HIS MAJESTY THE SUN
"And therefore is the glorious planet, Sol,
In noble eminence enthron'd and spher'd
Amidst the ether, whose medicinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil."
SHAKESPEARE.
Twelve years of open-air life in tropical Queensland persuade me that I
am entitled to prerogative of speech, not as an oracle or a prophet on
the prodigious subject of the weather at large, but of the effect thereof
on my sensations and constitution, since the greater part of that period
has been spent under conditions calculated to put them to the test.
Especially has the sun given penetrating tastes of his quality and
bestowed enduring marks of his favour. During these twelve joyful years
the annual rainfall has averaged over 131 inches, the average number of
days on which rain has fallen being 134. Of the heat of the sun during the
hottest month of the year let two unstudied records speak. As January 29,
1907, gave early promise of exceptional heat, I watched the thermometer
closely, noting the consistency with which its ups and downs tallied with
my perceptions These are the readings:
Deg.
6 a.m. 75
10 a.m. 94
Noon 96
12.30 p.m. 97
1 p.m. 98
3 p.m. 97
4 p.m. 88
5 p.m. 85
6 p.m. 82
In the sun at 1 p.m. the glass registered 108°, at 2 p.m. 110°, and
at 3 p.m. 107°. A thunderstorm accounted for the rather early
culmination of the temperature and its rapid decline.
The shade temperature of January, 1910, at 6.30 a.m. was 73°, at 3
p.m. 88°. The sun registered 98° on the hottest day of that month
when my diary tells me I took part in the erection of rough fencing,
horse-driving, and lifting and carrying logs.
This salubrious sun does not excuse man from day labour in unshaded
scenes. During January, I, who am blessed with but slight muscular
strength and no inherent powers of resistance to noontide flames, have
toiled laboriously without registering more than due fatigue. Those
accustomed to manual work experience but little inconvenience. It would
be palpably indiscreet and vain to say that outdoor work in excessive
heat involves no discomfort, but it may be truthfully asserted that
midday suspension therefrom, though pleasant, is not absolutely necessary,
at any rate where the environment is such as this.
Bounteous rain and glorious sunshine in combination might seem to
constitute a climate unsuitable to persons of English birth, or at least
trying to their preconceptions of the ideal. My own experience is
entirely, enthusiastically favourable. I proffer myself as an example,
since there is none other upon whom publicity may be thrust, and really
in the spirit of performing an inevitable duty, such duty being
comprehended in the fervent desire to proclaim from the lowly height of
my housetop how health unbought and happiness unrealisable may be enjoyed
in this delicately equable clime.
When I landed feebly on September 28, 1897, and crawled up on the beach
beyond the datum of the most recent high tide to throw myself prone on
the consoling sand I was worn, world-weary, and pale, and weighed 8 st. 4
lb. Now my weight is 10 st. 2 lb., and my complexion uniformly sun-tinted.
Perhaps it would be more exact to say that my uniform has been bestowed
by the sun, because having early discovered the needlessness of
clothes--that "the body is more than raiment"--most of the apparel in
which civilisation flaunts was promptly discarded, and through the few
thin things retained the sun soon worked his will. Latterly while in the
open air I have abandoned the principal part of the superfluous remnant,
to the enjoyment of additional comfort and the increase of
self-complacency. As a final violation of my reserve be it proclaimed
that to the super-excellence of the air of the Island, to the tonic of the
sea, and to the graciousness of his Majesty the Sun--in whose radiance
have I gloried--do I owe, perhaps, salvation from that which tributary
friends in their meed of tenderness predicted--an untimely grave.
It is natural that those who live in cold climates and who wear for their
comfort clothing designed to exclude the air from all parts of the body
save the face should be steeped in conservatism; but the farther one
ventures from the chaste opinion of the world the less subserviency he
shows to customs and habits authoritative and relevant among
century-settled folk, and the more readily he adapts himself to his
environment the sooner does he become a true citizen of the country which
he has chosen. Preconceptions he must discard as unfit, if not fatal. He
is an alien until he learns to house, feed, and dress himself in
accordance with the inviolable laws which Nature prescribes to each and
every portion of her spacious and discordant realm.
