TRAVEL STORIES
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[Illustration: Victoria Falls, Zambesi]
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TRAVEL STORIES
RETOLD FROM ST. NICHOLAS
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
Copyright, 1920, by
THE CENTURY CO.
PRINTED IN U.S.A.
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CONTENTS
PAGE
THE GRAND CAÑON OF ARIZONA _William Haskell Simpson_ 3
IN RAINBOW-LAND _Amy Sutherland_ 16
TRAVELING IN INDIA _Mabel Albert Spicer_ 25
WHERE THE SUNSETS OF ALL
THE YESTERDAYS ARE FOUND _Olin D. Wheeler_ 38
FIRECRACKERS _Erick Pomeroy_ 51
CURIOUS CLOCKS _Charles A. Brassler_ 64
MOTORING THROUGH THE
GOLDEN AGE--PART I _Albert Bigelow Paine_ 74
MOTORING THROUGH THE
GOLDEN AGE--PART II _Albert Bigelow Paine_ 97
LETTER-BOXES IN FOREIGN LANDS _A. R. Roy_ 119
LOST RHEIMS _Louise Eugénie Prickett_ 124
WHERE DOROTHY VERNON DWELT _Minna B. Noyes_ 135
GLIMPSES OF FOREIGN FIRE-BRIGADES _Charles T. Hill_ 142
DUTCH CHEESES _H. M. Smith_ 162
A GEOGRAPHY CITY "COME ALIVE" _Lindamira Harbeson_ 167
THE GIANT AND THE GENIE _George Frederic Stratton_ 180
OUT IN THE BIG-GAME COUNTRY _Clarence H. Rowe_ 195
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Victoria Falls, Zambesi _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Camel Carriages of the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab 32
Strings of Firecrackers 60
Hexagonal Bundles of Firecrackers Drying in the Sun 60
View of Constantinople from the Galata Side 170
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TRAVEL STORIES
THE GRAND CAÑON OF ARIZONA
BY WILLIAM HASKELL SIMPSON
Many of those who seek and love earth's greatest scenery have declared
that they found it at the Grand Cañon of Arizona. Travelers flock to it
from the ends of the earth, though the majority of the visitors,
numbering every year about a hundred thousand, are Americans.
The Grand Cañon of the Colorado River, in northern Arizona, is indeed a
world wonder, and there is no other chasm in the world worthy to be
compared with it. It is more than two hundred miles long, including
Marble Cañon, is from ten to thirteen miles wide in the granite gorge
section, and is more than a mile deep. It was created ages and ages ago
by the erosive action of water, wind, and frost, and it is still being
deepened and widened imperceptibly year by year.
The Colorado River, which drains a region of three hundred thousand
square miles and is two thousand miles long from the rise of its
principal source, is formed in southern Utah by the junction of the
Grand and the Green Rivers, and, flowing through Utah and Arizona to
tide-water at the Gulf of California, it dashes in headlong torrent
through this titanic gorge--this dream of color, tinted like a rainbow
or a sunset.
The cañon is reached by a railroad running to the rim, and may be
visited any day in the year. It is unlike most other scenery, because
when standing on its rim you look down instead of up. Imagine a
gigantic trough, filled with bare mountains on each side and sloping to
a narrow channel, which in turn is carved deeply and steeply out of
solid granite. You come upon it unawares from the level, timbered,
plateau country. The experience is an absolutely unique one. Only when
you go down one of the trails to the bottom and look up is the view
more nearly like other grand mountain vistas. The first glimpse always
is from the upper edge, and, having no previous standard of
measurement, you find it difficult to adjust yourself to this strange
condition. The distant rim swims in a bluish haze. The nearer red rocks
forming the inner cañon buttes--crowned with massive table-lands that
look like temples, minarets, and battlements--reflect the sunlight in
myriad hues. It seems a vast illusion rather than reality. No wonder
that the first look often awes the spectator into silence and tears!
But, before you have been here long, you will wish to know how it all
happened. You will ask how the cañon was made.
That question was asked by a little girl of Captain John Hance, one of
the pioneer guides. Hance contests with a few other early comers the
distinction of being the biggest "romancer" in Arizona. He told her
that he dug it all himself.
"Why, Captain Hance!" she said, in astonishment, "what did you do with
all the dirt?"
He quickly replied, "I built the San Francisco Peaks off there with it!"
Just between ourselves, no one absolutely can tell just how the miracle
occurred, for no human being was there at the time. But the geologist
has put together, bit by bit, thousands of facts, dug from the rocks
which here lie exposed like a mammoth layer-cake and his explanation is
so convincing that it must stand as at least the probable truth.
Here may be seen rocks of the four geological periods which are among
the very oldest of our earth. The rocks of later periods were here
once, too, making a layer more than two miles high resting on what is
to-day the top, but in some remote age they were shaved off by some
great natural force, perhaps a glacier.
The eating away of the rocks which formed the cañon itself is modern.
Scientists say it was done, as it were, last Monday or Tuesday, for it
was when the top two thirds had been "shaved off," as we have said,
that the Colorado River began to cut the Grand Cañon through the rocks
that formed the lower third.
