FLASH-LIGHTS
FROM THE SEVEN SEAS

WILLIAM L. STIDGER

MT. TAISHAN, CHINA, SAID TO BE THE OLDEST WORSHIPPING PLACE ON EARTH.

FLASH-LIGHTS
FROM THE SEVEN SEAS

BY
WILLIAM L. STIDGER
AUTHOR OF "STANDING ROOM ONLY," "STAR
DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS," "OUTDOOR
MEN AND MINDS," ETC.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
BISHOP FRANCIS J. McCONNELL

ILLUSTRATED
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY
THE AUTHOR

NEW

YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1921,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

DEDICATED TO
MARY I. SCOTT
A WOMAN FRIEND
WHO PUSHED BACK THE HORIZONS OF
THE WORLD AND LED ME TO THE
BEGINNING OF THE TRAIL THAT
HAS NO END: THE TRAIL OF
DREAMS AND TRAVEL

INTRODUCTION
By BISHOP FRANCIS J. McCONNELL

The Rev. William L. Stidger is one of the most thoroughly alive men in the ministry today. He sees quickly, reacts instantaneously, and knows how to bring others to a like alertness of mental and spiritual seizure. If it be said of him that he is impressionistic it must be remembered that the impressions are made on a mind of sound purpose and communicated to others for the sake of the truth behind the impression. His narratives of travel do not belong in the guide-book category or in that of the scientific geography. But if you wish to know what it would be like to visit yourself the countries described, the reading of Mr. Stidger's sketches will help you. If it be said that what one after all is getting is the Stidger view, it must not be forgotten that the Stidger view is marvellously vital and enkindling. The Stidger vitality is bracing and health-giving. It is a tonic for all of us who are getting a little old and sluggish. The contagion of youth and energy are in this book: it will reach and stir all who read.

Francis J. McConnell

Pittsburgh, Pa.

FOREWORD

That vast stretch of opal islands; jade continents; sapphire seas of strange sunsets; mysterious masses of brown-skinned humanity; brown-eyed, full-breasted, full-lipped and full-hipped women; which we call the Orient, can only be caught by the photographer's art in flash-light pictures.

It is like a photograph taken in the night. It cannot be clear cut. It cannot have clean outlines. It can only be a blurred mass of humanity with burdens on their shoulders; humanity bent to the ground; creaking carts; weary-eyed children and women; moving, moving, moving; like phantom shadow-shapes; in and out; one great maze through the majestic ages; one confused history of the ancient past; emerging; but not yet out into the sunlight!

Such masses of humanity; such dim, uncertain origins of unfathered races; these can only be caught and seen as through a glass darkly.

Paul Hutchinson, my friend, in "The Atlantic Monthly" says of China what is true of the whole Orient:

"In this vast stretch of country, with its poor communications, we can only know in part. When one sets out to generalize he does so at his own peril. The only consolation is that it is almost impossible to disprove any statement; for, however fantastical, it is probably in accord with the facts in some part of the land."

The facts, fancies, and fallacies of this book are gleaned from the rovings and ramblings of a solid year of over fifty-five thousand miles of travel; through ten separate countries: Japan, Korea, China, the Philippine Islands, French Indo-China, the Malay States, Borneo, Java, Sumatra and the Hawaiian Islands; across seven seas: the Pacific Ocean, the Sea of Japan, the North China Sea, the Yellow Sea, the South China Sea, the Malacca Straits, and the Sea of Java; after visiting five wild and primitive tribes: the Ainu Indians of Japan, the Igorrotes of the Philippines, the Negritos of the same islands; the Dyaks of Borneo, and the Battaks of Sumatra; face to face by night and day with new races, new faces, new problems, new aspirations, new ways of doing things, new ways of living, new evils, new sins, new cruelties, new fears, new degradations; new hopes, new days, new ways, new nations arising; new gods, and a new God!

When one comes back from such a trip, having fortified himself with the reading of many books written about these far lands, in addition to his travel, one still has the profound conviction that, after all is said, done, and thought out, the only honest way to picture these vast stretches of land and humanity is to confess that all is in motion; like a great mass of bees in a hive, one on top of the other, busy at buzzing, buying, selling, living, dying, climbing, achieving; groping in the dark; moving upward by an unerring instinct toward the light.

At nights I cannot sleep for thinking about that weird, dim, misty panorama of fleeting, flashing pictures; those thousands of Javanese that I saw down in Sourabaya, who have never known what it means to have a home; who sleep in doorways by night, and along the river banks; where mothers give birth to children, who in turn live and die out under the open sky. Nor can I forget that animal-like beggar in Canton who dug into a gutter for his food; or those hideous beggars, by winter along the railway in Shantung; or the naked one-year-old child covered with sores which a beggar woman in the Chinese section of Shanghai held to her own naked breast. Those pictures and a thousand others abide.

One has the feeling that if he could go back, again, and again, and again to these far shores, and live with these peoples and die with them, then he would begin faintly to understand what it all means and where it is all headed.

And this author, for one, is honest in saying that, in spite of careful investigation, in spite of extensive travel and a sympathetic heart, he sees but dimly. The very glory of it all, the age of it all, the wonder of it all, the mysterious beauty and thrill of it all; the thrill of these masses of humanity, their infinite possibilities for future greatness; like a great blinding flash of glory, dims one's eyes for a time.

But, now, that he has, through quiet meditation and perspective, had a chance to develop the films of thought, he finds that he has brought back home pictures that one ought not to keep to one's self; especially in this day, when, what happens to Asia is so largely to determine what happens to America.

