This book is DUE on the last date stamped belo\ OCT ^ ^ ig^g OCT 1 g 1928 APR SQ l92S(f;» "VIAY 18 1931 rjUN 1 7 mil L^- C E I V E D ♦§§^ ^<^^''' ,^^t^^^^ 3,^ Canton Xj '.^'^'5' «««1. i i flonolitliBtoHAWAllAN 18. i ..Jlellco^/i WKEI CJieenwich 60 Long-ituHe DU 1 3 PREFACE The purpose of this book is to give the children who read it a living knowledge of Australia and the chief islands of the world, and especially those which have become colonies or dependencies of the United States. Within the past few years our own territories have been extended to the other side of the globe. We have acquired new lands with new climates, re- sources, and products. We have adopted into our national family millions of people belonging to races different from ours, having different customs and a different civilization. In our far-away lands the whole aspect of nature seems changed, and we seem to be in a new world. This is so not only of Samoa, Hawaii, and the Philippines, but also of Porto Rico and our dependent sister republic of the West Indies, the great island of Cuba. This book aims to take the children themselves into this new world. In a personally conducted tour through the eyes of the author they travel over it, seeing our brown-skinned cousins of the several colonies as they are at home. They learn about the resources of the various islands, and of their value to the United States. They visit the people on the farms and in the factories. They spend some time in the cities and villages, and they explore the wilds, observing the wonders of plant and animal creation. A glance at the contents will give some idea of the scope of the tour. Not only our colonies, but also Australia and the chief islands of the world, have been visited. The most impor- 7 S PREFACE taut parts of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans are trav- ersed by the pupils, who are taken on a zigzag trip around the globe and introduced to many strange parts of it usually omitted in books of this nature. Much of this volume is based upon the personal investiga- ticms of the author in the countries described, and many of the illustrations are reproduced from photographs taken by him. This is especially so of those chapters relating to Porto Rico, Samoa, Hawaii, and the Philippines, which have been visited for the purpose of writing this book since they became a part of the United States. Great care has been taken not only as to the colonies, but also as respects all the islands described, that the descriptions be as accurate and as up to date as possible. The territory is, however, so vast and so varied, covering as it does the whole world, that only the most important places and things can be mentioned, the subjects being chosen with due regard to child interest and at the same time instruction. These travels are not intended to take the place of the school geographies, but they should be used with them as a supple- mentary reader. As with the volumes already published de- scribing similar tours in North America, South America, Asia, and FAH'ope, the text-books on geography may be regarded as the skeleton, and this reader as the flesh and blood which will clothe its dry bones and make our colonial possessions and the other islands of the seas a living whole in the minds of the pupils. CONTENTS >. PAGE General View of Australia . 1 1 In Sydney, the New York of Australia i6 Sheep and Wuul in Australia 24 South Australia and the Great Gentral Desert — Adelaide 34 Gold Mining jn Australia — - Ballarat — Melbourne . . 39 A Land of Strange Plants and Animals 44 Queenslantl — The I'earl Fisheries — The Great Barrier Reef 53 Among tlie Aborigines or Native Australians ... 60 Western Australia and Tas- mania 65 New Zealand 73 A Visit to a Meat-freezing Factory 79 Wellington — The Hot Springs — Among the Maoris . . 82 New Caledonia anil Other French Islands . . . . 91 New Guinea 95 Kaiser Wilhelms Land and Some German Islands of the Pacific 104 The Fijis and Other British Possessions of the Pacific . ill Samoa 119 Our Hawaiian Possessions — Honolulu 127 CHAP. PAGE 19. The Industries of the Hawai- ian Islands 134 20. A Visit to a Volcano . . .142 21. The Island of Guam . . . 148 22. General View of the Philip- pine Islands 153 23. Manila, the Capital of the Philippines 161 24. Home Life and the Markets 1 71 25. A Trip through the Country — Rice, Sugar, anil Tobacco 178 26. Through the Mountains of Luzon 187 27. The Visayan Islands— The Hemp Industry ..... 193 28. Mindanao and the Moros . 201 29. The Sulu Archipelago . . . 206 30. Borneo 213 31. The Dutch East Indies . . 222 32. Batavia, the Dutch Capital . 228 ^2- The Natives of Java . . . 233 34. Some Industries of Java . . 241 35. Sumatra 249 36. Singapore . . . . ' . . .257 37. Cevlon 265 38. Mauritius and Reunion . . 271 39. Madagascar — The Fast Coast ....... 274 40. The Hovas and the Central Plateau 279 41. Among the Sakalavas . . . 287 42. Zanzibar and < )ther East African Islands .... 289 lO CONIKNTS LllAP. TAr.E 4j. West African Islaixls — St. Helena 292 44. The Cape Verde ami Canary Arcliipelagoes .... The Madeiras and the Azores The Balearic Isles .... Corsica and Elba .... Sardinia and Sicilv .... 294 298 302 306 308 45- 46. 47- 48. 49. .Malta and the Grecian Isles 312 50. Crete, Rhodes, and Cyprus . 315 51. The West Indies — General View 319 52. The l>esser Antilles . . .321 53. General View of Porto Rico ■ — .\ Walk through San Juan 329 CHAP. Mr-.H 54. ^Vcross Porto Rico .... ^^■j 55. Haiti, the Island of the Two Black Republics .... 344 56. Jamaica 5:52 57. Cuba, the Pearl of the An- ti'l« 357 58. Havana 302 59. On the Sugar and Tubacco Plantations 367 60. The I5ahamas and the Ber- mudas 370 61. The Islands of Ice and Snow 375 62. Islands around and aliout South America .... 380 LIST OF MAPS The World frotttispiece Australia 12 New Zealand 7^ New Guinea 96 Fiji Islands 112 Samoa Islands I19 Hawaiian Islands 128 Guam 14^^ ^'hilippine Islands 154 East Indies 212 Java 229 Ceylon 265 Madagascar 276 Mediterranean Sea 304 West Indies 318 Porto Rico 330 Cuba 35S Iceland 37^ AUSTRALIA, OUR COLONIES, AND OTHER ISLANDS OF THE SEA oJ*Jc I. GENERAL VIEW OF AUSTRALIA THIS book will describe the tour of a party of boys and girls around the world on the lookout for strange lands and strange peoples. Every child who reads it shall be one of the party. He must forget, for the time, that he is in America and imagine himself with us in those far-away countries. We are to explore the chief islands of this big round earth. A look at the map will show you what a vast number of them there are and how they are scattered. Some lie on the edge of the broiling Equator, others are close to the ice-clad poles. Some are high islands formed by the peaks of volcanic mountains which have been thrown up out of the sea ; others are low islands built up by little coral animals from the bed of the ocean. There are so many islands that our tour must be care- fully planned that we may not miss the principal ones, and even with the best of planning it will be impossible to set foot upon all. Avoiding the greater land divisions we shall start with GENERAL VIEW OF AUSTRALIA 1 3 Australia and thence steam on from island to island, going from sea to sea and ocean to ocean until we have encom- passed the globe. Australia is the largest island of all, so large that it is classed with the continents. It is almost twice as large as all the countries of Europe without Russia and the Scandinavian Peninsula, and almost as large as the whole United States without Alaska, so large that we shall have to travel two thousand miles farther than from New York to London and back if we but sail around its coast. From east to west it is longer than the distance from the Hud- son River to the Great Salt Lake, and from north to south its width is greater than the distance between Philadelphia and Denver. This vast body of land- as we look at it on the map is shaped somewhat like a great heart, but if we could view it as the sun sees it, we should find it composed of mighty plains tilted up at the edges and sloping towards the cen- ter somewhat like an enormous soup plate of irregular shape. At the eastern side we should see a range of mountains making that part of the plate the highest, and in the southeast Mount Kosciusko, the highest mountain of Australia, reaching almost a mile and a half above the sea and looking to us like a knob on the rim of the plate. This island continent is largely a desert ; the chief water-laden winds which come from the Pacific strike the range of mountains along the eastern coast, and the cold air squeezes them dry, so that when they ])ass over the interior of the continent they have no more water to lose. As a result the eastern slope of the mountains has a good 14 AUSIKALIA rainfall, and there \vc find numerous rivers, the culti- vated lands, the large cities, and most of the people. In that part of Australia are located the great dairying and fruit industries. On the table-lands and western plains are some of the greatest sheep and cattle runs in the world. Much of the interior, although dry, is extremely fertile, and is enriched by occasional monsoonal rains. Much of the western plain country, formerly used for grazing purposes, is now profitably employed for wheat production. Large tracts in the west and southwest are also used for cultivation and pasture, but the middle of the continent over immense areas is a dreary desert. Some of it is as thirsty as Sahara, having vast regions of rock and sand through which we might ride for miles and see nothing but dusty scrub and bushes covered with thorns, where the only water to be found is in salt marshes, brackish lakes, and rock holes. The Australian continent now belongs to the British Empire. The English claim it by right of exploration and .settlement, having seized the lands and driven back the black aborigines, until they now hold somewhat the same place that the Indians do in our country. Australia was the last grand division of the earth to be visited by Europeans. It was discovered by Portu- guese, Spanish, and Dutch navigators, but it was not thought to be of any value until Captain James Cook, the great English explorer, made a tour along the east coast. This was about six years before we declared our independence of England. Captain Cook brought back glowing reports of the richness of the country, GENERAL VIEW OF AUSTRALIA 1 5 and the English at once sent out and took possession of it. The first settlements were devoted to criminals who worked in chains guarded by soldiers ; but later on, when it was found that the climate was good and the soil fertile, other people came and the prison settlements were done away with. By and by colonies were established in the best parts of the