While the cracking of the crust, caused by internal fires, may have
helped the process of cañon-making, the result of erosion is seen
everywhere. Every passing shower, every desert wind, every snowfall,
changes the contour of the region imperceptibly but surely. The cañon
is Nature's open book in which we may read how the earth was built.
With the coming of the railroad, when this century was yet a baby,
tourists began to flock in, hotels were built, highways constructed,
trails bettered, and other improvements made. To-day the traveler finds
here every comfort.
Although first glimpsed by white men in 1540, when the Spanish
conquistadors appeared,--one expedition journeying from the Hopi
pueblos in Tusayan across the Painted Desert,--the big cañon remained
unvisited, except for Indians and trappers, until 1858, when Lieutenant
Ives, of the army engineer corps, made a brief exploration of the lower
reaches of the Colorado, coming out at Cataract Creek. It was not
thoroughly explored until the year 1869, when Major John W. Powell made
his memorable voyage from the entrance to the mouth of the great gorge,
passing down the Green and Colorado Rivers. Though he lost two boats
and four men, he pushed on to the end. It is fitting that the United
States Government has erected to his memory a massive monument of
native rock with bronze tablets on one of the points near El Tovar
Hotel.
Powell's outfit consisted of nine men and four rowboats. The distance
traveled exceeded one thousand miles, from what is now Greenriver,
Utah, through the series of cañons to the mouth of the Rio Virgin. In
the spring of 1871 he again started with three boats and descended the
river to the Crossing of the Fathers. The following summer Lee's Ferry
was his point of departure and he went as far as the mouth of Kanab
Wash.
Beginning with the Russell and Monett party, in 1907, several others
have essayed to duplicate Powell's achievement, and successfully, too,
though without adding to our scientific knowledge of the cañon. The
trips are exceedingly dangerous, for the rapids conceal rocks that
would wreck any boat, and the currents are treacherous. It is safer, by
far, to sit at home and read Powell's story.
The average traveler spends too short a time at the cañon. He arrives
in the morning and leaves in the evening. Those wise ones, who go about
things in more leisurely fashion, stay from three days to a week.
There are certain things that everybody does. Simply by looking through
the big telescope at the "lookout," an intimate view may be had of the
far-off north rim and of the river gorge five miles below in an air
line. It is easier than actually going to those places, though both are
accessible. The north rim, or Kaibab Plateau, is about a quarter of a
mile higher than the south rim, where you are standing, and is thickly
forested with giant pines. Clear streams are found here, and wild game
in abundance. Mountain-lions hide in the rocks, and bobcats haunt the
trees. It is the home of the bear, too; you may see two "sassy" young
sample specimens outside the house where the Indians stay, opposite El
Tovar Hotel. The way across the cañon to the north side is not an easy
one, as the Colorado must be crossed in a steel cage suspended from a
cable, which stretches dizzily from bank to bank. Then follows the
stiff climb up Bright Angel Creek, along a trail seldom used.
The Hopi House, where the Indians give their dances every evening for
free entertainment of guests, is another attraction. It is occupied by
representatives of the Snake Dance Hopis, whose home is many miles
northeast across the Painted Desert. You won't see the Snake Dance, of
course, but you will witness ceremonies just as interesting,
participated in by men, women and children of the Hopi and Navajo
tribes. The little tots, especially, are very "cute." They execute
difficult steps in perfect time and with the utmost solemnity, while
the drummer beats the tom-tom, and the singer chants his weird songs.
Here you may see Navajo silversmiths at work, fashioning curious
ornaments from Mexican coins and turquoise, also deft weavers of
blankets and baskets.
The Havasupai Reservation, in Cataract Cañon, is about sixty miles
away, and Indians from that hidden place of the blue waterfalls are
frequent visitors around the railway station.
All of these Indians understand the language of Uncle Sam. Many of them
are Carlisle or Riverside graduates, and one young Hopi is writing a
history of his tribe in university English.
Have you ever ridden a mule? If not, you will learn how at the cañon,
for only on muleback can travelers easily make the trip down and up the
trail. Walking is all right going down, but the climb coming back will
tire out the strongest hiker: hence the mule, or burro, long as to
ears, long as to memory, and "sad as to his songs."
Of the visitors, fat and lean, tall and short, old and young, to each
is assigned a mule of the right size and disposition, together with a
khaki riding-suit, which fits more or less, all surmounted by hats that
are useful rather than ornamental. It is a motley crowd that starts off
in the morning, in charge of careful guides, from the roof of the
world--a motley crowd, but gay and suspiciously cheerful. It is
likewise a motley crowd that slowly climbs up out of the earth toward
evening--but subdued and inclined still to cling to the patient mule.
"What did you see?" asked curious friends.
Quite likely they saw more mule than cañon, being concerned with the
immediate views along the trail rather than the thrilling vistas
unfolding at each turn. Nine out of ten of them could tell you their
mule's name, yet would hesitate to say much about Zoroaster or Angel's
Gate. They could identify the steep descent of the Devil's Corkscrew,
for they were a part of it; the mystery of the deep gulf, stretching
overhead and all around, probably did not reach them. That is the
penalty one pays for being too much occupied with things close at hand.
