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 daylight.
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.
[Illustration: LOOKING OVER THE WALLED CITY OF MANILA, AMERICAN SOLDIERS
SCALED THIS WALL A FEW YEARS AGO TO STAY.]
[Illustration: BEAUTIFUL FILIPINO GIRLS ALL OF WHOM SPEAK ENGLISH.]
[Illustration: KOREAN GIRLS WITH AMERICAN IDEALS AND TRAINING.]
[Illustration: STEPPING ASIDE IN KOREA TO LET THE AMERICAN DEVIL WAGON
GO BY.]