The Pacific Triangle

Once staid Dunedin was thrilled by a wireless S.O.S. from the direction of the South Pole. The Aurora, Shackleton's ship which had gone down to the polar regions, was calling for help. She had snapped the cables which tied her to land when the ice-packs gave way and had drifted out to sea. Fortunately, most of the officers and crew were at the moment on board, but sixteen men were left marooned. To add to the prospect of tragedy, the ice smashed the rudder, and a jury-rudder, worked by hand from the stern deck, had to be improvised. With these handicaps the vessel made her way slowly till within five hundred miles of New Zealand, the reach of her wireless. Here she was rescued by a Dunedin tug and brought to Port Chalmers.

I made friends with the mate and the chief engineer and gained access to their superb collection of Emperor Penguin skins and an unusual number of photographs. Months afterward they wanted four men to complete the crew necessary for another journey south and I was tempted to join them, but tallow and bladder and a repressed pen were the negatives, while China and Japan were the positives. So I sailed away with the rising sun in the direction of the great West that is the Far East. Crisp and clear in the bright morning air shone the towering peaks of the New Zealand Alps as I sailed toward Australia and to Botany Bay,—not, however, without being nearly wrecked in the fog which had gathered in Foveaux Strait, which separates Steward Island from the South Island in New Zealand. Bluff, the last little town in New Zealand, is said to have the most southerly hotel in the world. I saw it.

2

Four days from Bluff to Melbourne on a sea that seemed on the verge of congealing into ice. It was not cold, yet autumn-like. And the passengers seemed the fallen leaves. The stewards maintained the reputation for impudence and unmannerliness of the Union Steamship Company crews, but I had grown used to that, and thanked my stars that this was the last coupon in the ticket I had purchased in Honolulu more than a year before. Of human incidents there was therefore none to relate.

But chill and melancholy as that Southern sea was, there hovered over it a creature whose call upon one's interest was more than compensating. Swooping with giant wings in careless ease, the albatross followed us day in and day out. Always on the wing, awake or asleep, in sunshine or in storm, the air his home as the water is to fish, and earth to mammal. Even the ship was no lure for him by way of support. He followed it, accepted whatever was thrown from it, but as for dependence upon it,—no such weakness, you may be sure. His sixteen feet of wing-spread moved like a ship upon the waves, like a combination of a ship and sails. Swift, huge, glorious, unconsciously majestic, he is indeed a bird of good omen. How he floats with never a sign of effort! How he glides atop the waves, skims them, yet is never reached by their flame-like leapings; simulates their motion without the exhaustion into which they sink incessantly.

The albatross had left us, and now the swarming is his artistry, so refined his "table manners." He does not gorge himself as does the sea-gull, nor is he ever heard to screech that selfish, hungry, insatiable screech. Silent, sadly voiceless, rhythmic and symbolic without being restrained by pride of art, he exemplifies right living. He is our link between shores, the one dream of reality on an ocean of opiate loveliness wherein there is little of earth's confusion and pain. For the traveler he keeps the balance between the deadly stability of land life and the dream-like mystery of the sea. But for him it were impossible to come so easily out of an experience of a long voyage. Away down there he is the only reminder of reality. Which explains the reverence sailors have for him and their superstitious dread of killing him. It is like the dread of the physician that his knife may too sharply stir the numbed senses of his patient under anæsthesia.

Land may be said to begin where the albatross is seen to depart. He knows, and off he swoops, ship or no ship to follow and to guide; back over the thousand miles of watery waste, to measure the infinite with his sixteen-foot wings, glide by glide, with the speed of a twin-screw turbine. Only when the female enters the breeding season does she seek out a lost island to rear her young. Independent of the sea, these birds are utterly confined to it, a mystery floating within mystery.

The albatross have left us, and now the swarming gulls abound. Why they are dignified with the Christian name "Sea" when they are such homely land-lubbers, is a question that I cannot answer. Pilots, rather, they come to see us into the harbor, or, with their harsh screeching, to frighten us away.

But something within me would not know Australia, nor any lands, just then. Perhaps it was that my unconscious self was still with the albatross; for strange as it may seem I could not sense any forward direction at all that day, but only one that pointed backward,—toward home. Try as I would to realize myself on my way to Australia, still my mind persisted in pointing toward America. Not until we got the first sight of land ahead was my soul set right. Then it was the Sister Islands, Wilson's Promontory, the Bass Straits, with Tasmania barely in sight, Cape Liptrap, and finally Port Phillip. And Australia was on all fours, veiled in blue,—a thin rind of earth steeped in summer splendor.

Flag signals were exchanged with the lonely pilot-ship that hung about the entrance. All being well, we passed on, crossing that point at the entrance where five strong water-currents meet and vanquish one another, turning into a smooth, glassy coat of treachery. The Wimmera hugged the right shore of the largest harbor I have ever seen. In places the other shore could not be seen with the naked eye. But it is very shallow and innumerable lights float in double file to guard all ships from being stranded.

Just as we entered, the sun set. A stream of color unconstrained obliterated all detail as it poured over the point of the harbor, filling the spacious port. Clots of amber and orange gathered and were dissipated, softened, diffused, till slowly all died down and were gone. Darkness and the blinking lights of the buoys remained.

Two big ships, brilliantly lighted, flinging their manes of smoke to the winds, passed, one on its way to Sydney, the other to Tasmania and Adelaide in the south. Far in the distance ahead we could see the string of shore lights at Port Williamson. It took us three hours to overtake them, and we arrived too late to receive pratique. For half an hour the captain and the customs carried on a conversation with blinking lights. The winches suddenly began their rasping sound, and the anchor dropped to the bottom. We did not debark that night.

