_The Race for the Situation—Ceylon—Across
India—Stalled in Bombay—Russia via the
Suez Canal_
After four days of Shanghai, the German Mail Steamer _Princess Alice_,
with passengers, mail and cargo, from Yokohama to Bremen, called at
Woo Sung and put an end to our sufferings. In a driving snow and sleet
storm we boarded the big German liner as she lay at anchor at the mouth
of the Yangtse River, and had our baggage ticketed to the Suez Canal.
It was during the next weeks, while we are plowing through the China
Seas, that I began to learn more of the checkered history of my Chief
of Staff. A more or less entertaining volume might be readily written
on his wanderings and experiences. For hours on end, while I lay in
my bunk kicking my heels and waiting for the time to pass, Monroe D.
would sit on a camp stool and regale me with the story of his life.
Scientists tell us that there is no such thing as perpetual motion, but
when they made this statement, they had never seen my “Black Prince,”
and observed the phenomena of unintermittent speech which flowed
steadily and at the rate of 150 words a minute for as many minutes on
end as he was able to get a hearer. He was born in Mississippi, and had
moved early to Kansas, where in 1898, as he informed me, he was holding
an important position in a local express company. When the call to arms
for the Spanish War went forth, Morris was the first man to enlist
in the 20th Kansas. For active service in Cuba he was mustered out a
year later as Third Sergeant, and immediately re-enlisted in a colored
volunteer regiment for a campaign in the Philippines, and quickly rose
to the rank of First Sergeant in his company. After serving out his
time, he returned to the States, again renewed his associations with
the express business, and gave that up to accept the position of porter
on a Pullman car. This business, however, did not apparently prove
sufficient for the development of his intellectual assets, and he soon
gave that up to go as steward for one of the American army transports.
Thirteen times he had crossed the Pacific, and finally had left the
transport at Tientsin and attached himself to one of the officers in
the United States Marine Barracks at Peking.
[Illustration: FROM FAR MONGOLIA’S BORDER FOR 180 MILES EASTWARD
STRETCHES THE LINE OF THE JAPANESE TRENCHES]
[Illustration: REGIMENT AFTER REGIMENT, FRESH FROM JAPAN, POUR ALONG
THE NEWLY MADE HIGHWAYS]
My arrival and departure had opened a new career to him, and from the
day we left Peking until his return to Kansas City, both night and day
were devoted to disproving the scientific phenomena referred to above.
“Morris,” I would say, when I felt particularly bored, “please talk to
me.”
“Yes, sir,” he would say, and he would begin on the moment and continue
for hours until I would say:
“All right, Morris. Can do. Go to bed,” when he would cut it off in the
middle of a sentence with a “Yes, sir. Good Night, sir!” and be off.
The trip from Japan to the Canal is interesting enough the first time,
but thereafter it becomes a bit monotonous. Hongkong, Singapore,
Penang and the ports were all old stories to me. The _Princess Alice_
sighted the palm-skirted coast of Ceylon twenty-two days later. I
was desperately bored with the German boat. I was bound for Russia.
Everybody went by the Canal. I had been that way myself less than a
year before. I had a new idea.
“Morris,” I said, as we slipped behind the breakwater at Colombo one
glorious November afternoon, “I have a scheme. Pack up chop-chop. We
are going to abandon this boat to-day. From Colombo we will cross over
to India, take the train to Bombay, go up the Persian Gulf to Bunder
Abbas, or one of those places, get some horses, camels, or whatever
they use there, and cross Persia to Teheran. From there we can hit the
Caucasus from the Caspian Sea.”
Morris was delighted and turned on the conversation and began packing
on the spot. He was filled with delight at the idea of an 800-mile ride
across the mountains of Persia.
“It may be bad there,” I told him. “They say the mountains are filled
with bandits.” I paused to watch the effect, and then asked Morris,
“Are you a good shot?” He stopped packing, and his eyes snapped as he
drew himself up with pride and said:
“You just give me a ‘Martini’ or a ‘Kraig,’ and I can wing a man at 200
yards just as fast as they can get up,” and he grinned from ear to ear.
An hour later we landed in Ceylon.
