Established by Edward L. Youmans
APPLETONS'
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY
EDITED BY
WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS
VOL. LIV
NOVEMBER, 1898, TO APRIL, 1899
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1899
COPYRIGHT, 1899,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
VOL. LIV. ESTABLISHED BY EDWARD L. YOUMANS. NO. 1.
APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
NOVEMBER, 1898.
_EDITED BY WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. Was Middle America Peopled from Asia? By Prof. E. S.
MORSE. 1
II. The Possible Fiber Industries of the United States. By
CHARLES RICHARDS DODGE. (Illustrated.) 15
III. What is Social Evolution? By HERBERT SPENCER. 35
IV. The Torrents of Switzerland. By EDGAR R. DAWSON, M. E. 46
V. The Evolution of Colonies. V. Political Evolution.
By J. COLLIER. 52
VI. Architectural Forms in Nature. By F. S. DELLENBAUGH.
(Illus.) 63
VII. The Herds of the Yellow Ant. By JAMES WEIR, Jr., M. D.
(Illus.) 75
VIII. Two Gifts to French Science. By M. HENRI DE PARVILLE.
(Illus.) 81
IX. The Mongoose in Jamaica. By C. W. WILLIS. (Illustrated.) 86
X. The Cause of Rain. By J. R. PLUMANDON. 89
XI. Dream and Reality. By M. CAMILLE MELINAND. 96
XII. A Practical Dutch Charity. By Prof. J. HOWARD GORE. 103
XIII. Sketch of Frank Wigglesworth Clarke. (With Portrait.) 110
XIV. Correspondence: The Moon and the Weather. 118
XV. Editor's Table: The Goal of Education.--A Doubtful
Appendix to Science.--The Cause of Spain's
Decadence.--Dream and Reality. 118
XVI. Scientific Literature. 126
XVII. Fragments of Science. 135
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
72 FIFTH AVENUE.
SINGLE NUMBER, 50 CENTS. YEARLY SUBSCRIPTION, $5.00.
COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
Entered at the Post Office at New York, and admitted for transmission
through the mails at second-class rates.
[Illustration: FRANK WIGGLESWORTH CLARKE.]
APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
NOVEMBER, 1898.
WAS MIDDLE AMERICA PEOPLED FROM ASIA?
BY PROF. EDWARD S. MORSE.
The controversies over the question of the origin of Central American
culture are to be again awakened by the exploration organized under
the direction of the American Museum of Natural History through the
liberality of its president, Morris K. Jesup, Esq. The plans embrace an
ethnographic survey of the races between the Columbia and Amoor Rivers.
Many similarities in customs, folklore, etc., will doubtless be found
among these northern races. How far traces of an ancient avenue will
be established through which came the unique cult of middle America,
and for which in a way the surveys have been instituted, remains to be
seen. The question is one of perennial interest, and all honor to the
scientific spirit of Mr. Jesup, whose munificence has provided the means
for this work.
It may be of interest to remind those who have only a vague idea of the
contention that there are many earnest scholars who insist that the
wonderful architectural remains in Mexico, Yucatan, and other regions
of the west coast are due to Asiatic contact in the past. As proofs of
this contact are cited similarities as seen in the monuments, the facial
characteristics of certain tribes, ancient customs, astronomical ideas,
serpent worship, certain games, etc. Particularly is it believed by the
scholars that the "land of Fusang" mentioned in early Chinese historical
records is no other than Mexico or some contiguous country.
Space will not permit even the briefest mention of the evidences
which have led to these conclusions, and the reader is referred to a
remarkably condensed history of the whole question embodied in a volume
by Mr. Edward P. Vining entitled An Inglorious Columbus. Under this
unfortunate title one may find the most painstaking collocation of the
many memoirs written upon this subject, with the Chinese account of the
land of Fusang in Chinese characters, and appended thereto the various
translations of the document by De Guines, Williams, Julien, and other
eminent sinologues.
To the French Orientalist, M. de Guines, we are indebted for our first
knowledge of certain ancient records of the Chinese, which briefly
record the visit of Chinese Buddhist monks to the land of Fusang in the
year 458 of our era, and the return of a single Buddhist monk from this
land in 499. De Guines's memoir appeared in 1761, and for forty years
but little attention was drawn to it. Humboldt says that, according to
the learned researches of Father Gaubil, it appears doubtful whether the
Chinese ever visited the western coast of America at the time stated by
De Guines. In 1831, Klaproth, the eminent German Orientalist, combated
the idea that Fusang was Mexico, and insisted that it was Japan. In
1844 the Chevalier de Paravey argued that Fusang should be looked for
in America. Prof. Karl Friedrich Neumann also defended this idea. In
magazine articles in 1850-1862, and finally in book form in 1875, Mr.
C. G. Leland supported with great ingenuity the idea of Chinese contact
based on the Fusang account. In 1862 M. José Perez also defended
the idea. In 1865 M. Gustave d'Eichthal published his memoir on the
Buddhistic origin of American civilization, and in the same year M.