3

I spent nearly six months in Melbourne and Sydney, those two eastern eyes of that wild old continent, and for the first time in a twelvemonth the sense of security from the sea obtained. For a fortnight I occupied a little shack on Manly Beach, near Sydney, but oh, how different it was there from the sand-dunes on the shores at Dunedin, in New Zealand! In the Dominion one had to hide within the interior to get away from the sea: on the beach one felt about to slip into Neptune's maw. But at Manly, Bondi, Botany Bay, the sea might hammer away for another eternity without putting a landlubber off his ease.

But we shall return to Australia in another section. The sea is still much in the blood, there is still a vast length that lies close to Asia and marks off another line of our imaginary triangle. Here are no landless reaches, but all the way to Japan one passes strip after strip, as though some giant earthquake had shattered part of the main.

Months afterward I took passage once more, this time on the Eastern, bound for Japan.

There was no mistaking the side of the world I was on and the direction of my journey from the moment I stepped upon the pier to which the Eastern was made fast. Hundreds of Chinese, with thousands of boxes and bundles, scurried to and fro in an ant-like attention to little details. Then as the steamer was about to depart, mobilization for the counting of noses took place, and veritable regiments of emaciated yellow men lined the decks. Here and there a fat, successful-looking Chinese moved round the crowd, an altogether different-looking species, more as one who lives on them than as one who lives with them. On the dock stood several groups waiting to wave farewell to their Oriental kin. One of these groups was composed of a stout white woman with two very pretty Eurasian daughters,—as handsome a pair of girls as I saw in Australia. Their father was a well-to-do Chinese merchant taking one of his regular trips to China. In Australian fashion they were ready for a mild flirtation, spoke Australian English with Australian slang, and, aside from their pater, they were native to all intents and purposes. And in Australia they remained.

Of those who departed, the major number likewise remained native—though to China—despite years and years of residence in Australia. It is a one-sided argument to maintain that because of that the Chinese are unassimilable. There is no ground for such a deduction, because they arrived mainly after maturity, and the Chinese could challenge any white man to become one of them after he has fully acquired his habits and prejudices. But we had not been many minutes at sea before it was our misfortune to find that we had among us a Chinese boy who was born and brought up in New Zealand and was just then going to China for the first time. Here I had ample opportunity of observing the assimilability of the Oriental. And here I bow before the inevitable.

He had assimilated every obnoxious characteristic of our civilization, the passion for slang, the impertinence, the false pride, the bluff which is the basis of Western crowd psychology. He was not a Chinese,—that he denied most vehemently,—he was a New Zealander, and by virtue of his birth he assumed the right to impose his boyish larrikinism upon all the ship's unfortunate passengers. He banged the piano morning, noon, and night; he affected long, straight black hair, which was constantly getting in his way and being brushed carefully back over his head; and he took great pains to make himself as generally obnoxious as possible. He was not that serious, struggling Chinese student who comes to America afire with hope for the regeneration of his race. He was a New Zealander, knew no other affiliations, had no aspirations, and lorded it over "those Chinese" who occupied every bit of available space on the steamer.

In his way he was also a Don Juan, for he hovered over the young half-Australian wife of a middle-aged Chinese merchant who was taking her back to China for her confinement. She was morose, sullen, as unhappy a spirit as I have seen in an Oriental body. Obviously, China held few fine prospects for her. She was seldom seen in her husband's company, for he was generally below playing fan-tan or gambling in some other fashion. And the Australian half of her was longing for home. It seemed to devolve upon our young Don Juan to court this unhappy creature, and court her he did. But she had no resilience, no flash, her Chinese half-self offering him as little reward for his pains as a cow would offer the sun for a brilliant setting.

I expected any hour of the day to see that woman throw herself into the sea, or that husband stick a knife into the bold, bad boy, but nothing happened; the husband and the wife were seemingly oblivious of the love-making, and all went well.

Besides the Chinese crew and passengers there were perhaps a dozen white people, including the officers. An old English army captain whose passport confirmed his declaration that he was seventy-three years old, was taking a little run up to Japan. His only reason was that Japan was an ally, hence he wanted to see it. Such is the nature of British provincialism. Otherwise, there were but two or three young Australians bound for Townsville, and the stewardess. Somewhere along the coast we picked up a Russian peasant, who with his wife had been induced to emigrate to Australia, but who was now going home to enlist. As though there weren't already enough men in Russia armed with sticks and stones! At still another port we commandeered a veritable regiment of Australian children, colloquially called larrikins. These were bound for the Philippines, where their father had preceded them some months before. Their exploits deserve an exclusive paragraph.

Suddenly, out of a clear sky, there would be a shriek like the howl of a dingo on the Australian plains. There would be a rush to the defenses by an excited female,—the mother. There would follow such a slapping as would delight the English Corporal Correction League, except that it wasn't done cold-bloodedly enough. And thereafter for half an hour there was bedlam all around. After exhaustion, a new series of pranks set in. This time they were playing a "back-blocks" game which entailed a hanging. One of them needs must be hanged, and was rescued just in time by an ever-swooping mother. After hours of hunger-stimulating escapades on deck, the dinner-bell sent them scurrying down into the saloon. Before any of us had time to be seated all the fruit on the table was divided according to the best principles of individual enterprise. Beginning with the first thing on the menu, they went down the sheet, leaving nothing untasted; nor did it matter much whether it was breakfast or dinner,—steak enough for a meal in itself comprised the entrée. And the littlest kept pace with the biggest. Nor did afternoon and morning tea escape them. Fully stoked up, they were ready for another beating and another hanging on deck.

