From Long Island To Luzon.
Across the Continent--An American Governor-General Steams Through
the Golden Gate--He Is a Minute-Man--Honolulu as a Health Resort--The
Lonesome Pacific--The Skies of Asia--Dreaming Under the Stars of the
Scorpion--The Southern Cross.
Spain, crowded between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, was the
world's "West" for many centuries, indeed until Columbus found a
further West, but he did not go far enough to find the East Indies. The
United States is now at work in both the East and West Indies.
Our Manila expeditions steamed into the sunsets, the boys pointing
out to each other the southern cross. The first stage of a journey,
to go half round the world on a visit to our new possession, was by
the annex boat from Brooklyn, and a rush on the Pennsylvania train,
that glimmers with gold and has exhausted art on wheels, to Washington,
to get the political latitude and longitude by observation of the two
domes, that of the Capitol, and the library, and the tremendous needle
of snow that is the monument to Washington, and last, but not least,
the superb old White House.
The next step was across the mountains on the Baltimore and Ohio,
the short cut between the East and the West, traversed so often by
George Washington to get good land for the extension of our national
foundations. The space between Cincinnati and Chicago is cleared on the
"Big Four" with a bound through the shadow of the earth, between two
rare days in June, and the next midnight, the roaring train flew high
over the Missouri River at Omaha, and by daylight far on the way to
Ogden. The country was rich in corn and grass, and when one beholds the
fat cattle, lamentations for the lost buffalo cease. It is a delight
to see young orchards and farmhouses, and cribs and sheds fortified
against tornadoes by groves, laid out with irritating precision to
confront the whirling storms from west and south. The broad bad lands
in which the tempests are raised devour the heart of the continent.
I made note of the 888-mile post beyond Omaha, but the 1,000-mile
telegraph pole and tree glided away while I was catching the lights
and shadows on a fearfully tumbled landscape. The alkali has poisoned
enormous tracts, and the tufts of sagebrush have a huge and sinister
monotony. Looking out early in the morning there was in our track
a "gaunt grey wolf" with sharp ears, unabashed by the roar of the
train. His species find occasional scraps along the track and do
not fear the trains. Then I saw something glisten in the herbage,
and it was a rattlesnake, if it were not a whisky bottle.
The gigantic lumps of tawny earth, with castellated crags of stone,
ghostly ruins one would say of cities that perished thousands of years
before the bricks were made for Babylon. Profound beds for vanished
torrents yawned into a scrap of green valley, and the glitter of a
thread of water. A town blossomed from a coal mine, and there was
an array of driven wells with force pumps to quench the thirst of
seething and raging locomotives. A turn in the line and a beautiful
cloud formation like billows of white roses, massive, delicately
outlined fantastic spires like marble mountains, carved--ah! the
cloud comes out clear as if it were a wall of pearl, and there are
the everlasting mighty hills with their brows of exquisite snow!
These are lofty reservoirs from which the long days glowing with
sunshine send down streams of water at whose touch the deserts
bloom. The eye is refreshed as we make a closer acquaintance of
the mountains. Where water flows and trees "wag their high tops"
there is hope of homes. There are canyons that cause one to smile
at remembrances of what were considered the dizzy gorges of the
Alleghenies. There is a glow as of molten lead in one corner of a misty
valley far away. It is Salt Lake, the Dead Sea of America. Beyond
this at an immense elevation is a lake with the tinge of the indigo
sky of the tropics. If one could stir a portion of the Caribbean Sea
into Lake Geneva, the correct tint could be obtained. Thirty miles
of snow sheds announce progress in the journey to the Pacific. There
is still heat and dust, but beside the road are villages; and there
are even fountains.
Each stream is a treasure, and its banks are rich with
verdure. There are sleek cows on bright grass. The mountains
are no longer forbidding. They take on robes of loveliness. The
valleys broaden and on the easy slopes there are orchards where the
oranges glisten. There are clusters of grapes. We have come upon that
magic land, California. There is golden music in the name. This is a
conquest. The war in which it was won was not one of philanthropy. We
gathered an empire.