Vivien de Saint-Martin combated the theory, and since that time many
others have written upon the subject in favor or in opposition to the
idea of Asiatic contact.
These hasty citations are only a few of the many that I have drawn from
Mr. Vining's encyclopedic compilation.
It is extraordinary what a keen fascination the obscure paths of regions
beyond history and usually beyond verification have to many minds, and
the fascination is as justifiable as the desire to explore unknown
regions of the earth. In the one case, however, we have a tangled mass
of legendary tales coming down from a time when dragons were supposed to
exist, when trees were miles in height, when people lived to a thousand
years, when every unit of measurement was distorted and every physical
truth, as we know it to-day, had no recognition, while in the other case
we have at least a continuity of the same land and sea extending to the
unexplored beyond. This impulse of the human mind finds an attractive
problem in the question as to the origin of the American races. Dr.
Brinton has insisted on the unreasonable nature of the inquiry by
asking an analogous one: "Whence came the African negroes? All will
reply, 'From Africa, of course.' 'Originally?' 'Yes, originally; they
constitute the African or negro subspecies of man.'" By bringing
together isolated features which have resemblances in common, the
American Indian has been traced to nearly every known stock. Mr. Henry
W. Henshaw, in an admirable address entitled Who are the American
Indians? says: "If you have special bias or predilection you have only
to choose for yourself. If there be any among you who decline to find
the ancestors of our Indians among the Jews, Phœnicians, Scandinavians,
Irish, Welsh, Egyptians, or Tartars, then you still have a choice among
the Hindu, Malay, Polynesian, Chinese, or Japanese, or indeed among
almost any other of the children of men." Had this address been written
a few years later he might have added Hittite!
There are two propositions involved in the controversy as to the Asiatic
origin of the American race: the one is that America was peopled from
Asia by invasions or migrations in pre-savage or pre-glacial times; the
other is that the peculiar civilization of Central America was induced
by Buddhist monks, who traveled from Asia to Mexico and Central America
in the fifth century of our era. Those who sustain the first thesis are
without exception men trained in the science of anthropology; those
who sustain the second thesis are with a few conspicuous exceptions
travelers, geographers, sinologues, missionaries, and the like.
If Asia should ever prove to be the cradle of the human race, or of
any portion of it which had advanced well beyond the creature known as
_Pithecanthropus erectus_, then unquestionably an Asian people may be
accounted the progenitors of the American Indians. Any effort, however,
to establish an identity at this stage would probably take us far beyond
the origin of speech or the ability to fabricate an implement.
The controversy has not raged on this ground, however; the numerous
volumes and memoirs on the subject have dealt almost exclusively with
culture contacts or direct invasions from Asia in our era, and more
particularly with the supposed visits of Chinese Buddhist monks to
Mexico and Central America already alluded to. Believing in the unity
of the human race, the dispersion of the species seems more naturally
to have occurred along the northern borders of the great continents
rather than across the wide ocean. From the naturalist's standpoint the
avenues have been quite as open for the circumpolar distribution of man
as they have been for the circumpolar distribution of other animals
and plants down to the minutest land snail and low fungus. The ethnic
resemblances supposed to exist between the peoples of the two sides of
the Pacific may be the result of an ancient distribution around the
northern regions of the globe. Even to-day social relations are said
to exist between the peoples of the Mackenzie and the Lena delta,
and it is not improbable that the carrying band of the Ainu in Yeso
and a similar device depicted on ancient codices and stone monuments
in Mexico may have had a common origin. Advancing to a time when man
acquired the art of recording his thoughts, the question of any contact
between the peoples of the eastern and western shores of the Pacific,
south of latitude 40°, compels us to examine the avenues which have
been so potent in the distribution of life in the past--namely, the
oceanic currents. We are at once led to the great Japan current, the
Kuro Shiwo, which sweeps up by the coast of Japan and spends its force
on the northwest coast of America. Records show a number of instances
of Japanese junks cast ashore on the Oregon coast and shores to the
north.[1]
It must be evidences of Japanese and not Chinese contact that we are
to look for--tangible evidences, for example, in the form of relics,
methods of burial, etc. That the Japanese bear resemblances to certain
northern people there can be no doubt. Dr. Torell brought before
the Swedish Anthropological Society, some years ago, the results
of a comparative study of Eskimo and Japanese. The anatomical and
ethnographical resemblances appeared so striking to him as to give
additional strength to the theory of the settlement of America from
Asia by way of Bering Strait. That there are certain resemblances
among individuals of different races we have abundant evidences. At a
reception in Philadelphia I introduced a Japanese commissioner (who had
been a Cambridge wrangler) to a full-blooded Omaha Indian dressed in our
costume, and the commissioner began a conversation with him in Japanese;
nor could he believe me when I assured him that it was an Indian that
he was addressing, and not one of his own countrymen. I was told by an
_attaché_ of the Japanese legation at Washington that after carefully
scrutinizing the features of a gentleman with whom he was traveling he
ventured to introduce himself as a fellow-countryman, and found to his
astonishment that the man was a native of the Malay Peninsula. That
the Malays bear a strong resemblance to the Chinese is quite true. Dr.