In contrast were the little Chinese children,—quiet, shy, never spanked; and though they put away enough within their Oriental bread-baskets, one never saw that same wild struggle for existence which told the tale of life on an Australian station better than anything I wot of.

We had now reached Brisbane, 519 miles from Sydney, a distance which took the Eastern from noon of the 8th to sunrise of the 10th of October to negotiate. And from the outer channel to the docks on the Brisbane River we steamed till half-past one in the afternoon. Here we were "beached" in the mud when the tide went out and had to wait twenty-four hours before floating out again. In the meantime we picked up two more gems,—mature larrikin this time. One of them was so drunk he couldn't see straight, the other was sober enough to bring him on board. Unfortunately for me, they were placed in my cabin, and from then on, after the youngsters had turned the day into chaos, these two would come in to sleep, and the cursing, the spitting, the reference to women with which they consoled their souls, would have shocked the most hardened beach-comber, I am sure.

To avoid annoyances I explored every nook and corner of the vessel. At last I discovered a sanctuary on the roof of the unused hospital. It could not be called a model of order and comfort, for various air-tanks and stores of sprouting potatoes belittered it. But it was like the holy of holies to me, for there I might just as well have been on a lone craft of my own. No sound reached me from any living thing,—except an occasional extra-loud shriek from the youngsters. Above and about me there was nothing to obstruct my view, and within, absolute peace.

On the following day we were on the Great Barrier Reef, grayish green in color, languid in temperament, shallow and therefore dangerous in make-up. Numerous islands, neutral in color and sterile of vegetation, seemed to stare at us and at one another in mute indifference. For the first time the storied reality of being stranded on a desolate island came home to me. As I sat watching this filmy show, I became conscious of a familiar something in the world about me, be it warmth or color, a something which immediately brought the picture of Santa Anna Valley in California back to mind. Sometimes we come across a face we feel certain we have seen before: that was the case with the atmosphere along the Great Barrier Reef. The setting is that of the island home of Paul and Virginia. Near and far, lowly and majestic, in generous succession on each side, were islands and continent,—an avenue wide, spacious, and clear. Occasional peaks along the mainland recalled old-fashioned etchings,—dense clouds, heaven-reaching streaks and shafts of twice-blended astral blue; rain-driven mountain fiords.

Early one day, an hour before dawn, the Eastern moored before Magneta Isle with her stern toward Townsville, as though ready for instant flight, if necessary. With an early-morning shower of filthy words, one of my cabin-mates pulled himself together and dressed. Shortly afterward he slipped over the side of the ship into a tossing and pitching launch and was rushed to Townsville. His rousing me at that hour was the only thing I had reason to be grateful to him for in our short acquaintance.

For the world was exquisitely beautiful in its delicate gown of night. Dawn was but waking. Four-o'clock stupor superintended the easy activities. A few lights in a corner, a bolder and more purposeful flash from a search-light, and all set in twilight. A ring of islands—the Palm Isles—stones set in a placid bay. That was all I saw of Townsville.

And perhaps it is just as well. It may have been "ordained" that my ignorance obtain, be the city's virtues and its right to fame what they may. What if I had gathered closer impressions, added meaningless statistics or announced the prevalence of diphtheria throughout Queensland, or discovered the leading citizen of Townsville to an apathetic world? But it may be of interest to hear that Townsville claims one distinction. It is the Episcopal See of Australia and the seat of the Anglican Bishop and possesses a cathedral.

4

On the afternoon of the following day a heavy wind or squall came up. This time the ship did not defy it. No foolhardy resistance here. The reefs are too near and they stretch for thirty miles seaward. Again we anchored. The horizon contracted like a noose of mist; it stifled one. The ship seemed to crouch beneath the winds. An hour, and the anchor was heard being lifted and the propellers were slowly revived to action. A little later we anchored again. A light was hoisted to the stern mast and twilight lowered on a calm gray sea. Distant little flat islands loomed through the mist. Two sailing-vessels at anchor, moored in companionship, rested within an inlet. A gentle swish, a murmur of human voices, and our little world was swaying gently upon a curious world. And there we remained all night.

As the sun gave notice of day, we moved off, and all day the sea was so still that but for the vibration of the screws it would have been hard to realize that the ship was in motion. Here we came to where the jagged coastline has run down. Tiny islets, flat and low, most of them but a landing-place for a few tropical trees. Summer calm, with barely a ripple of the sea. That night we anchored again, having come, it was said, to the most dangerous pass on the reefs.

Ten days after having left Sydney we arrived at the last port in Australia, Thursday Island. A cloudy morning had turned clear for us, but on ahead to the northwest hung heavy mists. Because of these, I was later told by two soldiers on guard atop the mountain fortification, they could not see us coming. They saw our smoke, but the steamer was hidden from them by mist. Then suddenly we shot into view. All the while we had been in the clearest sunshine, the sea glassy and the flying-fish darting about. It was no place for speed. We moved just fast enough to leave the scene undisturbed. And thus we stole into Torres Straits.

Of all the numerous harbors I have entered in the Pacific, none, with the exception of the Inland Sea in Japan, is more picturesque than that at Thursday Island. Shelter, space, and depth, and stillness! One's eyes sweep round this pearly promise with greed for its beauty. Seventy-five sail-boats, their sailless masts swaying with the swells, are anchored on the reefs. It is Sunday and they are at rest, but what enchantment lies hid in those folded sails! I wish for the power to utter some word which could put them to flight; but that remains for Monday, when "the word" is spoken.