country. They grew rapidly, and now there are white people living in all of the habitable regions. The continent is divided into five great colonies or states and one territory. Western Austraha comprises the whole western portion of the country, with Perth as its capital. The state is largely a desert, but is rich in gold and other minerals, and has extensive jarrah forests. South Australia takes up the south central portion of the continent. It has rich lands in the mountainous south- eastern section, but much of the northern part is unfit for cultivation. Its capital is Adelaide, on the Torrens River. North of this state is the Northern Territory, which has few inhabitants except the native aborigines. The eastern section of the continent is divided into the three states of Victoria, New South Wales, and Queens- land. Victoria at the south is very rich in gold and in farm and pasture lands. Its capital is the city of Mel- bourne, and it has many other large towns. New South Wales, just to the north, is much larger than Victoria and is also exceedingly rich. Its capital is Sydney, the prin- cipal port of Australia. Queensland, which takes up the vast country still farther north, includes all northeastern Australia. It is a land of pastures, farms, rich mines, and sugar plantations. Its capital is Brisbane. l6 AUSTRALIA The five states of Australia, together with Tasmania, are now united in the Commonwealth of Australia. This part of the British Empire has a Governor-General appointed by the Crown, and a parliament elected by the people, which makes laws for the Commonwealth. The parliament is much like our Congress at Washington. Each state has a parliament of its own which is similar to the legislatures of our states. The Northern Territory is under the control of the Commonwealth, as is also Papua, or British New Guinea. We shall learn more about the states as we travel through them, imagining ourselves first in New South Wales, in the city of Sydney, ready to start. 2. IN SYDNEY, THE NEW YORK OF AUS- TRALIA BEFORE we begin our exploration of Sydney, let us stop a moment and think where we are. We are away south of the Equator on the other side of the globe. It was winter when we left the United States. It is sum- mer here in Australia. Our watches are all wrong and we must change them if we would not be ever calculating the difference of time, and often turning night into day. Sydney time is fifteen hours ahead of New York time, so that when our friends in the United States are going to bed on Monday night, we shall be sitting down to lunch on Tuesday afternoon. The difference will be less in Western Australia, as it is nearer Greenwich, from which our time is reckoned. It took us twenty-one days to come from .San l^'rancisco lo Sy due)'. The voyage was not wearisome, however, for IN SYDNEY, THE NEW YORK OF AUSTRALIA 1 7 the racific Ocean was in a (jiiict mood and the vvcalhcr was fine all the way. It was a little cold at the start, but the sun grew warmer as we sailed southward. It was so warm and pleasant at Honolulu that we packed away our overcoats, and a few days afterward came out in our summer clothes. A little later we crossed the Equator, and just two weeks after leaving San Francisco we called at Uncle Sam's Httle island of Tutuila (tob-too-e'la) in the Samoan Group, where it is so warm that many of our brown cousins wear no clothes at all. Still later we reached New Zealand, and we are now at anchor in the harbor of Sydney with all Australia before us. How beautiful everything seems after our long voyage at sea! The sky is bright blue, the trees and the grass are the greenest of green, and the sunlight is dancing on the waves of the harbor. We seem to be in a winding lake with hundreds of bays, inlets, and creeks. The lake con- tains many islands ; wooded hills rise in some places straight up from the shore, and in others the mainland slopes so gently that a great city has been built upon it. This is the famed harbor of Sydney, which the Aus- tralians claim to be the finest harbor of the world. Its entrance is The Heads, a natural gateway about a mile wide guarded by gigantic rocks as high as the highest church steeple, so protecting the shipping that, no mat- ter how stormy the ocean outside, there are quiet waters within. The harbor is so deep that the largest ocean steamers can sail close up to the land, and its coast line is so long that all the ships of all the world could anchor here and have room to spare. i8 AUSI IvALIA See that big steamer al the iii;ht of t)ur vessel. That is a German ship of ten tliousand tons which has come to Sydney for a cargo of wool. Ne.xt to it is a French vessel from Marseilles, and farther on are huge steamers from London and Liverpool taking on and putting off goods. There are ships here from China and Japan, ships from the Mediterranean, and from India and Africa, ships from Circular Quay, Sydney Harbor. South America, Canada, and the United States, and coast- ing steamers which do business with Australia and all the islands of the southern Pacific. The harbor is such that the ships lie at anchor in the very heart of the city, and when we land we are in one of the chief business sections. We send our baggage to the hotel and start out for a walk. How homelike it is ! The buildings remind us of San Francisco, save that they are not quite so tall, few of the IN SYDNEY, THE NEW YORK OF AUSTRALIA 1 9 business houses having more than six stories. Many of the best blocks are of sandstone from the quarries near the city. From the sandstone so conveniently obtained, very handsome vi^arehouses and other business establish- ments are erected. Notice the streets ! They wind about this way and that. They are as crooked as those of Boston, which, it is said, were laid out along cow paths. Sydney has such winding streets that the people of other Australian cities say it was planned by a bullock driver who stood at the harbor and threw boomerangs up the hills and made the streets along the lines of their flight. Let us look at the roadways as we go through the city. The streets are paved with wooden blocks so fitted together that they seem like wood carpeting. They are so hard and smooth that one horse can haul a load of three tons, and six-ton loads for two horses are not uncommon. The pavements are of eucalyptus, the famous Australian hard- wood. The continent has excellent timber, which is so good for pavements and railway ties that it is in great demand in other countries. The stores have plate glass windows and sometimes galvanized iron awnings out over the street to shield passers-by from the sun. Here is an arcade, a street roofed with glass and walled with stores, which runs through from one side of a block to the other. Such arcades are common in the Australian cities. The people like them, for they can walk from store to store, keeping cool and dry no matter how hot or rainy it is outside. See the goods in the store windows ! The price tags are English, but the figures are in pounds, shillings, and 20 AUSIRALIA pence, and we have difficulty in knowing just what they mean. The Australians use English money, and the pound ($s), the shilling (25 cents), and the penny equal to about two of our cents, will be our money during our stay. We stop at a bank to exchange our greenbacks for such gold, silver, and copper, and then go on with our walk. We have many pur- chases to make, but hardly know just where to go. The signs are different from ours. Here, for instance, is one " Fellmonger." That is a fur store, as •■ Here .s an arcade. ^^.^ ^^^ fj.^,^^ ^j^^ gj^jj^g of foxes, bears, kangaroos, antelopes, duck moles, and other animals in the windows. Hardware merchants are known as ironmongers, and those who sell cloth are drapers. If we should ask for a dry goods store, the people would think we meant a saloon, for "dry goods" is the term sometimes here used for liquors, and they might direct us to a public house, as saloons are called in Australia. IJruggists arc called chemists and drug stores chemist shops. Lumber dealers are timber merchants, and the lumberman is a timber getter. In Australia candies arc almost always called sweets and sometimes "lollies," a contraction of "lollypops," IN SYDNEV, THE NEW YORK OF AUSTRALIA 21 an English word meaning taffy. We see the word " Li^l- lies " over some candy stores; and at the theaters, shows, and football games boys go about with baskets of candy, crying out, " Lollies, ladies ! Lollies, gents ! Don't you want a box of fine fresh lollies ? " Suppose we stop a moment and look at the people. They have faces like ours, and we may well call them our brothers, for they came from England, which most of us consider our mother country. The Australians, however, are taller than either the Americans or the English. See that man passing by. He is more than six feet in height, and the woman with him is almost as tall. These people grow so thin that, in fun, they are sometimes called corn- stalks because they are so tall. The people are well dressed. Even the men who are mending that sidewalk wear good clothing. They look more Hke American workmen than like the poorer work- ing people of Europe. Australia is a new country and, as there is much to do, wages are high. The people make money and spend it quite freely. We can see this by the costly goods in the store windows. Everything one can think of is displayed here, no matter in what part of the world it is made. The Australian will pay for the best, and so all countries send their goods here for sale. We get some idea of the enormous commerce by the shipping in the harbor, and learn more of it as we see the long Unes of teams hauling freight through the streets. Vast quantities of goods are always coming in and going out. Here we are at the Post and Telegraph Office. You can see the red-coated postmen starting out on their routes. 