Baelz, of the Medical College of Japan, can find no differences between
the crania and pelves of the Chinese and Malays. Wallace assures us
that even the Malay of Java, when dressed as a Chinese, is not to be
distinguished from them, and Peschel classifies the Malays with the
Mongoloid people. In these approximate regions one might expect close
intermixtures. If resemblances are established between the Japanese and
the Eskimo, they would probably have arisen from a circumpolar race
which has left its traces on northern peoples the world around. We turn
naturally to Japan as the region from which a migration might reasonably
have been supposed to take place. Its position on the Asiatic coast
with a series of larger and smaller stepping-stones--the Kuriles--to
Kamchatka, and thence across the strait to America and seaward, the
broad and powerful Japanese current sweeping by its coast and across
the Pacific, arrested only by the northwestern coast of America. With
these various avenues of approach one might certainly expect evidences
of contact in past times. A somewhat extended study in Japan of its
prehistoric and early historic remains in the way of shell-heap pottery
from the north to the south, much of it of an exceedingly curious
character; the later stone implements, many of them of the most
extraordinary types; the bronze mirrors, swords, spear points, and the
so-called bronze bells; the wide distribution of a curious comma-shaped
ornament of stone known as the _magatama_, with a number of varieties,
and many other kinds of objects, leads me to say that no counterpart
or even remote parallelism has been found in the western hemisphere.
Certain rude forms of decoration of the northern shell-heap pottery of
Japan, such as the cord-mark and crenulated fillet, are world-wide in
their distribution, and a similar wide dispersal is seen of the rude
stone implements and notched and barbed bone and horn. Here, however,
the similarity ends. The lathe-turned unglazed mortuary vessels so
common in ancient graves in Japan and Korea have equally no counterpart
on our western coast. If now we examine the early records of Japan in
her two famous works--the Kojiki and Nihonji, which contain rituals,
ceremonies, and historical data going back with considerable accuracy to
the third and fourth centuries of our era--we shall find many curious
details of customs and arts and references to objects which have since
been exhumed from burial mounds, yet we look in vain for a similar cult
in Mexico or Central America. Turning aside from Japan as an impossible
ground in which to trace resemblances, we glance at the unique character
of the ancient pottery of Central America, with its representations
of natural forms, such as fishes, turtles, frogs, shells, etc., its
peculiar motives of decoration in color, and find no counterpart in
Asia. The pyramidal rock structure and rounded burial mounds are
supposed to have their counterparts in the East, but the pyramidal form
is common in various parts of the world, simply because it is the most
economical and most enduring type of architecture, and facilitates by
its form the erection of the highest stone structures. The rounding dome
of an earth mound and the angular side of a rock pyramid are the result
of material only.
If we now turn to China as a possible region from which migrations may
have come in the past, we have only to study the historical records
of that ancient people to realize how hopeless it is to establish
any relationship. Let one study the Ceremonial Usages of the Chinese
(1121 B.C.--translated by Gingell), and he will then appreciate the
wonderful advancement of the Chinese at that early date--the organized
government, the arts, customs, manufactures, and the minute observances
and regulations concerning every detail of life. With these records
before him he may search in vain for the direct introduction of any art
or device described in this old Chinese work. A few similarities are
certainly found between the East and the West, but these arise from the
identity in man's mental and physical structure. With two legs only,
for example, it is found difficult to sit on a seat comfortably in more
than a few ways. One may sit with both legs down, with one leg under,
with legs crossed _à la_ Turk, or the unconventional way throughout
the world with one leg over the other at various angles. It would seem
with this limited number of adjustments that any similarities in the
attitude of certain stone statues in America and Asia could have but
little weight. Prof. F. W. Putnam believes that he has established an
Asiatic origin of certain jade ornaments found in Central America. If
this conclusion could be sustained, we should then have evidences of
contact with an Asiatic people in the stone age, which in itself was
one of great antiquity for the Chinese, and one long antedating the
origin of Buddhism. In the Chinese work above alluded to the whetstone
is mentioned for sharpening swords, and the craft employed in polishing
the musical stone. Confucius also refers to the musical stone in his
Analects. This is as near as we get to the use of stone eleven hundred
years before Christ. It is to the merit of Putnam to have first called
attention to the fact that many of the jade ornaments, amulets, etc.,
of Central America had originally been portions of jade celts. The
discovery is one of importance, whatever explanation may be reached as
to the origin of the stone. In Costa Rica these celt-derived ornaments
have been cut from celts composed of the native rock, and it would
seem that these old implements handed down in the family led to their
being preserved in the form of beads, amulets, etc., much in the same
spirit that animates us to-day in making paper-cutters, penholders, and
the like from wood of the Charter Oak, frigate Constitution, and other
venerated relics. Among other evidences of contact the existence of the
Chinese calendar in Mexico is cited. Dr. Brinton shows, however, that
the Mexican calendar is an indigenous production, and has no relation
to the calendar of the Chinese. In a similar way the Mexican game of
_patolli_ is correlated with the East Indian game of _parchesi_ by Dr.