And on Monday, too, immediately upon leaving port at ten o'clock, the ship's time was returned to standard time, leaving Australia and its "bunkum" daylight-saving time behind. Thence we lived again by "dinkum" time. The ship about-faced and left the channel the same way it had entered, and shortly afterward we struck across the Arafua Sea.

5

From that day until I reached Japan it was all I could do to keep track of the seas we passed through,—Arafua, Banda, Molucca, Celebes, Sulu, China, and the Inland Sea.

As we neared the equator again, there was nothing to disturb the peaceful splendor of life, except the little hoodlums on board. About sixty miles south of it a tiny creature, like a turtle, sailed along the still surface; the flying-fish blistered the water, the scars broadened and healed again just as the sportive amphibians pierced it and disappeared. What a contrast to the albatross!

Then the miracle occurred. From the west, hidden from me by the ship, the sun reached to the eastern clouds, dashing them with pink and bronze and blue. I could not tell where the horizon went to, and was roused to curiosity as to what kind of sunset could effect such lovely tints. It wasn't a sunset, but a sunfall, a revelation. Where suggestion through imitation glistened on the eastern side, daring prodigality of color swept away emotion on the western side. It was neither saddening nor joyous. It was a vision of a consciousness in nature as full of character, as definitely meaningful and emotional as a human face. There was something almost terrifying in the expression of that sunset face. One could read into it what one felt in one's own soul. And a little later a crescent moon peeped over the horizon.

At about midnight of the seventeenth day after leaving Sydney we crawled over the equator, and no home-coming ever meant more to me than seeing the dipper again and the Northern stars. During all those days nothing wildly exciting had happened at sea; but just after we left the equator we passed a series of water-spouts—six in all—which formed a semi-circle east, south, and west. The spout to the east seemed to me to be at least two or three hundred feet high, and tremendous in circumference. It drew a solid column of water from the sea far into a heavy black cloud. On the sea beneath it rose a flutter of water fully fifty feet high, black as the smoke produced by a magician's wand. Weird and illusive, the giants beggared description as they stalked away to the southeast, like animated sky-scrapers.

Then we reached Zamboanga, the little town on the island of Mindanao of the Philippines. From there, for twelve hours, we crept long the coast till we entered Manila Harbor.

There remained but two days' voyage before I would reach Asia, the object of my interest for years, and of all my efforts for two. But it was not so easy as all that, for two days upon the China Sea are worth a year upon the Atlantic. Riding a cyclone would be riding a hobby-horse or a camel compared with the Yellow Sea, and though I was the only passenger who missed only one meal during the whole period, I was beaten by the seventy-three-year-old English captain,—who managed all but half a meal. The sea would roll skyward as though it were striving to stand on end and for a moment the ship would lurch downward as though on a loop-the-loop. Sometimes it seemed as though the world were turning completely over. Yet I was told this was only normal, and that typhoons visit it with stated regularity. The China Sea is "the very metropolis of typhoons."

A month had well-nigh gone before we reached Hong-Kong, the British portal to Cathay, a month of dreamy weather. Only one thing more,—a thing more like a scene in the Arabian Nights. Toward the end of the journey I discovered where the five hundred Chinese whose noses had been counted when we left Sydney had gone. Going forward, I looked over into an open hatchway, down into the hold, and there was a sight I shall never forget. These hundreds of deck passengers were all in a muddle amid cargo, parcels, hundreds of birds in cages, parrots, a kangaroo,—yet oblivious of everything. For the entire voyage nothing that I tell of could possibly have come within their ken, as during those days their minds were bent on one thing and one alone,—on playing fan-tan. There in the bottom of the hold hundreds of gold sovereigns passed from hand to hand in a game of chance. And at last they were to be released, to spread, a handful of sand thrown back upon the beach.

As for myself, with my arrival at Hong-Kong and a visit to Shanghai ended the longest continuous voyage I had made upon the Pacific, and the second side of that great Pacific Triangle was drawn. But meanwhile let me review in detail the outposts of the white man in the far Pacific—the lands I had passed on the white man's side of the triangle, ending in Hong-Kong, where white man and Oriental meet.

CHAPTER VIII
THE AUSTRALIAN OUTLANDS

From the moment that I set foot in Australia I felt once again on a continent. Melbourne is low, flat, and gave me the impression of roominess which New Zealand cities never gave. They, with the exception of Christchurch on the Canterbury plains, always clambered up bare brown hills and hardly kept from slipping down into the sea. But in Australia I felt certain that if I set out in any direction except east I could walk until my hair grew gray without ever coming across a mountain. It was a great satisfaction to me that first day, for it was intensely hot and I had a heavy coat on my arm and two cameras and no helmet. Added to my difficulties was the cordiality of an Australian fellow-passenger who was determined that I should share with him his delight at home-coming. He was a short, stout, olive-skinned young man of about twenty-three who had a slightly German swing in his gait and accentuated his every statement with a diagonal cut outward of his right hand, palm down.

He lured me from one end of Melbourne to the other, made me lunch with him at a vegetarian restaurant,—which is a very popular resort in Melbourne,—introduced me to Cole's Book Arcade, to the Blue-bird Tea Rooms, where fine orchestral music flavors one's refreshments, to the latest bank building and even to the station of the railway, which "carries the largest suburban passenger traffic of any in the world." "Meet me under the clock," is the Melbournian motto. How they can all do so is beyond me, for the half-dozen stone steps that lead to the narrow doors at the corner of the station could not, I am sure, afford a rendezvous for more than thirty people at one time; yet the old clock ticks away in patience,—the most popular and most persistent thing in Melbourne.