So, out of the dark room, where they have been developing for a year, and out of the dim shadows of that mysterious land whence they came, they are printed and at the bottom of each picture shall be written the humble words:

"Flash-Lights from the Seven Seas"

William L. Stidger.

Detroit, Michigan.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

FLASH-LIGHTS
FROM THE SEVEN SEAS

CHAPTER I
FLASH-LIGHTS OF FLAME

Fire! Fire! Fire everywhere!

Fire in the sky, fire on the sea, fire on the ships, fire in the flowers, fire in the trees of the forest; fire in the Poinsetta bushes which flash their red flames from every yard and jungle.

In the tropical lands flowers do not burst into blossom; they burst into flame. Great bushes of flaming Poinsetta, as large as American lilac bushes, burst into flame over night in Manila.

That great tree, as large as an Oak, which they call "The Flame of the Forest," looks like a tree on fire with flowers. One will roam the world over and see nothing more beautiful than this great tree which looks like a massive umbrella of solid flame.

Every flower in the Orient seems to be a crimson flower. The tropical heat of the Philippines, Java, Borneo, Sumatra, the Malay States and India's far reaches; with beautiful Ceylon, and Burma; seems to give birth to crimson child-flowers.

The sunsets burst into bloom, as well as the flowers. There is no region on earth where sunsets flare into birth and die in a flash-light of glory and beauty like they do in the regions of the South China Sea. For months at a stretch, every night, without a break, the most wildly gorgeous, flaming, flaring, flashing crimson sunsets crown the glory of the days.

I have been interested in catching pictures of sunsets all over the world. I have caught hundreds of sunsets with the Graflex; and other hundreds have I captured with a Corona, just as they occurred; and I have never seen a spot on earth where the sunsets were such glorious outbursts of crimson and golden beauty as across the circling shores of Manila Bay.

Night after night I have sat in that ancient city and watched these tumultuous, tumbling, Turner-like flashes of color.

One night the sky was flame from sea to zenith across Manila Bay. It was like a great Flame of the Forest tree in full bloom. Against this sky of flaming sunset-clouds, hundreds of ships, anchored in the bay, lit their lesser crimson lights; while, now and then, a battleship which was signaling to another ship, flashed its message of light against the fading glow of glory in the crimson sunset.

"It is light talking unto light; flash unto flash; crimson unto crimson!" said a friend who sat with me looking out across that beautiful bay.

The picture of that flaming sunset, with the great vessels silhouetted against it; with the little lights on the ships, running in parallel rows; and the flashing lights of signals from the masts of the battleship will never die in one's memory.

It was a quiet, peaceful scene.

But suddenly, like a mighty volcano a burst of flame swept into the air at the mouth of the Pasig River. It leapt into the sky and lighted up the entire harbor in a great conflagration. The little ships stood out, silhouetted against that great flaming oil tanker.

"It's a ship on fire!" Otto exclaimed.

"Let's go and see it!" I added.

Then we were off for the mouth of the Pasig which was not far away.

There we saw the most spectacular fire I have ever seen. A great oil tanker full of Cocoanut-oil had burst into flame, trapping thirty men in its awful furnace. Its gaunt masts stood out like toppling tree skeletons from a forest fire against the now deepening might; made vivid and livid by the bursting flames that leapt higher and higher with each successive explosion from a tank of gasoline or oil.

I got out my Graflex and caught several pictures of this flash-light of flame, but none that will be as vivid, as lurid, or as lasting as the flash-light that was etched into the film of my memory.

The next flash-light of flame came bursting out of midnight darkness on the island of Java.

We were bound for old Bromo, that giant volcano of Java. We had started at midnight and it would take us until daylight to reach the crater-brink of this majestic mountain of fire.

White flashes of light, leapt from Bromo at frequent intervals all night long as we traveled on ponies through the tropical jungle trail, upward, and onward to the brink of that pit of hell.

White flashes of light leapt from Bromo at the narrow rail. They called them "Night-Blooming Lilies," and sure enough they blanketed the rugged pathway that night like so many tiny white Fairies. Indeed there was something beautifully weird in their white wonder against the night. They looked like frail, earth-angels playing in the star-light, sending out a sweet odor which mingled strangely with the odor of sulphur from the volcano.

And back of all this was the background of that awful, thundering, rumbling and grumbling volcano as somber as suicide. Strangely weird flashes lighted the mountains for miles around.

"It looks like heat lightning back at home," said an American.

"Only the flashes are more vivid!" said another member of the party.

Those flashes of light from the inner fires of the earth, bursting from the fissures of restless volcano Bromo shall ever remain, like some strange glimpse of a new Inferno.

Volcanic Merapi, another belching furnace of Java, gave me a picture of a flash-light of flame.

The night that we stayed up on the old temple of Boroboedoer, Merapi was unusually active; and now and then its flashes of flame lighted up the whole beautiful valley between the temple and the mountain.

At each flash of fire, the tall Bamboo and Cocoanut trees loomed like graceful Javanese women in the midst of far-reaching, green, rice paddies; while two rivers that met below us, wound under that light like two silver threads in the night.

Once, when an unusually heavy flash came from Merapi, we saw below us a beautiful Javanese girl clasped in the arms of her brown lover. Each seemed to be stark naked as they stood under a Cocoanut tree like Rodin bronzes.

It was this beautiful girl's voice that we later heard singing to her lover a Javanese love song in the tropical night.

This, I take it, was the Flame of Love; a flame which lights up the world forever; everywhere her devotees, clothed or naked, are the same; forever and a day; be it on the streets of Broadway; along the lanes of the Berkshire Hills of New England; up the rugged trails of the Sierras; or along the quiet, tree-lined streets of an American village. It is a flame; this business of love; a flame which, flashing by day and night, lights the world to a new glory.

