The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, by Murat Halstead

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Captain Cook makes a strong plea in his journal that he was the
very original discoverer of the Sandwich Islands. Referring to the
wonderful extent of the surface of the earth in which the land is
occupied by the Polynesial race, he exclaims:

"How shall we account for this nation's having spread itself,
in so many detached islands, so widely disjoined from each other,
in every quarter of the Pacific Ocean! We find it, from New Zealand
in the South, as far as the Sandwich Islands, to the North! And, in
another direction, from Easter Islands to the Hebrides! That is, over
an extent of sixty degrees of latitude, or twelve hundred leagues,
North and South! And eighty-three degrees of longitude, or sixteen
hundred and sixty leagues, East and West! How much farther, in either
direction, its colonies reach, is not known; but what we know already,
in consequence of this and our former voyage, warrants our pronouncing
it to be, though perhaps not the most numerous, certainly, by far,
the most extensive, nation upon earth.

"Had the Sandwich Islands been discovered at an early period by
the Spaniards, there is little doubt that they would have taken
advantage of so excellent a situation, and have made use of Atooi,
or some other of the islands, as a refreshing place to the ships,
that sail annually from Acapulco for Manilla. They lie almost midway
between the first place and Guam, one of the Ladrones, which is at
present their only port in traversing this vast ocean; and it would not
have been a week's sail out of their common route to have touched at
them; which could have been done without running the least hazard of
losing the passage, as they are sufficiently within the verge of the
easterly trade wind. An acquaintance with the Sandwich Islands would
have been equally favorable to our Buccaneers, who used sometimes to
pass from the coast of America to the Ladrones, with a stock of food
and water scarcely sufficient to preserve life. Here they might always
have found plenty, and have been within a month's sure sail of the
very part of California which the Manilla ship is obliged to make,
or else have returned to the coast of America, thoroughly refitted,
after an absence of two months. How happy would Lord Anson have been,
and what hardships he would have avoided, if he had known that there
was a group of islands half way between America and Tinian, where
all his wants could have been effectually supplied; and in describing
which the elegant historian of that voyage would have presented his
reader with a more agreeable picture than I have been able to draw
in this chapter."

And yet there seems to be reason for believing that there was a
Spanish ship cast away on one of the Hawaiian group, and that their
descendants are distinctly marked men yet: There was also a white man
and woman saved from the sea at some unknown period, of course since
Noah, and they multiplied and replenished, and the islanders picked
up somewhere a knack for doing things in construction of boats and
the weaving of mats that hint at a crude civilization surviving in
a mass of barbarianism.

Captain George Dixon names the islands discovered by Captain Cook on
his last voyage:

"Owhyhee (Hawaii), the principal, is the first to the southward and
eastward, the rest run in a direction nearly northwest. The names of
the principals are Mowee (Maui), Morotoy (Molokai), Ranai (Lanai),
Whahoo (Oahu), Attooi (Kauai), and Oneehow (Niihau)."

This account Dixon gives of two curious and rather valuable words:
"The moment a chief concludes a bargain, he repeats the word Coocoo
thrice, with quickness, and is immediately answered by all the people
in his canoe with the word Whoah, pronounced in a tone of exclamation,
but with greater or less energy, in proportion as the bargain he has
made is approved."

The great and celebrated Kamehameha, who consolidated the government
of the islands, did it by an act of treachery and murder, thus told
in Alexander's history:

"The Assassination of Keoua.--Toward the end of the year 1791 two of
Kamehameha's chief counsellors, Kamanawa and Keaweaheulu, were sent
on an embassy to Keoua at Kahuku in Kau. Keoua's chief warrior urged
him to put them to death, which he indignantly refused to do.

"By smooth speeches and fair promises they persuaded him to go to
Kawaihae, and have an interview with Kamehameha, in order to put an end
to the war, which had lasted nine years. Accordingly he set out with
his most intimate friends and twenty-four rowers in his own double
canoe, accompanied by Keaweaheulu in another canoe, and followed by
friends and retainers in other canoes.