I had so much trouble keeping pace with this Australian, who seemed to grow more energetic the hotter it became, that I was grateful when he said he would have to leave me, and I was alone again. Then I realized for the first time that I could really like Melbourne; that it had long, broad, spacious streets with clean, fresh-looking office and department-store buildings, that even the narrower side streets were clean and inviting, and that the street cars were propelled by cables and not by trolley wires. So easy were these cars and so low that no one ever waited for them to stop, but hopped aboard anywhere along the street. Melbourne was to me a perfect bath in cleanliness and orderliness,—just what a city ought to be. Even in the very heart of the city the homes had a suburban gentility about them, and there were no unnecessary noises, no smoke, and no end of pretty girls. The people were a joy to look at. Something of the tropical looseness in both dress and flesh, as though their skins were always being fully ventilated, made them attractive. The New Zealanders made me feel as though I were in a bushel of apples; the Australians, carefully packed yellow plums. I have never enjoyed just being on the street more than I did in Melbourne.

On Bourke Street, in the very midst of the pushing crowd, a soft-voiced lad approached me for some information and strutted off, tall in his self-confidence. Victorian belles, tall, graceful, russet-skinned, plump but not flabby, moved with a fine air of self-reliance. On closer acquaintance, I found that these girls were not silent and opinionless as were most of the New Zealand girls. Whatever the issue before the public, they had their defined opinions concerning it, and they were not sneered at by the men. Then, too, there was a companionship between the boys and girls, without reserve, that was balm to my soul after the year in New Zealand.

Melbourne was the home of Madame Melba, and in consequence the city is the most musical of any I lived in in the Antipodes. Even the babies sing operatically on the streets, and the voices one hears from open windows are not the head-voices of prayer-meetings, but those of people who seem to know the value of the human larynx.

During the two weeks that I was in Melbourne, I was, whenever I chose, a guest of the Master of the Mint, Mr. Bagg, who was the uncle of a New Zealand girl of my acquaintance; lunched, dined and afternoon tea-ed with his family whenever I felt like it; was rushed to the theater to see an old pioneer play; and went to attend public meetings at which the mayor and the prime minister spoke; visited the beaches, and knew the joy of the most refreshing companionship it was my good-fortune to meet with in all my wanderings,—though there were others. And it was so with whomever I met in Melbourne, from the clerk in the haberdashery, who acquainted me with the jealousy that exists between Sydney and Melbourne, to the woman in whose home I roomed on Fitzroy Park, or the young couple with the toddling baby and the glorious sheep-dog, who engaged me in conversation on the lawn near the beach at St. Kilda.

And so I still see Melbourne in memory as a place I should enjoy living in. I was often alone, but never lonely in it. And I see it from its Botanic Gardens, with the broad Yarra Yarra River slowly cleaving it in two, its soft, semi-tropical mists hanging over it, its temperate climate, its cleanliness and its low, rolling hills where it hides its suburbs.

I didn't go to see Adelaide, in South Australia, because I was destined to live in Sydney, in New South Wales.

2

It is more than mere accident that Victoria has broader-gaged railways than New South Wales, and that travelers from one state to the other must get off at Albury and change, or between New South Wales and Queensland to the north of it. It is not mere accident, I am sure, for there is a like difference in the width of streets between Melbourne and Sydney.

Sydney is hilly, exposed, bricky, and crowded, and though it is the premier city of Australia, it grows without changing. There is a conservatism about it which, in view of the activity of Australians, is inexplicable. Sydney is almost an old city. Its streets wind as though the settlers had been uncertain of the prevailing winds; and the hills tend to give it an appearance of huddling. The red roofs of the cottage-like houses, and their architectural style give it a European tone, slightly like an English city. It has none of the fresh, "hand-me-down" regularity of the American, nor the sober coziness of the English, village. Every street leads one to the center of the city, and wind as it will there is hardly any relief from commonplaceness. The thoroughfares are crowded with street cars which cross and circumambulate, some of the main streets are too narrow for more than single-track lines. Yet instead of seeing the earlier error and trying to correct it by prohibiting the erection of buildings on the present curb lines, the authorities have permitted one of the finest office buildings in the city—the Commonwealth Bank Building, to be placed on the same line as the rest of the old structures. It is hardly to be expected that such methods will ever broaden the streets.

There are no tenements in Sydney, in the New York sense of the term, but the average home as I saw it on my usual rounds in search of quarters, was ordinary. The rooms were small, and there were few conveniences.

But this is Sydney proper. Newer Sydney, with its suburbs and homes along the numerous peninsulas projecting into the waters of Port Jackson, is modern, clean, and airy, and really convenient. Man is a lazy animal and prone to dote on nature's beauties, neglecting his responsibilities to nature. Sydney, proud of its harbor, builds there and forgets its city-self. There are no fine structures to speak of, no monuments, no art, and even the library has to borrow a roof for itself in a building essentially excellent but neglected as a municipal white elephant. But there is a municipal organ in the Town Hall, and that makes up for much that is wanting in Sydney.

I took up my quarters across the water from Sydney, and from there I could see the city through the glory-lens, its harbor. Little peninsulas, crossed in but a few minutes, project into the waters of the harbor, making it look like an oak-leaf and affording sites for the splendid homes that have been built there. Crowding is impossible; views of the water may be had from all angles. And here, in a borrowed nest, I sat for hours perched above the water, noting and gloating over its moods and character. What charm it works, when in the blood-red streaks of sunset the tidal floods cool the peaceful turquoise; when the busy little ferries of day become fairy transports with streaks of shimmering light as escort, moving across the still waters; when on Sunday morning Sydney across the way relaxes, amazing with revelations. With street and sky-line clear, quiet hangs in the air; or on more windy days, myriad whitecaps royne at the numerous ships which cross and recross one another's paths. In one direction, industry is idealized; in others, nature and beauty lie naked, above idealization.