General Merritt never minded the weather, whether the wind blew or
not, and instead of holding his ship for several hours after the
appointed time, wanted to know five minutes after 10 o'clock whether
the time for starting was not 10 o'clock and by whom the boat was
detained. At ten minutes after 10 the gangplank was swung free, with
a desperate man on it who scrambled on with the help of long legs and
a short rope. As the ship swung from the dock and got a move on there
were thousands of men and women exalted with emotion, and there were
crowded steamers and tugs toppling with swarming enthusiasts resounding
with brass bands and fluttering with streaming flags. The ladies were
especially frantic. Spurts of white smoke jetted from forts and there
were ringing salutes. Steam whistles pitched a tune beyond the fixed
stars. The national airs with thrilling trumpet tones pierced the
din, and a multitude of voices joined with the bands giving words and
tone to the magnetic storm. How many miles the Newport was pursued I
cannot conjecture. There were tall ladies standing on the high decks
of tugs that were half buried in the foam of the bay, but as long
as they could hold a "Star Spangled Banner" in one hand, and a few
handkerchiefs in another, their skirts streaming in grace and defiance
before the rising gale, they sang hosannas, and there were attitudes
both of triumph and despair as the fair followers, dashed with spray,
gave up the chase, passionately kissing their hands god-speed and
good-by. This was going to the Indies through the Golden Gate!
A breakage of dishes, that sounded as though the ship were going
to pieces, belied the prophesy that beyond the bar there was to
be no moaning; and the Pacific would not be pacified. However,
the reputation of the ocean was good enough to go to sleep on,
but the berths squirmed in sympathy with the twisting and plunging
ship. It was not a "sound of revelry by night," to which the wakeful
listened through the dismal hours, and in the morning there was a
high sea--grand rollers crowned with frothy lace, long black slopes
rising and smiting like waves of liquid iron.
The Pacific was an average North Atlantic, and it was explained by the
tale that the peaceful part of this ocean is away down South where the
earth is most rotund, and the trade winds blow on so serenely that they
lull the navigators into dreams of peace that induce a state of making
haste slowly and a willingness to forget and be forgotten, whether--
Of those who husbanded the golden grain
Or those who flung it to the winds like rain,
The gulls are not our snowy birds of the Atlantic. We are lonesome
out here, and the Albatross sweeps beside us, hooded like a cobra,
an evil creature trying to hoodoo us, with owlish eyes set in a frame
like ghastly spectacle glasses.
General Merritt's blue eyes shone like diamonds through the stormy
experiences while the young staff officers curled up as the scientists
did on the floor, and smiled a sort of sickly smile! The highest
compliment that can be paid them is that the group of officers
and gentlemen surrounding the commander of the expedition to the
Philippines, express his own character.
It was funny to find that the private soldiers were better served
with food than the General and his staff. There was reform, so as
to even up the matter of rations, but the General was not anxious
and solicitous for better food. His idea of the correct supper after
a hard day's service is a goodly sized sliced onion with salt, meat
broiled on two sticks, hard tack, a tin cup of coffee, for luxuries a
baked potato, a pipe of tobacco, a nip of whisky, a roll in a blanket
and a sleep until the next day's duties are announced by the bugle.
As the gentlemen of the staff got their sea legs, and flavored
the narration of their experiences with humor, I found myself in a
cloudy state and mentioned a small matter to the brigadier surgeon,
who whipped out a thermometer and took my temperature, and that man of
science gave me no peace night or day, and drove me from the ship into
Paradise--that is to say I was ordered to stay at Honolulu. Through
a window of the Queen's hospital I saw lumps of tawny gold that were
pomegranates shaking in the breeze, another tree glowed with dates,
and a broad, vividly green hedge was rich with scarlet colors. I was
duly examined by physicians, who were thorough as German specialists. I
had, in the course of a few hours, a nap, a dish of broth, a glass
of milk, a glass of ice water and an egg nog. That broth flowed like
balm to the right spot. It was chicken broth. When I guzzled the egg
nog I would have bet ten to one on beating that fever in a week, and
the next morning about 4:30, when there was competitive crowing by a
hundred roosters, I was glad of the concert, for it gave assurance of
a supply of chickens to keep up the broth and the eggs that disguised
the whiskey.