22 Al'SIKAI.lA TIkmc arc rcdcoatctl men takini; the bags of mail Irom red wui^oiis which have just come from our steamer, aiul other red \vai;ons dash past us on their way to the trains. The Post Office has many branches. We can see the sij^ns over the doors. There is a postal savings bank, and next door are telegraph and telephone departments. All such things are under the government, the Australians believing that they should be managed at the lowest pos- sible cost for the people. The government controls the railroads, and also owns the street cars in many of tlie cities, and gives quite a long ride for two cents. That great building up the street is the town hall, where the maN'or and other city officials ha\-c their offices. It also contains an audience room for public amusements, where every week one can attend a concert free of charge. The city keejis an organist to ])lay for the people, and it owns one of tlie largest organs of the world. The organ has nine thousand pipes, some as high as a three-story house and some as short as a pin and almost as small. In other cities we shall find similar halls, Melbourne having one with an oi-gan that cost thirty-five thousand dollars. There g(jes a ])art)' of boys in uniforms with flat bats in their hands. One is throwing up a ball and catching it as he runs. That is one of the cricket clubs of Sydney, and its members are on their way to play a match with the crack team of Melbourne. Let us follow and have a look at the game. We find thousands of people at the playground. There are other clubs playing in different jjarts of the field, and as we go from one to another we hear nothing but talk about sports. The Australians are a sporting people, and almost every TV SYDXKV, TIIK NFAV YORK ( »l Al'^' Ik A 1.1 A "That great building is the town hall." man, woman, and child gives a part of each week to play. Sydney has several thou.sand acres of parks devoted to public amusements, and in Melbourne alone there are one hundred parks and a dozen grounds especially for football and cricket. Cricket is the favorite game here. It holds about the same place that baseball does with us. Coming back to the city, we visit the Domain, a park of about one hundred acres right in the heart of Sydney, facing the harbor. It is the most popular of all pleasure grounds here, being especially full upon Sundays, when any one who wishes can speak upon any subject if he can get the people to listen. There are no signs warning us to keep off the grass, and we roll over and over on the sod, rejoicing that our travels south of the Equator have turned winter to summer, and that all is so fresh and green M-hen the snow covers the earth at our home. OUR COLONIES — 2 24 AUS'l KALIA 3. SIIKKP AND WOOL IN AUSTRALIA Tl 1 1'- annual sheep show is goini; on in Sydney. The city is full of squatters, as sheep farmers are called, and we can see sheep from all parts of the continent and from Tasmania and New Zealand as well. Sheep so thrive in this latitude that Australasia, made up of Australia and its neighboring islands, is one of the best sheep-rearing places upon earth. The two great sheep-rearing centers of the world are situated at about the same distance south of the Equator. Look on your niaj) and you will see where they are. On one side of the globe is Australasia and on the other Argentina in South America. Argentina has a cli- mate much like that of Australia, and it vies with it in fine sheep and wool. Sheep farming is carried on in almost every settled part of the continent. Some of the stations, as such farms are called, are so large that it would take us several days to ride around one on horseback, and a single field often con- tains eight hundred acres, or more than five ordinary American farms. One hundred sheep is quite a large flock in ])arts of our country. In New South Wales there are several men who each own one hundred thousand sheep, and one who has more than one million, or enough, supposing each sheep to weigh one hundred pounds, to give a slice of mutton to every man, woman, and child in our country and leave plenty over for a stew for our whole nation next day. Australasia has had at times one hundred million sheep, SHEEP AND WOOL IN AUSTRALIA 25 SO many that if they could be driven four abreast along the Equator, they would form a woolen belt about the waist of old Mother Earth ; or, if shorn, would furnish sufBcient wool to make a suit of clothes for every one of her American children, with many fragments for patches. 'A woolen belt about the waist of old Mother Earth " This great industry has grown up since the continent was discovered. There were no sheep here when Captain Cook landed, but shortly after settlements were established, some Sjianish merinos were brought in. They did well and formed the start for the immense flocks of to-day. 26 AUSTRALIA Suppose \vc lake llic cais lor the Ai^ricullural rirounds where tlic sheej) show is held. We hear the bleating and baaing before we reaeh there, and we follow the sound. We eonie at last to a great building whose floor is divided up into pens so built along aisles that we ean Part of a flock of twenty thousand sheep. easily go to anv part of it. There are seven hundred sheep in the building, and eaeh has its own pen well bedded with straw. Some of the animals have blue or red ribbons about their necks. They are the ones that have taken the prizes. What fine sheep they are ! I venture to say you never saw so much wool on animals before. Take this prize ram ! Don't be afraid he will butt vou ! He is a gentle- SIlEF.r AND wool, IN AUSl'RALIA 2/ man of distinguished aiK'cst.r\', noted for his Hnc breeding, and has been so kindly handled that he is perfectly safe. Were it not for his horns, his nose, and his feet, we might think him merely a bundle of wool. His fleece lies upon him in rolls and folds, the skin apparently wrinkling to make it hold more. It is so long and thick on his head that we see only the tips of his ears ; his eyes are far back of those holes in the wool. The fleece hangs down from the under parts of the body, covering the legs clear to the hoofs. We poke our fingers into the wool. We can not reach the skin without pressing the knuckles far in. How greasy it feels ! It is dirty and gray outside, but when we pull it apart it is the color of cream. This sheep has more than forty pounds of wool on him, and his owner would not sell him for three thousand dollars. The common sheep of Australia, however, have only a very few pounds of wool, often not more than five or six. They can be bought for about the same prices that such sheep bring in our country. We can easily see what a difference it makes if each sheep yields much wool or little. Take, for instance, that squatter over there who has fifty thousand sheep. If each of his flock can be made to yield one pound more at a shearing, he will have fifty thousand pounds more wool to sell every year ; so you see how important it is to have good sheep, and why the people pay so much for them. Leaving the sheep show, we visit one of the warehouses of Sydney, where the wool is brought in from the coun- try to be shipped off to Europe. It is on the edge of the harbor and of easy access to the ships. We go from floor to fioor of the vast building, making our way in and out 28 AUSTRALIA tlii(iuj;Ii the wool, wliiili is sloicd here by the tlKtiisaiuls of bales. Each bale is about as hij;h as our heads. It is wrapped in yellow bagging and weighs about three hun- dred and ninety pounds. Some of the bales have been opened, and the white wool seems to be pouring out upon the floor. Each bale is In a wool warehouse. marked with the name of the station from which it comes. In some places men arc tearing the bales apart and sort- ing the wool, and in others buyers are examining the piles in order to make bids upon them. Each buyer takes up the wool in his hands and pulls it apart. We do likewise and then throw the stuff back on the pile. How dirty it is ! Our hands shine as though coated with vaseline, and our cuffs are soiled with the grease. The sheep are SHEEP AND WOOL IN AUSTRALIA 29 not always washed before shearing, but the wool is fre- quently scoured before shipping. We ask one of the buyers, a man dressed in overalls and a long linen coat buttoned tight up the front, what the wool brings. He replies that the price varies accord- ing to the grade, quality, and state of the market. He shows us that it makes a difference also from what part of the sheep the wool comes, some bales being composed only of the shearings of the legs and tails, while others come from the sides and under parts of the body. Fine wool brings twice as much as coarse wool, and it takes an expert to know just what is best. After the wool is sold, it is exported to Europe in steamships and sailing vessels. The sailing vessels go around the Cape of Good Hope, while the steamers usu- ally pass through the Suez Canal. The shortest distance from Australia to the European markets is about eleven thousand miles, and the freight rate for carrying wool there is sometimes as low as one fourth of a cent per pound. It takes less than four pounds of wool to make a suit of clothes for a man, so that for one cent the ships carry enough wool for a suit from Australia to London. This is one of the wonders of commerce. Let us go out in the country for a look at the sheep in the fields. One of the principal squatters has asked us to visit his station, and we gladly accept the invitation. We leave in the evening and ride all night on the cars. When we awake we are passing through great pasture fields, some containing large droves of cattle and others thousands of sheep. Now and then we go by fields of wheat, rye, barley, or oats, ur through forests of eucalyptus and other 30 AUSTRALIA Aup.tralian trees; but nearly ever\\vhere there are sheep, sheep, sheep! We sec single floeks which contain as many as two thousand animals, and at one place ride sev- eral miles by a drove of sheep on its way from one station to another. There are but few farm buildings, and no great barns such as we have in our north central states. The weather Scne on a station. is so mild that the grass is good all the year roiuid and the sheep need no other food. They require no shelter, living out in the fields from one year's end to the other. The houses we see are chiefly one-story structures, painted yellow and roofed with galvanized iron. Some of them have iron chimneys, and nearly all have iron tanks on their porches to catch the rain water as it comes from the roofs. Australia is a dry country, and in many places every drop of water that can be so caught is saved. At last we reach the end of our railroad journey, where we find riding horses which take us across the country to iiur sciuatter friend's home. It is a big building with many SHEEP AND WOOL IN AUSTRALIA 3 1 smaller ones about it. Some of them are offices, stores, blacksmith and carpenter shops, and the others are the homes of the men. It takes a large number of employees to run such a station, and the home settlement is almost a village. The house of the squatter is a one-story building, roofed with iron, with many rooms opening out upon porches, with a large parlor and all the surroundings and furniture of a comfortable home. There is a cricket ground at one side of it and grounds for croquet and golf. There are also great stables with horses for pleasure and work. The station is miles in extent, and almost every man on it has a horse. The sheep are kept in fenced fields and hence do not need shepherds, as our great flocks on the Rocky Mountain plateaus do ; but it is necessary to have boundary riders, men