For two weeks I lived out at Manly Beach, nine miles by ferry from Sydney, and went in and out every day. The Heads lie to the right, and as we made our way across, the swells from the sea beyond rolled the little ferry teasingly. At times, when the swells were heavier and the crowds excessive, a sort of panic would spread over them, but some of the inevitable minstrels that swarm the streets and by-ways of Sydney, would counteract contagion with music and song.

The beaches are always crowded. Annette Kellerman is Australian, and somehow, whether as cause or effect, Sydney people are the most amphibious folk in the world. They seem to live in the water. Every spare hour is spent on the wide stretches of sand that lie warm and white in the blazing sun. But nothing takes precedence over the harbor in the adoration of Sydneyites.

Sydney is known for its gaiety, yet I was lonely in Sydney,—bitterly so. Perhaps people are too gay to think of others, perhaps their gaiety made me exaggerate my loneliness. "Nothing like the Australian larrikin when he gets going," you will be told. But what struck me was the latent distemper that lurked beneath much of the hilarity that I saw in Sydney. Australia is not very different from any of us,—a little more imitative, a little more outspoken, a little more gruff, a little more youthful. But wildness is not specially Australian; nor is bluntness; nor yet youthfulness. The Australian is perhaps a little more reckless, individually or en masse, than the people of other lands, but he puts up with the same social inconveniences; he reasons falsely at times and gets fooled; he gloats over the spectacular, becomes intensely excited over nothing,—and suddenly relapses. In a crowd he sometimes becomes belligerent, yet is easily led and easily relinquishes. But, above all else, he is gregarious. And it is because of this that he takes you in in Sydney,—and drops you out before you have known what has happened to you. Hence he is an inveterate sportsman, a heavy drinker, a perpetual gambler at the races,—faithful to his whimsicalities.

Intellectually he is a fanatic, but tolerates all sorts of fanaticisms. A Sunday morning on the beautiful grounds of the Public Domain is enough to convince you that Sydney would welcome the most freakish freak in the world, imprison him for the fun of it, then sympathize with him if he dies in prison, as did the famous naked man, Chidley. I have seen Sydney men who seemed to me men without hearts, as soft and gentle as women in the face of another man's hurt. Yet when a well-known army officer stole funds that belonged to wounded soldiers and their needy families, I heard respectable Sydney men say they were glad he got away with it. I have seen girls at carnivals, who at ten o'clock went about tickling strange men under the chin, snarl at them at eleven and order them to "Trot along, now." I have heard Australians say harsh things of themselves in criticism, but true loyalty is widely prevalent among Australians. An Australian always wants a mate, "some one who would stick like lead" if he were up against it. The self-criticism comes rather from the more thoughtful Australians, who, looking out upon the future, want to see their country hold on to the prize it has won, and grow and become a leader in the affairs of the Pacific.

But though Sydney and Melbourne are the leading cities of the commonwealth, he who has to judge of the nation by them wonders where that leadership is to come from. The love of pleasure is a sign of health in any people; and Australia is in that sense most healthful. Material progress is the next best indication of the state of a nation; and Australia is universally prosperous. But it is in the outlook on life that a country justifies its existence and insures itself against decay. Until the war, all reports of Australia on that score were negative. Provincialism, of the most ingrowing kind, obtained. Every state thought chiefly of itself; every city of itself only; every district of none other than itself. But with the war Australia took a tremendous leap forward. For the first time in her history, her men had a chance to leave the land which intellectually was little more than a sublimated prison to them. Half a million men left Australia for Europe and other sections of the globe. And if Australia knew what she was about she would now send the rest of her men and women abroad with the same end in view,—the education of the people for the place they occupy in the world.

Much criticism is flung at Australia because her young men and women are inclined to enjoy life rather than burden themselves with a succeeding generation. If the beginning and end of life is reproduction, then that is a just criticism. But the welfare of the living is as important as the welfare of civilization. The greatest criticism is not that people will not bear children in the face of trying economic conditions, but that, having exceptionally favorable circumstances, they show no special inclination to become parents, and that nothing is being done to create conditions under which the bearing of young would be no handicap. But that requires an intellectual outlook which is at present wanting in the cities of Melbourne and Sydney. There is an over-emphasis of pleasure per se, a lack of seriousness in the concerns of life.

Sydney lures men and women from the back-blocks and makes them feel human again, makes them forget the plains are sear, and that manliness is next to cleanliness. It affords dull station-owners a chance to mix with folk where sweetness and refinement, and not crudeness, is the order of the day and of life. It takes men and women who have been told that to increase and multiply is the only contribution they can make to the welfare of the community and shows them that there is something in life besides that. So when I think of what Sydney means to the world that lies behind it I cannot refrain from offering my contribution of praise. But then I ask myself and Sydney what it has done to make the back-blocks better, what it is doing to build up the country, and the fact becomes evident that it is only draining it. Fully 51 per cent of the inhabitants of Australia live in cities. It is for these cities to lay railroads and highways and to open the vast continent; and that can be done only by putting prejudices aside, by adding to recreation real creation and a soberness in the affairs of life which alone will win for Australia its place in the affairs of the Pacific.