Was I to remain fully clad and comfortless, or the reverse? The
indulgence of my sensations has brought about revolutionary changes of
costume and custom. Such changes were bound to react mentally, for are
they not merely the symbols of ideas? Once it was unseemly, if not
uncleanly, to perspire freely. Now the function is looked upon as
necessary, wholesome, and the sign of one's loyalty to the sun. The sun
compels thoughts. Daily, hourly does he exact homage and reign supreme
over mind, body, and estate. So commanding is his rule, so apparent his
goodwill, so speedy his punishment for sins of disobedience, so
influential his presence, that I have come to look up to him as the
transcendent manifestation of that power which ordains life and all
its privileges and abolishes all the noisesomeness of death. Alive,
he nourishes, comforts, consoles, corrects us. Dead, all that is mortal
he transforms into ethereal and vital gases. Obey him, and he blesses;
flout him, and you perish.
An old historian of sport quaintly expressed a correct theory as to the
virtue of profuse perspiration: "And when the hunters do their office
on horseback and on foot, they sweat often; then if they have any evil in
them it must come away in the sweating; so that he keep from cold after
the heat." So does the wise man in the tropics regard perspiration--not as
an offensive, certainly not as a pleasant function, but as one that is
really inevitable and conducive to cleanliness and health.
Can the man who swathes his body in ever so many separate, superimposed,
artificial skins, and who is careful to banish purifying air from contact
with him, save on the rare occasions of the bath, be as healthful as he
who furnishes himself with but a single superfluous skin, and that as
thin and penetrable as the laws which hold society together permit?
The play of the sterilising sun on the brown, moist skin is not only
tolerable but delightful--refreshing and purifying the body, while even
light cotton clothing saturated to the dripping stage with perspiration
represents the acme of discomfort, and if unchanged a good deal of the
actually unwholesome.
All the hotter hours of the day have I worked in the bush felling trees,
sawing and splitting logs, and adzing rough timber, the while November's
unclouded sun evaporated perspiration almost as speedily as it flowed
from high-pressure pores. There was no sensation of overheat, although
the arms might weary with the swinging of the heavy maul and the back
respond with aches to the stiffened attitude imposed by the adze.
Then at sundown to plunge into the tepid sea, to frolic and splash
therein, while the red light in the west began to pale and the pink and
silver surface of the ocean faded to grey; then to a vigorous soaping and
scrubbing in the shady creek, where the orange-tinted drupes of
pandanus-palms give to the cool water a balsamic savour; then, clad in
clean cotton, to the evening meal with a prodigious appetite; and to bed
at nine o'clock to sleep murmurlessly for eight hours--tell me if thus
you are not fitted for another day's toil in the sublimating sunshine!
A medical man on the staff of one of the earliest of European voyages in
the Pacific Ocean expressed the opinion that the "cutaneous disorders
which so generally affect the inhabitants in the neighbourhood of the
equator are caused by an acrimonious alteration of the humours brought on
by the great heat of these climates"; and he adds: "I have no doubt
that the constant action of the air and sun upon the skin of the people
who go continually naked contributes much to these maladies, and renders
them more obstinate." Though it would be presumptuous to pose as counsel
for the defence of his Majesty the Sun, one who is blessed with so many
of the privileges he bestows cannot ignore so scandalous albeit musty a
libel which time, the only dispassionate judge, has long since condemned
in respect of the generality of manhood. It is surprising, too, that
Byron, though he revelled in the sea, was also under a delusion as to the
more vitalising element, for he fancied the scorching rays to be
"impregnate with disease," whereas the sun, the sea, and, in lesser
degree, the torrid sand do actually represent "the spice and salt which
season a man," and are the elements whence are derived many of his
cleanest, superfine thoughts.