Yet only by crawling down into the awe-full depths can the cañon be
fully comprehended afterward from the upper rim.
All trail parties take lunch on the river's bank. The Colorado is about
two hundred feet wide here, and lashed into foam by the rapids. Its
roar is like that of a thousand express-trains. The place seems
uncanny. At night, under the stars, you appear to be in another world.
No water is to be found on the south rim for one hundred miles east and
west of El Tovar, except what falls in the passing summer showers, and
that is quickly soaked up by the dry soil. All the water used for the
small army of horses and mules maintained by the transportation
department, likewise for the big hotel and annex and other facilities,
is hauled by rail in tank-cars from a point one hundred and twenty-five
miles distant. The vast volume of water in the Colorado River, only
seven miles away, is not available. No way has yet been found to pump
economically the precious fluid from a river that to-day is thirty feet
deep, and to-morrow is seventy feet deep, flowing below you at the
depth of over a mile.
Another curious fact is this: the drainage on the south side is away
from the cañon, not into it. The ground at the edge of the abyss is
higher than it is a few miles back.
During the winter of 1917 there was an unusual fall of snow, which
covered the sides and bottom of the cañon down to the river. Nothing
like it had been seen for a quarter of a century. Generally, what
little snow falls is confined to the rim and the upper slopes. At times
the immense gulf was completely filled with clouds, and then the cañon
looked like an inland lake. As a rule, this part of Arizona is a land
of sunshine; the high altitude means cool summers; the southerly
latitude means pleasant winters.
Naturally, a place like the Grand Cañon has attracted many great
artists and other distinguished visitors. Moving-picture companies have
staged thrilling photo-plays in these picturesque surroundings.
Photographers by the score have trained their finest batteries of
lenses on rim, trail, and river, some of them getting remarkable
results in natural colors.
Unmoved by this galaxy of talent, however, the Grand Cañon refuses
wholly to give up its secrets. Always there will be something new for
the seeker and interpreter of to-morrow.
The Grand Cañon is a forest reserve and a national monument. A bill has
been introduced in Congress to make it a national park. Meanwhile, the
United States Forest Service and the railway company are doing all they
can to increase the facilities for visitors. A forest ranger is located
near by. His force looks out for fires, and polices the Tusayan Forest
district. Covering such a large area with only a few men, a system has
been worked out for locating fires quickly. Fifteen minutes saved,
often means victory snatched from defeat. Water is not available, for
this is a waterless region except during the short rainy season, so
recourse must be had to other devices, such as back-firing and
smothering with dirt.
Official government names for prominent objects in the region have been
substituted for most of the old-time local names. For example, your
attention is invited to Yavapai Point, so called after a tribe of
Indians, instead of O'Neill's Point. These American Indian words are
musical and belong to the country, and the names of Spanish explorers
and Aztec rulers also seem suited to the place. Thus the great cañon
has been saved the fate of bearing the hackneyed or prosaic names that
have been given to many places of wonderful natural beauty throughout
our country. Think of a "Lover's Leap" down an abyss of several
thousand feet! That atrocity, happily, has been spared us in this
favored region.
This great furrow on the brow of Arizona never can be made common by
the hand of man. It is too big for ordinary desecration. Always it will
be the ideal Place of Silence. Let us continue to hope that the incline
railway will not be established here, suitable though it may be
elsewhere, nor the merry-go-round. The useful automobile is barred on
the highway along the edge of the chasm, though it is permitted in
other sections.
It has been my good fortune to meet at the cañon many noted artists,
writers, lecturers, "movie" celebrities, singers, and preachers. The
impression made upon each one of them by this titanic chasm is almost
always the same. At first, outward indifference--on guard not to be
overwhelmed, for they have seen much, the wide world over. Then a
restrained enthusiasm, but with emotions well in check. After longer
acquaintance, more enthusiasm and less restraint. At the end, full
surrender to the magic spell.
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IN RAINBOW-LAND
BY AMY SUTHERLAND
Until only a few years ago, the Greatest Wonder of the World lay hidden
away in one of the most savage parts of Africa. The natives of that
region, terrified by its mysterious columns of vapor and its
subterranean thunder, did not venture within many miles of it. The
white men who had looked upon it could be counted on the fingers of one
hand.
And yet, more than fifty years have passed since the explorer
Livingstone, journeying eastward along the Zambesi, first beheld that
rainbow mist rise above the forest. Of its cause he could learn nothing
from the savages; and so, except for his own conjectures, he came quite
unprepared upon his splendid discovery. He approached it by the river,
which above the Falls is a mile wide, and below them runs for fifty
miles at the bottom of a gorge between four and five hundred feet deep,
whose twin walls of black, precipitous rock show for all that distance
scarcely a ledge or slope where the smallest plant may cling. So, after
a peep downward at the Falls, from the island on their brink which now
bears his name, he left his new-found marvel less than half seen, and
departed whence he came.