What, socially and individually, then, is the contribution of Australia to the civilization of the Pacific? Is her position to be one of eminent leadership commensurate with the welfare of the individual members of the Commonwealth, or is their joyousness going to make her citizens forget ambition and their ruling destiny? This much must not be forgotten,—that born as a convict colony, Australia has more than justified itself; that the term "convict colony" is now no more applicable to Australia than it is to Virginia. That handicap notwithstanding, Australia to-day is as far advanced as any nation in the world. The people do not generally take to higher mathematics, to philosophical thinking, or to science, but illiteracy is rare in Australia. Given a continent wherein nothing of civilization was to be found, Australia has made of it, in a little more than a century, a land productive, healthful, and promising. Much praise is due Japan for what she has accomplished along material lines in seventy years; how much more praise is due Australia for what she has done in about the same time!

3

As one journeys north along the Australian coast, life begins to thin out. Fate must have been in a comic mood when it apportioned me my experiences as I was leaving that island continent, for in Brisbane it allotted me an august funeral, and in Thursday Island it sent a missionary out to "attack me." Thereby hang two tales.

I had walked what seemed to me fully two miles from the pier in the Brisbane River to the heart of town and was rather overheated. My septuagenarian Englishman trudged along by my side. When we arrived in the central thoroughfare I took note of the fact that things looked fresh and clean, that there was a tendency toward pink paint, but that otherwise I might have saved myself the journey. Alas, it was Saturday afternoon, and a half-holiday! Leaving my venerable comrade behind, I strode along at my own pace in search of adventure, my camera across my shoulder. I had taken to a hilly side street, and must have looked like a professional tourist. Absorbed in seeking, I was startled by an appealing voice behind me. Turning, I found the owner of that voice gazing intently at my camera.

"That's a camera you have there, sir."

I admitted my guilt, wondering what crime lurked in the possession of a camera.

"I've been trotting all over town trying to find a photographer, sir, but their shops are all closed. Would you mind coming along with me, sir, and taking a picture of a funeral as the mourners come out of church. Lady ---- is so anxious to have a picture of them just leaving church. The deceased, sir, her husband, was a very much beloved gentleman, a prominent official, and devoted to the church in which now lie his remains, and she would be so pleased if you would come and taik a fouto for her." In his excitement, he slipped into the use of cockney, so prevalent in Australia. I threw out my chest and thought to myself: "See here, old man, do you think I've lived in New York and London and Paris, and Sydney, and —— to be sold a gold brick in Brisbane? But I'll show you I'm game." And I followed him up the street. But sure enough, there at the top of the hill, from an imposing church, emerged a funeral, posing to be taken. It did not matter to this man that I told him my ship was in port only for the day and that before I could possibly make a print I should be either in China or Japan. But just then Fate thought she was carrying the joke too far and sent along a native son with a camera, and I was released. I set out for the ship.

In the little gullies that lie along the way were shacks or cottages, raised on piles, with inverted pans between them and the floor beams. White ants were eating to pulp these supports. We were in the tropics again.

Fate must have chuckled. She is fond of practical jokes. The next time she tried one on me, I was in Cairns. Having entered Australia on the ground floor, Melbourne, I suppose Cairns might be said to be the fifth-story window. I left the ship the moment she was made fast, keyed up with expectation of seeing the tropics again. Ashore, the spirit hovering about tropical villages took me in hand. No better guide can be found on earth. With a voice subdued, it urged me to pass quickly through the town, which was still asleep except for the saloons and their keepers. The spirit leading me complained of that other spirit which leads and captures most men in the tropics. My spirit, happy to have a patron, offered me luxurious scenes, melodious sounds, and mellow colors,—happy in receiving a grateful stranger. While pressing through the little village, I noticed the mission type of architecture of the post-office; the concrete columns guarding the entrance of the newspaper office; the arched balconies of a hotel; the delicate, dainty cottages raised on wooden piles, the verdure hiding defects, and the main building lost in a massive growth of yellow flowers overgrowing roof and all. A small opening for entrance and a pugnacious corner were the only indications of its nature as a residence. Then there were a "School of Arts" and a double-winged girls' school. The whole town was pretty and in concord with the scenes about.

But I was not held. I pressed on toward the hills, to the open road. Allons! But alas! I betrayed myself by doubting the "spirit of the tropics" which was guiding me. I resorted to a tiny mortal for information, and in that way angered the spirit, which instantly deserted me. Not content with whisperings, I had sought definition, asked for distance,—Where? Whence? How? And I lost!

He was a little man, with worn shoes from the holes of which peeped stockingless feet. In the early morning he had slipped on shoes which would not deprive him of the dew. He had covered his little legs with a dark pair of dirty trousers, his body with a soiled white coat, and his mind with misunderstood scripture. His bulging eyes betrayed his inward confusion.

Upon inquiring, he informed me that the road led to the hospital and would take me fifteen minutes to negotiate. Then he wanted to know if I came off the Eastern. "Any missionaries on board?" he asked. "I don't know," I answered. "I suppose that is something you don't trouble much about." I agreed. "Ah, that's just it. Don't you know the Bible says, 'Be prepared to meet thy Maker?' How do you know but what any moment you may be called?" "Well, if I am, I have lived well enough to have no fear." "Yes, that is just it. You live in carnal sin. You have no doubt looked upon some woman with lustful eyes this very morning. I sin, too, every moment." Heaven knows I had not been tempted. I hadn't seen any woman to look at, and nothing was further from my mind just then. And so it was,—sin, assumption and condemnation. I talked with him a few minutes, asserted my fearlessness, the consciousness of a reasonably good life. But nothing would do. The poison of fear with which he contrived to wound me I now had to fight off. I had come out all joy and happiness in the new day, the loveliness of life. If worship was not on my lips it was in my heart, and he had tarnished it. He brought thoughts of sin and death to my mind, which, at that moment, if at any time in my life, was free from selfishness and from unworthy desires.