who go about the fields every few days to see that the fences are up and that the sheep are all right and that they have plenty of water. We spend some time at the station, going about with the squatter and the men, learning much about sheep and wool raising. We see them shear sheep at a neighboring farm forty miles off. A large gang of men does the work, cutting off the wool so fast that one man shears one hun- dred or more sheep in a day. The men are paid about five cents for each sheep, and their earnings depend on the number they shear. When the sheep come into the hands of the shearers they look fat and gray, but when shorn they seem to have shrunk and their coats are snow-white. At another place we .see men shearing sheep bv ma- 32 AUSTRALIA chinery worked by steam or electricity. The cutting is done by little knives moving back and forth like the knives of a mowing machine. The knives are in a frame which is pressed against the wool, cutting it more easily and smoothly than by hand. The power is communicated by a tube like that which the dentist uses for drilline; out teeth. Shearing sheep by machinery. While the shearing is going on, men take the wool and sort it. They pack it in bales and load it on wagons, which are hauled by long teams of horses or o.xen to the cars. In Western and South Australia camels are often used to carry the wool, two bales of wool forming a load for one camel. We arc delighted with our lite at the station. We thought it would be tame so far off in the coimtry, but SIIEEr AND WOOL IN AUSTRALIA 33 A load of wool. with riding and driving and games, every moment is filled. The squatter's boys think nothing of going off ten miles to play cricket, and his girls often ride twice as far to a party or to spend the night with a neighbor. They have their teachers at home, and their life seems very easy. We must remember, however, that this is one of the richest of the sheep farmers and that his lands are among the best in Australia. The smaller farmers often have as hard times as our small farmers at home. All suffer when the weather is dry, some parts of the continent being subject to frequent droughts, during which the sheep die by thousands for lack of water and food. The droughts clear the land of everything green. The pastures become as bare as a road, and the sheep stagger about, nosing in the dust for the seeds of grasses and trees. 34 AUSTRALIA 'llicir owners often ha\c lo sil ami watch them die, know- ing" they can get nothing to teed them. 'I'he poor squatters sometimes go crazy because the rain fails to come. In some districts the e\ils of the ch'oughts are avoided by artesian wells which are being made by the govern- ment in many parts of the continent, where, although the surface of the land is almost a desert, vast reservoirs of water are found far below. Some wells are several thou- sand feet deep, a single one often flowing a million and some more than a million gallons of water a day. The water is often hot when it comes forth, but it soon cools. It is a little saltv, but the sheep drink it and thrive on it. Another great enemy of the sheep is the rabbit, which is found in vast nimibers in many parts of Australia. These little animals cat the grass required for the sheep. Men are kept to do nothing else but hunt and trap rabbits, a single man sometimes killing four hundred in a day. Many sheep farms have fences of wire netting about them to kec|i out these pests, and some of the states have built lumdrctls of miles of rabbit-proof fences along their borders. 4. SOUTH AUSTRALIA AND THE GREAT CENTRAL DESERT — ADELAIDE WE have returned to Sydney and are now on our way to Adelaide, the caj^ital of South Australia. The trip is a long one, but we have sleej)ing cars and can spend day and night comfortably in the train. The weather is warm, and the dust makes us thirsty. We ask for a SOUTH AUSTRALIA 35 drink, and are told to go to the water bag on the platform of the rear car. Some of the Australian cars carry no ice, but instead have canvas bags about two feet square filled with water, so hung on the platform outside that the wind strikes their wet surface, keeping them cool. There is a spigot at the bottom of each bag to which a tin cup is fastened. Such water bags are often used in Australia, forming the cooler of many a home. When a man takes a long trip over the desert, he ties a water bag under his wagon or carriage, and if the wind is blowing, no matter how warm the weather, he is sure of a cool drink on the way. The canvas is so closely woven that the water does not run through. We start from Sydney at night, and in the morning cross the Murray River, which forms the boundary be- tween New South Wales and Victoria. The Murray is seventeen hundred miles long. It is the largest river of Australia, and with its tributaries drains the western sides of the mountains along the east coast. It is a sluggish stream, navigable for small steamers as far northeast as Albury, the place where we cross. The waters are dark, but they are fringed with trees ; and as the river winds about in its course, the Australians think it quite picturesque. After leaving the border town of Albury on the Murray, we do not see that river again until we have crossed the whole of Victoria and traveled about a hundred miles through South Australia. The trip is dehghtful. The country is hilly, but there are fine farms on which are great herds of cattle and thousands of sheep. Victoria is the smallest of all the Australian states. It is only a little larger than Kansas, but in proportion to its 36 AUSTRALIA size it is far richer than any other state of the common- wealth. Nearly all of it can be used for farming or graz- ing, and about one half of it has gold, silver, or other minerals. It is better settled than other parts of Aus- tralia, and we pass through many fme towns on our way to Adelaide. Adelaide is the capital of South Australia. By this you must not think that it is the capital of all southern Australia, for Victoria, New South Wales, and the southern part of Western Australia are as much in southern Australia as this state. South Australia includes only the south central portion of the continent, comprising about one eighth of Australia. A great part of South Australia is desert, as is also most of the Northern Territory which lies to the north of it. The Northern Territory formerly belonged to South Australia, but in 191 1 it was transferred to the control of the Com- monwealth of Australia. In the great central basin of the continent there is no water except in the salt marshes, blind creeks, and rock holes occasionally met with. In this region Australian explorers encountered great hard- ships in their attempts to cross the continent. Our Great Lake Region is one of rich farms, fine for- ests, and valuable mines. It is surrounded by cities and villages, and peopled by millions of happy men, women, and children. The great lake region of Australia is far different. It has no inhabitants and no vegetation of value. It belongs to the Australian Desert, one of the bleakest, dreariest, and most horrible parts of the globe. The great lakes here, such as Lake Torrens, Lake Gaird- ner, and Lake Eyre, arc all salt. They arc surrounded by flats of treacherous mud which have a salt crust over SOUTH AUSTRALIA 37 them so lluil Lhcy make your eyes sore lo k)ok at them. Lake Eyre is so dreary that it has been called the " Dead Sea of AustraUa." The country about the lakes and on and on everywhere to the north and west of them is as thirsty as the Sahara. The greater part of the soil is composed of gray sand upon which the sun beats almost straight down for hours A squatter's home near Adelaide. every day during the hot parts of the year. Much of the sand is dotted with bunches of spinifex grass, which would tear our clothes if we tried to make our way through them, but would not shield us from the burning sun. In places the sand has drifted into hills and ridges, in which our feet and those of our horses or camels would sink as we crossed them. In other regions we should run into por- cupine grass, each bunch of which is like a huge pin- 6947b 38 AL'SIKAI.I.V cushion with shari) knitting needles sticking out on all sides. There are vast tracts covered with low trees, and also bleak and bare mountai^is and sandy plains filled with i)ink, grav, and purple bowlders which seem red hot under the sun. This desert is perhai')s the dryest region on the face of the globe, and explorers who have made their way through it have brought back strange stories of its terrible heat. Captain Sturt, who visited it some years ago, says that the mercury rose in his thermometer until it broke the tube, and that for three months it was more than one hundred degrees in the shade. It was so hot that his hair stopped growing, the ink dried on his pen when he tried to write, his comb split up into hairs, his finger nails became as brittle as glass, and the wood shrank so frotn the heat that the screws dropped out of his boxes and the lead became loose in his pencils. This region is so vast that we can not describe it in detail. We could go northward or westward for months if we had any means of sustaining life, but day after day we should find only this same hot, thirsty land which is one of the driest regions on earth. But at times, except in the incurable desert region, good rains fall and vegetation is luxuriant. Pastoral settlement is gradually pushing out into the area of scanty rainfall. The region near the Murray River where we are now is as beautiful as any we have seen in Australia, and the land is exceedingly rich. Adelaide is surrounded by good farms, gardens, and vineyards. It is a thriving city, and its people say that it is the most beautiful of all the towns south of the Equator or, as they say, "south of the Line." It is COI.I) MlNlNc; IN AUSTRALIA 39 sometimes called the "White City" from the white stone which is used for its buildings. Adelaide lies on the river Torrens about six miles by rail from the Gulf of St. Vincent, an excellent harbor. We stroll along King William Street, passing the mag- nificent public buildings of the city and state, walk through Rundle and Hindley streets, the chief business thoroughfares, and later on take a drive to the top of Mount Lofty for a view of the city and country about. On every side of us there are fine farms, gardens, orchards, and vineyards. There are rich pastures with cattle and sheep feeding upon them, and in the center the white city of Adelaide with the Torrens running on by it until it is lost in the sea in the distance. It is a beautiful view, and we do not wonder that the Australians are proud of this part of their territory. We drive through farms on our way back to the city, and at the public departments learn that South Australia has some other rich lands in the far north. Just now we wish to see more of Victoria, and we take the cars through that state to the town of Ballarat in the gold-mining regions. 