And the loneliness of those vast solitudes brooded once more over
forest and river, to be broken only at rare intervals by some wandering
hunter, or perhaps by a party of men adventuring through endless toil
and danger to behold a wonder whose fame, even then, spread as far as
that tiny portion of South Africa where white men dwelt and
civilization held sway. So things remained until the day of Cecil
Rhodes, under whose auspices went forth the _voortrekkers_, or
pioneers, to colonize the vast land now called Rhodesia, in the heart
of which the Victoria Falls lie. Many of these voortrekkers, and their
wives and children, died at the hands of the savage Amatabele tribe of
natives; but the survivors in the end were victorious, and the country
became their own.
Cecil Rhodes died, and was laid in his lonely grave among the Matopo
Hills, on a rocky summit which looks far out over the land he loved.
But his wishes were remembered, the greatest and the least of them; and
still, year by year, the Central African Railway grows, every year a
little, northward through the forests. And now it has reached the
Zambesi, and over that hitherto unconquerable gorge has been thrown one
of the most wonderful railway bridges ever built; and close by has
sprung up a great hotel, so that the Victoria Falls and their
surroundings are attainable at last by all the world.
For many days the approaching traveler has been flying through a mighty
tropical forest, in which a path has been cut for the railway line, but
which is otherwise so undisturbed, so vast and silent and lonely, that
it is hard to believe white men can ever make a home in it. Here the
lion prowls at his own sweet will, and legions of antelopes, great and
small, graze on the sweet veldt. And here elephants wander in troops of
fifty or more, and in the swamps the hippopotamus plows his way through
the papyrus reed and the ten-foot Rhodesian grass. The little iron
shanties of the railway men are the only signs of civilized life. The
natives of the country are few and far between; their kraals, with the
conical huts peculiar to this race of Africans, look down from the
rare, slight eminences.
There is no change in the scenery, little to give warning of the wonder
that one approaches. Only, above the noise of the train, a far-off
murmur of sound grows upon the ear; and a little while later, floating
upward from out the forest, there comes in sight a long line of snowy
vapor, which, as the low sun touches it, glows with soft, many-colored
lights. This mist-cloud is caused by the sudden narrowing of the great
Zambesi River in the Chasm, not two hundred yards wide, which receives
the Falls at the end of their leap. The cloud rises at times as much as
five hundred feet into the air, and there condenses into rain, which
falls in eternal showers glorious in this thirsty land, and makes in
the country close about the Falls one perpetual spring.
This tract of land is known as the Rain Forest, and in its tropical
magnificence, its soft and delicate beauty, can surely be surpassed by
nothing on earth. All about the path laboriously cut through its
jungles, rise the trunks of splendid trees, which seem to tower into
the very sky; their stems, and the earth about them, are hidden in
masses of giant ferns, whose long sprays sway and quiver continually
under the weight of the falling drops. Strange plants of many kinds
grow here; orchids droop from the trees, and palms raise their graceful
heads from out the tangle. Through it all drift the rainbow vapors, and
from between the trees the sun strikes in long, slanting rays, and
lights up the wet vegetation, the rising mist, the falling raindrops,
with an effect so tenderly and unutterably lovely that it often brings
tears to the eyes.
In places the forest is more open, and here the giant Rhodesian grass
grows, twelve feet high, its flower-heads heavy with wet; and palms,
free from the jungle and able to grow as they will, rise thirty feet
into the air, their every fringed leaf hung with gems.
At any time a few steps will take the traveler from out this Forest of
Rainbows, to where he may stand on the very verge of the terrific
Chasm. Here he is directly opposite the Falls, which come rushing over
the further tip in a mass of foam as white as snow, to fall with a roar
more than four hundred feet into the dreadful abyss. By leaning over,
it is possible at times to see the river at the bottom, a boiling,
turbulent torrent racing furiously to the right along its rock-bound
bed; but more often all is hidden in the mist, which is hurled upward
so densely that in places the Chasm seems choked with it, and it rushes
past the observer with an audible sound and a suggestion of
irresistible force, awe-inspiring to a degree. Opposite the Main Falls,
a spot known to the natives as Shongwe, the Caldron, it is so heavy as
to blot out sky, forest, and even the Falls themselves, and we are in a
strange twilight, half smothered in vapors and wholly deafened with the
thunderous roar of the Falls so close at hand.
Everywhere are double rainbows of surpassing brightness, sometimes
arches, sometimes complete, glowing circles. They are so close, one may
watch their melting colors as in a soapbubble; and they move and change
continually with the sun or the movements of the spectator. They gleam
softly in the cloud, brilliantly against the stern black cliffs; and
tiny rainbows by hundreds dance in the falling sheets of water and
among the palms and ferns of the forest.
A strange circumstance cannot fail to strike the observer, and awe him,
as perhaps nothing else could, with a sense of the vast depth of the
fissure into which he fearfully gazes. The spray and rain bring into
being hundreds of streams, which flash over the edge of the cliff
opposite the Falls in an eternal effort to rejoin their parent river.
But they never reach the bottom. Long before they are half-way down,
they vanish, dissipated once more into spray, and borne upward in the
form of lighted mist.
Of the radiant beauty of the whole scene, one writer, a traveler of
renown, says:
"I believe that on that day I was gazing at the most perfectly
beautiful spectacle of all this beautiful world.