"As they approached the landing at Kawaihae, Keeaumoku surrounded
Keoua's canoe with a number of armed men. As Kamakau relates: 'Seeing
Kamehameha on the beach, Keoua called out to him, "Here I am," to which
he replied, "Rise up and come here, that we may know each other."'

"As Keoua was in the act of leaping ashore, Keeaumoku killed him
with a spear. All the men in Keoua's canoe and in the canoes of
his immediate company were slaughtered but one. But when the second
division approached, Kamehameha gave orders to stop the massacre. The
bodies of the slain were then laid upon the altar of Puukohola as an
offering to the blood-thirsty divinity Kukailimoku. That of Keoua had
been previously baked in an oven at the foot of the hill as a last
indignity. This treacherous murder made Kamehameha master of the whole
island of Hawaii, and was the first step toward the consolidation of
the group under one government."

This is one of those gentle proceedings of an amiable race, whose
massacre of Captain Cook has been so elaborately vindicated by alleged
exponents of civilization.

There is found the keynote of the grevious native government in
an incident of the date of 1841 by which "the foreign relations
of the government became involved with the schemes of a private
firm. The firm of Ladd & Co. had taken the lead in developing the
agricultural resources of the islands by their sugar plantation
at Koloa and in other ways, and had gained the entire confidence
of the king and chiefs. On the 24th of November, 1841, a contract
was secretly drawn up at Lahaina by Mr. Brinsmade, a member of the
firm, and Mr. Richards, and duly signed by the king and premier,
which had serious after-consequences. It granted to Ladd & Co. the
privilege of "leasing any now unoccupied and unimproved localities"
in the islands for one hundred years, at a low rental, each millsite
to include fifteen acres, and the adjoining land for cultivation in
each locality not to exceed two hundred acres, with privileges of
wood, pasture, etc. These sites were to be selected within one year,
which term was afterwards extended to four years from date."

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.

Glimpses of China and Japan on the Way Home from the
Philippines--Hongkong a Greater Gibraltar--Coaling the China--Gangs
of Women Coaling the China--How the Japanese Make Gardens of the
Mountains--Transition from the Tropics to the Northern Seas--A
Breeze from Siberia--A Thousand Miles Nothing on the Pacific--Talk
of Swimming Ashore.

