Manila, except in general and fruitless conversation. Then came the intelligence that General Merritt had been called to Paris and General Greene to Washington, and there was a deepened impression that the war was over. It was true that the army was in an attitude and having experiences that were such as travelers appreciate as enjoyable, and that no other body of soldiers had surroundings so curious and fascinating. The most agreeable time of the year was coming on, and the sanitary conditions of the city, under the American administration, would surely improve constantly, and so would! the fare of the men, for the machinery in all departments was working smoothly. The boys were feeling pretty well, because they found their half dollars dollars—the Mexican fifty-cent piece, bigger and with more silver in it than the American standard dollar, was a bird. A dollar goes further if it is gold in Manila than in an American city, and if our soldiers are not paid in actual gold they get its equivalent, and the only money question unsettled is whether the Mexican silver dollar is worth in American money fifty cents or less. One of the sources of anxieties and disappointment and depression of the American soldiers in Manila has been the irregularity and infrequency with which they get letters. If one got a letter or newspaper from home of a date not more than six weeks old he had reason to be congratulated. The transports trusted with the mails were slow, and communications through the old lines between Hongkong and San Francisco, Yokohama and Vancouver, were not reliably organized. There were painful cases of masses of mail on matter precious beyond all valuation waiting at Hongkong for a boat, and an issue whether the shorter road home was not by way of Europe. This is all in course of rapid reformation. There will be no more mystery as to routes or failures to connect. The soldiers, some of whom are ten thousand miles from home, should have shiploads of letters and papers. They need reading matter almost as much as they do tobacco, and the charming enthusiasm of the ladies who entertained the soldier boys when they were going away with feasting and flattery, praise and glorification, should take up the good work of sending them letters, papers, magazines and books. There is no reason why soldiers should be more subject to homesickness than sailors, except that they are not so well or ill accustomed to absence. The fact that the soldiers are fond of their homes and long for them can have ways of expression other than going home. A few days after the news of peace reached Manila, the transports were inspected for closing up the contracts with them under which they were detained, and soon they began to move. When the China was ordered to San Francisco, I improved the opportunity to return to the great republic. There was no chance to explore the many islands of the group of which Manila is the Spanish Capital. General Merritt changed the course of this fine ship and added to the variety of the voyage by taking her to Hongkong to sail thence by way of the China Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean, to Paris. Our route to San Francisco, by way of Hongkong, Nagasaki, Sunanaski, Kobe and the Yokohama light, was 6,905 knots, about seven thousand seven hundred statute miles, and gave us glimpses of the Asia shore, the west coast of Formosa and the great ports of Hongkong and Nagasaki. The first thing on the Sea of China, in the month of September, is whether we shall find ourselves in the wild embrace of a typhoon. It was the season for those terrible tempests and when we left Manila the information that one was about due was not spared us. We heard later on that the transport ahead of us four days, the Zealandia, was twenty-eight hours in a cyclone and much damaged—wrung and hammered and shocked until she had to put into Nagasaki for extensive repairs. The rainfall was so heavy during the storm that one could not see a hundred yards from the ship, and she was wrung in so furious a style in a giddy waltz, that the Captain was for a time in grave doubt whether she would not founder. The rule is when one is in the grasp of the oriental whirl to run through it, judging from the way of the wind, the shortest way out. There is a comparatively quiet spot in the center, and if the beset navigator can find the correct line of flight, no matter which way as relates to the line of his journey, he does well to take it. Often in this sea, as in this case, there were uncertainties as to directions. The rain narrowed observation like a dense fog, and there was danger of running upon some of the islands and snags of rocks. The battered vessel pulled through a cripple, with her boats shattered, her deck cracked across by a roller, and her crew were happy to find a quiet place to be put in order. "To be or not to be" an American instead of a Spanish or Asiatic city was the parting thought as the China left Manila Bay, and the dark rocks of Corrigedor faded behind us, and the rugged rocks that confront the stormy sea loomed on our right, and the violet peaks of volcanic mountains bounded our eastern horizon. The last view we had of the historic bay, a big German warship was close to the sentinel rock, that the Spaniards thought they had fortified, until Dewey came and saw and conquered, swifter than Caesar, and the Germans, venturing some target practice, by permission of Dewey, who relaxes no vigilance of authority. Hongkong is 628 miles from Manila, and the waters so often stirred in monstrous wrath, welcomed us with a spread of dazzling silk. The clumsy junks that appeared to have come down from the days of Confucius, were languid on the gentle ripples. The outstanding Asian islands, small and grim, are singularly desolate, barren as if splintered by fire, gaunt and forbidding. Hongkong is an island that prospers under the paws of the British lion, and it is a city displayed on a mountain side, that by day is not much more imposing than the town of Gibraltar, which it resembles, but at night the lights glitter in a sweeping circle, the steep ascent of the streets revealed by many lamps, and here and there the illumination climbs to the tops of the mountains that are revealed with magical efforts of color and form. The harbor is entered by an ample, but crooked channel, and is land-locked, fenced with gigantic bumps that sketch the horizon, and with their heads and shoulders are familiar with the sky. Here General Merritt, with his personal staff, left us, and between those bound from this port east and west, we circumnavigated the earth.