Kinship with his Majesty the Sun of the tropics is not to be claimed
offhand. The imperious luminary does not grant his letters-patent to all.
Very few does he permit to wanton in his presence without exacting
probation. He is a rare respecter of persons. Though there are faces,
like King Henry V.'s, which the sun will not condescend to burn,
sometimes he smites savagely. He makes of the countenances of his foes a
fry and of their bodies a comprehensive granulation. But if you find
favour in his eyes--in those discriminating, ruthless, sight-absorbing
glances which none may reciprocate--accept your privileges with a thrill
of chastened pride that you may bask in his presence and be worthy his
livery and of gladsome mind. The harpings of the sweet singer of Israel
could not have been more effectual in the dispersal of depression than
the steadfast beams of the sun supreme in tropic sky.
Let the sun scorch the skin and blister it until it peels, and scorches
and peels again, and scorches and peels alternately until, having no more
dominion over the flesh, it tinctures the very blood and transmutes mere
ruddiness to bronze. Thereafter you know not for ever the pallor of the
street for have you not the gold of the sun in your blood and his iron
in your bones?
Of the graciousness of the sun a special instance has been preserved in
my erratic diary. Here it is: November 24, 1908: Spent from 10 a.m. to
1.15 p.m. on the beach and on the Isle of Purtaboi, bare-limbed,
bare-bodied, save for scant cotton pants. Above high-water mark the sand
was scorchingly hot to the feet. The heat of the glowing coral drift on
the Isle forced me promptly to amend my methodic gait to a quick step,
though my hardened soles soon became indifferent. Nutmeg pigeons were
nesting plentifully on trees and shrubs amongst masses of orchids, and on
ledges almost obscured by grass. Brown-winged terns occupied cool nooks
and crannies in the rocks, and other species of terns had egg
reserves--they cannot be called nests--on the unshaded coral bank. After
gazing intently on the white drift, eagerly making mental notes of any
remarkable mutations in the colouring of the thickly strewn eggs, and
admiring the fortitude or indifference with which the fledglings endured
the sizzling heat, I found myself subject to an optical illusion, for
when I looked up and abroad the brightly gleaming sea had been changed to
inky purple, the hills of the mainland to black. Though absolutely
cloudless, the sky seemed oppressed with slaty gloom, and the leaves of
the trees near at hand assumed a leaden green. For a few seconds I was
convinced that some almost unearthly meteorological phenomenon, before
which the most resolute of men might cower, had developed with
theatrical suddenness. Then I realised that the intense glare of the
coral, of which I had been unconscious, and the quivering heat rays had
temporarily deprived my vision of appreciation of ordinary tints.
Saturated by vivid white light, my bemused sight swayed under temporary
aberration. I was conscious of illusion creating symptoms, tipsy with
excess of sunshine. This condition passing, I found the atmosphere,
though hot, pleasant and refreshing, the labour of rowing across the
bay involving no unusual exertion or sense of discomfort. During my
brief absence the beach of the island seemed to have absorbed still
more effectively solar rays. "Scoot" (my terrier, exulting companion
on land and sea) skipped in sprightly fashion across the burning zone,
while I was fain to walk on the grass, the sandy track being impracticable
to bare feet. In the house protests against the intolerance of the sun
were rife. Crockery on the kitchen shelves seemed to have been
artificially heated, while the head of an axe exposed to the glare was
blisteringly hot. Yet to me in the open air, most scantily draped and
wearing a frayed, loopholed, and battered straw hat, the sunbath had
been a pleasant and exhilarating indulgence in no way remarkable on the
score of temperature.
Dress, other than fulfils the dictates of decency, is not only
unimportant but incongruous and vexatious. During bright but cloudless
days the less worn the higher the degree of comfort, and upon comfort
happiness depends. Sick of a surfeit of pleasures, the whining monarch,
counselled by his soothsayers, ransacked his kingdom for the shirt
of a happy subject. He found the enviable man--a toil-worn hind who had
never fidgeted under the discomfort of the badge of respectability.