5. GOLD MINING IN AUSTRALIA — BALLA- RAT— MELBOURNE HOW would you Hke to find a gold nugget as big as a football and weighing as much as yourself ? Several such lumps have been found near Ballarat where we now are, and who can tell- what we may see if we wander about through the hills ? OUR COLONIES — 3 40 AUSTRALIA Tlic earth of uboiit one hall, of X'irloria loiilaiiis more or less gold, and from this miinng region alone has come gold to the amount of three hundred million dollars. Ballarat was the birthplace of the mining industry of Australia. Gold in paying quantities was first found in New South Wales shortly after its discovery in California, but the product was small, and it was not until some of these big lumps were unearthed near Ballarat that people from all parts of the world flocked here to dig. They came by sea to Melbourne and thence inland to Ballarat. There were so many that Melbourne soon grew to be a rich city, its wealth of to-day starting from the discovery of gold. The first gold found was in loose veins and dust in the bottom of the streams and along their banks. Then a nugget was unearthed that weighed ninety-eight pounds, and then another still larger. Later on came the famous Welcome nugget, which weighed over one hundred and eighty-four pounds and which sold in Melbourne for fifty thousand dollars; and later still the Welcome Stranger, the biggest of all. Do you wonder that the miners became almost crazy . over these discoveries .-' They dug up the earth and ' washed it again and again to get out the gold, so that every bit of dirt over which we are walking this morning has been handled over and over. As the loose gold gave out, the miners dug deeper and deeper. They found veins of the precious metal away down under the earth, and great works were put up to hoist the gold-bearing rock to the surface and crush it. Some of the mines are now almost half a mile deep and are still yielding gold. - GOLD MINING IN AUSTRALIA 4 1 Soon after the big nuggets were found, rich mining camps sprang up not only in Victoria but in New South Wales. Then gold was discovered in Queensland and later in Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand, until to-day there is not a state of Australasia which does not produce some gold. Mount Morgan, a mountain of iron mixed with gold, near the coast of Queensland, is said to be the richest gold mine of the world, and about the town of Gympie, some distance off, there is so much gold in the earth that the boys sometimes find the yellow grains in the gutters after a rain. There are more than two thousand gold mines in Queensland alone, and also rich deposits of tin, iron, cop- per, and lead. The tin is found mixed with the sand of the streams, the grains looking very like the iron filings of a machine shop or smithy. In Western Australia the best gold fields are in the desert. Camels are used by the prospectors, and supplies of food and water are carried from one place to another by caravans. There are parts of Western Australia where we might travel for hundreds of miles over nothing but rock and sand, but the rock and sand would be more or less mixed with gold. Australia is a wonderful continent. It is rich in min- erals and other resources, but parts of it are so little known that we can not tell just how rich it is. It already vies with North America and Africa as the greatest of the world's gold producers, and it has vast beds of coal north, south, and west of Sydney which supply most of the ships of the southern Pacific Ocean. Let us go on with our trip about Ballarat. We enter 42 AUSTRALIA mine after mine, now descending the shafts and climbing through tunnels over rocks away down underground, now watching the heavy stamps crush the ore to a powder to get the gold out, and then visiting the furnaces from which flow the ricli yellow streams into the molds, form- ing: the ffold bricks of commerce. Placer mining near Ballarat. How would you like to attend school in a mine ? This is what is done in the mining college at Ballarat. The college has a mine beneath it, worked by the pupils under the eyes of their teachers. The boys themselves blast down the rock. They manage the machinery which hoists it to the surface. They crush it and gather the gold and smelt it into bricks. There is gold on the train which takes us to Melbourne. It is on its way to the mint, where it will be coined into (lOLD MINING IN AUSTRALIA 43 money and flow through the streams of eommcrce all over the world. The men in charge of it take us with them, and the mint officials show us all the processes of melting and coining, after which we go to the hotel. We have seen so much gold that it dances before our eyes in our sleep, and we dream of yellow nug- gets as big as our heads, which we make into beautiful coins to give us all we want for the rest of our lives. The next day is spent in driving about Mel- bourne. It is a fine city almost as big as Boston, with magnificent buildings of gray stone, wide streets paved with wood blocks, and so many parks and gardens that it seems more than half pleasure grounds. We drive out to the Flemington Race Course and take a spin around the track, which the Australians think the finest of its kind upon earth. After that we look at the public library and the art gal- lery and visit the colleges and schools. Melbourne has excellent schools, and the same is true of every town in Australia. There are fine libraries almost everywhere, and even small towns have schools of arts, where good books are kept for reference. We spend some time in the zoological garden and the botanical garden and take a ride on the river Yarra, Stamping gold coins. 44 AUSTRALIA which runs through Melbourne on its way to the sea. Melbourne is very near the mouth of tlie Yarra, so near that large steamers come to anchor in the city and the biggest of ocean vessels have a safe harbor only a few miles below it. It is therefore a great commercial point, and its people do business with all parts of the world. It vies with Sydney as the greatest city of Australia, the two towns being so jealous of each other that here in Mel- bourne we have to be careful not to say much in j^-aise of Sydney. 6. A LAND OF STRANGE PLANTS AND ANIMALS LEAVING Melbourne we travel for days north and south over the country, avoiding the great cities and explor- ing the wilds. Now we are climbing the beautiful moun- tains which run along back of the coast, lingering in valleys bedded with ferns of all sizes. There are fern trees so high we can climb them, and, what is worse, nettles much higher. The nettles have light green leaves which sting terribly when we touch them. There are also palm trees and evergreens so matted together that they make us think of a tropical jungle. We can hardly make our way through them. Other regions are all woodland. There are miles and miles of great trees with no undergrowth and plenty of grass. Most of the forest is of the eucalyptus or gum- tree variety, of which there are more than three hundred kinds in Australia. Some gums, like the malice, are about A LAND OF STRANGE PLANTS AND ANIMALS 45 ten feet high with trunks no thicker than a blackboard pointer, and others are among the largest trees known. The gigantic blue gum, for instance, grows three hundred feet tall and six feet in diameter. It is said to reach a greater height than our famous big trees of California. A grass tree. It is the eucalyptus that gives to Australia much of its gloomy appearance. Many regions are covered with mallee and mulga scrub, vast areas of dusty brown bushes so matted together that it is almost impossible to make one's way through them. The taller forests are dreary. The leaves of the gums hang down from the branches as though they were weeping, and the bark is half off. On some trees the leaves never fall, and remain green all the year round. The trees shed their bark instead of their leaves, the old bark hanging from Ihc trunk 46 AT ST KALI A like disheveled hair, while the new bark is white or silver- gray. Ill some places we pass throu_u,"h groves of dead trees which have been ringed with an ax to kill them for clearing. Snch trees have lost their leaves, their bark has dropped to the ground, and their white trunks and branches look like polished bones or skeleton trees. The logs on the ground are white, the stumps are white, and all the surroundings like those of a graveyard. We feel very depressed during parts of our journey, and do not wonder that part of the interior has been called the " Never, Never Country." Still, nature is so strange that we are interested every moment. We are always finding new plants and flowers. In northern Australia there are bam- boos, palm trees, and tropical jungles. We find beautiful orchids of odd shapes with singu- lar flowers, and a lily known as the "Gigan- tic," which grows to a height of ten feet and bears an immense dark red blossom. The grass tree is like a tall stump which has sprouted out grass on the sides and top, and the bottle tree has a trunk the shape of a great bottle, with branches and leaves growing out of the cork. A bottle tree. A LAND OF STRANGE PLANTS AND ANIMALS 47 The Australian animals are even more interesting than the plants. This is the land of the marsupial or pouch bearer. There are more than one hundred different kinds of animals which have pouches on their bodies, in which they carry their young. Some of these animals are taller than a man, and some no bigger than your thumb. Some climb trees, some gal- lop over the plains, and some spend more than half their time in the water. The largest of the marsupials are the kan- garoos, ranging in size from great gray fellows measuring more than Kangaroos. seven feet from nose to tail, down to the family dwarf, the kangaroo rat. We see specimens of every kind in the zoological gardens of Sydney and Melbourne, and we meet some during our tour through the country, now and then having a kangaroo hunt with the squatters. The red and gray kangaroos arc hunted in most parts of Australia and killed by the thousands. Horses and dogs are bred for the sport. The dogs are a sort of hound, very fierce and fleet of foot. The big kangaroo has enormous hind legs which send it flying along as though moved by steel springs. It can leap twenty ov thirty feet at a jump, and it fairly gallops over the country. 