come, especially when you come to consider that bears are not like
wolves, panthers and those kind of fierce beasts, which kill to eat.
Besides, you should not spleen at eating bear meat, for they live
mostly on nuts and berries and sleep all winter. Experience is a great
teacher, this day will never be forgotten. It adds to our lives and we
shall look back to it with pleasure. Now, you're not mad?"
"Mad? No, Mr. Richardson, I half way love you, and when I think of this
fright I shall think about you as both the best and meanest man on my
list. I am going to eat hearty on the bear steak for supper; you see
if I do not. Now you can consider yourself forgiven for all except one
act."
"What is that, Archibald?"
"When you kept calling 'Run! Run! He is after you!' He was not after
me, he was before me, and you knew that you were lying all the time."
The last evening I spent at Juneau with Judge Mellen and his
interesting wife. It was ten o'clock when we parted. The sun was still
shining and the birds singing when we shook hands good-bye, and he
said: "We will meet again, where friends meet friends which they loved
on earth." As the steamer pulled off from the shore I thought of the
friends I had gained in Alaska to make my life more interesting in that
home where the flowers fade not and the inhabitants never grow old.
MY EDUCATION
In returning to my mental endeavors, I gladly confess that before I had
passed out of my teens, my lack of a common school education caused me
deep regret, but I braced myself bravely against adversity and soon
found myself working evenings over the very rudiments of language which
I had spurned in the old Birch School House.
After my marriage to Mary Hoyt, she took me in hand and together
evenings we read "The Hoosier School Master," "Belle of Ores Islands,"
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," and many other good books, after which I struck in
for myself with Webster's unabridged at my elbow. By working days and
studying nights I soon became conversant with Stowe, Eliot, Dickens,
Shakespeare and that class of literature which illustrates human
nature. Later I took up the sciences, geology, astronomy and what else
I cared for, together with the languages under private instructors,
which, with my experience at Evanston, gave me a comparatively good
understanding as to how these great subjects are handled in our
classical institutions of learning. I never aspired to scholarship; my
ambition is to discern truth.
For diversion I am usually working up some subject which, when formed
into a book, I present to my friends, never thinking of recompense, as
my business affords me more than I need, and as to notoriety, I have no
ambition that way.
"Jim Hall and the Richardsons" was my first literary endeavor. It
evolved out of my long siege in ferreting out the chronological trail
of the Stafford branch of Richardsons.
"Rose Lind" is an assumed exposure of the far-reaching evil influences
of the grain gamblers on the Chicago Board of Trade.
"Eight Days Out" is a burlesque on Phillip, on my visit to the Soo.
"Mina Faust" is a long love story.
"Chicago's Black Sheep" is a figurative illustration of the criminal
dens of Chicago, and the work of the Salvation Army.
"Personality of the Soul" is a review of the prevailing religion, as I
found them in my extensive travels.
"Twilight Reflections" is an accumulation of indications that mineral,
vegetable and animal existence are the direct result of scheming and
are being held or driven by an incomprehensible will power. Also, that
the animal, especially man, possesses slight creative power.
Somehow, I cannot think of the soul as something evolving from nothing,
or as beginning its existence with the formation of the body, but
rather as descending to or ascending from former existence.
Pre-existence is in harmony with the teachings of Jesus, reason
and eternal life. The animated body comes into existence through
transformation from pre-existence. If that quality, to present, to
consider, to decide, exists it must be a transformation of some kind of
pre-existence. To affirm that God gave or created does not imply that
He gave or created from that which He did not have.
I will not question the Divine Power or intelligence, but I challenge
man to produce an indication of existence only as transformation or
evolution from existence. The only way to blot out memory is through
unconsciousness, and we know it does not do it. Eternal life is for
all, but souls, even in this life, often drift far apart.
The unfathomable, incomprehensible, unthinkable dark pocket of
forgetfullness conceals memory but it does not annihilate it. If time
admits of no before, space of no beyond and matter of no annihilation,
then the law of continuity is established; and if we do now live, we
have lived and will live forever. Eternal life must include the past as
well as the future. Life from God is a declaration of pre-existence.
Existence beginning at conception or birth assumes something evolving
from nothing.