"As the sun's rays fell on that kaleidoscopic, ever-moving, changing
scene, made up of rock, water, mist, and shivering foliage, the
coloring of it all was gorgeous, yet of sweetly tender tints under that
luminous, pearly atmosphere formed by the spray-mist. Below, where one
caught glimpses of the rushing water, it was turned brown and golden,
blue and rich dark green. The cliff, sparkling with dripping water, was
of shining black and glowing bronze. The foliage of the Rain Forest was
of the green of an eternal spring, and a myriad jewels of twinkling
light were made by the water-drops on the trembling leaves. A glorious
rainbow spanned the Chasm, and other rainbows flitted in the haze. As
for the tender, pale beauty of the Cataract and of the luminous, pearly
mist, no words could convey it to the imagination."
Another writer says: "The beauty of the pearl-tinted atmosphere, and
the glory of the dazzling rainbows, are the first and the last
impressions that the Victoria Falls give to the mind."
The eastern extremity of the cliff opposite the Falls is known as
Danger Point; and here the Chasm turns abruptly at right angles, and
becomes the famous Gorge which for fifty miles zigzags across country,
with the Zambesi like a silver cord at the bottom of it. Just at the
turning-point, a mass of rock has fallen from the cliff and lies below
in the river--a mass which, it is interesting to note, Livingstone
describes as just _ready to fall_, and which in his drawing of the
scene is represented as almost parted from the rest. Along the Gorge a
strong, cold wind blows always, and bears the mist as far as the
railway bridge and the exquisite palm groves near it.
Above the Falls, the scene is scarcely less fair. Here lies the broad
Zambesi, placid and calm under its sunny skies, with its fifty islands,
palm-crowned, wonderful, kept ever green and spring-like by the soft
spray-showers. On the banks grows the burly baobab, whose trunk is as
large as a house; lovely forest fringes either shore, and gay-plumaged
birds flit among the flowering trees and feast on the plentiful wild
fruits. From here the mists of Victoria take the form of five towering
pillars, bending with the wind, white below, but dark farther up, where
they condense into rain. Livingstone says of the river at this point:
"No one can imagine the beauty of the view from anything witnessed
elsewhere. It had never been seen before by European eyes; but scenes
so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight."
The monstrous footprints of the hippopotami are thick along the banks,
and crocodiles lie sunning themselves in the open spaces. Tiny gray
monkeys, with wise black faces, swing from the miles of creeper which
festoon the trees. Green parrots shriek, and strange great reptiles
crash a path through the tangle. The savage natives punt or paddle
their dugouts on the placid bosom of the river. So recent is the white
man's advent that the whole is scarcely changed from the day when David
Livingstone first looked upon it and realized, with beating heart, the
Wonder he had found.
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TRAVELING IN INDIA
BY MABEL ALBERTA SPICER
Here in the Western world, where everything is hustle and bustle, where
express-trains, automobiles, telephones, telegraphs, pneumatic tubes,
and, most recently, aëroplanes save us hours of time, it is difficult
to realize that on the other side of the world things are moving along
at the same slow pace at which they did centuries ago. Also, here in
America, where everybody is saying, "I have no time, I have no time, I
have no time!" it seems strange to think that there are countries where
time has no value whatsoever, where people believe they have to live
thousands and thousands of lives before they reach their heaven, and,
consequently, have no regard for time.
Imagine spending the whole night in the train to go one or two hundred
miles! Imagine, also, everybody's surprise if some traveler should
attempt to take with him into an American sleeping-car a roll of
bedding, a box of ice, sawdust, and bottles of soda-water, a huge
lunch-basket, spirit-lamps, umbrella-cases, hat-boxes, suitcases and
bags without number, a talkative parrot, and a folding chair or two! He
would be thought quite mad, of course, and would not be allowed to
enter the car. Yet this is how people travel in the trains of India.
Sometimes, to be sure, the chairs and noisy parrot are left at home,
but quite as often golf-sticks and a folding cot are substituted.
Native travelers often carry their cooking-utensils and stoves with
them. No one is in a hurry, and the train often waits quite long enough
at stations for them to install their stoves on the platform, and cook
a good dish of rice.
Most trains have first-, second-, and third-class carriages. Europeans
and Americans usually travel first-class, for the best in India is bad
enough when compared with the luxuries of travel in Western countries.
Most of the carriages are about half as long as those in America, and
divided into two compartments without a corridor, each having a
lavatory at one end. Running along each side of the compartment, just
under the windows, is a long, leather-covered bench, which serves as a
seat during the day, and a berth at night. It is equally uncomfortable
in both capacities. Above this, folded up against the side of the car,
is a leather-covered shelf that lets down to form the upper berth.
My first experience in Indian trains was at night. My turbaned servant
arranged my bedding on a bench in a compartment reserved for ladies,
switched on an electric fan, salaamed, and went off to find his place
in a servants' compartment adjoining. Most trains have special
compartments for servants. It is impossible to travel comfortably in
India without native servants.
While I was in the dressing-room, preparing for the night, I heard a
noise outside, and, looking out, saw an old man with a lantern, down on
his knees looking under the berths. He said that he was looking for me,
that he was afraid I had missed the train.
Finally, after a great ringing of bells, tooting of whistles, waving of
lanterns, and chattering of natives, we pulled out into the darkness
and heat. The electric fan burred, mosquitos hummed and bit, the train
rocked wildly from side to side.