Formosa was so far away eastward--a crinkled line drawn faintly with a
fine blue pencil, showing as an artistic scrawl on the canvass of the
low clouds--we could hardly claim when the sketch of the distant land
faded from view, that we had seen Japan. When Hongkong, of sparkling
memory, was lost to sight, the guardian walls that secluded her
harbor, closing their gates as we turned away, and the headlands of
the celestial empire grew dim, a rosy sunset promised that the next
day should be pleasant, our thoughts turned with the prow of the
China to Japan. We were bound for Nagasaki, to get a full supply of
coal to drive us across the Pacific, having but twelve hundred tons
aboard, and half of that wanted for ballast. It was at the mouth of
the harbor of Nagasaki that there was a settlement of Dutch Christians
for some hundreds of years. An indiscreet letter captured on the way
to Holland by a Portuguese adventurer and maliciously sent to Japan,
caused the tragic destruction of the Christian colony. The enmity of
Christian nations anxious to add to their properties in the islands
in remote seas was so strong that any one preferred that rather than
his neighbors might aggrandize the heathen should prevail. The first
as well as the last rocks of Japan to rise from and sink into the
prodigous waters, through which we pursued our homeward way, bathing
our eyes in the delicious glowing floods of eastern air, were scraggy
with sharp pinnacles, and sheer precipices, grim survivals of the
chaos that it was, before there was light. I have had but glimpses
of the extreme east of Asia, yet the conceit will abide with me that
this is in geology as in history the older world, as we classify our
continents, that a thousand centuries look upon us from the terrible
towers, lonesome save for the flutter of white wings, that witness the
rising of the constellations from the greater ocean of the globe. But
there are green hills as we approach Nagasaki, and on a hillside to the
left are the white walls of a Christian church with a square tower,
stained with traditions of triumphs and suffering and martyrdom long
ago. Nagasaki is like Hongkong in its land-locked harbor, in clinging
to a mountain side, in the circle of illumination at night and the
unceasing paddling of boats from ship to ship and between the ships and
landings. One is not long in discovering that here are a people more
alert, ingenious, self-confident and progressive than the Chinese. As
we approached the harbor there came to head us off, an official steam
launch, with men in uniform, who hailed and commanded us to stop. Two
officers with an intense expression of authority came aboard, and we
had to give a full and particular account of ourselves. Why were we
there? Coaling. Where were we from? Manila and Hongkong. Where were we
going? San Francisco. Had we any sickness on board? No. We must produce
the ship doctor, the list of passengers, and manifest of cargo. We had
no cargo. There were a dozen passengers. It was difficult to find fault
with us. No one was ill. We wanted coal. What was the matter? We had
no trouble at Hongkong. We could buy all the coal we wanted there,
but preferred this station. We had proposed to have our warships
cleaned up at Nagasaki, but there were objections raised. So the job
went to the docks at Hongkong, and good gold with it. Why was this? Oh
yes; Japan wanted, in the war between the United States and Spain,
to be not merely formally, but actually neutral! The fact is that the
Japanese Empire is not pleased with us. They had, in imperial circles,
a passion for Honolulu, and intimated their grief. Now they are annoyed
because that little indemnity for refusing the right to land Japanse
labor was paid by the Hawaiian Government before the absorption into
the United States. As the Hawaiian diplomatic correspondence about this
was conducted with more asperity than tact, if peace were the purpose,
it was a good sore place for the Japanese statesmen to rub, and they
resent in the newspapers the facile and cheap pacification resulting
from the influence of the United States. In addition the Japanese
inhabitants, though they have a larger meal than they can speedily
digest in Formosa, are not touched with unqualified pleasurable feeling
because we have the Philippines in our grasp. If Japan is to be the
great power of the Pacific, it is inconvenient to her for us to hold
the Hawaiian, the Aleutian and the Philippine groups of islands. The
Philippines have more natural resources than all the islands of Japan,
and our Aleutian Islands that are waiting for development would
probably be found, if thoroughly investigated, one of our great and
good bargains. The average American finds himself bothered to have to
treat the Japanese seriously, but we must, for they take themselves so,
and are rushing the work on new ships of war so that they will come out
equal with ourselves in sea power. They have ready for war one humdred
thousand men. If we did not hold any part of the Pacific Coast, this
might be a matter of indifference, but we have three Pacific States,
and there is no purpose to cede them to the Japanese. It would not
be statesmanship to give up the archipelagoes we possess, even if we
consider them as lands to hold for the hereafter. It is not deniable
that the Japanese have good reason to stand off for strict examination
the ships of other nations that call at their ports. The British and
Chinese have had an experience of the bubonic plague at Hongkong,
and the Japanese are using all the power of arms and the artifice
of science they possess to keep aloof from the disastrous disease,
which is most contagious. The China had called at Hongkong, and
hence the sharp attentions at a coaling station where there are about