Two days later I gave up the egg nog because it was too good for
me. I knew I did not deserve anything so nice, and suspected it was a
beneficence associated with a cloud on my brow. I had the approval of
the hospital physician as to egg nog, and he cut off a lot of dainties
sent by the Honolulu ladies, who must have imagined that I was one
of the heroes of the war. Their mission is to make heroes happy. I
was detained under the royal palms, and other palms that were planted
by the missionaries, four weeks, and got away on the ship Peru with
Major-General Otis, and when we had gone on for a fortnight, as far
as from the Baltic to Lake Erie, we saw some rocks that once were
Spanish property.
As we left Honolulu the air was already a-glitter with Star Spangled
Banners. There are three great points to be remembered as to the
annexation of Hawaii:
1. There is not to be a continuance of the slavery of Asiatics in
the new possession.
2. "Manhood suffrage" is not to be extended to Asiatics, often actually
as under strictly conventional constitutional construction.
3. The archipelago is to be a United States territory, but not a
State of the United States. Ex-President Harrison says in his most
interesting book: "This Country of Ours," which should be one of our
national school books:
"Out of the habit of dealing with the public domain has come the common
thought that all territory that we acquire must, when sufficiently
populous, be erected into States. But why may we not take account
of the quality of the people as well as of their numbers, if future
acquisitions should make it proper to do so? A territorial form
of government is not so inadequate that it might not serve for an
indefinite time."
It is to be remarked of the Hawaiian Islands that they did not possess
the original riches of timber that distinguished the West Indies,
especially Cuba, where Columbus found four varieties of oranges. One
of the features of Hawaiian forestry is the Royal Palm, but it was
not indigenous to the islands. The oldest of the stately royalists
is not of forty years' growth, and yet they add surprising grace to
many scenes, and each year will increase their height and enhance
their beauty.
Hawaiians will be saved from extinction by miscegenation. There will
be no harm done these feeble people by the shelter of the flag of the
great republic. The old superstitions prevail among them to an extent
greater than is generally understood. I had the privilege of visiting
an American home, the background of which was a rugged mountain
that looked like a gigantic picture setting forth the features of
a volcanic world. Far up the steep is a cave in which the bones of
many of the old savages were deposited in the days of civil war and
inhuman sacrifices. The entrance was long ago--in the days the Hawaii
people describe as "Before the Missionaries." The hole going to the
holy cavern was closed, but there is still pious watching over the
place of bones, and if there are climbers of the mountain not to be
trusted with the solemn secrets of ancient times, they are stalked
by furtive watchmen of the consecrated bones, and no doubt the ever
alert sentinels would resist violation of the sepulchre in the rocks;
and the natives are careful to scatter their special knowledge that
the spot is haunted by supernatural shapes and powers. The Americans
living in the midst of these mysteries are rather proud of the ghosts
they never see, but have to put up with the haunting guard still
ministering to the gods that dwelt in the shrines where the shadows
of extinct volcanoes fall, long before the masterful missionaries
planted their first steps in the high places.
After twenty-two days' steaming from San Francisco--Queen's Hospital
time not counted--we were directly south of China's Yellow Sea,
and within a few hours of sighting the isle of Luzon.