* * * * * *

One night the missionaries in Korea saw flames bursting out against the hills.

"What is it?" they cried, filled with fear.

"The Japanese are burning the Korean villages!" said one who knew.

All night long the villages burned and all night long the people were murdered. Runners brought news to the hillsides of Seoul where anxious, broken-hearted American missionaries waited.

"One, two, three, four, five; ten, fifteen, twenty; thirty, forty, fifty; a hundred, two hundred, three hundred; villages are burning," so came the messages.

The entire peninsula was lighted as with a great holocaust.

It is said that the light could be seen from Fusan itself, a hundred miles away.

"From our village it looked like a light over a great American steel-mill city," said a missionary to me.

And when the morning came, the flames were still leaping high against the crimson sky of dawn.

For days this burning of villages continued. Belgium never saw more ruthless flame and fire; set by sterner souls; or harder hearts!

That was two years ago.

The villages are charred ruins now. Some of them have never been rebuilt. The murdered people of these villages have gone back to dust.

The Japanese think that the fires are out. They thought, when the flames of those burning villages ceased leaping into the skies; and at last were but smouldering embers; that the flames had died. But the Japanese were wrong, for on that very day, the Flames of Freedom began to burn in Korean hearts and souls! And from that day to this; those flames have been rising higher and higher. These are Flash-Lights of Flame that, as the years go by; mount, like beacon lights of hope on Korean hills, to light the marching dawn of Korean Independence.

* * * * * *

A beautiful Korean custom that used to be; flashes a flame of fire across the screen of history.

In the old days the Korean Emperor used to have signals of fire flashed from hill to hill running clear from the Chinese border to Seoul, the Korean capital. This signal indicated that all was well along the borders and that there was no danger of a Chinese invasion from the north.

Korea has always been a bone of contention between China, Russia and Japan. Consequently this little peninsula has always walked on uneasy paths, which is ever the fate of a buffer state.

Never did a Korean Emperor go to sleep in peace until he looked out and saw that the signal fires burned on the beautiful mountain peaks surrounding the city of Seoul; fires indicating that the borders were safe that night and that inmates of the palace might rest in peace and security.

"It must have been a beautiful sight to have seen the light flashing on the mountain peak there to the north," I said to an eighty-year old Korean patriarch.

"It meant peace for the night," he answered. "It was beautiful. I often long to see those fires of old burning again on yonder mountain."

He said this with a dramatic wave of his stately white robed arm.

"The sunsets still flame from that western mountain peak, overlooking your city beautiful!" I said with a smile.

"Yes, the sunsets still flame behind that peak," he responded with a far-away look in his aged eyes.

"Perhaps the good Christian God is lighting the fires for you?" I suggested.

"Yes, He, the good Christian God; is still lighting the fires for us; but they are fires of freedom, fires of hope, and fires of Democracy!" the old man said with a new light in his own flashing eyes.

"And fires of peace," I added.

"Yes, fires of Peace when freedom comes!" he responded.

But whatever the political implications are; it is historically true that this old custom had existed for years until the Japanese took possession of Korea and stopped this beautiful tradition.

But behind that same mountain from which the bonfires used to flash in the olden days; indicating that the frontiers were safe for the night; that no enemy hosts were invading the peninsula; behind that mountain the fires of sunset still flame, flash, flare, and die away in the somber purple shadows of night.

* * * * * *

Nor shall one forget an evening at Wanju; a hundred miles from Seoul; sitting in the Mission House looking down into that village of a hundred thousand souls; watching the fires of evening lighted; watching a blanket of gray-blue smoke slowly lift over that little village; watching the great round moon slowly rise above a jutting peak beyond the village to smile down on that quiet, peaceful scene in mid-December.

Koreans never light their fires until evening comes and then they light a fire at one end of the house, under the floor and the smoke and heat travel the entire length of the house warming the rooms. It is a poor heat maker but it is a picturesque custom.

Thousands of flames lighted up the sky that night. The little thatch houses, and the children in their quaint garbs moving against the flames composed a strange Oriental Rembrandt picture.

* * * * * *

Streets! Streets! Streets!

Lights! Lights! Lights!

Somehow streets and lights go together.

We think of our great Broadway. We smile at our superior ingenuity when we think of the "Great White Way."

But for sheer beauty; fascinating, captivating, alluring, beauty; give me the Ginza in Tokyo on a summer evening; with its millions of twinkling little lights above the thousands of Oriental shops; with the sound of bells, the whistle of salesmen, the laughter of beautiful Japanese girls; the clacking of dainty feet in wooden shoes; and the indefinable essence of romance that hovers over a street of this Oriental type at night. I'll stake the romance, and beauty of the Ginza in Tokyo, against any street in the world. He who has looked upon the Ginza by night, has a Flash-Light of Flame; of tiny, myriad little flaming lights; burned into his memory; to live until he sees at last the lighted streets of Paradise itself.

* * * * * *

Nor are the clothes of the Orient without their flaming colors.