HAWAIIAN ISLANDS
In 1898, having nothing to detain me and knowing that my son Arthur
could conduct my business better than I could, I decided to take an
extensive tour around the world, taking as much time as I pleased in
visiting the interior of countries to study the people in their natural
condition, both physically and mentally.
When our boat passed through the Golden Gate into the open Pacific
a wild storm was whistling down the coast from Alaska, which caused
our steamer to roll and plunge worse than anything I have ever since
experienced. For five days neither sun or stars appeared, and when we
got our reckoning we were five hundred miles out of our course.
When we neared the Hawaiian Islands we saw whales, schools of pretty
flying fish, sharks and porpoises, while large sea birds came near.
Then, when we felt our cheeks fanned by the soft summer breeze, we
forgot Columbia's wild Boreas and got our silver pieces, so that when
the natives swam from shore to meet us we could throw the money into
the deep sea, which they would dive for and usually bring up, even
though they sometimes swam more than fifty feet to the spot where it
went down.
We found the mid-Pacific Islands all in bloom. I stayed there five
weeks, in which time I visited Kilanea Volcano on the Hawaiian Island
and all the other islands, of which I will only mention my trip to Man
Eating Rock, which, to me, was the most wonderful.
THE ANCIENT CITADEL
Paukoonea, a deserted, skillfully fortified prehistoric fortress on
which the man-eating rock still can be seen, is seldom visited by
tourists, and still it is undoubtedly the most ancient and beautifully
located kings' palace grounds on our globe. To the thoughtless it is
simply a rock on an island. To the thoughtful it is wonderful.
Vogue tradition has it that long ago a great world, a mid-Pacific
continent, existed in this summer clime. One evening, as the sun was
going down, their world sank into the ocean, leaving only the mountain
top, on which more people were huddled together than could live. As a
necessity the priestly clan, or kings, barricaded themselves on this
protected island, where they shaped out a baking rock which would
preserve all the juices of the flesh, and then ordered each tribe to
furnish their portion of human beings, to be placed on the hot rock
alive and cooked until palatable. This statement does not seem so
inconsistent when we learn that when Cook discovered these islands the
natives were allowed only a certain number of children to each pair of
parents, and all the over-plus were killed at birth.
At Waialua I found a guide, Major Jankea, whose father, grandfather
and great-grandfather spent their lives near the fort. We rode up the
Helamano River about eight miles where, in a bend among the trees, he
showed me a large deep footed stone covered with dots, diagonal lines
and curves which he said no one could read and no one knew what it
represented.
At the fort we crossed the chasm on the stone debris of an ancient
dam, when we began hunting for the man-eating rock. We searched in the
grass, about four feet tall, and found it in about the center of the
field, half buried in the earth.
It was chipped and defaced all over. Originally it must have measured
about three by nine feet, and would weigh several tons. As far as I saw
there were no other rocks on the surface of the island. It is roughly
carved out to receive the head, arm, legs and body of a man. My guide
informed me that his grandfather said that the ancient custom was for
four men each, at an arm or leg, to hold the victim on the heated rock
until dead, and then let him be cooked for dinner.
The citadel, or fort of the cannibal kings, is near the source of the
Helamano River, under the Koolauloa Mountain. It is about three or four
miles in circumference, protected by a perpendicular rock chasm nearly
one hundred feet high. The gully surrounding it must once have served
as an aqueduct, the water having been held back by the dam, which now,
and probably for ages, has served as a passageway into the ancient
rendezvous.
Standing there in the latter half of February looking west, the
scene is lovely beyond description. The green palms on the Koolauloa
Mountains serve as a background, while the Helamano River, with its
fringe of trees all in blossom, winds its way like a ribbon of white
roses away to the dreamy old Pacific Ocean, plain in view, but many
miles away. Then to feel the spell of silence, where tumult once
arose, we can but ask, "Is life a reality or a myth?" and a voice comes
back from the voiceless realms of the dead, they were like us, simply
passing through earth life.