48 ' AUSTRALIA When brought to bay, it is dangerous and will then attack a dog or a man. It usually backs itself up against a tree, and as the dog comes up it seizes him with its fore paws and hugs him tightly to its breast, while it tears him to pieces with the single claw which it has on each hind foot. This claw is as hard as ivory-; it is three or four inches long and it cuts like a knife. Kangaroos can swim as well as run, and they take to the water when they can. If a dog follows them, they will seize him, pull his head under, and hold him there until he is drowned. These animals usually go about in herds. We often see a male and female together, and sometimes spy the head of a baby kangaroo sticking out of its mother's pouch. The kangaroos are very small when born, some kinds being not more than an inch long at that time. The mother puts her babies into her pouch, and there they live upon their mother's milk for eight or nine months, coming out now and then to eat grass and crawling back when they are tired or at the least sign of danger. They leave the pouch when they become too heavy for the mother to carry. Among the most common of the small kangaroos are the wallabies, which are killed for their skins. There is a great demand for kangaroo leather for bags, shoes, and other such things, and much of it is yearly exported to the United States. Australia has a marsupial bear, and in northern Queens- land there are kangaroos which live in the trees like monkeys. They climb about and spend most of their time feeding upon the leaves, seldom coming down except for water. AnioiU' other curious aiiiuials of the conlinent uie tu»<0 II. A VISIT TO A MEAT-FREEZING FACTORY WE take the train at Bluff and go northward along the east coast. The land is rolling, with valleys and plains. Now the mountains are afar off on our left, and now close to the sea. We ride for miles through fields fenced with green hedges. They contain rich crops and meadows on which fat sheep and cattle are feeding. The farmhouses arc small, wooden buildings roofed with galvanized iron. There are no barns, for the animals can 8o m;w /.kaland graze out of doors all the year roiiiul. Here and there is a haystack covered witli thatch. Some ot the horses have blankets to shield them from the rain. We pass through small towns not unlike those of our country. Nearly every house has a garden about it, sepa- rated from the street by a green hedge. We stop off a day at Dunedin, a thriving city of si.xty thousand people. It has all modern improvements, and is on a good harbor. P""rom there we go northward to Christchurch, another good town of about the same size. How rich the land is, and how fat the cattle and sheep ! W'e thought the farms good on our way to Dunedin ; but we are now on the Canterbury Plains, one of the richest parts of New Zealand and in the best sheep lands upon earth. New Zealand has many millions of sheep, enough to give more than a hundred to its every family and leave thousands to spare. The sheep here are different, however, from those of Australia, where the climate and grasses are just suited for making fine wool. The moist air and rich vegetation of New Zealand are better for mutton, and the sheep are reared more for their meat, their carcasses being frozen and sent in cold storage chambers to England. New Zealand leads all countries in its product of mutton. It rears millions of sheep every year for the people of Eng- land, and has a fleet of steamers always sailing back and forth across the waters to and from London. Some of the ships go about South America, others about South Africa, and others through the Isthmus of Suez and across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. The distance is great, but so many sheep are sent that New Zealand mutton can A VISIT TO A MKAT-I'KEEZING FACTORY 8 1 be sold at a lower price in London than that raised in Eng- land itself. It is a common expression that you can not get blood out of a turnip, but the New Zealanders know how to do so. Indeed, the dehcious chops we have at the hotels come from turnip-fed mutton. All the way from Bluff we have been passing turnip fields, in some of which the sheep were eating the leaves and in others where they ap- peared to be playing ball, the cropped-off turnips looking like thousands of new baseballs scattered over the black ground. After the leaves are consumed, the sheep eat the white roots. They dig them out of the ground and bite away until nothing is left. Some farniers dig up the tur- nips and feed them outside, burying them in pits or mounds for food when the grass becomes scarce. Christchurch, where we are now, has great meat-freez- ing factories in which the mutton is prepared for the market. We drive out to an establishment which kills about five thousand sheep every day during the season. The sheep are enticed into the factory by several old decoy sheep, which are kept to lead their brothers to slaughter. The decoys start the procession, and the thou- sands behind follow them up the roadway to the killing rooms, where the decoys are sent back for more. The sheep are killed and dressed, and then frozen for shi]:)ment to England. We go with the manager into one of the freezing rooms. How cold it is ! The temperature is not far from zero, and the wails are coated with snow. Carcasses of mutton hang in long rows from the ceiling. There are thousands of them here in this room. They were i)iil in three clays ago, and they are already frozen as 82 NKW ZEALAND hard as so many stones. Strike one with your pencil. It sounds like a tap on a drum head. Take down a carcass and rest it on the floor. It is so stiff that it stands alone. It is now ready for shipment, and needs onlvto be inclosed in a bag of white cotton before starting on its long voyage to London. A few moments later we ride with a trainload of mutton to the steamer and watch the men slide the sheep down chutes into the hold of the ship, which is almost as cold as the freezing room. It is kept so by machinery, and the mutton is still frozen when it is landed in England. 12. WELLINGTON — THE HOT SPRINGS COUNTRY — AMONG THE MAORIS WE are in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. How the wind roars around the corners and tears through the streets! The hills back of the city give but little protection, and we seem to be in the cave of /Eolus, the god of the winds. Wellington is one of the stormiest towns south of the Equator. It is situated at the lower end of Cook Strait, which is so windy that it has been called the Windpipe of the Pacific. Were it not for the excellent harbor, ships could not land, and even as it is great wooden docks have been built to protect them. Wellington has good streets, fine public buildings, ex- cellent stores, and comfortable houses. It is here that parliament meets, and here live the chief officials (jf tin- country. New Zealand is a British colony, and as such WEI,I,IXGT()N — AMONG THE MAORIS 83 "We are in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand." it has a governor appointed by the king of England. The governor, however, has not much power ; the people make their own laws and elect those who execute them. In New Zealand every one votes, women as well as men. The telegraphs and railroads belong to the government, which does everything it can to help the people. It gives low rates on the railroads to laboring men, school children, and school excursions. There is a government savings bank at every post office, and when poor working people become too old to labor, the government gives them a pension. We must not think, however, that the New Zealanders are generally poor. They are about as well off as any people on earth. Their country is one of many resources. It has rich wheat farms, stock farms, and dairies which 84 N'l-W /i: A LAND make IhiUlm- for 1 jii;laiul. It has woolen mills and other factories. Coal aiul iron are lound in the mountains, and in places along the sea the earth has flour gold and grains of gold. The gold is gathered by throwing the dirt into water, Avhich is made to flow over tables covered with mercury or rough cloth. The gold is taken up by the mercury, or caught on the nap of the cloth, and thus saved. New Zealand is rich in fine timber, including the kauri pine, a magnificent tree with a gray bark which grows from eighty to one hundred feet high. The kauri is used for building and cabinet work, and from its gum the finest varnish is made. The best kauri gum is like ambier. It lasts after the tree dies, and great lumps of it are found in the swamps wherever the forests have been. Thou- sands of men go over the country with spears and j)icks hunting it. They thrust their spears into tlie earth to ascertain where the Iumi)S are and then dig them out. Within a half century about fifty million dollars' worth of kauri gum has been sold. We leave Wellington by sea, steaming out through Cook Strait, and then along the shores of the north islantl to New Plymouth, where we anchor under the shadow of Mount Egmont, one of the most beautiful of the New Zea- land peaks. It is an extinct volcano almost cone shaped, its lower slopes clad with green forest and its top with per- petual snow. We do not try to climb it, but go on with our steamer to Auckland, which is the largest city of New Zealand, although Christchurch and Dunedin are almost as large. Auckland lies on an isthmus at the foot of Mount Eden, which is six hundred feet high ; it is not far WELLINGTON — AMONG THE MAORIS 8$ from the mouth of the Waikato River, the chief stream of the archipelago. We cHmb the mountain for a bird's-eye view of the country. How beautiful it is ! The sea spotted with green islands stretches away on both sides of us as far as our eyes can reach. Just below lies Auckland, its "—we anchor under the shadow of Mount Egmont." streets filled with traffic, and its harbor with shipping from Australia, San Francisco, the Fiji Islands, and other parts of the Pacific Ocean. Behind the city and north and south of us are rich farms and gardens, and away off in the distance are volcanic hills and mountains covered with woods. The hill on which we are standing is a dead volcano ; we are on the very edge of a crater about sixty feet deep. It is quiet now, but from this very earth once burst forth 86 NKW zi:ai.anI) steam, ashes, lava, and red-hot stones. Ahnost the whole of this island is volcanic, and it is now only a few years since a mountain, not more than a day's ride by train from where we now are, burst oi)en and sent forth a volume of ashes and mud which destroyed the \'illages about it, just as Vesuvius destroyed Pompeii centuries ago. There was a lake near the mountain which was blown out, and a roaring crater, which sent uj:) columns of steam to a height of three miles, took its place. The earth broke open, jnak- ing one crack nine miles long. The sun was so hidden by ashes and dust that it became dark at midday, and there was a rain of hot water, boiling