I was just dozing off, when lights were flashed in my eyes. More bells,
whistles, and chattering natives! The door burst open, and an
Englishman ordered his man to put his luggage in the compartment. I
called out that it was reserved for ladies, and he disappeared with a
"Sorry!"
Out into the darkness again, only to be aroused at the next station by
the guard, who shouted, "Tickets, please!" The night was one prolonged
nightmare of heat, noise, jolting, and mosquitos. By five, I was
beginning to sleep, when I was startled by a cry of "_Chota Hazree!_" I
sat up in alarm, wondering what those dreadful-sounding words could
mean, when the shutters by my head were suddenly lowered, and a tray of
toast and tea thrust in at me. I accepted it, and gave up all idea of
sleep. The dreadful-sounding words, I found, meant "little breakfast."
Sometimes we had our meals from a tiffin basket which we carried with
us, sometimes from a restaurant car, or again at the station café while
the train waited, and sometimes, when all of these failed us, not at
all. During the winter, traveling was more comfortable. It was so cold
that we needed heavy rugs over us. Some of the express-trains go from
twenty to thirty miles an hour.
Each time that the train stops, there is great confusion. The natives
arrive at the station hours ahead of time. Here they squat patiently
until the train arrives, when they quite lose their heads. In an
attempt to find places in the crowded carriages, they run excitedly up
and down the platform, clinging to one another, clutching at their
clumsy luggage, and screaming at their servants and the trainmen.
Equally agitated groups pour out of the cars and scurry off to find
bullock carts or _ekkas_ to drive them to the town, which is usually
some distance from the station. Boys and women with sweets, fruit,
drinking-water, toys, cheap jewelry, and various articles of native
production cry their wares at the car windows. Others sell newspapers,
which are apt to be weeks old, if the purchaser does not insist upon
seeing the date. The platform presents a riot of strange costumes,
bright colors, quick-moving figures with jingling bangles and ankles,
unholy odors, and clamorous sounds.
At the stations, we were met in different parts of India by the
greatest imaginable variety of conveyances--carriages with footmen and
drivers in state livery, sent by the native princes, hotel and public
carriages after models never dreamed of in America, bullock carts,
elephants, camels, rickshaws, and, in Calcutta and Bombay,
taxi-automobiles.
When your driver starts off down the street at a reckless gait,
clanging a bell in the floor of the carriage with his foot, and a boy
on a step at the back calls out "_Tahvay!_" as you bowl along, you
wonder if you have not taken, by mistake, a police wagon or an
ambulance. But it is all right; you hear the same shouting and clanging
of bells from all the other carriages along the route. This noise is
necessary to make the idlers who stroll along the streets hand in hand
get out of the way of the carriages.
There are so many horses in India that one wonders why any one should
ever walk, and, in fact, very few do. They are of all grades, differing
as much as does the shabbiest beggar from the most gorgeous raja. The
conveyances to which they are harnessed range from the rickety public
ekkas to the royal gold and silver coaches used on state occasions. One
sees these wretched-looking public carriages that can be hired for a
few cents filled with lazy natives and pulled along by a poor little
pony that looks as if it were half-starved. Contrasting with these poor
over-worked creatures are the thoroughbreds which literally die in the
stables of the princes for lack of exercise.
When we were visiting in the native states, the chiefs sometimes
offered us saddle-horses. The first time I rode one of these, I started
off gaily, nothing fearing. From a gentle canter my mount suddenly
broke into a dead run. Supposing that horses in all countries
understood the same language, I said "Whoa," first mildly,
persuasively, then loudly, imploringly; but without the slightest
effect. On he sped faster and faster, until he overtook another horse,
apparently a friend of his, for he slowed down to a walk beside it. I
learned afterward that a sound similar to that used in America to make
a horse go is used in India to make him stop. So the poor dear did not
understand in the least my frantic cries of "Whoa!"
The only other swift-moving animal that it was my misfortune to
encounter in India was a camel. This was in the north, in the desert of
Rajputana. We were going to visit some tombs about five miles from the
city. The others went in carriages, but I preferred to try the
"fleet-footed camel." The creature knelt docilely enough to let me
climb into the saddle back of the driver; then he unfolded his
many-jointed legs and rose, throwing me forward and backward in a most
uncomfortable manner.
He walked haughtily about the grounds of the guest-house a few minutes,
turning up his nose at everybody, then suddenly let his hind legs
collapse, almost throwing me off. The driver succeeded in making him
understand that there was no use making a fuss, that he would have to
take us. Off across the desert he started, at a gait so rough that I
know of nothing with which to compare it. At first, I tried to hold to
the saddle, but it was too slippery, so there was nothing to do but to
throw my arms about the driver, and hang on to him with all my might. I
returned in a carriage!
At Mysore and several other places, we saw camel-carriages. They make a
queer sight, these ungainly, loose-jointed animals shambling along in
the harness. In Bikanir, we watched the camel corps drill. The natives
in this part of India are very finely built men, and they look most
imposing in their gaily colored uniforms and turbans as they sit erect
on the arrogant camels who snub even their masters.