The beautiful kimonos of the Geisha girls of Japan; the crimson, gold, and rose glory of the Sing Song Girls of China; the flashing reds of the brown-skinned Spanish belles of the Philippines, as they glide, like wind-blown Bamboo trees through the streets; and the lurid, livid, robes which men and women alike wear in Borneo and Java. In fact all of the clothes of the Orient, are flame-clothes. There are no quiet colors woven into the gown of the Oriental. The Oriental does not know what soft browns are. Crimson is the favorite color for man or woman. They even make their sails red, blue, green and yellow. The beautiful colors of the sailboats in the harbor of Yokohama is one of the first flashing touches of the Orient that a traveler gets. From Japanese Obies, which clasp the waists of Japanese girls, to Javanese Sarongs, the flame and flash of crimson predominates in the gowns of both men and women. Where an American man would blush to be caught in any sort of a gown with crimson predominating save a necktie, the Japanese gentlemen, the Filipino, the Malay, and the Javanese all wear high colors most of the time. And the women are like splendid flaming bushes of fire all the time.

A Javanese bride is all flame as far as her dress is concerned. Her face is powdered; her eyebrows are pencilled a coal black; her arms and shoulders daubed with a yellow grease. As to her dress, the sarong is a flaming robe that covers her body to the breasts; red being the dominant color; with a crown of metal which looks like a beehive on her head. Brass bracelets and ornaments on her graceful arms complete her costume.

* * * * * *

Even the Pagodas and Temples of the Oriental lands are flame.

The most beautiful Temples of Japan are the Nikko Temples.

"See Nikko and you have seen Japan" is the saying that is well said.

But when one has spent weeks or a week, days or a day at Nikko; he comes away with an impression of beautiful, tall, terraced, red-lacquered Pagodas; beautiful, graceful red-gowned women; beautiful, architectural masterpieces of Oriental Temples; all finished in wonderful red lacquer; beautiful red-cheeked women in the village stores; beautiful red Kimonos for sale in the Curio shops; red berries burning against the wonderful green grass; and all set off, against and under, and crowned by wonderful green rows of great Cryptomaria trees. These red Temples and these Red Pagodas—red with a red that is flaming splendor of the last word in the lacquer artist's skill; are like beautiful crimson jewels set in a setting of emerald.

And back of all these Flash-Lights of Flame one remembers the path of a single star on the smooth surface of Manila Bay at night; and the phosphorescent beauty of Manila Bay where great ships cleave this lake of fire when the phosphorus is heavy of a Summer night; and every ripple is a ripple of flame. One remembers the continuous flash of heat lightning down in Borneo and on Equatorial Seas; and one remembers the Southern Cross; and the flash-lights of fire in a half-breed woman's eyes.

CHAPTER II
FLASH-LIGHTS PHYSICAL

The red dawn of tropical Java was near. The shadows of night were still playing from millions of graceful Palm trees which swung gently in the winds before the dawn.

Three ancient volcanos, still rumbling in blatant activity, loomed like gigantic monsters of the underworld, bulging their black shoulders above the earth. Before us lay a valley of green rice paddies.

We had roved over ancient Boroboedoer all night, exploring its haunted crannies and corners, listening to its weird noises; dreaming through its centuries of age; climbing its seven terraces. But in the approaching dawn, the one outstanding thrill of the night was that of a half-naked Javanese girl, who stood for an hour, poised in her brown beauty on the top of one of the Bells of Buddha, with some weird Javanese musical instrument, singing to the dawn.

Then it came.

"What? Her lover?"

No! The dawn! The dawn was her lover! Or, perhaps her lover was old Merapi.

For, there, as we too, climbed to her strategic pinnacle of glory on top of the Buddha Bell to watch the dawn that she had called up with her weird music and her subtle brown beauty; before us, stretched thousands of acres of green rice paddies, spread out like the Emerald lawn of an Emerald Springtime in Heaven. Below us two silver streams of water met and wedded, to go on as one.

As we stood there that morning on the top of Boroboedoer's highest bell, lines of Edna St. Vincent Millay swung into my soul:

"All I could see from where I stood
Was three tall mountains and a wood."

Only in this instance all I could see were three volcanos. And the one in the center, old Merapi was belching out a trail of black smoke. These three volcanos, take turns through the centuries. When one is working the other two rest. When one ceases its activity, one of the others takes up the thundering anthem and carries it on for a few years or centuries and then lapses into silence, having done its part. While we were there it was Merapi's turn to thunder and on this particular morning Merapi was busy before day-light.

For fifty miles along the horizon, a trail of black smoke swept like the trail of black smoke which a train leaves in its wake on a still day. There was not another cloud in the eastern skies. Nothing but that trail of black smoke as we stood on the top of Boroboedoer at dawn and watched.

Then something happened. It was, as if some magician had waved a magic wand back of the mountain. The rising sun was the magician. We saw its heralds spreading out, like great golden fan-ribs with the cone of the volcano, its direct center of convergence. Then before our astonished, our utterly bewildered, and our fascinated eyes, that old volcanic cone was changed to a cone of gold. Then the golden cone commenced to belch forth golden smoke. And finally the trail of smoke for fifty miles along the horizon became a trail of golden smoke.

This was a Flash-Light that literally burned its way into our memories to remain forever.

There is another Flash-Light Physical which has to do with another volcano which I mentioned in the preceding chapter. Bromo is its name. It is still there, down on the extreme eastern end of Java, unless in the meantime the old rascal has taken it into his demoniacal head to blow himself to pieces as he threatened to do the day we lay on our stomachs, holding on to the earth, with the sides trembling beneath us.

Old Bromo was well named. It reminds one of Bromo-Seltzer. I had heard of him long before I reached Java. I had heard of the Sand Plains down into the midst of whose silver whiteness he was set, like a great conical gem of dark purple by day and fire by night.

Travelers said "You must see Bromo! You must see Bromo! If you miss everything else see Bromo! It's the most completely satisfactory volcano in the world."