There are many beautiful places in the world, and there are a great
many places that are strange and quaint to the foreigner who sees
them for the first time, but the beautiful island that has Colombo
for its capital has the rest of the spots in the position of feeble
competitors, at least, that was the way it looked to me. Apparently
Ceylon has long been ranked as A-1 on its personal charm, for even
the person who wrote that old familiar hymn, which treats briefly
of various places, “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains to India’s Coral
Strands,” gave the palm to Ceylon, where even he admitted “Every
prospect pleases and only man is vile.” That is Ceylon all right as
far as the pleasing prospect is concerned, but the citizens of the
place impressed me in a very hospitable and kindly light, despite
the disparaging comment of the hymn writer. It is true that they are
somewhat active in the pursuit of business, and are chronic beggars,
but otherwise it is hard to see how they are any worse than anybody
else. However, they may have changed since his day. The harbor of
Colombo isn’t a very good harbor, and were it not for the protection
of the breakwater, it would be absolutely untenable in the spring and
summer, when the hot monsoon blows up from the sun-scorched African
coast, and piles up the great breakers in clouds of foam and spray
against the stone masonry. This breakwater is thrown across the
harbor neck to guard the ships at anchor from the stormy seas that
lash without. The harbor itself is so small that the ships scarcely
have room to swing at anchor with the changing of the tide, so that
they are tied up by their noses and sterns, or, to be more nautical,
fore and aft, to great buoys, which keep them absolutely steady. The
moment one lands on the jetty, one is besieged by droves of extremely
black gentlemen, dressed in a white effect, which seems to be a cross
between a pair of pajamas and a nightgown. Everyone of these gentlemen
endeavors to get your ear, and to tell you in most deplorable English
that he recognizes in you a man of exceptionally genial qualities,
to whom he would like to attach himself during your stay. If left
unmolested, he will hustle you into a carriage and take you off to see
the town, irrespective of your baggage or other impending business.
If you evade him on the moment of landing, and fight your way through
the streets, you will meet dozens more of the same pattern. Your first
impression is one of pleasure to think that you have found so many new
friends, for everyone you meet has to be restrained from embracing
you on the spot, and wants to do something for you—remuneration to be
discussed later. Incidentally everybody expects something. It seems
that all the native inhabitants of this place have an idea that the
foreigner is perpetually in their debt for something or other. If you
look at a man hard on the street, he at once stops, steps forward with
a winning smile and outstretched hand, seemingly under the impression
that you owe him at least 50 annas for the privilege of seeing him. At
the hotels it is even worse. You get nothing free, not even a pleasant
look. In fact, one gets into the habit of distinctly discouraging
pleasant looks, for, though they are pretty to look at, they come high,
averaging about a rupee per look. The men are extremely black, with
wonderfully perfect features, and for the most part superbly handsome.
There seems to have been some mistake, however, in the women, for they
absolutely fail to make good when it comes to personal charms. Most of
them one sees are extremely depressing spectacles, and the few that are
at all presentable have been corralled by enterprising speculators, and
are on exhibition, but, like everything else in Ceylon, they are not
free—one has to pay to look at them.
The natural beauties of Ceylon and Colombo are beyond description. It
is almost the only place in the world, save perhaps Japan and Venice,
that is just as good as advertised. The wonderful groves of cocoanut
palms, banana trees, and I know not what other tropical wonders in
every direction, are outlined against the soft blue of the eastern
sky. All along the sea-front of Colombo the palms stretch in great
avenues and groves from the Galle-Face Hotel to Mount Lavinia, a bluff
by the sea, some four or five miles down the coast. If it is beautiful
at the seashore, it is even more wonderful in the interior, where
luxuriant tropic hills rise sharply above jungle-clad valleys, and tea
plantations abound. In the interior one finds wild elephants in great
droves, and the catching and taming of these for domestic use is not
one of the least important occupations on the island. Other places
in the tropics are so fiercely hot that one fails to appreciate the
glories that are on every hand, but here the breezes from the sea, that
spring up at night, cool the air so that one can enjoy the advantages
of the tropics, and yet sleep as comfortably as in a more northern
climate. One might spend weeks in this glorious country, but as has
been the case on my previous visits, I was pressed for time. A little
wretched B. I. boat was just starting for the tip of India, and we
transferred to her.
The reader in search of accuracy and facts may as well know at the
start that the writer passed but five days in the Indian Empire, and,
therefore, what follows is not to be regarded as an authoritative
discussion of conditions there. My impressions began on first boarding
the steamer at Colombo for the nearest Indian port, which rejoices in
the name of Teutocorin. Behind a table on the deck of the steamer sat
a large and forbidding party in a brilliant uniform, before whom I was
dragged by the first deck-hand who discovered me wandering about the
boat with the Black Prince at my heels, trying to find an unoccupied
cabin in which to deposit my impedimenta. The man in uniform, it
appeared, was an officer of the Indian customs, and he at once pointed
out his importance in the social scheme, and, standing me up before him
like a prisoner at the bar, started on an intimate investigation of my
personal history. Large pads of paper in forms of printed matter were
piled about, and while he was busy asking questions, you are equally
busy signing papers to the effect that you are not a pirate, and not
afflicted with the plague, and so forth and so on. At last the supreme
moment arrives. Backed by all the majesty of the law and the dignity
of his brilliant uniform, he asks you in an impressive whisper if you
have any fire-arms. Here was where he landed heavily on my expedition.