[Illustration: Camel carriages of the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab]
There are so many slow, lazy ways of traveling in India that it is
difficult to say which is the slowest.
Perhaps the bullocks, when they walk, are the slowest of all. They do,
however, sometimes trot, and that at a rather brisk pace. They are
beautiful animals, and very different from those in America. Their skin
is wonderfully soft and silky. Between their shoulders is a large
gristly hump. From their chin down between their fore legs hangs a
loose, flabby fold of skin.
Of these, the most beautiful are the huge white bulls sacred to the
Hindu god Shiva. These lead a life of leisure and luxury. They roam
about the streets unmolested, eating from the fruit- and
vegetable-stalls at will. Some are housed in the temples of the god.
Those who are not so lucky as to be held sacred have a rather hard time
of it. They do most of the heavy hauling, and often suffer very cruel
treatment from their drivers. In fact, no other animal is so much the
victim of the cruelty and ignorance of the natives as these poor
bullocks.
We drove in all sorts of curious-looking conveyances behind these
somewhat refractory creatures. Once we drove out into a desolate region
to visit some deserted temples, seated on the floor of a bullock cart
with an arched cover of plaited bamboo over us. The men along the road
walked faster than our bullocks, which went so slowly that, had it not
been for the jolting of the cart, we should scarcely have known that we
were moving.
In the southernmost part of the peninsula, along the Malabar coast,
where there are no trains, we traveled in cabin-boats rowed by natives.
It took them all night to row from Quilan to Travandrum, about fifty
miles along the backwater. They sang from the moment they began to row,
timing the stroke of the oar to the rhythm of their song. In the
morning, they appeared as smiling and fresh as they had the evening
before when we started.
In Madras, we rode in rickshaws like those of China and Japan. In many
parts of India, men take the place of animals, both in carrying people
and in transporting cargo. Several times we were carried up mountains
in _dholies_ by coolies. These dholies consist of a seat swung between
two poles by ropes. They are carried by two or four men, who trot off
up the hill with the poles resting on their shoulders, while the
passenger dangles between them. They used to come down the mountains so
fast that we were quite terrified. The seat would twist and sway, hit
against trees, graze along the side of rocks, while our porters would
dance along, talking and laughing, without paying the slightest
attention to us. Then there are various kinds of push-carts used in
different parts of the country.
Of course, the really Indian way of traveling is on elephants. Very
few, however, except princes and foreign travelers, ever ride on these
lordly animals. In the "zoos" in Calcutta and Bombay there are
elephants for the children to ride. The riders climb steps to a
platform the height of the elephant's back, then jump into the howdah,
where they are tied fast to make sure of their not falling. The old
_huthi_, as the elephant is called there, sways off, waving his trunk,
flopping his ears, and blinking his eyes. He makes a tour of the
gardens, then returns to the platform to get other children.
At Jaipur, Gwalior, and a number of other towns where there is a fort
on a hill, elephants can be hired for the ascension. The huge creatures
knelt down while we clambered into the howdah with the aid of ladders.
When they rose, it seemed like an earthquake to us on their backs. They
climbed the hill so slowly that the others of the party who walked
arrived ahead of us. Our huthi would smell about carefully with his
trunk before taking each step, then he would put a huge foot forward
cautiously, and throw his great weight upon it slowly, as if afraid
that the earth would give way under him. It took him so long to
accommodate his four feet to each step, that I was thankful he had not
as many as a centiped.
To appreciate an elephant in all his glory, one should see him in the
splendor of princely procession. Designs in bright colors are painted
on his forehead and trunk, trappings of silver ornament his tusks,
head, and ankles, a rich cloth of gold and silver embroidery hangs over
his colossal sides, and on his back is perched a rare howdah, often of
gold and silver, with silk hangings. Aloft in the howdah rides the
prince, resplendent with gold, silk, and jewels. In front, on the
elephant's neck, sits the mahout, urging him on with strange-sounding
grunts, and prods from a short pointed spear.
The elephants are reserved for state occasions. Most of the princes now
have automobiles, which they look upon much as a child does its latest
toy. The mass of the people depend upon the bullocks and horses to cart
them about. There are now, also, in most parts of the empire,
telephones and telegraphs; but they are such ancient systems and so
unreliable that they are not to be compared with ours. India is through
and through a lazy country, where nobody is in a hurry.
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WHERE THE SUNSETS OF ALL THE YESTERDAYS ARE FOUND
BY OLIN D. WHEELER
In Montana, Idaho, and northern Wyoming lies the region where center
the headwaters of the Missouri, Yellowstone, Green, and Snake
rivers--the last named a branch of the Columbia. In the early years of
the last century it was virtually the center of all human activity in
the Rocky Mountain region, being a prolific, but dangerous,
trapping-ground for the fur trade of those days.
Here the cloud-piercing peaks of the American Rockies reach their
greatest altitude, and the scenery is of the wildest and most
impressive character. The Grand Teton, 13,747 feet elevation,
overlooking the magnificent Jackson Lake basin, has been climbed but
twice by white men.
Since the Yellowstone Park was established, in 1872, the wonders of
this region have been more or less familiar. But prior to 1870 they
were believed to exist largely in the fertile imagination of the
trapper.