E. B. Tylor. Dr. Stewart Culin, who has made a profound study of the
games of the world, and Mr. Frank Hamilton Cushing, the distinguished
student of the ethnology of southern North America, are both convinced
that this game had an independent origin in various parts of the world.
Mexican divisions of time marked by five colors are recognized as being
allied to a similar device in China. The application of colors to the
meaning of certain ideographs is common in other parts of the world as
well. It is important to remark that the colors named include nearly the
whole category as selected by barbarous people, and in the use of colors
in this way it would be difficult to avoid similarities.
The evidences of contact in early times must be settled by the
comparison of early relics of the two shores of the Pacific.
Resemblances there are, and none will dispute them, but that they are
fortuitous and have no value in the discussion is unquestionable. As
illustrations of these fortuitous resemblances may be cited a tazza from
the United States of Colombia having a high support with triangular
perforations identical in form with that of a similar object found
among the mortuary vessels of Korea, and Greece as well. A curious,
three-lobed knob of a pot rim, so common in the shell mounds of Omori,
Japan, has its exact counterpart in the shell mounds of the upper
Amazon. In the Omori pottery a peculiar curtain-shaped decoration on a
special form of jar has its exact parallel in the ancient pottery of
Porto Rico. These instances might be multiplied, but such coincidences
as are often seen in the identity of certain words are familiar to all
students. The account of the land of Fusang appears in the records of
the Liang dynasty contained in the Nanshi, or History of the South,
written by Li Yen-Shau, who lived in the beginning of the seventh
century. It purports to have been told by a monk who returned from
the land of Fusang in 499 of our era. This hypothetical region has
been believed to be Japan, Saghalin, and Mexico. The record is filled
with fabulous statements of impossible animals, trees of impossible
dimensions, and is so utterly beyond credence in many ways that it
should have no weight as evidence. If it had any foundation in fact,
then one might infer that some traveler had entered Saghalin from the
north, had crossed to Yeso and Japan, and found his way back to China.
His own recollections, supplemented by stories told him by others,
would form the substance of his account. The record is brief, but any
one familiar with Japan as Klaproth was is persuaded with him that
the account refers to Japan and adjacent regions. The twenty thousand
_li_ the monk is said to have traveled may parallel his mulberry trees
several thousand feet high and his silkworms seven feet long. In a
more remote Chinese record, as mentioned by Dr. Gustave Schlegel, the
statement is made that the inhabitants had to dig down ten thousand feet
to obtain blue tenacious clay for roofing tiles! A number of ardent
writers convinced that signs of Chinese contact are seen in the relics
of middle America have seized upon this account of Fusang in support of
this belief. These convictions have arisen by finding it difficult to
believe that the ancient civilizations of Mexico and Peru could have
been indigenous. In seeking for an exterior origin in the Fusang account
overweight has been credited to every possible resemblance, and all
discrepancies have been ignored.
The fabulous account of the land of Fusang evidently supplied
documentary evidence, and Mexico was conceived to be the mythical
Fusang. Mr. Vining goes so far as to declare that "some time in the past
the nations of Mexico, Yucatan, and Central America were powerfully
affected by the introduction of Asiatic arts, customs, and religious
belief." To establish the details in the Chinese account the entire
western hemisphere is laid under contribution: now it is the buffalo
of North America, then the llama of Peru, the reindeer of the arctic,
or some native word. These writers do not hesitate to bring to life
animals that became extinct in the upper Tertiaries, and to account for
the absence of others by supposing them to have become extinct. Literal
statements of horses dragging wheeled vehicles are interpreted as an
allusion in Buddhist cult which refers by metaphor to attributes and not
to actual objects. As an illustration of the wild way in which some of
these resemblances are established, Mr. Vining quotes the account of M.
José Perez (_Revue Orientale et Américaine_, vol. viii). Perez reminds
us that the inhabitants of the New World gave Old World names to places
in the new continent, citing New York, New Orleans, and New Brunswick as
examples, and then says that at some remote epoch the Asiatics had given
to the cities of the New World the same names as the cities of their
mother country; so the name of the famous Japanese city Ohosaka (Osaka),
to the west of the Pacific, became Oaxaca in Mexico on the eastern side.
Now it is well known that the ancient name of Osaka was Namihawa; this
became corrupted into Naniwa, and not till 1492 does the name Osaka
appear. Rev. J. Summers gives a full account of these successive names
with their meanings (Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan,
vol. vii, part iv). The real question to be answered is not what might
have been accomplished by ancient explorers from Asia, but what was
accomplished. It is shown that Chinese Buddhist priests went to India
in the years 388, 399, 629, and so on, and the question is asked, Why
may they not have reached Mexico on the east? Migration on parallels of
latitude with no intervening ocean is one matter; to go from latitude
30° on one side of the Pacific almost to the Arctic Ocean, and down on
the other side nearly to the equator, is quite another exploit. It is
assumed that five priests had gone to Mexico in 468 A.D., and there
ingrafted Buddhistic cult on the races with whom they came in contact.