SOUTH SEA ISLANDS AND AUSTRALIA
In a few weeks I found myself taking in the South Sea Islands, admiring
the pretty lagoons, those tiny inner-ocean retreats, where the
glistening sandy beach is strewn with miniature shells cozily protected
by the surrounding palm groves, upon whose outer shore the mighty waves
come pounding in only to recede without disturbing the finny tribes who
never venture outside of these inland tiny lagoons.
At Apia, in the Samoa group, where lies the body of Robert L.
Stevenson, I wondered not at his choice of selection for spending the
last days of his life. Here among the South Sea Islands he could muse
unmolested, far from the struggle for gain, and notoriety. There is a
beautiful side to those so-called barbarian lives, and one is tempted
to envy them their freedom as they laugh and sing in the bamboo shade,
and bathe at ease in the soft waves of the grand old Pacific Ocean.
One can but love them for their simplicity and confiding way as their
wistful smile pleads for your generosity and sympathy.
The wonder-land in the Friendly or South Sea Island is Tongo-Taboo.
Here one finds undoubted traces of a lost continent, in the way of an
archway, or portal, through which a people must have passed before the
dawn of Babylonian tradition. Two immense rectangular stone columns are
seen tied together at the top by an enormous slab, on which rests a
huge stone bowl, The entire structure must be nearly fifty feet high.
[Illustration: EASTER ISLAND.
THE DREAMLAND OF THE SOUTH SEAS. COULD THEY BUT SPEAK!]
There is no quarry on this little island from which it could have been
taken, neither could it have been brought from a distant land, for
ancient boats were not adequate.
The quarry from which it came, the mysteries of the people who such art
designed, and the homes in which they lived, must be nearby, beneath
the waves.
To satisfy curiosity, I took a shell boat to Easter Island, where those
strange saint-like statues with sealed lips now stand, pre-eminent
sentinels, as they have stood since the day when the Mid-Pacific
continent was a prominent feature on our globe. On this tiny mid-ocean
world the natives know about as much concerning the origin of their
clans as we do about pre-existence. They shelter from storm in stone
houses, of which the walls are four or five feet thick.
Many of the inner walls still bear traces of an intelligent people.
Hieroglyphic characters and paintings of birds and other animals
adorn the inner walls of what must have been the mansions of nabobs,
while many statues of these unknown people with thin lips and serious
countenances stand facing the sea. Like the fort on the Helomano and
the colossal on Tonga, they speak for themselves, and while each have
no tradition of other tribes, still all their languages spring from the
same roots.
As I stood on deck gazing at these faces a spell came over me and from
above I looked down on our world 100,000 years ago.
Before me lay an elbow-shaped mid-Pacific continent 2,000 miles wide
and 8,000 miles long, on which millions of half-civilized people were
passing their days and years as we are now doing, while the land
of the morning sun teemed with shore and inland animal life roaming
over the vast plains sheltered by primeval forests. Suddenly, as I
gazed, the world trembled and reeled as the vast plains at the rising
sun begun belching forth lightning and fire amid peals of thunder
destroying all animal life as an immense mountain range came forth like
a budless blossom far up and down the ocean shore.
In horror I turned to the mid-ocean continent and beheld it with all
its cities and inhabitants sinking down, down beneath the ocean waves.
From this reverie I awoke and wondered who would dare dispute, as
soundings prove that such a continent, with the exception of a few
mountain peaks we call islands, now sleep beneath those ocean waves,
while the bones and fossils of mammalia are found on the Rocky Mountain
Range.
After visiting the Maories of New Zealand, one of the remaining
fragments of the South Sea Island tribes, who are probably the finest
specimen of aboriginies in the world, I took in Australia, where the
white cockatoo parrots move in great flocks and the many species of
kangaroo, from the size of a rabbit to a horse, sport in the gardens to
the annoyance of the pioneer farmers, and where the sun shines in from
the north windows, the north star and great dipper have disappeared,
and beautiful new constellations appear in the southern skies, and the
mountains of the moon are seen from the other side.
NEW GUINEA
Copy of diary when in Torres Straits and New Guinea, 1899:
April 6.
Arrived at Cooktown on Japanese steamer Kusuga Maru and leave on
schooner Shilo for New Guinea next day.
April 8.
York Island, only three white men besides Captain Mosly, live here. The
captain tells sympathetic stories about the storm of March 3, when he
saw the ship his son was on go down. He thinks about 200 men from pearl
hunting crafts were lost in the storm.