It was two o'clock in the morning when we started on little rugged Javanese ponies up Bromo's steep slopes.

At daybreak we reached the mile high cliff which looks down into the world-famous Sand Sea. It was a sea of white fog. I have seen the same thing at the Grand Canyon and in Yosemite looking down from the rims. I thought of these great American canyons as I looked down into the Bromo Sand Sea. By noon this was a great ten-mile long valley of silver sand which glittered in the sunlight like a great silver carpeted ballroom floor. Tourists from all over the world have thrilled to its strange beauty. Like the gown of some great and ancient queen this silver cloth lies there; or like some great silver rug of Oriental weaving it carpeted that valley floor at noon.

But at daybreak it was a sea of mist into which it looked as if one might plunge, naked to the skin and wash his soul clean of its tropical sweat and dirt; a fit swimming pool for the gods of Java, of whom there are so many.

Then something happened as we stood looking down into that smooth sea of white fog, rolling in great billows below us. There was a sudden roar as if an entire Hindenburg line had let loose with its "Heavies." There was a sudden and terrific trembling of the earth under our feet which made us jump back from that precipice in terror.

Then slowly, as if it were on a great mechanical stage, the perfect cone of old rumbling Bromo, from which curled a thin wisp of black smoke, bulged its way out of the center of that sea of white fog, rising gradually higher and higher as though the stage of the morning had been set, the play had begun, and unseen stage hands behind the curtain of fog, with some mighty derrick and tremendous power were lifting a huge volcano as a stage piece.

Then came the quick, burning tropical sun, shooting above the eastern horizon as suddenly as the volcanic cone had been lifted above the fog. This hot sun burned away the mists in a few minutes and there, stretching below us, in all its oriental beauty was the sinewy, voluptuous form of the silver sand sea—Bromo's subtle mistress.

* * * * * *

There is another Physical Flash-light that will never die.

Coming out of the Singapore Straits one evening at sunset, bound for the island of Borneo across the South China Sea, I was sitting on the upper deck of a small Dutch ship. The canvas flapped in the winds. A cool, tropical breeze fanned our faces. Back of us in our direct wake a splashing, tumbling, tumultuous tropical sunset flared across the sky. It was crimson glory. In the direct path of the crimson sun a lighthouse flashed its blinking eyes like a musical director with his baton beating time.

I watched this flashing, lesser, light against the crimson sunset and was becoming fascinated by it.

Then great black clouds began to roll down over that crimson background as if they were huge curtains, rolled down from above, to change the setting of the western stage for another act.

But as they rolled they formed strange and beautiful Doric columns against the crimson skies and before I knew it, I was looking at the ruins of an old Greek temple in the sky. Then the black clouds formed a perfect hour-glass reaching from the sea to the sky, with its background of crimson glory, and the little lighthouse seemed to be flashing off the minutes in the arteries of that hour-glass.

And then it was night a deep, dense, tropical night; heavy with darkness; rich with perfume; weird with mystery. But the sunset of crimson; the Doric temple in ruins; the hour-glass; and the flashing lighthouse still remained.

* * * * * *

And who shall ever forget the sunsets of gold across Manila Bay night after night; with great warships and majestic steamers, sleek and slender cutters, white sails, long reaching docks, and graceful Filipino women, silhouetted against the gold? And who shall forget the domes, towers, and pinnacles of the Cathedrals; and the old fort within the city walls as they too were silhouetted against the gold of the evening?

* * * * * *

Mt. Taishan, the oldest worshiping place on earth, not far from the birthplace of Confucius; in Shantung; is one of the most sacred shrines of the Orient. There, countless millions, for hundreds of centuries, have climbed over six thousand granite steps, up its mile high slope to pay their vows; to catch a view of the blue sea from its imminence; to feel the sweep, wonder and glory of its sublime height, knowing that Confucius himself gloried in this climb. The exaltation of that glorious view; shall live, side by side, with the view from the top of the Black Diamond range in Korea one winter's night as we caught the full sweep of the Japan Sea by sunset. In fact these all shall live as great mountain top Physical Flash-Lights etched with the acid of a burning wonder into one's soul!

Nor shall one ever forget a month's communion with Fujiyama, that solitary, great and worshiped mountain of Japan; sacred as a shrine; beautiful with snow; graceful as a Japanese woman's curving cheek; bronzed by summer; belted with crimson clouds by sunset like a Japanese woman's Obie. It, too, presented its unforgettable Physical Flash-Lights.

The first glimpse was one of untold spun-gold glory. There it stood.

"There it is! There it is! Look!" a fellow traveler cried.

"There is what?" I called. We were on top of a great American College building in Tokyo.

"It's Fuji!"

I had given up hope. We had been there two weeks and Fujiyama was not to be seen. The mists, fogs, and clouds of winter had kept it hidden from our wistful, wondering, waiting eyes.

But there it stood, like a naked man, unashamed; proud of its white form; without a single cloud; burning in the white sunlight. Its huge shoulders were thrown back as with suppressed strength. Its white chest, a Walt Whitman hairy with age; gray-breasted with snow; bulged out like some mighty wrestler, challenging the world. No wonder they worship it!

I had gloried in Fujiyama from many a varied viewpoint. I had caught this great shrine of Japanese devotion in many of its numberless moods. I had seen it outlined against a clear-cut morning sunlight, bathed in the glory of a broadside of light fired from the open muzzle of the sun. I had seen it shrouded in white clouds; and also with black clouds breeding a storm, at even-time. I had seen it with a crown of white upon its brow, and I had seen it with a necklace of white cloud pearls about its neck.