The Park region, as we will call it, lay between the old-time northern
and southern routes of frontier-day travel across the continent. It is
true there were Indian trails leading across and through it, but the
Indians, superstitious by nature, seem to have avoided the localities
of the geysers and hot springs, and their north and south bound trails
lay to the east or west of these areas that now fascinate and interest
us.
In 1807, along one of these outside trails--one that just skirted the
eastern side of the geyser zone, which here lies along a well-defined
north-and-south axis--came the first white man who visited the region.
He saw the two beautiful lakes, Jackson and Yellowstone, the dazzling
Grand Cañon and its two falls, probably some of the hot springs, and
possibly some of the inferior geysers. His trail is shown--marked
"Colter's Route in 1807"--on the map of the great explorers Lewis and
Clark in 1814. But it was after their return to civilization that they
learned of this "hot springs brimstone" locality.
John Colter was a prince of adventurers. His life as a border hero,
explorer, and trapper rivals that of any character of fiction; his
discovery of the Yellowstone, while on a mission to an Indian tribe,
was purely accidental, but it brought him lasting fame. He, himself,
probably never realized its importance.
Two or three other old-time and adventurous mountaineers, particularly
James, or "Jim," Bridger, afterward visited this locality, but people
in general utterly refused seriously to consider, let alone believe,
what these men told them regarding it.
Bridger was a man of remarkable ability as a guide and mountaineer,
although unable to read, or even to write his own name. He was the
discoverer of Great Salt Lake, and as a guide and natural-born scout
had no superior, if, indeed, an equal, among frontiersmen. In this
capacity he served numerous government and other expeditions and
explored and traversed a large part of what was then the Far West. He
could tell many a good story about his hairbreadth escapes, and lived
to a ripe old age.
To attempt a word-picture of this region and its weird and unusual
features is almost useless, and yet every one who visits it endeavors
to do so. No words can be found adequately to describe the hot springs,
that are numbered by the thousands, and the marvelous hues of their
waters and their basins, rimmed and ornamented by fluted and beaded
parapets of indescribable delicacy and beauty. Nor can the geysers,
leaping suddenly from their deep, nether-world reservoirs, be pictured
by words in such a way as to convey to the mind a real image of their
strange and fascinating reality.
The first printed description of one of them was by another trapper,
Warren A. Ferris, of the old American Fur Company. He visited a geyser
area in 1834, but his account of it was not published until July, 1842.
Numerous waterfalls are found here, from cascades a few feet in height
to cataracts having twice the leap of Niagara; lakes lie deeply
embosomed among the high peaks or the heavy forests, and one of them,
twenty miles in length and a mile and a half above the ocean, is now
being navigated--think of it!--by motor-boats; thousands of miles of
crystal trout-streams, kept supplied with trout by the government
hatcheries, radiate in every direction; a natural glass cliff, an
Indian quarry for arrow-heads in the ancient days, towers above a lake
formed at its base by the wise and cunning beavers. There is, too, a
low mountain of pure sulphur, with beautiful boiling sulphur-pools
splashing at its foot; and, in contrast to these, there is a gruesome
volcano of mud belching from a dark, malodorous cavern, while almost
beside this is a beautiful, clear pool of hot water formed by a stream
flowing from beneath a green Gothic arch.
The wonderful cañons, exhibiting such different phases of nature's
sublime handiwork, awe the beholder. One shows the marvelous way in
which lava, cooling, arranges itself in massive, black, symmetric slabs
and columns; these enclose a beautiful fall that adds a touch of
lightness and beauty. The Grand Cañon is the most startling and
extraordinary example of color harmony and nature sculpture to be found
in the universe. A Japanese, in the poetic imagery of his race, has
said that these brilliant cañon walls have caught and emblazoned upon
their mural precipices the sunsets of all the yesterdays--a beautiful
conception. One stands awed to silence in the presence of "Nature's
immensities" seen here and is almost overwhelmed by the profound
splendors and majestic glories of this cañon.
In another respect this park land stands in a category by itself. By
federal enactment all of the Yellowstone Park proper and some
additional territory bordering it has been made a vast national
game-preserve, something not originally planned.
As settlement has increased and the valleys have become occupied by
farmers and ranchmen, the game has been forced into the higher valleys
and parks of the mountains, or into their remote recesses. Here, within
the park boundaries, deer, elk, antelope, bears, mountain-sheep, moose,
bison, and the smaller game, birds (between 150 and 200 species), and
fur-bearing animals, have a refuge where no hunter or trapper
penetrates and danger rarely intrudes. In the Jackson Lake country,
hunting is allowed for a limited period.
There are thousands of these various animals that know they are
absolutely immune from harm by man when within the bounds of this park.
Most of them have never seen a dog nor heard the sound of a rifle.
Under these conditions their natural timidity is greatly lessened, and
many of them, even bears, become surprisingly tame.
From the supply which Yellowstone Park affords, state and city parks
and various game-preserves are being stocked. Experienced men round up
the yearling elk into corrals near the railway sidings, and there load
them into freight-cars, with plenty of alfalfa hay, and then they are
forwarded to their destination. Many carloads are shipped each winter.