Produced by Ronald Lee
FLASH-LIGHTS
FROM THE SEVEN SEAS
WILLIAM L. STIDGER
[Illustration: 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
PAGE
INTRODUCTION BY BISHOP FRANCIS J. MCCONNELL vii
FOREWORD ix
CHAPTER
I FLASH-LIGHTS OF FLAME 19
II FLASH-LIGHTS PHYSICAL 33
III FLASH-LIGHTS OF FAITH 49
IV FLASH-LIGHTS OF FEAR 63
V FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIGHTFULNESS 79
VI FEMININE FLASH-LIGHTS 101
VII FLASH-LIGHTS OF FUN 123
VIII FLASH-LIGHTS OF FREEDOM 145
IX FLASH-LIGHTS OF FAILURE 165
X FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIENDSHIP 189
ILLUSTRATIONS
MT. TAISHAN, THE OLDEST WORSHIPPING PLACE
ON EARTH _Frontispiece_
PAGE
THE WALLED CITY OF MANILA 48
BEAUTIFUL FILIPINO GIRLS 48
KOREAN GIRLS WITH AMERICAN IDEALS AND TRAINING 49
STEPPING ASIDE IN KOREA 49
CONFUCIUS TOMB AT CHUFU, CHINA 64
RUIN OF THE MING TOMBS 64
GRINDING RICE IN CHINA 65
A CAMEL TRAIN ENTERING PEKING 65
THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN, PEKING 112
A BEAUTIFUL THIRTEEN-STORY PAGODA NEAR PEKING 112
A WAYSIDE TEMPLE AND SHRINE 113
A SUNRISE SILHOUETTE, JAVA 113
OLD BROMO VOLCANO, JAVA 128
A SIDE VIEW OF BEAUTIFUL BOROBOEDOER, JAVA 128
NAKED AND OTHERWISE 129
A DOG MARKET 129
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.