In his native state the black fellow is nearer the ideal than the white
alien in his body clothes, starched shirt, high collar, cloth suit, and
felt hat. The needs and means of the black are non-existent. His dress
corresponds, whereas the white usurper of his territory--servile to the
malignant impositions of custom and fashion--suffers from general
superfluity and winces under his sufferings. Would he not be wiser owning
subservience to the sun, and adopting dress suitable to actual needs and
the dominant characteristics of the land of the sun? He would pant less,
drink less, perspire less, be more wholesome and sweeter in temper, and
more worthy of citizenship under the sun, against whose sway there can
be no revolt. Kings and queens are under his rule and governance. His
companionship disdains ceremonious livery, scorns ribbands, and scoffs at
gew-gaws. Bronze is his colour, native worth the only wear.
Whosoever has seen (himself unseen) an unsophisticated North Queensland
black parading his native strand has seen a lord of creation--an inferior
species, but still a lord. His bold front, fluent carriage, springy step,
alert, confident, superior air proclaim him so, innocent though he be of
the frailest insignia of civilisation. The monarch arrayed in seven
colours ascends the steps of his throne with no prouder mien than that in
which the naked child of the sun lords it over the empty spaces.
In civility to his Majesty the Sun do I also proudly testify to his
transcendent gifts as a painter in the facile media which here prevail.
Look upon his coming and his going--an international, universal property,
an ecstatic delight, an awesome marvel, upon which we gaze, of which we
cannot speak, lacking roseate phrases. A landscape painter also is he,
for have I not seen his boldest brush at work and stood amazed at the
magnificence of his art?
Do those who live in temperate and cold climates realise the effect of
the sun's heat on the sea--how warm, how hot, blessed by his beams, the
water may become? The luxuriousness of bathing in an ocean having a
temperature of 108° is not for the multitude who crowd in reeking cities
which the sun touches tremulously and slantwise.
On November 21, 1909 (far be it from me to bundle out into an apathetic
world whimpering facts lacking the legitimacy of dates), we bathed at
Moo-jee in shallow water on the edge of an area of denuded coral reef
fully two miles long by a mile broad. For three hours a considerable
portion of the reef had been exposed to the glare of the sun, and the
incoming tide filched heat, stored by solar rays, from coral and stones
and sand. The first wallow provoked an exclamation of amazement, for the
water was several degrees hotter than the air, and it was the hottest
hour (3 p.m.) of an extremely hot day. No thermometer was at hand to
register the actual temperature of the water, but subsequent tests at the
same spot under similar conditions proved that on the thermometerless
occasion the sea was about 108° F.--that is, the surface stratum of about
one foot, which averaged from 4° to 6° F. hotter than the air. Beneath,
the temperature seemed ordinary--corresponding with that of the water a
hundred yards out from the shore. This delectable experience revealed that
in bathing something more is comprehended than mere physical pleasure. It
touched and tingled a refined aesthetic emotion, an enlightened
consciousness of the surroundings, remote from gross bodily sensations.
For the time being one was immersed, not in heated salt water only but in
the purifying essence of the scene--the glowing sky, stainless, pallid,
and pure; the gleaming, scarcely visible, fictitious sea and the bold blue
isles beyond; the valley whence whiffs of cool, fern-filtered, odorous
air issued shyly from the shadowed land of the jungle through the
embowered lips of the creek. The blend of these elements reacted on the
perceptions, rendering the bathe in two temperatures that of a lifetime
and a means also whereby the clarified senses were first stimulated and
then soothed. With an occasional lounge on the soft sand, when the body
became clad in a costume of mica spangles and finely comminuted shell
grit, the bathe continued for two hours, with an after effect of sleek
and silky content.