It is simply beyond reason to believe that the introduction of Buddhism
into Mexico antedated by half a century its introduction into Japan.
Communication between Korea and Japan has been from the earliest times
one without effort or peril: in the one case a trip of a day or more,
in the other case a journey of unnumbered thousands of miles through
perilous seas, across stormy fiords and raging waters, including arctic
and tropical climates and contact with multitudinous savage hordes.
Those who hold that Mexico and Central America were powerfully affected
by Asiatic contact must be called upon to explain the absence of
certain Asiatic arts and customs which would have been introduced by
any contact of sufficient magnitude to leave its impress so strongly
in other directions. A savage people takes but little from a civilized
people save its diseases, gunpowder, and rum. The contact of barbarous
with civilized people results in an interchange of many useful objects
and ideas, but these introductions must be through repeated invasions
and by considerable numbers. Peschel, while believing in the Asiatic
origin of the American race, would place the time far back in the savage
state. He repudiates the Fusang idea, and expresses his belief that "a
high state of civilization can not be transmitted by a few individuals,
and that the progress in culture takes place in dense populations and
by means of a division of labor which fits each individual into a
highly complex but most effective organization," and then insists that
"the phenomena of American civilization originated independently and
spontaneously"; and Keane shows how interesting the social, religious,
and political institutions of America become when "once severed from the
fictitious Asiatic connection and influences." That the savage derives
little or derives slowly from contact with a superior race is seen in
the fact that he still remains savage. Thus the Ainu, a low, savage
people, though they have been in contact with the Japanese for nearly
two thousand years, have never acquired the more powerful Mongolian
arrow release, while the Persians, though Aryan, yet early acquired
this release from their Mongolian neighbors. The Scandinavians, who in
prehistoric times practiced the primary release, yet later acquired
the more efficient Mediterranean method. Let us for a moment consider
what would have occurred as a result of an Asiatic contact with a
people advanced enough to have been powerfully affected in their "arts,
customs, and religious belief." It seems reasonable to believe that
traces of a Mongolian release would be found in Central America, the
more so as a warlike people would eagerly seize upon a more powerful
method of pulling the bow, yet no trace of a stone or metal thumb ring
has ever been found in the western hemisphere. Ancient Mexican codices,
while depicting the archer, reveal no trace of the Mongolian method. In
the Old World this release crept westward as a result of the migration
of, or contact with, Asiatic tribes, and metal thumb rings are dug up
on the Mediterranean littoral. While the arrow release of China might
not have effected a lodgment in America, the terra-cotta roofing tile
certainly would. This important device, according to Schlegel, was
probably known in China 2200 B.C., in Korea 500 B.C., and in Japan in
the early years of our era. In the ancient records of Japan reference
is made to "breaking a hole in the roof tiles of the hall," etc., and
green-glazed tiles are dug up on the sites of ancient temples in Japan.
The fragments are not only unmistakable but indestructible. I have shown
elsewhere[2] that the primitive roofing tile crept into Europe from
the East, distributing itself along both shores of the Mediterranean,
and extending north to latitude 44°. Graeber finds its earliest use in
the temple of Hira in Olympia, 1000 B.C. The ancient Greeks had no
knowledge of the roofing tile. Among the thousands of fragments and
multitudinous articles of pottery found by Schliemann in the ruins of
Ilios, not a trace of the roofing tile was discovered. One is forced
to believe that so useful an object, and one so easily made, would
have been immediately adopted by a people so skillful in the making of
pottery as the ancient Mexicans. Certainly these people and those of
contiguous countries were equal to the ancient Greeks in the variety
of their fictile products. Huge jars, whistles, masks, men in armor,
curious pots of an infinite variety attest to their skill as potters,
yet the western hemisphere has not revealed a single fragment of a
pre-Columbian roofing tile. Vining, in his work, cites an observation
of the Rev. W. Lobscheid, the author of a Chinese grammar. In crossing
the Isthmus of Panama this writer was much struck with the similarities
to China; "the principal edifices on elevated ground and the roofing
tiles identical to those of China." The roofing tile is indeed identical
with that of China. It is the form that I have elsewhere defined as the
normal or Asiatic tile, but it reached America for the first time by way
of the Mediterranean and Spain, and thence with the Spaniards across the
Atlantic, where it immediately gained a footing, and rapidly spread
through South America and along the west coast north, as may be seen in
the old mission buildings in California.
In China, Korea, and Japan the sandal has a bifurcated toe cord, the
base of which, springing from the front of the sandal, passes between
the first and second toes. It belongs to the Old World through its
entire extent. It is the only form represented in ancient Egyptian,
Assyrian, and Greek sculpture. One would have expected that with any
close contact with Asian people this method of holding the sandal to
the foot would have been established in Central America, yet one may
seek in vain for the evidences of even a sporadic introduction of this
method. Where representations are given in the sculptured stone pottery,
or codex, the sandal is represented with two cords, one passing between
the first and second and the other between the third and fourth toes.