Once I saw this great mountain looking like some ominous volcano through a misty gray winter evening. And one mid-afternoon I saw it almost circled by a misty rainbow, a sight never to be forgotten on earth or in heaven by one whose soul considers a banquet of beauty more worth shouting over than an invitation to feast with a King.

But the last sight I caught of Fuji was the last night that I was in Tokyo, as I rode up from the Ginza on New Year's eve out toward Aoyama Gakuin, straight into a sunset, unsung, unseen by mortal eye.

Before me loomed the great mountain like a monstrous mass of mighty ebony carved by some delicate and yet gigantic artist's hand.

I soon discovered where the artist got the ebony from which to carve this pointed mountain of ebony with its flat top; for far above this black silhouetted mountain was a mass of ebony clouds that seemed to spread from the western horizon clear to the rim of the eastern horizon and beyond into the unseen Sea of Japan in the back yard of the island. It was from this mass of coal-black midnight-black clouds that the giant artist carved his ebony Fuji that night.

But not all was black. Perhaps the giant forged that mountain rather than carved it, for there was a blazing furnace behind Fuji. And this furnace was belching fire. It was not crimson. It was not gold. It was not red. It was fire.

It was furnace fire. It was a Pittsburgh blast-furnace ten thousand times as big as all of Pittsburgh itself, belching fire and flames of sparks. These sparks were flung against the evening skies. Some folks, I fancy, on that memorable night called them stars; but I know better. They were giant sparks flung from that blast-furnace which was booming and roaring behind Fuji. I could not hear it roar; that is true; but I could feel it roar. I could not hear it because even so great a sound as that furnace must have been making will not travel sixty miles, even though it was as still up there in the old theological tower as a country cemetery by winter down in Rhode Island when the snow covers the graves.

Then suddenly a flare of fire shot up directly behind the cone of Fuji, flaming into the coal-bank of clouds above the mountain, as if the old shaggy seer had forgotten his age and was dreaming of youth again when the earth was young and he was a volcano.

Above that streak of fire and mingled with it, black smoke seemed to pour until it formed a flat cloud of black smoke directly above the cone, and spread out like a fan across the sky to give the giant artist further ebony to shape his mountain monument.

Then Fuji suddenly belched its volcano of color and lava; of rose and gold, amber, salmon, primrose, sapphire, marigold; and in a stream these poured over Fuji's sides and down along the ridge-line of the lesser hills until they too were covered with a layer of molten glory a mile thick.

The clouds above Fuji forgot to be black. In fact, their mood of sullenness departed as by magic, and a smile swept over their massive mood of moroseness, and glory swept the skies. It was as if that furnace behind Fuji had suddenly burst, throwing its molten fire over the hills, the mountains, the sky, the world.

And "mine eyes" had "seen the glory of the coming of the Lord." And that was enough for any man for one lifetime.

* * * * * *

Then there is beautiful Boroboedoer down in Java. It is a Physical Flash-Light that looms with its huge and mysterious historical architectural beauty like some remnant of the age when the gods of Greece roamed the earth. A sunrise from its pinnacled height I have already described, but the temple itself is unforgettable. There is nothing like it on the earth.

Boroboedoer is one of the wonders of the world, although little known. It is in the general shape of the pyramid of Egypt, but more beautiful. One writer says, "Boroboedoer represents more human labor and artistic skill than the great pyramids." Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace says: "The human labor and skill expended on Boroboedoer is so great that the labor expended on the great pyramid sinks into significance beside it."

Boroboedoer was built in the seventh century A.D., by the Javanese under Hindu culture. Then came the Mohammedan invasion, destroying all such works of art in its pathway.

It is said that the priests so loved this beautiful Buddha temple that they covered it over with earth and then planted trees and tropical vegetation on it. In six months it was so overgrown that it looked like a hill. This is one explanation of why it lay for a thousand years unknown.

The volcanic ashes undoubtedly helped in this secretion, for old Merapi even now belches its ashes, rocks and dust out over the beautiful valley down upon which Merapi looks.

From Djodjakarta you go to the temples.

This great temple has, instead of the plain surfaces of the great pyramid, one mile of beautifully carved decorations, with 2141 separate panels depicting the life of Buddha from the time he descended from the skies until he arrived at Nirvana, or perfect isolation from the world. A history of more than a thousand years is told in its stone tablets by the sculptor's chisel, told beautifully, told enduringly, told magnificently.

One writer says: "This temple is the work of a master-builder whose illuminated brain conceived the idea of this temple wherein he writes in sculpture the history of a religion."

And again one says architecturally speaking of it:

"It is a polygonous pyramid of dark trachyte, with gray cupulas on jutting walls and projecting cornices, a forest of pinnacles."

There are four ledges to this hill temple and above each ledge or stone path are rows of Buddhas hidden in great 5-foot stone bells, and at the top crowning the temple a great 50-foot bell in which Buddha is completely hidden from the world, symbol of the desired Nirvana that all Buddhists seek.

Mysterious with weird echoes of a past age it stands, silhouetted against a flaming sky to-night as I see it for the first time. It is late evening and all day long we have been climbing the ancient ruins of that magnificent age of Hindu culture on the island of Java. This temple of Boroboedoer was to be the climax of the day, and surely it is all of that.

The fire dies out of the sky. The seven terraces of the stone temple begin to blur into one great and beautiful pyramid. Only the innumerable stone bells stand out against the starlit night; stone bells with the little peepholes in them, through which the stolid countenances and the stone eyes of many Buddhas, in calm repose, look out upon the four points of the compass.

Night has fallen. We have seen the great Temple by crimson sunset and now we shall see it by night.