Only at Honolulu, all the way from San Francisco, was there a sail or a
smoke not of a vessel of the Philippine expedition. All the long days
and nights the eye swept the horizon for companionship, finding only
that of our associates in adventure, and very little of them. Even the
birds seem to shrink from the heart of the watery world spread between
America and Asia; and the monsters of the deep are absent. One day,
about a thousand miles from California, a story spread of a porpoise
at play, but the lonely creature passed astern like a bubble. Bryant
sang of the water fowl that flew from zone to zone, guided in certain
flight on the long way over which our steps are led aright, but the
Pacific zones are too broad for even winged wanderers. The fish that
swarm on our coast do not seem to find home life or sporting places
in this enormous sea. Only the flying fish disturb the silky scene and
flutter with silver wings over the sparkling laces that glisten where
the winds blow gently, and woo the billows to cast aside the terrors
of other climes and match the sky of blue and gold in beauty; but,
unlike the stars, the waves do not differ in glory, and the spread
of their splendor, when they seem to roll over a conquered universe,
appeals to the imagination with the solemn suggestion not that order
rules but that old chaos settles in solemn peace. The days terminate
on this abyss in marvelous glories. The glowing spectacle is not
in the west alone, but the gorgeous conflagration of the palaces we
build in dreams spreads all around the sky. The scene one evening in
the vicinity of the sun departing in Asia to light up the morning
of the everlasting to-morrow touching America with magical riches,
was that of Niagara Falls ten thousand times magnified and turned
to molten gold, that burned with inconceivable luster, while the
south and north and east were illuminated with strange fires and
soft lights, fading and merged at last in the daffodil sky. Then
the west became as a forest of amazing growth, and the ship entered
its dusky recesses like a hunter for game such as the world never
saw--and we looked upon the slow-fading purple islands that are the
northern fringes of the greater one of the Philippines, and studied
the rather faint and obscure Southern Cross and the stately sheen of
the superb constellation of the Scorpion. It is a pity to have to say
that the Cross of the South is a disappointment--has to be explained
and made impressive by a diagram. It is more like a kite than a
cross; has a superfluous star at one corner, and no support at all
of the idea of being like a cross unless it is worked up and picked
into the fancy. The North Star shines on the other side of the ship,
and the Great Dipper dips its pointers after midnight, into the mass
of darkness that is the sea when the sun and moon are gone.
The voyage from Honolulu to the farther Pacific was not so long that we
forgot the American send-off we got in that Yankee city. The national
airs sounded forth gloriously and grand. Flags and hankerchiefs
fluttered from dense masses of spectators, and our colors were radiant
above the roofs. There was, as usual, a mist on the mountains, and
over Pearl Harbor glowed the arch of the most vivid rainbow ever
seen, and Honolulu is almost every day dipped in rainbows. This
was a wonder of splendor. The water changed from a sparkling green
to a darkly luminous blue. From the moment the lofty lines of the
coast--our mountains now--faded, till the birds came out of the west,
the Pacific Ocean justified its name. The magnificent monotony of its
stupendous placidity was not broken except by a few hours of ruffled
rollers that tell of agitations that, if gigantic, are remote.
The two thousand and one hundred miles from California to Honolulu
seemed at first to cover a vast space of the journey from our Pacific
coast to the Philippines, but appeared to diminish in importance
as we proceeded and were taught by the persistent trade winds that
blew our way, as if forever to waft us over the awful ocean whose
perpetual beauty and placidity were to allure us to an amazing abyss,
from which it was but imaginative to presume that we, in the hands of
infinite forces, should ever be of the travelers that return. Similar
fancies beset, as all the boys remember--the crews of the caravels
that carried Columbus and his fortunes. There were the splendors of
tropical skies to beguile us; the sea as serene as the sky to enchant
us! What mighty magic was this that put a spell upon an American army,
seeking beyond the old outlines of our history and dreams, to guide
us on unfamiliar paths? What was this awakening in the soft mornings,
to the thrilling notes of the bugle? The clouds were not as those
we knew in other climes and years. We saw no penciling of smoke on
the edges of the crystal fields touched up with dainty ripples too
exquisite to be waves--that which is a delight for a moment and passes
but to come again, in forms too delicate to stay for a second, save
in those pictures that in the universe fill the mind with memories
that arc like starlight. The glancing tribes of flying fish became
events. We followed the twentieth parallel of longitude north of the
equator, right on, straight as an arrow's flight is the long run of the
ship--her vapor and the bubbles that break from the waters vanishing,
so that we were as trackless when we had passed one breadth after
another of the globe, as the lonesome canoes of the Indians on the
Great Lakes.