Dr. Otis T. Mason, who has given us an exhaustive monograph of the foot
gear of the world, says that every authority on Mexico and Central
America pictures the sandal with two cords, and he further says, in a
general article on the same subject, "An examination of any collection
of pottery of middle America reveals the fact at once, if the human foot
is portrayed, that the single toe string was not anciently known."
The Thibetans, Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese have used the serviceable
carrying stick from time immemorial. The nearest approach to this method
in this country is seen in Guadalajara, where a shoulder piece is used
to carry jars. The representation of this method shows that the pole
rests across the back in such a manner that the load is steadied by both
the right and left hand simultaneously--identical, in fact, with methods
in vogue to-day through western Europe. We find, however, the northern
races, as the Ainu and Kamchadels, use the head band in carrying loads,
and this method has been depicted in ancient American sculpture. The
carrying stick, so peculiarly Asiatic, according to Dr. Mason, is not
met with on this continent.
With the evidences of Asiatic contact supposed to be so strong in
Central America, one might have imagined that so useful a device as
the simple chopsticks would have secured a footing. These two sticks,
held in one hand and known in China as "hasteners or nimble lads," are
certainly the most useful, the most economical, and the most efficient
device for their purposes ever invented by man. Throughout that vast
Asian region, embracing a population of five hundred million, the
chopstick is used as a substitute for fork, tongs, and certain forms of
tweezers. Even fish, omelet, and cake are separated with the chopsticks,
and the cook, the street scavenger, and the watch repairer use this
device in the form of iron, long bamboo, and delicate ivory. The bamboo
chopstick was known in China 1000 B.C., and shortly after this date
the ivory form was devised. Their use is one of great antiquity in
Japan, as attested by references to it in the ancient records of that
country. One may search in vain for the trace of any object in the
nature of a chopstick in Central or South America. Knitting needles of
wood are found in the work baskets associated with ancient Peruvian
mummies, but the chopstick has not been found. Curious pottery rests for
the chopsticks are exhumed in Japan, but even this enduring testimony of
its early use is yet to be revealed in this country.
The plow in all its varieties has existed in China for countless
centuries. Its ideograph is written in a score of ways. It was early
introduced into Korea and Japan, and spread westward through the Old
World to Scandinavia. There it has been found in the peat bogs. It is
figured on ancient Egyptian monuments, yet it made its appearance in
the New World only with the advent of the Spaniards. This indispensable
implement of agriculture when once introduced was instantly adopted by
the races who came in contact with the Spaniards. Even in Peru, with
its wonderful agricultural development and irrigating canals, no trace
of this device is anciently known, and to-day the tribes of Central and
South America still follow the rude and primitive model first introduced
by their conquerors.
If we study the musical instruments of the New World races we find
various forms of whistles, flutes, rattles, split bells, and drums, but
seek in vain for a stringed instrument of any kind. This is all the more
surprising when we find evidences of the ancient use of the bow. If Dr.
Tylor is right, we may well imagine that the lute of ancient Egypt was
evolved from the musical bow with its gourd resonator (so common in
various parts of Africa), and this in turn an outgrowth of the archer's
bow, or, what at the moment seems quite as probable, the musical bow
might have been the primitive form from which was evolved the archer's
bow on the one hand and the lute on the other. Dr. Mason, in a brief
study of the musical bow, finds it in various forms in Africa and
sporadic cases of it in this country, and expresses the conviction that
stringed musical instruments were not known to any of the aborigines
of the western hemisphere before Columbus. Dr. Brinton is inclined to
dispute this conclusion, though I am led to believe that Dr. Mason is
right; for had this simple musical device been known anciently in this
country, it would have spread so widely that its pre-Columbian use
would have been beyond any contention. In Japan evidences of a stringed
instrument run back to the third or fourth century of our era, and in
China the _kin_ (five strings) and _seih_ (thirteen strings) were known
a thousand years before Christ. These were played in temples of worship,
at religious rites, times of offering, etc. It seems incredible that
any contact sufficient to affect the religious customs of Mexico or
Central America could have occurred without the introduction of a
stringed instrument of some kind.[3]
In the Ceremonial Usages of the Chinese (1100 B.C.), a work already
referred to, one may find allusions to a number of forms of wheeled
carriages, with directions for their construction. Minute details even
are given as to material and dimensions, such as measuring the spoke
holes in the rim with millet seed (reminding one of the modern method of
ascertaining the cubic contents of crania), all indicating the advanced
development of wheeled vehicles. If from this early date in China up
to the fifth century A.D., any people had found their way from China
to middle America, one wonders why the wheel was not introduced. Its
absence must be accounted for. It was certainly not for lack of good
roads or constructive skill. Its appearance in this hemisphere was
synchronous with the Spanish invasion, and when once introduced spread
rapidly north and south. Like the plow, it still remains to-day the
clumsy and primitive model of its Spanish prototype.