April 9.
At sea, bound for Fly River. Hot as tophet, but a stiff breeze. Find
small island inhabited by birds, but no land quadrupeds, as in dry
season the small fresh water streams dry up.
April 10.
At mouth of Fly River. Approach main land. High mountains appear in the
distance. Great marshes on either side, which cause Guinea fever to the
whites, but not to the natives.
April 11.
Go ashore, several miles up the river. Birds, birds, birds on all
sides. I shot a Guinea pigeon, looks like a pheasant, big as a hen,
soon have her cooked. Natives never travel singly, always in groups.
Several missionaries have been eaten here. One from Boston, but the
natives do not look to me particularly hungry.
April 12.
Head on for Port Moresby, where I am to catch Burns-Phillips Co.
steamer. Go ashore on a lagoon island. Go through the palms to the
miniature ocean, find a beautiful helmet shell and concluded to keep it
and gather others to send home.
April 13.
Strike fleet of pearl shell boats. Go down in diving suit about 160
feet. Bad job, starts the blood out of my ears. Get but one shell,
which I will send to Arthur. Most of the divers are natives or Japs.
One shipmaster owns and supplies about twenty diving boats. All shells
opened on the ship. Average about one pearl to 300 shells. I buy of
native four pearls for $6.25.
April 14.
Port Moresby only five houses. Bishop Stowigg, English missionary,
here. Find three missionaries at each of these little ports. Became
acquainted with Miss Tully from Brisbane, Australia. She is lonesome
and shed tears when she bid me farewell.
April 15.
Land at Samaria. Find a native here who came from the interior, where
the people go naked and build their houses in the trees. He speaks a
few words in English and considers himself an interpreter. For two
silver dollars I hire him to go with me anywhere as long as I feed him,
and when through with him can leave him anywhere on the shore. We board
the steamer here for the west, along the north shore. Everything and
everybody looks and smells as though they had sat on the equator and
fried ever since they had been born.
April 16.
At sea. My appreciative companions are a mother and four kittens, a
captive young cassowary, about four feet tall, who the captain declares
will eat his hammer and nails if he does not hide them, and three dogs.
All small dogs around here will dive from the bow of a boat into deep
water and bring up a knife or anything you show them before you throw
it in. Dear little curs.
April 17.
Reach Kaiser Wilhelm's land and leave steamer. Am hearing terrible
stories about the natives, men who eat an antelope at a meal, women
with pompadours three feet high; also hear about snakes ninety-five
feet long, but the stories come from natives who cannot count higher
than the number 5.
April 18.
Catch excursion boat at Cape Croiselles and start west in search of
village where the inhabitants live in nests in the trees. Captain and
mate are from Adalaide, Australia, out for the season on about the same
kind of a mission that I am. Captain continually teasing me that I am
about at the end of my rope. Says he will write to Chicago and inform
them that I escaped a Jonah whale only to be swallowed by a Guinea
nigger. The mate says he will venture into the interior with me, at
which I assure him if he will not attempt to coquette with the ladies
he will not be hurt. Of course, I advise the captain to stay by his
anchor and avoid temptation, for I tell him I see by the size and shape
of his neck that he would become completely betwaddled in the presence
of nature's fair adornments, or Papuan simplicity.
April 19.
The mate, guide, three stalwart blacks and myself leave the boat in
the night. Several miles in we cross a clear running brook, through
which we wade to our hips. After climbing several mountain trails we
continue for five or six miles along a zigzag course under the brow of
a mountain range, crossing ravines in which the large birds, all of
them beautiful in color, do not seem to fear us or fly at our approach.
At openings I can view the evergreen, palm tree valley below, which
seems awaking from its dreams to greet the rising sun. I call a halt
and look and listen, for I am charmed.
About ten o'clock, when motioned by our guide, we somewhat nervously
follow him to a crystal lake, surrounded by tropical verdure, where we
were confronted with from sixty to one hundred houses or nests built in
the trees covered, water-proof tight, with a sort of long sea grass,
which grows abundantly in all tropical marshes. Apparently some of the
larger dwellings, like those of the Alaska Indians, would accommodate
several families. Here and there naked people, looking out or climbing
up or down the swinging ladders.