I did have fire-arms of all kinds and varieties. For a moment it
looked as though I was in for a life sentence. Even Morris turned pale
in the confusion which followed. The theory seems to be that every
foreigner who happens to have a revolver or shotgun in his baggage is
the fore-runner of a revolutionary junta, and is about to inaugurate
a second Indian Mutiny, or something of that sort. After the first
outburst of excitement, and things had calmed down a little, and the
gentleman in uniform talked slow enough, so that I could understand, I
discovered that all might yet be well, providing I paid the price. I
never understood exactly what it was for, but my impression was that it
was something in the nature of a customs duty. By tending strictly to
business and writing fast, the necessary forms were finally filled out,
and, weak and exhausted, I was allowed to withdraw to recuperate in my
cabin.
The next disappointment occurred in the morning, when I found that the
boat which starts for Teutocorin does not really get there at all, but
anchors miles away on the horizon, while the despairing passengers are
taken into the alleged port on a small smelly tender, where they sit
in determined rows, trying to keep the spray off with their umbrellas.
At the pier which is finally reached, a swarm of piratical coolies and
customs officials rush down like an avalanche upon the baggage and
carry it off to the station a quarter of a mile away, where the train
for the north is waiting. The Indian trains really are not as bad as
one would expect, considering the condition of the country and the
people. There are no sleeping cars, as the term is used in America.
They have something, however, under that name, which is a compartment
on wheels, with two sofas, that remind one of slabs in a morgue
running lengthwise. At night another slab unexpectedly lets down from
the roof. This is technically known as the upper berth. The whole is
called a sleeping car because if one remains in it long enough, one
finally falls asleep from sheer exhaustion. The wise traveler brings
a pillow and some bedding. The unwise sleeps in his overcoat. The
railroad provides nothing whatever except jolts and some dismal looking
railroad men, who appear to be chronic recipients of bad news from home.
The country from Teutocorin to Madras is not particularly noteworthy,
and looks like any other semi-tropic country, with much cactus growth
scattered about. New Mexico and Oklahoma are the nearest things in
America which resemble it. The only new thing that really impresses
the stranger is the native, and for a short time he is interesting to
look at. His dress is distinctly simple. As far as one can observe,
there is nothing more than a long strip of red cotton cloth, perhaps
four feet wide by twenty feet long. He begins his dressing process at
his head and winds himself up in this sheet effect, until when the job
is finished, he appears extremely well dressed and quite gracefully
draped. The women have a similar arrangement, only there is more of
it. The country in the south is fairly well cultivated, and here and
there in the fields one sees the natives stripped for action, patiently
following the bullock and a wooden plow through the field. The thing
that impresses one most of all is the limitless number of brown-faced
red clad men and women that swarm around the stations and villages with
apparently nothing on their minds or any business in hand. There are no
dining cars on the train that I traveled on, and one has to put up with
eating houses, one of which occurs every five hours. The fare is not
bad, and the time allowed is certainly adequate to eat all there is in
sight. The style of drink in this country is whiskey and soda with ice,
served in glasses eight inches deep. There must be something curious
about Indian conditions which enable the residents to soak up such
enormous quantities of alcohol. There are thousands of them in India
who can drink a quart of whiskey a day and get up and walk off with it
without turning a hair.
Madras is the first truly large city on our line, and is called the
third largest in India. I have met people since I was there who assert
strongly that Madras has attractions. Personally I was unable to find
them in my sojourn of a single day. Nobody seems to know anything or
to be interested in anything, and it seems to offend a man frightfully
if you want to do business with him. Everybody I met was unutterably
bored. Statistics say that there is much business done in Madras,
and the figures seem to prove it, but when or how it is done is a
mystery to the writer, who was unable to detect a single individual
doing anything useful or interesting. The hotels apparently are run in
the interest of the servants. There are literally millions of them,
everyone doing something different. They are strong advocates of the
minute division of labor. The halls and corridors of the hotels swarm
with them, and the compound and dining rooms are crowded with them,
standing about, getting under foot, and annoying one. At every turn
there is a black man handing you something you don’t want, calling for
a carriage when you prefer walking, getting you coffee and cigars when
you told him distinctly three times that you don’t want anything. When
you come to go away, they appear en masse in front of your room. It is
a literal fact that just before my departure from one of these hotels
I went to my room to look for a book. The corridor in front of it was
crowded with men, so that I thought there must be either a fire or a
raid by the police. Not at all! It was only the local staff waiting for
tips. When you get in your carriage to go away there is a course of
wails,—
“I am the man who blacked your boots!”