mud, and red-hot stones. This volcano is Mount Tarawera, situated in the Hot Lake district where we are going. It is quiet now, although the whole region about it is always more or less dan- gerous. We leave Auckland on the cars and ride all day long through farms where fat cattle and sheep are feeding. The country is rolling and there are numerous streams. It makes us think of the grass lands of Kentucky, except where the soil has been turned up for planting. In such places lumps of lava are scattered over the fields, and in others they have been gathered up and made into fences. The lava increases as we go farther south, until at last we come into the Hot Lake region, a tract about one hundred miles long, containing two million acres. How the earth rumbles and grumbles as our train passes over it ! Steam is oozing out of the ground on each side of the track, and we tremble le.st the crust may break and drop us into the bubbling, boiling, seething mass, which apparently lies not far below. We pass the WELLINGTON— AMONG THE MAORIS 87 village of Koiitu, which is almost hidden in steam, skirt a great lake with jets of steam bursting forth from its banks, and stop at last at Rotorua, the chief town of New Zealand's hot springs. Here there are hotels and numerous cottages. People from all parts of the southern Pacific come to bathe in the springs for their health, and there are great bath houses containing pools of this hot, bad-smelling water. We leave our valises at the hotel and go with a guide on foot and on horseback from one wonder to another. There are geysers of steam and water. Here is a pool of boiling, bubbling mud, which now and then shoots a column high into the air, and there is another which is always sending up what looks like paint. The earth is everywhere steaming. We step over steam cracks, and, staff in hand, follow our guide through volumes of steam so thick that we can hardly breathe. Now we have left Rotorua and have come to Tikitere, twelve miles away. We have tied our horses and are going through the steam to where a score of great pits are sending up boiling water and mud. Look down into that whirlpool on your right ! The water is black, and it steams and bubbles and spits. Be careful ! If your foot slips, you may fall in and be scalded to death. Let us go on. What a vile smell comes up with the vapor out of that pool at our feet ! It has a rim of bright yellow, and its smell is like sulphur. That is a sulphur pool ; we can taste the brimstone as we stoop over it. It seems full of boiling mud, and we can hardly see down through the steam. Now the ground has changed from yellow to white ; it 88 Ni:\V ZKAl.AXl) looks like sail. W'c pirk up ;l bit of the earth and taste it. How it puckers our mouths! It is as though we had bitten into an unripe persimmon. The stuff is not salt; it is alum. There are bushels of alum mixed with the other minerals that come up from the springs. Some pools send up clouds of steam which smell like camphor, and others throw up mud or water in which are salt, potash, and various acids. " — the steam coming through does the cooking." Some of the springs are cooler than others and just right for bathing. They cure rheumatism, gout, sore throat, and various skin diseases. They were used long ago by the aborigines or native New Zealanders, and now the P'nglish have erected bath houses over them and built swimming vats. The Blue Bath, for instance, is as big as a city lot, and so hot we gasp for breath as we let our- selves down into it. "The Coffee Pot" bath contains a hot, thick, brown fluid, covered with an oily scum good for rheumatism, and " The Painkiller " and others are supposed to take away pain. WELLINGTON — AMONG THE MAORIS 89 There are many Maori chiklren bathing; iii llie pools outside tiie bath houses. The Maoris are the native New Zealanders ; they have homes in this region, Uving here that they may have heat without the trouble of making a fire. They build their cabins near the boiling pools, and cook their meals on the steam coming up through "We are interested in watching the natives." the earth in their backyards. Each woman has a steaming box of her own sunk in the earth over one of the little steam holes or in one of the pools. The box has only slats on the bottom. The food is placed on the slats, a piece of carpet or bagging is thrown over it, and the steam com- ing through does the cooking. Meat, eggs, and potatoes are steamed in this way, and in late years even Christmas plum puddings are thus cooked on these little volcanoes. We are interested in watching the natives and learning OUR COLUNIES — 6 90 NEW ZKAl.AND Maori woman and child. about [hem. Tlic origin of the Maoris is a mystery, but scholars think they originated in India or Central Asia. They are far more intelligent and more civ- ilized than the native Australians, and a finer people in every way. They have brown skins, high cheek bones, and noses much like our own. The men are tall and broad shoul- dered, with big hands and feet. The women are often good looking, or would be so if they did not tattoo their foreheads, chins, and lips with blue and red ink. In former times both men and women went almost naked, and they then tattooed many parts of their bodies ; but since the English came, they have adopted our clothing, and tattooing is now dying out. When Captain Cook landed in New Zealand, there were many Maoris. They were divided up into tribes, each having its own priests, chiefs, middle classes, common people, and slaves. They had their own religion and lan- guage. The men were fishers and hunters, and the women took care of the houses, made the clothing for the family, and worked in the fields. Some were cannibals, and the different tribes were always warring upon one another. After the Maoris were conquered by the English, they em- braced Christianity, and they are now nearly all Christians. They have their own schools, and live in villages on reser- vations in the two larger islands. They are governed by chief.s, but are also subject to the laws of New Zealand, NEW CALEDONIA AND OTHER FRENCH ISLANDS 9 1 13. NEW CALEDONIA AND OTHER FRENCH ISLANDS WE have left Auckland and are on our way to New Caledonia, a large island belonging to France, about seven hundred miles off the eastern coast of Aus- tralia. The weather has been growing warmer ever since we left Auckland. We are sailing over summer seas in a climate similar to that inside the Great Barrier Reef. We pass Norfolk Island, an unimportant possession of Eng- land, go by atolls with cocoanut palms growing upon them, and as we approach New Caledonia, steam slowly to avoid the coral rocks and reefs which almost surround it. The reefs are a few miles out from the shore, many of them reaching not quite to the surface. The captain consults his chart every few minutes, and he almost stops the engine as we go through an opening in the reef, which leads to the beautiful harbor of Noumea (ndo-ma'a), the capital of New Caledonia. Noumea lies on the western side of the island, right on the sea, with high mountains rising behind it. Its little houses are of wood roofed with galvanized iron ; many of them have wide porches and are well shaded by palms and other tropical trees. The French officers come out to the ship and look us over before giving us permission to go upon shore. New Caledonia is a convict settlement, and visitors are carefully watched. Thieves and other criminals from France are sent here for punishment; they are made to work, guarded by soldiers, and the island is under military rule. The 92 NEW CALEDONIA AND orilEK IKKNCII ISLANDS very worst criminals are taken to the Isle of Pines, a little coral spot on the sea about thirty miles southward, where prisoners can not escape except by boat. The other convicts are scattered over New Caledonia, some in peni- tentiaries, but more at work on farms and in the houses. Many convicts by diligence and good behavior have earned "Noumea lies right on the sea." the right to have farms for themselves, and some remain on the island after finishing their sentences. We spend a while in Noumea practicing our French on the storekeepers, changing our shillings and pence into francs and sous. We buy some of the curious weapons used by the natives, and enjoy the bananas, pineapples, oranges, and cocoanuts, which cost so little that we can get all we want to eat for a very few sous. Wc call upon the governor, and by his assistance make NEW CALEDONIA AND OTHER FRENCH ISLANDS 93 a trip iiilo the iiitcrioi", goiiii; liom villay,c to village visiting the natives. We learn that New Caledonia is quite large. It is as wide as Porto Rico, and more than twice as long. Noumea has many native tribes ; some of them are of the Papuan Race, of which we shall see more as we go on with our journey. The Papuans inhabit New Guinea and many of the smaller islands of the Pacific. They are far different from the Australians, and not at all like the Malays, from whom come our little brown cousins of the Philippine Islands. They have dark faces, frizzly hair, and in features are more like negroes than white men. They wear but few clothes, some of them going almost naked. The different Papuan tribes vary somewhat in appear- ance and customs. Here in Caledonia they are hospitable and quiet among themselves, although they have frequent wars with their neighbors. Each tribe has its chief who acts as ruler and leads in its wars. The people live in villages of circular houses, each of which has a top like a cone. The houses are made of wood and thatched with grass and leaves. They have narrow doors and no chim- neys, so that when we visit them the smoke makes our eyes smart. We ask one of the chiefs why he does not have chimneys ; and he replies that the smoke does no harm, and it keeps out the mosquitoes. We learn that the island has excellent timber, including the kauri and other pine trees which we saw in New Zea- land. There are mines in the mountains not far from the coast, which yield coal, iron, and copper, and also nickel and cobalt used for plating iron and other metals. In the lowlands the French have established sugar, tobacco, and 94 NF.W CAI.r.DoNlA AND DTIIF.R rUFXCII ISLANDS codec plantations, and i ic c and coin arc also mown. They have pretty little one-story houses of wood roofed with galvanized iron. They have large pastures and fine cattle and sheep. The island is healthful, and were it not for the convicts, it might make a pleasant home. "They have pretty httle one-story houses of wood roofed with galvanized iron." The French own also the Loyalty Islands and some islets not far from New Caledonia ; but their population is small, and they are not of enough importance for us to go out of our way to look at them. We shall not be able to v'isit the Society Islands, the Marquesas (mar-ka'sas), and the many other little islands which form the Paumotu (pa-oo-mo'too) and other archi- pelagoes lying in the Pacific Ocean northeast of New Zealand. These islands all belong to the French, and they are governed by a French governor who lives at NEW GUINEA 95 Papeiti (pa-pa-e'te) in Tahiti (ta'he-tc), the largest of the Society Group. These French islands are of but little importance. Their only export of value is copra or dried cocoanut meat, which is extensively used in soap making, and their people are few in number and rather lazy than otherwise. They are not unlike the natives of the Samoan and Ton- gan islands, among whom we shall travel later on. They have dark brown complexions, broad noses, rather thick lips, and beautiful teeth. The men are tall and well formed, and the women are fine looking. They were formerly cannibals, but many of them are now Chris- tians. 