I cut across to the sea,—not even an open avenue being fresh enough for me now. It was as though I had suddenly inhaled two lungfuls of poison gas and struggled for pure air. I turned back to the boat, not caring to go too far lest she leave port. A tropical shower poured its warm water over me as though the spirit of the tropics felt sorry, and forgave me. I returned to the ship, and quarter of an hour later we were moving out into the open sea again.

4

The next and last time that I landed on Australian soil was at Thursday Island, one of the smallest of the Prince of Wales group, north of Cape York Peninsula, in the Torres Strait. German New Guinea (now a British mandatory) lies not far away. There is not much of a village and most of the buildings are made of corrugated iron. But there was not at that time that stuffy, damp odor which pervades Suva; nor, in fact, was there much of that mugginess that is Fiji. Yet it is only eleven degrees from the equator, whereas Fiji is thirteen. The street is only a country road, and dozens of goats and kids pasture upon it. The few stores (closed on Sunday) were not overstocked. There are two large churches. One was built from the wreckage of a ship that had some romantic story about it which I cannot recall. There was also another institution, the purpose of which I could not discern. It was musty, dirty, dilapidated, with shaky chairs and shelves of worm-eaten books. I suppose it was a library. Hotels there were galore, and though bars were supposed to be closed on Sunday, a small party of passengers succeeded in striking a "spring."

I wandered off by myself. Slowly the great leveler, night, crept into the heart of things, and they seemed glad. Orientals and natives from New Guinea lounged about their little corrugated iron houses, obedient to law and impulse for rest. Japanese kept off nakedness with loose kimonos. One of them lay stretched upon the mats before the open door, reading. Others squatted on the highway. Tiny Japanese women walked stiffly on their wooden geta as they do in Japan. Tiny babies wandered about alone like wobbling pups. Upon the sea-abandoned beach groups of New Guinea natives gathered to search for crabs or other sea-food. A cow waded into the water to cool herself. And the sail-boats, beached with the receding tides, lunged landward.

Peace and evening. Nay, more. There is not only indolent forgetfulness here; there is more than mere ease in the tropics: there is affluence in ease. A something enters the bone and sinew of moving creatures which awakens and yet satisfies all the dearest desires. And nothing remains when night comes on but lamplight and wandering white shadows.

Late that night I returned to the ship. Deep, familiar sounds revived my memory of Fiji, on the other line of my triangle. A chorus of New Guinea voices,—rich, deep, harmonious, and rhythmic—rose from a little boat beside us. In it were a half-dozen natives, squatting round a lantern, reading and singing hymns in their own tongue. Such mingled sadness with gladness,—one does not know where one begins and the other ends. Shiny black bodies crouching and chanting. Hymns never seemed more sincere, more earnest.

They were waiting there for midnight to come, when Sunday ends for them, and toil begins. The ship must be loaded. Then voices will rattle with words and curses. All night long they labored with good things for other men. When I came out in the morning they breakfasted on boiled yams and turtle, a mixture that looked like dough. Instead of using their fingers, they employed sharp pointed sticks, doubtless in imitation of Japanese chop-sticks. Progress!

Shortly afterward we struck across the Arafua Sea, and saw Australia no more.

CHAPTER IX
OUR PEG IN ASIA

Our ship had hardly more than buoyed when a fleet of lighters surrounded her,—flat, blunt, ordinary skiffs; long, narrow, peculiar ones. The former I thought represented American efficiency; the latter, Filipino whimsicality. The Filipino craft were decorated in black, with flourishes and letters in red and white. Over their holds low hoods of matting formed an arch upon which swarmed the native owners. How business-like, yet withal attractive. And business became the order of the night.

From beneath the matted hoods of the lighters flickered glimmers of faint firelight. Life there was alert, though quiet. It hid in the shadows of night; confined in the holds, dim candles and lanterns quivered: peace reigned before performance. A quiet harbor; moon and stars and mast-lights above; a cool, refreshing breeze. That was my first night in Manila Harbor.

Morning. Not really having stretched my legs in nearly three weeks, since sailing from Sydney, Australia, I naturally felt in high spirits upon landing. The mists which hung over Manila quickened my pace, for I knew that before I could see much of that ancient town they would be gone, dissipated by the intense heat of the tropical sun. I was eager to put on my seven-leagued boots to see all that I had selected years before as the things I wanted to stride the seas to see. But I soon discovered that I was only a clumsy iron-weighted deep-sea diver. All round the Pacific I had traveled alone. I wanted no mate but freedom. But the three weeks en route from the Antipodes, on board a small liner whose major passenger list was made up of monosyllabic Oriental names drove me, willy-nilly, into the companionship of the septuagenarian English captain.

2

On account of the keying down of my reactions to the tempo of seventy-three plus British sedateness, I wrote many things in my book of vistas that seem to me now mere aberrations. Just to indicate what the effect was I shall confess that as I approached the Walled City I conceived of myself as almost a full-fledged Don Quixote storming the citadel of ancient aggression. But my elderly Sancho Panza held me back lest the shafts of burning sunlight strike me down.

Standing before the gates of antiquity, even the most haughty of human beings moves by instinct back along the line of the ages, like a spider pulling himself up to his nest on his web. Round the black stone wall which encircles the old Spanish city, that which was once a moat is now a pleasant grass-grown lawn. The wall itself, still well preserved, has been overreached by two-story stone houses with heavy balconies which seem to mock the pretenses of their "protector." Outwardly, things look old; within change has kept things new. Mixed with surprised curiosity at two Antipodes so close together comes a feeling of contact with eternity, the present of yesterday linking itself with the antiquity which is to be.