seventy-five thousand inhabitants of the Japanese quarters, which are
an exhibit of Old Japan, and most interesting. Nagasaki has, indeed,
the true Japanese flavor. If there had been a sick man on our ship we
should have been quarantined. Further on we were halted in the night
off the city of Kobe, to the sound of the firing of a cannon, for we
had dropped there a passenger, Mr. Tilden, the Hongkong agent of the
Pacific Mail line, and if our ship had been infected with plague he
might have passed it on to Japan! I had gone to bed, and was called
up to confront the representative of the Imperial Government of the
Japanese, and make clear to his eyes that I had not returned on account
of the plague. Authorities of Japan treat people who are quarantined
in a way that removes the stress of disagreeableness. All are taken
ashore and to a hospital. There is furnished a robe of the country,
clean and tidy in all respects. The common clothing is removed and
fumigated. It is necessary for each quarantined person to submit to
this and also to a bath, which is a real luxury, and after it comes a
cup of tea and a light lunch. There was an actual case of plague on an
American ship at this city of Kobe not long ago, at least, it was so
reported with pretty strong corroborative evidence. The symptom in the
case on the ship was that of a fever, probably pneumonia. The man was
landed and examined. The plague fever resembles pneumonia at an early
stage. The Japanese physicians found signs of plague and the end came
soon. The sick man, taken ashore in the afternoon, at nine o'clock
was dead, transferred at once to the crematory, in two hours reduced
to ashes, and the officers of the ship informed that if they wanted
to carry the "remains" to America they would be sealed in a jar and
certified. The ship's officers did not want ashes, and the Japs hold
the jar. They are so "advanced" that cremation is becoming a fad with
them. It would not be surprising to find that the impending danger of
the Japanese is excessive imitative progress, which is not certain to
be exactly the right thing for them. They have reached a point where it
is worth while to examine the claim of new things with much care before
adopting them. We have very high authority to examine all things for
goodness sake, before committing ourselves to hold them fast. We had
to take aboard eighteen hundred tons of coal at Nagasaki. A fleet of
arks with thirty tons of Japanese coal approached and gathered around
the ship, which has sixteen places to throw coal into the bunkers. So
the coal business was carried on by from twelve to fifteen gangs, each
of about ten men and twenty women! The latter were sturdy creatures,
modestly attired in rough jackets and skirts. There were not far from
thirty bamboo baskets to the gang. One man stood at the porthole, and
each second emptied a coal basket, using both hands, and throwing it
back into the barge with one hand, the same swing of the arm used to
catch the next basket hurled to him with a quick, quiet fling. There
were three men of a gang next the ship, the third one standing in the
barge, served with baskets by two strings of women. At the end of the
string furthest from the ship the coal was shoveled into the baskets
by four men, and there were two who lifted and whirled them to the
women. The numbers and order of the laborers varied a little at times
from this relation, yet very little, but frequently a lump of coal was
passed without using a basket. The work of coaling was carried on all
night, and about thirty-six hours of labor put in for a day. There was
a great deal of talking among the laborers during the few moments of
taking places, and some of it in tones of high excitement, but once
the human machine started there was silence, and then the scratching
of the shovels in the coal, and the crash of the coal thrown far
into the ship were heard. It is, from the American contemplation,
shocking for women to do such work, but they did their share with
unflinching assiduity, and without visible distress. When the night
work was going on they were evidently fatigued, and at each change
that allowed a brief spell of waiting, they were stretched out on the
planks of the boats, the greater number still, but some of the younger
ones talking and laughing. There did not seem to be much flirtation,
nothing like as much as when both sexes of Europeans are engaged in
the same wheat or barley field harvesting. There were, it is needful
to remark, neither lights nor shadows to invite the blanishments of
courting. The coal handling women were from fifteen to fifty years
of age, and all so busy the inevitable babies must have been left
at home. I have never seen many American or European babies "good"
as weary mothers use the word, as the commonest Japanese kids. They
do not know how to cry, and a girl of ten years will relieve a mother
of personal care by carrying a baby, tied up in a scarf, just its
head sticking out (I wish they could be induced to use more soap and
water on the coppery heads, from which pairs of intent eyes stare out
with sharp inquiry, as wild animals on guard). The girl baby bearer,
having tied the child so that it appears to be a bag, slings it over
her shoulder, and it interferes but slightly with the movements of
the nurse; does not discernibly embarrass her movements. The men
colliers, it must be admitted, are a shade reckless in the scarcity
of their drapery when they are handling baskets in the presence
of ladies. They do usually wear shirts with short tails behind,
and very economical breechcloths, but their shirts are sleeveless,
and the buttons are missing on collar and bosom. The only clothing
beneath the knees consists of straw sandals. The precipitation of
perspiration takes care of itself. There are no pocket handkerchiefs.