Another date (January 10, 1910) may verify details of such a sybaritic
soak in the sea as is to be indulged in only in the tropics and remote
from the turmoil of man. Between noon and 3 p.m. the thermometer hanging
on the wall of the house under the veranda, five feet from the corrugated
iron roof, wavered between 89° and 90°, while the unshaded sun registered
98°. My noontide bath failed to detect any difference in temperature
between air and water, and putting my perceptions to scientific test
found the sea to be heated to 90°. With the bulb buried in the sand six
feet from the edge of the water, the mercury rose to 112° in a few
seconds and remained stationary.
It being far more blissful to lounge in the sea than on the veranda, I
sat down, steeped chin deep in crystal clearness, warmth, and silence,
passively surrendering myself to a cheap yet precious sensation. Around
me were revealed infinitely fragile manifestations of life, scarcely less
limpid than the sea, sparkling, darting, twisting--strong and vigorous of
purpose. Tremulous filaments of silver flashed and were gone. No space
but was thickly peopled with what ordinarily passes as the invisible, but
which now, plainly to behold, basked and revelled in the blaze--products
of the sun. Among the grains of sand and flakes of mica furtive
bubblings, burrowings, and upheavals betrayed a benighted folk to whom
the water was as a firmament into which they might not venture to ascend.
Sought out by the sun, translucent fish revealed their presence by
spectral shadows on the sand, and, traced by the shadows, became
discernible, though but little the more substantial.
This peace-lulled, beguiling, sea, teeming with myriad forms scintillating
on the verge of nothingness--obscure, elusive, yet mighty in their wayward
way--soothed with never so gentle, so dulcet a swaying. This
smooth-bosomed nurse was pleased to fondle to drowsiness a loving mortal
responsive to the blissfulness of enchantment. Warm, comforting,
stainless, she swathed me with rose-leaf softness while whispering
a lullaby of sighs. Her salty caresses lingered on my lips, as I
gazed dreamily intent upon determining the non-existing skyline.
Yet, with no demarcation of the allied elements this rimless, flickering
moon, to what narrow zone, I pondered, is man restricted! He swims
feebly; if he but immerse his lips below the shining surface for a space
to be measured by seconds, he becomes carrion. On the mountain-tops he is
deadly sick. Thus musing, the sorcery of the sea became invincible. My
thoughts drifted, until I dozed, and dozing dreamt--a vague,
incomprehensible dream of floating, in some purer ether, some diviner air
than ever belonged to wormy earth, and woke to realities and a skate--a
little friendly skate which had snoodled beside me, its transparent
shovel-snout half buried in the sand. Immune from the opiate of the sea,
though motionless, with wide, watery-yellow eyes, it gazed upon me as a
fascinated child might upon a strange shape monstrous though benign, and
as I raised my hand in salutation wriggled off, less afraid than curious.
Beyond, a shadow--a disc-shaped shadow--drifted with a regular pulsating
motion. Shadowlike, my thoughts, too, drifted, but how remote from the
scene! They transported me to Thisbe--Thisbe who
"Saw the lion's shadow ere himself
And ran dismayed away."
How different the shadow of the moment from that of the king of beasts
which led to the tragedy under the walls of Babylon, where the blood of
the lovers dyed the mulberry red! It is the evidence of a bloodless thing,
a rotund and turreted medusa, the leader of a disorderly procession,
soundless and feeble as becomes beings almost as impalpable as the sea
itself. Shadows of fish exquisitely framed flit and dance. I see naught
but shadows, dim and thin, for I doze and dream again; and so fantastic
time, whose footfalls are beads and bubbles, passes, and grosser affairs
beckon me out of the sunlit sea.
Oh, great and glorious and mighty sun! Oh, commanding, majestical sun!
Superfine invigorator; bold illuminator of the dim spaces of the brain;
originator of the glow! which distils its rarest attars! Am I not thy
true, thy joyful knight? Hast thou not touched my toughened, unflinching
shoulders with the flat of thy burnished sword? Do I not behold its
jewelled hilt flashing with pearls and precious stones as thou sheathest
it for the night among the purple Western hills? Do I not hail its golden
gleams among the fair-barked trees what time each scented morn I milk
my skittish goats?