Mr. Poultney Bigelow, of Harper's Weekly, who dropped in by the way just to make a few calls at Manila, and has a commission to explore the rivers and lagoons of China with his canoe, left us, in that surprising craft, plying his paddle in the fashion of the Esquimaux, pulling right and left, hand over hand, balancing to a nicety on the waves and going ashore dry and unruffled, with his fieldglass and portfolio, his haversack and typewriter machine that he folds in a small box as if it was a pocket comb, and his kodak, with which he is an expert. He has not only ransacked with his canoe the rivers of America, but has descended the Danube and the Volga. He puts out in his canoe and crosses arms of the sea, as a pastime, makes a tent of his boat if it rains, fighting the desperadoes of all climes with the superstition, for which he is indebted to their imagination for his safety in running phenomenal hazards, that he is a magician. Marco Polo was not so great a traveler or so rare an adventurer as Bigelow, and, having left Florida under a thunder cloud of the scowl of an angry army for untimely criticisms, he has invaded the celestial empire in his quaint canoe, and he can beat the Chinese boatmen on their own rivers, and sleep like a sea bird on the swells of green water, floating like a feather, and safe in his slumbers as a solon goose with his head under his wing. However, he has not a winged boat, a bird afloat sailing round the purple peaks remote, as Buchanan Reed put it in his "Drifting" picture of the Vesuvian bay, for Bigelow uses a paddle. There has been a good deal of curiosity as well as indignation about his papers on the handling of our Cuban expedition before it sailed, and it is possible he was guilty of the common fault of firing into the wrong people. He was in Washington in June, and he and I meeting on the Bridge of Spain over the Pesang in Manila in August, we had, between us, put a girdle about the earth. Some say such experiences are good to show how small the earth is, but I am more than ever persuaded that it is big enough to find mankind in occupation and subsistence until time shall be no more. In the dock at Hongkong was Admiral Dewey's flagship Olympia, and while she had the grass scratched from her bottom, the gallant crew were having a holiday with the zest that rewards those who for four months were steadily on shipboard with arduous cares and labors. H.B.M.S. Powerful, of 12,000 tons displacement, with four huge flues and two immense military masts, presided at Hongkong under orders to visit Manila. The mingling of the English and Chinese in Hongkong is a lively object lesson, showing the extent of the British capacity to utilize Asiatic labor, and get the profit of European capital and discipline, an accumulation that requires an established sense of safety—a justified confidence in permanency.
The contrast between the city of Hongkong and that of Manila is one that Americans should study now, to be instructed in the respective colonial systems of England and Spain. Hongkong is clean and solid, with business blocks of the best style of construction, the pavements excellent in material and keeping, shops full of goods, all the appliances of modern times—a city up to date. There are English enough to manage and Chinese enough to toil. There are two British regiments, one of them from India, the rank and file recruited from the fighting tribes of northern mountaineers. There are dark, tall men, with turbans, embodiment of mystery, and Parsees who have a strange spirituality of their own, and in material matters maintain a lofty code of honor, while their pastime is that of striving while they march to push their heads into the clouds. There are no horses in Hongkong, the coolies carrying chairs on bamboo poles, or trotting with two-wheelers, an untiring substitute for quadrupeds, and locomotion on the streets or in the boats is swift and sure. I had an address to find in the city, on a tip at Manila of the presence, of a literary treasure, and my chairmen carried me, in a few minutes, to a tall house on a tall terrace, and the works of a martyr to liberty in the Philippines were located. The penalty for the possession of these books in Manila was that of the author executed by shooting in the back in the presence of a crowd of spectators. The cost of the carriers was thirty cents in silver—fifteen cents in United States money—and the men were as keen-eyed as they were sure-footed, and the strength of their tawny limbs called for admiration. They were not burdened with clothes, and the play of the muscles of their legs was like a mechanism of steel, oiled, precise, easy and ample in force. The China took on a few hundred tons of coal, which was delivered aboard from heavy boats by the basketful, the men forming a line, and so expert were they at each delivery, the baskets were passed, each containing about half a bushel—perhaps there were sixty baskets to the ton—at the rate of thirty-five baskets in a minute. Make due allowances and one gang would deliver twenty tons of coal an hour. The China was anchored three-quarters of a mile from the landing, and a boat ride was ten cents, or fifteen if you were a tipster. The boats are, as a rule, managed by a man and his wife; and, as it is their own, they keep the children at home. The average families on the boats—and I made several counts—were nine, the seven children varying from one to twelve years of age. The vitality of the Chinese is not exhausted, or even impaired.
CHAPTER XXIII
Kodak Snapped at Japan.