The king, a young fellow, after learning our wants, invites us to stay
a moon, which I think would have been perfectly safe if we did not
wander away from the village.
I then presented the king with the presents I had brought, six large
jack knives and six cheap hatchets, after which they began to show us
things, how and what they cooked, how they caught game, fight, dance,
worship and lastly how they clear a guilty conscience.
[Illustration: NEW GUINEA.
HOME OF THE NAKED PEOPLE WHO BUILD THEIR HOUSES IN THE TREES.]
This is done by immersion in clear water by moonlight, when the god in
the moon forgives all. They believe that the souls of the dead linger
around those whom they loved on earth.
The king and several others gave me rudely ornamented shell rings. A
lady to whom I gave a silver dollar gives me a pretty shell which she
had herself ornamented with the sharp end of a stone, also she gave me
her petticoats which females wear when at the sea shore. (I have these
momentoes yet.) The petticoat consists of a waist-band to which is
attached loose ringlets down to the knees, all made of sea grass. Once
I caught two girls winking, laughing and making fun of me. All females
stand sideways to the males and look and talk over their shoulder. Many
have fine physiques.
There are few quadrupeds here, but this seems to be the home of birds.
The cassowary is larger than an ostrich. Their flesh is said to taste
like turkey. The plumage of some birds is wonderful. Especially the
lyrebird, who struts like a tom-turkey. Over twenty species of the bird
of paradise are said to live here.
All kind of tropical fruit grow wild and in great abundance. Bread
fruit trees grow quickly and furnish 500 to 1,000 pounds of food each,
substance about equal to oatmeal.
Many from Chicago may well envy these kind, timid, primitive people
their sunshine career as compared to our daily struggle for ascendancy.
As I am about to leave these people, who are huddled around me, out of
curiosity I look one after another of each sex squarely in the eyes for
recognition, and I get the response everytime. Not that steady stare of
the snake, dog, or gorilla, but that conscious response of affection
between souls. This satisfies me that men are not improved beasts, but
rather distinct creatures endowed with certain soul-responsive looks,
self-controlling powers, gifts which cannot be mentally experienced.
April 24.
After several days among the verdure islands with broad, glistening,
sandy shores, strewn with large and small shells, I find myself among
the Solomon Islands, about 500 miles from New Guinea.
I am glad I came here, for it seems like a dream of the long, long ago.
With the exception of a few naked natives, flying foxes, and shore
fowls, these islands must resemble the great lake region at home in the
carboniferous age. The age after the great Mississippi Valley inland
sea had fled away from the shores. The age before the vegetation had
lured the sea family through the long reptilean age into the mammalian
age, when the mastodon roamed the palm groves of Michigan and the great
dinotherium lived on the marshy plains of Colorado, before the Rocky
Mountains had raised their now silent, dreary forms.
If there was a day in Illinois when the Crustacean invertebrate
families lined the hot ocean shores and the vegetation grew thirty feet
high, it must have resembled this equatorial region now, for although
clear today, I am told it rains almost daily, and up the mountain sides
as far as I can see the vegetation is wonderful.
A sort of inspiration seems to pervade the forests of New Guinea and
the Samoa group, but this carboniferous clime has little charm. For
although white sand beaches miles wide strewn with shell against
a background of waving palms, is a sight long to be remembered, I
somehow feel I am associating with clams, turtles and pelicans of the
"evening and morning of the fifth day," so I will now leave for Cape
York, to catch the Futami Maru, which is to call there May 17th.
COCHIN CHINA
Briefly I must mention the interesting countries of Anam and Siam.
Saigon, a city of Anam, that country which the French gobbled up from
the helpless natives, is to me, the most beautiful city in the world.
The Mongolian natives here are modest-nice for hot climate people.
The females wear loose gauze habits, protecting from the neck to the
bare toes.
It is amusing to see a group of these ladies on an afternoon outing,
riding in a wooden cart drawn by one lazy ox. I have often felt like
patting both the ox and the ladies.
Paddy fish come ashore here in great schools, flopping into and
damaging the gardens and rice fields.