The shadows seem to wrap its two thousand exquisite carvings, and its Bells of Buddha in loving and warm tropical embrace. But no warmer, is the embrace of the shadows about the Temple than the naked embrace of a score of Javanese boys who hold to their hearts naked Javanese beauties who sit along the terraces looking into the skies of night utterly oblivious to the passing of time or of the presence of curious American strangers.

Love is such a natural thing to these Javanese equatorial brown brawn and beauties that unabashed they lie, on Buddha's silent bells, breast to breast, cheek to cheek, and limb to limb; as if they have swooned away in the warmth of the tropical night.

The Southern Cross looks down upon lover and tourist as we all foregather on the topmost terrace of that gigantic shadow-pyramid of granite.

The sound of the innumerable naked footsteps of all past ages seems to patter along the stone terraces. Now and then the twang of the Javanese angklong and the beautiful notes of a flute sweep sweetly into the shadowed air.

Then comes the dancing of a half dozen Javanese dancing girls, naked to the waist, their crimson and yellow sarongs flying in the winds of night, as, in slow, graceful movements, facing one of the Bells of Buddha they pay their vows and offer their bodies and their souls to Buddha; and evidently, also to the Javanese youths who accompany them in their dances.

The sound of the voices of these Javanese girls—who in the shadows look for all the world like figures that Rodin might have dreamed—mingling their laughter with the weird music; shall linger long in one's memory of beautiful things.

Their very nakedness seemed to fit in with the spirit of the night; a spirit of complete abandonment to beauty and worship. In their attitudes there seemed to be a mingling of religion and earthly passion; but it was so touched with reverence that we felt no shock to our American sensibilities.

All night long we wandered about the terraces of the old Temple.

We wondered how long the Javanese girls would remain.

At dawn when we arose to see Boroboedoer by daylight they were still there as fresh as the dawn itself in their brown beauty, the dew of night glistening in their black hair and wetting their full breasts.

And across, from Boroboedoer the sun, in its dawning splendor, was transforming belching and rumbling old volcanic Merapi into a cone of gold.

LOOKING OVER THE WALLED CITY OF MANILA, AMERICAN SOLDIERS SCALED THIS WALL A FEW YEARS AGO TO STAY.

BEAUTIFUL FILIPINO GIRLS ALL OF WHOM SPEAK ENGLISH.

KOREAN GIRLS WITH AMERICAN IDEALS AND TRAINING.

STEPPING ASIDE IN KOREA TO LET THE AMERICAN DEVIL WAGON GO BY.

CHAPTER III
FLASH-LIGHTS OF FAITH

He was an old man; gray-haired, gray-bearded; gray-gowned; and he knew that the Japanese Gendarmes would just as soon take his life as light a cigarette. They do each with inhumane impunity. One means as much to them as the other.

He was under arrest for conspiracy in the Independence Movement.

"Do you know about the Independence Movement?" he was asked.

"Yes, I know all about it," was his fearless reply; though he knew that that reply in itself might mean his death; even without trial or further evidence. Just the fact that he had admitted that he knew anything at all about the movement was enough to throw him into prison. He was like an old Prophet in his demeanor. Something about the very dignity and sublime Faith of the man awed the souls of these crude barbarians from the Island Empire.

"Since when was it begun?" asked the Gendarmes.

"Since ten years ago when you Japanese first came to Korea," was the dignified reply.

"From whence did it spring?" he was asked next.

"From the hearts of twenty million people!"

"Did twenty millions of people all get together then, and plan?"

"Not together in body but in spirit!"

"But there must have been some men to start it?" the Japanese Gendarme said.

"They all started it!" was the old man's reply.

"Is there no one who had charge of this movement from the beginning?"

"Yes, there is one!"

"Do you know him?"

"I know him well!"

"What is his name?"

"His name is God!" said this seventy-year old, fearless Christian Korean Patriot.

Such faith as I have indicated in the paragraphs above is a common thing in Korea. Never in the history of the world have Christian people been subjected to the same tortures, the same cruelties, the same terrors, for their Faith as the early Christian martyrs; save these; the Koreans.

We had thought that the world had gotten past that day when men would be tortured, crushed, persecuted, and killed because they were Christians but that day is not yet past as almost any American Missionary in Korea will testify.

The Japanese officials will say that there is no persecution because of Christianity; but missionaries in Korea know better. They will point to countless incidents when men, women and children have been hounded, and persecuted for no other reason than that they were Christians.

"And when Jesus heard it, He marveled greatly and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel!" might well be said of the Korean Christians every hour, every minute, every second. They know what it means to die for their Faith.

The story of Pak Suk Han is one of the most thrilling illustrations of Faith that I have ever heard in Oriental lands. He had been a Christian since he was seven years of age. He was a brilliant speaker and the Assistant Pastor of the First Methodist Church at Pyeng Yang, where, even the non-Christians loved him. He was arrested on Independence Day and sent to prison where a barbarous Japanese officer, whom the natives called "The Brute" kicked him in the side because he would not give up his Christ. From that kick and further inhuman treatment running over a period of six months; a disease developed which a most reliable missionary doctor told me ended Pak Suk Han's life.

When he knew that he was about to die he said, "I have been a Christian and have served the church since I was seven years old. I have given my life to Christ, all but the last six months in prison which I have given to my country. I have no regrets. I might have lived had I been willing to deny my nation's rights and give up my Christ. I am going home to my Father's house. Good-by!" No Christian martyrs in the early centuries of the persecutions by Rome ever died with greater glory in their souls; or with deeper Faith!