“I passed the sahib his paper at breakfast.”
“I carried water for his bath,” and so forth, until you are on the
verge of nervous prostration listening to the uproar. The old travelers
in India aren’t bothered so much, for they slap a few people, kick
the porters, and insult the proprietor of the hotel, and by so doing
prosper.
From Madras to Bombay is something over a thousand miles, which an
express train makes in about thirty-six hours. The trains on this
line are more comfortable than in the south of India. The gauge is
wider, being five feet, six inches, which makes very smooth riding.
The railroad bed itself is admirable, being well ballasted and with
heavy steel, and the bridges throughout are the latest steel and
masonry construction. Bombay, which was our destination, is the second
largest city in India. Calcutta is the biggest and most filthy. Bombay
is really a beautiful place, but was hot and sticky, and when we were
there, steaming like a Turkish bath. The streets are broad and well
kept, the buildings many stories and modern, while the general plan of
the town affords many parks, squares and driveways. The people over
there seem to be doing more business than in Madras, but even in Bombay
it is very difficult to actually discover anyone in the act of doing
anything in particular. After he has once gotten used to it, they say
the foreigner gets to thinking there is no place like it, and though
he may make an occasional break for home, in nine cases out of ten he
comes back to the luxurious life and tropical heat of India.
Owing to mis-information, which was pleasantly given me by one of
Cook’s officials, we missed the boat up the Persian Gulf by two
hours. My personal experience with Cook’s representatives in the
far east was that what they don’t know about the country in which
they are stationed would fill a series of large volumes. There was
not another boat for five days, so, cursing our luck and the genial
young man, who had so glibly misdirected us, we took our baggage up
to the Taji-Mahal Hotel, which is certainly one of the finest in the
world. The Bombay papers were filled with telegrams of the situation
in Russia. Inasmuch as I was stalled for a number of days, I sent my
office a brief wire to keep them posted of my address in case a change
of plan might seem advisable, and then settled down for my week’s wait.
I was aroused the next morning about 5 o’clock by a yellow envelope
shoved under the mosquito-bar of my bed by a docile Indian servant,—the
never-to-be-avoided cable again. “Situation urgent,” it read. “Proceed
quickest possible route Russia.” That settled it. I shouted for Morris,
and by noon was steaming out of Bombay Harbor on a P. & O. liner headed
not for the Persian Gulf, but for the Suez Canal. At Aden the Reuters
dispatches that the agent brought on board told of the confusion and
disaster in Russia. “Wires cut. Railroads in the hands of strikers
and mutiny of sailors at Sebastopol,” ran the headings. I gave the
steamship agent, who brought them on, a cable for my office in Chicago.
“Port Said in three days. Wire more funds.” I had a few thousand in my
money belt, but “Railroads and wires cut” suggested the need of money
and lots of it to keep the pot boiling.
At Port Said the Imperial Ottoman Bank paid me a substantial remittance
one hour after I landed. In the meantime Morris had gotten into a fight
with one of those dirty heathen negroes who infest the Canal zone.
It was a detail, however, at least for Morris, and in two hours we
were on an express train speeding for Cairo. A night at Shepherd’s
and then an express train for Alexandria, where I caught by minutes a
dilapidated old barge called the _Ismalia_ for Constantinople. My plan
was Constantinople and then by boat to Odessa, and thence where the
news was originating.
The _Ismalia_ was the limit. She called everywhere there was a landing
place. Her chow was vile, and the company worse, and every place we
stopped the cable dispatches told of renewed disorders in Russia and
the Balkans. Every hour that we lay killing time in the dirty ports at
which we called I begrudged most bitterly.
The Piræus and Smyrna slipped past. At Mitylene the Powers were playing
a puerile game on the Sultan, or, as the papers said, “Conducting
naval demonstrations against the Porte.” The wily old monarch having
been there many times before, no doubt recognized in it one of those
oft repeated and inefficient bluffs which so delight the heart of the
European diplomats. Anyway, he stood pat, and after the Powers had had
their play and saw that there was nothing doing, they pulled up their
anchors and sailed away, while the Turks smiled broadly. At dawn of
the fifth day from Egypt we passed the Dardanelles, crossed the Sea
of Marmora, and at six in the evening dropped anchor a mile outside
the Golden Horn. Constantinople at last, and the threshold of our
situation!