The potter's wheel is known to have existed in Asia from the earliest
times; the evidence is not only historical, but is attested by the
occurrence of lathe-turned pottery in ancient graves. We look in vain
for a trace of a potter's wheel in America previous to the sixteenth
century. Mr. Henry C. Mercer regards a potter's device used in Yucatan
as a potter's wheel, and believes it to have been pre-Columbian. This
device, known as the _kabal_, consists of a thick disk of wood which
rests on a slippery board, the potter turning the disk with his feet.
The primitive workman uses his feet to turn, hold, and move objects
in many operations. The primitive potter has always turned his jar in
manipulation rather than move himself about it. Resting the vessel
on a block and revolving it with his feet is certainly the initial
step toward the potter's wheel, but so simple an expedient must not
be regarded as having any relation to the true potter's wheel, which
originated in regions where other kinds of wheels revolving on pivots
were known.
It seems reasonable to believe that had the Chinese, Japanese, or
Koreans visited the Mexican coast in such numbers as is believed they
did, we ought certainly to find some influence, some faint strain, at
least, of the Chinese method of writing in the hitherto unfathomable
inscriptions of Maya and Aztec. Until recently it was not known whether
they were phonetic or ideographic; indeed, Dr. Brinton has devised a
new word to express their character, which he calls ikonomatic. This
distinguished philologist of the American languages confesses that not
even the threshold of investigation in the solution of these enigmatical
puzzles has been passed. Had the Chinese introduced or modified or
even influenced in any way the method of writing as seen on the rock
inscriptions of Central America, one familiar with Chinese might have
found some clew, as was the case in deciphering the ancient writings
of Assyria and Egypt. Grotefend's work on cuneiform inscriptions and
Champollion's interpretation of Egyptian came about by the assumption of
certain inclosures representing historic characters, which were revealed
in one case by an inference and in another by an accompanying Greek
inscription. If we examine the early Chinese characters as shown on
ancient coins of the Hea dynasty (1756 to 2142 B.C.), or the characters
on ancient bronze vases of the Shang dynasty (1113 to 1755 B.C.), we
find most of them readily deciphered by sinologists, and coming down
a few centuries later the characters are quite like those as written
to-day. On some of the many inscribed stone monuments of Central America
one might expect to find some traces of Chinese characters if any
intercourse had taken place, whereas the Maya glypts are remotely unlike
either Chinese or Egyptian writing. Some acute students of this subject
are inclined to believe that these undecipherable characters have been
evolved from pictographs which were primarily derived from the simple
picture writing so common among the races of the New World.
It seems clearly impossible that any intercourse could have taken
place between Asia and America without an interchange of certain
social commodities. The "divine weed," tobacco, has been the comfort
of the races of the western hemisphere north and south for unnumbered
centuries: stone tobacco pipes are exhumed in various parts of the
continent; cigarettes made of corn husks are found in ancient graves and
caves; the metatarsals of a deer, doubly perforated, through which to
inhale tobacco or its smoke in some form, are dug up on the shores of
Lake Titicaca.
The question naturally arises why tobacco was not carried back to Asia
by some of the returning emigrants, or why tea was not introduced into
this country by those early invaders. A Buddhist priest without tea or
tobacco would be an anomaly. There are many other herbs, food plants,
etc., that should not have waited for the Spanish invasion on the one
hand, or the Dutch and Portuguese navigator along the Chinese coast on
the other.
Finally, if evidences of Asiatic contact exist, they should certainly
be found in those matters most closely connected with man, such as his
weapons, clothing, sandals, methods of conveyance, pottery making and
devices thereon, musical instruments, and above all house structure and
modes of burial. More remote perhaps would be survivals of language,
and if the invaders had a written one, the characters, whether phonetic
or ideographic, would have been left in the enduring rock inscriptions.
If now a study of the aborigines of the western hemisphere from Hudson
Bay to Tierra del Fuego fails to reveal even a remote suggestion of
resemblance to any of these various matters above enumerated, their
absence must in some way be accounted for by Asiaticists.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Mr. Charles Walcott Brooks presented to the California Academy of
Sciences a report of Japanese vessels wrecked on the North Pacific Ocean
in which many instances are given. He says: "Every junk found stranded
on the coast of North America or on the Hawaiian or adjacent islands
has, on examination, proved to be Japanese, and no single instance of
a Chinese vessel has ever been reported, nor is any believed to have
existed.... There also exists an ocean stream of cold water emerging
from the Arctic Ocean which sets close in along the eastern coast of
Asia. This fully accounts for the absence of Chinese junks on the
Pacific, as vessels disabled off their coast would naturally drift
southward."
[2] On the Older Forms of Terra-Cotta Roofing Tiles. Essex Institute
Bulletin, 1882.
[3] Since the above was written Dr. Brinton and Mr. Saville have called
my attention to such evidences as would warrant the belief in the
existence of a pre-Columbian stringed musical instrument. The devices
are, however, of such a nature as to indicate their independent origin.
THE POSSIBLE FIBER INDUSTRIES OF THE UNITED STATES.