* * * * * *

The temperature was zero.

The cold had swept down over night from the Siberian and Manchurian plains across the city of Seoul. The capital city of Korea was shivering with cold. But it was vibrant with something else. It was vibrant with a great sense of something impending.

There were those who said that the restlessness in the souls of the Koreans had died down with the terrible days of the March Independence Movement; but I knew that the faith of the people was deeper than that. I knew that the flame of faith was just smouldering.

I sensed this from the conversation of old-time missionaries who had been in Korea from the very beginning. I sensed it in the conversation of young Koreans who had graduated from American schools. It was there; a vibrant, living, pulsing, faith in God and in the justice of their hopes: the Independence of Korea.

The whole thing was summed up for me in a flash. It was a flash of the light of a tremendous faith that blinded mine eyes for a day; but my soul it lighted as with a great eternal light.

A Korean boy stepped into the home of a missionary friend of mine, whose name I dare not use. If I did he would likely be sent home by the Japanese. Men have been sent home for less.

The snow crunched under his feet as he walked up across the yard and the porch. He knocked at the door.

"Come in," said the missionary, kindly.

The boy stepped in. The missionary had never seen him before. The boy was moved deeply as with a great emotion. He seemed to have carried into that quiet missionary home with him some of the tenseness of the outside air and some of the tenseness of the political situation.

"What do you want?" asked the missionary.

"I want to talk with you about something very important," he replied in Korean.

"All right! Go ahead! Do not be afraid. I am your friend!"

"So I know. All missionaries are our friends."

"Then you need not be afraid to talk."

"No!" said the boy. But he did not talk. His agitation was growing more marked.

"Go on, my boy! Tell me what you came for."

The Korean boy looked at the half open door which led into the kitchen. The missionary, without a word, stepped over and closed that door, because he understood.

The boy himself closed a door which led into the missionary's study. For in Korea in these days no home; not even a missionary's home, is free from spies.

The boy started to talk hurriedly. The missionary soon saw that he was not talking about the thing that he had come for.

"Come to the point! Come to the point! You did not come to me, in such secrecy, to talk commonplace things like that!" said the missionary a bit sharply.

Then the boy suddenly dropped to his knees behind the missionary's desk and whipped out a big knife. Then he took from his white gown a long piece of white cloth. This he laid out on the floor. Then he opened his sharp knife with a quick motion and before the missionary knew it, he had ripped the index finger of his right hand, from, the tip to the palm, clear to the bone, until the blood spurted all over the floor.

"What are you doing, my boy?" cried the missionary.

The boy smiled a sublime smile and then knelt on his knees over the white cloth and before the missionary's tear-misty eyes wrote across the immaculate cloth in his own blood the words: "Mansei! Mansei! Mansei! Korean Independence Forever! Self-determination!"

Then underneath these words in a few swift strokes in his own blood he drew a picture of the Korean flag. And as he drew, now and then the blood would not flow fast enough; and he took his knife, as one primes a fountain pen; and cut a bit deeper to open new veins in order that the flag of his country and the declaration of his faith might be written in the deepest colors that his own veins could furnish.

Finally, after what seemed hours he jumped to his feet and handed the missionary that flag; crying as he did so: "That is our faith! That is the way we Koreans feel! You are going back to America! We want America to know that our faith in the Independence of Korea has not died! The fire burns higher to-day than ever. The Japanese cruelties are worse! The need is greater! The oppression is more terrible! Our determination is deeper than ever before! I have come here this day, knowing that you are going back to America; I came to write these words in my own blood that you may know; and that America may know; that our faith is a flame which burns out like the beacon lights on the Korean hills, never to die!"

* * * * * *

The most scintillating Flash-light of Faith that I saw in the Orient was in the Philippine Islands. We were traveling the jungle trail to visit a tribe of naked Negritos. These are diminutive people who look like American negroes only they are much smaller; much more underfed, and who live in trees very much like the Orangutans of Borneo. They eat roots and nuts. They hunt with bows and arrows.

They are the lowest tribe in mentality on the Islands.

It was a terribly hot, tropical day and I had a sunstroke on the way up the mountainside to this Negrito village.

I did not expect to get back alive.

For three solid hours under a killing tropical sun, without the proper cork helmet and protection, a pile driver kept hammering down on my head. I felt it at every step I took. Finally I dropped unconscious on the trail. After several hours I was able to proceed to the top of the mountain, where the Negritos were camped.

We got there about two o'clock and had lunch. As we ate about fifty Negritos swarmed about us.

They were a horrible looking crowd; stark naked, filthy with dirt; starved to skin and bones; and animal-like in every look and move.

I was so sick that I was not able to eat the lunch which had been provided in baskets. I lay on my back trying to get back my strength.

As the rest of the expedition ate, the Negritos with hungry eyes, crowded closer.

One hideous old man was in the forefront of the natives. He was so hideous looking that he was sickeningly repulsive to me as I looked at him crouched as he was like an animal with a streak of sunlight playing on his face.

This streak of sunlight, with ruthless severity, made the ugly scabs of dirt stand out on his old wrinkled face. That face had not felt the touch of water in years. His whole body was covered with dirt and sores. Wherever the sunlight struck on that black body it revealed scales like those on a mangy dog. His body was also covered with gray hairs matted into the dirt.

"That old codger represents the nearest thing to an animal that the human being can reach," said McLaughlin, one of the oldest missionaries on the island.

"You're right!" I said. "He looks as much like a Borneo Orangutan as any human being I ever saw."

"And he lives like one, too; up in a tree in a nest of matted limbs and grass," said another.