BY CHARLES RICHARDS DODGE.
The wealth of any community is dependent on the variety and extent of
its industries, the utilization of local natural resources, and the
employment of the labor of all classes of its population. In locations
of successful industrial operations the farmer derives increased
incomes, the value of his products is greater, his lands of higher
value, and the wages of agricultural labor larger. The rural population
contiguous to large towns, therefore, is more prosperous than the larger
farming contingent more remote from manufacturing or industrial centers.
The farmers of the first class are prosperous because they have a home
market for their dairy products, fruits, vegetables, and other "truck,"
which they are able to produce, for the most part, on small areas by
high culture, while those of the second class are forced to expend their
energies on commercial commodities such as cotton, wool, meat, grain,
etc., with long hauls in transportation, and with heavy competition,
international as well as domestic.
In times of depression, or when competition has grown too heavy, the
cultivation of certain staples may cease to be remunerative, and the
unfortunate producer is compelled to diversify his agriculture, or adopt
some other means of livelihood.
Just such a misfortune has overtaken many farmers in the United States
within the past few years. Within two years, in fact, wheat has been a
drug in the market, while corn has been cheaper in some sections than
coal, and cotton is now so low that it hardly pays to grow it, without
considering the necessity, for the Southern farmer, of competing against
the seventy-five thousand bales of Egyptian cotton which enter our ports
in a year. Confronted with these conditions, there never has been a time
when farmers were more anxious to discover new paying crops. Among
the possible new rural industries that have attracted the attention of
the agricultural class is that of fiber production, though the growth
of certain kinds of fibers in past time has been a source of income
to the country. Already there is a widespread interest in the subject
throughout the West and South, and farmers are only seeking information
regarding the particular practice involved in the cultivation of flax,
ramie, and other fibers, cost of production, market, etc., but many are
asking where the proper seed can be secured with which to make a start.
The importation of unmanufactured flax, hemp, textile grasses, and
other fibers amounts annually to a sum ranging from fifteen million to
twenty million dollars, while the imported manufactures of these fibers
amount to almost double this value, or, in round numbers, approximately
forty-five million dollars. With the establishment and extension of
three or four fiber industries in this country, and with the new
manufacturing enterprises that would grow out of such establishment and
extension, an immense sum could be readily saved to the country, and the
money representing the growth of these fibers would add just so much to
the wealth of the farming class.
There are two ways in which we may arrive at a solution of this problem:
by direct Government aid, and through the intelligently directed efforts
of private enterprise.
Government experiments for the development or extension of vegetable
fiber industries have been instituted, at different times, in many
countries. In some instances these have been confined to testing the
strength of native fibrous substances for comparison with similar tests
of commercial fibers. Such were the almost exhaustive experiments of
Roxburgh in India early in the present century. Another direction for
Government experimentation has been the testing of machines to supersede
costly hand labor in the preparation of the raw material for market, or
in the development of chemical processes for the further preparation of
the fibers for manufacture. The broadest field of experiment, however,
has been the growth of the plants under different conditions, either
to introduce their culture, or to economically develop the industries
growing out of their culture, when such industries need to be fostered.
The introduction of ramie culture is an example of the first instance,
the fostering of the almost extinct flax industry of our grandfathers'
days an illustration of the second.
The United States has conducted experiments or instituted inquiries in
the fiber interest at various times in the last fifty years, but it is
only since 1890 that an office of practical experiment and inquiry has
been established by the United States Department of Agriculture, that
has been continuous through a term of years.
[Illustration: A COTTON FIELD IN MISSISSIPPI.]
In the present work the efforts of the Government have been mainly
directed in the line of collecting and disseminating authoritative
information relating to all branches of the industry, in importing
proper seed for experimental cultivation, and in directing experiments,
either on its own account or in co-operation with State and even private
interests. The testing of new labor-saving machinery has also come
within its province.
The subject in its details will be better understood by considering
the list of the more important commercial fibers known to our market.
The list is not a long one, for it barely reaches a total of fifteen
species. The fibers of the first rank are the spinning fibers--namely,
cotton, flax, hemp, jute; of the second rank, or cordage fibers, Sisal,
Manila, Sunn and Mauritius hemps, and New Zealand flax; and of the third
rank, Tampico, or ixtle, African fiber or palmetto, coir or cocoanut,
piassaba, Mexican whisk, raffia, and Spanish moss, which are used in
brush manufacture, in upholstery, and for other rough manufactures.
Of these fifteen forms, only cotton, hemp, palmetto, and Spanish moss
are produced in the United States in commercial quantity, though
flax line has been produced to some extent in the past. Of those not
produced in commercial quantity in this country, but which would thrive
in cultivation, may be mentioned jute, New Zealand flax, Sisal hemp,
cocoanut, and possibly Sunn hemp in subtropical Florida, with a few
"substitutes," which will be mentioned hereafter.
I have neglected to mention in this list the sponge cucumber, a species
of _Luffa_ used as a bath sponge, which is imported from Japan in
quantity, and which grows in the United States.