14. NEW GUINEA CONSIDERING Australia a continent, New Guinea is, next to Greenland, the largest island on the globe. It is longer than the distance from New York to Omaha, and its width in places is as great as the distance from Boston to Washington. It would make more than seven states the size of Kentucky, and about thirty-eight as big as Massachusetts. Turn to your map and look at it. What is it like ? A crocodile .'' Yes, a little ; but more like a gigantic bird squatting on the Arafura Sea and Torres Strait, its island- feathered tail extending eastward into the Pacific, and its ragged head about to swallow some of the islands of the Malay Archipelago. This vast country was discovered by Menezes, a Portu- guese navigator, in 1526, only thirty-four years after 96 NEW GUINEA 97 Columbus discovered America, but for centuries it lay unexplored and unclaimed. In 1848 the Dutch, who had been surveying the coast, took formal possession of the western portion of it, and in 1884 the English and the Ger- mans claimed the remainder. The Dutch still have the whole western half of the island; while the eastern half, comprising the former German territorv' and the British territory south of it, form the Territory of Papua under the control of the Commonwealth of Australia. Each nation is gradually exploring its territory, and in time we shall learn all about the country. At present we know only that it is a wild land of high mountains, great rivers, and low, fever-laden plains. The Charles Louis A-Iountains in Dutch New Guinea have peaks so high that, although they lie close to the Equator, they are clad in perpetual snow. They are said to have the highest peaks between the Himalayas and the Andes. Ranges in the Territory of Papua are almost as high, and here is one peak which is more than thirteen thousand feet high. Each country has great rivers which have built up vast deltas and plains. The Fly River in the Territory of Papua is a mighty stream up which boats have gone for more than six hundred miles. Nearly all of New Guinea is covered with forests. The vegetation is so thick that it would take us months to make our way through it from one side of the island to the other. The trees are much the same as those we saw in Australia, but so dense that the leaves shut out the sun, and so bound together with creepers and rattans Ihat we should be ol)ligc(l I0 cul a path from one place to another through the tangled undergrowth. gS NKW r.UINKA There are many poisonous snakes in the forests, and also savage tribes hostile to white men. The dangers are so many and travel is so difficult that we shall confine our journeys to the coast. Port Moresby is the ca])ital of the Territory of Papua, or British New Guinea, and .we can there learn all that is known about the island. In coming to New Guinea from New Caledonia we are in the coral seas all the way. The Great Barrier Reef extends almost to New Guinea, and that island itself has a coral reef guarding its coast. We make our way through a break in the reef, and wind in and out through coral gardens to a beautiful harbor, almost surrounded by hills. There is a collection of wooden buildings and native huts on the shore. They are Port Moresby, the chief town of New Guinea and the home of the P^nglish governor. We go to the Government House, built on a command- ing site at the eastern end of the harbor, and have delight- ful chats with the different officials. They tell us that the exj^loration of the island is going rapidly on, and that the different governments are beginning to develop their ter- ritories and civilize the natives. They are finding gold in the mountains and along the Fly and other rivers ; they are setting out cocoanut groves and rubber forests, and are planting tobacco and cotton. We learn that the natives are very fond of tobacco, and that they use sticks of tobacco as money. The sticks are as long as a lead pencil and a little bit thicker. They are composed of the strongest tobacco leaves coated with a sweet mixture, which makes them stick fast. In some villages four sticks is the pav for a day's work, and ;v certain mmihcr will buy a hatchet, a knife, a fish net, oi NEW GUINEA 99 Natives of New Guinea. a necklace. They are taken and given in trade at the stores of Port Moresby. The natives of New Guinea are very inter- esting. They are Pap- uans, but differ greatly according to the tribes to which they belong and the parts of New Guinea which they inhabit. Some of them are said to be cannibals, but in general they are good people, affectionate among themselves, and easily ruled by the foreigners. They are more intel- ligent than the native Australians, although very super- stitious, believing in witches and ghosts. The most of the tribes wor- ship a great spirit who, they think, lives in the mountains. We see natives about Port Moresby wearing clothes much like ours, but they are the stu- dents of the mission school. The ofificials tell us that the people of the wilds wear almost no clothes whatsoever. The women and girls of some tribes have [)etlicoals of long leaves, grass, or stri])s of bark "Tlie girls have petticoats of grass. lOO Ni:\V l.UINEA Strung together and bound about the waist in flounces, layer on layer. They have also necklaces of shells or metal, and the skirt and necklace, with a coat of tattoo- ing, often forms the whole costume. The native men wear even less than the w^omcn. Many a one has only a necklace and bracelets and a bit of cloth about the waist, with perhaps a bark belt or two, ten inches wide, bound around the body. The belt is usually tied very tight, compressing the waist like a corset, so that even though the man be full grown, his waist is exceedin'gly slim. We ask the reason for such a custom, and are told that the men want the women to think they have small stomachs and are therefore small eaters. The woman provides most of the food, and a young woman who is looking about for a husband naturally chooses the man who eats least. A boy on being asked why he laced himself so tightly, said, " I do so because when I am older I must get me a wife, and if I have a big stomach, no one will have me." It is said that some of the tribes think it a disgrace for men to be fleshy, and the braves do all they can to keep lean. In eastern New Guinea the men tattoo their bodies and faces in hideous fashion. In some tribes the women are tattooed all over, the ink being pricked into the skin with thorns. The thorn is dipped into the ink and then driven through the skin with a Httle mallet. Such dressmaking is slow, but a suit once made lasts a lifetime. Each tribe has its own way of combing the hair, and the headdress often indicates the state of the man or woman who wears il. V(n- instance, you may know whether a woman is n)arried or single by a look at her head, for girls I NEW GUINEA lOI shave their heads close to the scalp upon beuig wedded, and keep it so shaved for the rest of their lives. The men of some regions dress their hair so that it stands out all over the head, and in others they thread the hair through many little bamboo tubes or pipes, so that it looks like great tas- sels. Many natives pierce their ears, and some thrust sticks and other ornaments through their noses. Indeed, the odd cus- toms are as many and as different as the tribes, and this is so not only in dress, but in the manner of living. In some villages the men dwell in clubhouses and the women in huts off by themselves, a number of the latter often being in one hut. The women cook the food in the huts and bring it to their husbands at the clubhouse. There they lay it on the porch, for women may not enter the clubhouse, nor do they eat with their husbands. These clubhouses are of great size. They have a sort of ridge roof thatched with straw or leaves, which makes them look like immense hayricks. There are no windows, and the smoke gets out as it can. " These clubhouses are of great size." I02 NEW GUINEA 111 parts of New Guinea llu; men and women live together in apartment houses. Such a house may be five hundred feet long and sixty feet wide, and may contain as many as fifty families. It is divided up by little partitions into stalls or pens, opening upon a central hall. Each family has its own stall ; in it the cooking is done, and there all sleep at night. The apartment houses are made of a frame- work of poles, roofed with grass or the leaves of palms and bananas. We are delighted with the native chil- dren. They have their own sports. The girls have odd- looking dolls, the boys play leapfrog and games, and alto- gether they have as much fun as we do " — the boys play leapfrog and games." ^^ homC One of the oddest things in New Guinea is the cradle, which is made of the fiber of the banana plant knitted into a bag. The baby is put in the bag and hung to a pole in the roof or in a tree outside the hut, and swung off to sleep. When the mother goes away, she merely unties the string and throws the cradle, baby and all, on her back and walks off with it. Many of the native tribes devote themselves to hunting NEW GUINEA 103 and fishing. Some make pottery for sale, and others have Httle farms where they raise sweet potatoes, yams, ba- nanas, and other tropical fruits. The people live largely upon vegetables, but in many respects are much the same as the Australians, eating game and fish, and also snakes and lizards, and worms which they find in the trees. New Guinea has about the same wild animals as Australia. It has ant- eaters, kangaroos, wal- labies, wild pigs, and dingos. It has alligators and turtles, and sharks swarm the coasts. It has ten species of snakes, many ants, and an in- sect whose bite produces sores like pimples. It has gorgeous butterflies and the most beautiful birds of the world. The birds of New Guinea are wonderfully "^"^ °^ ^^^ °'^^^^^ '^'"^^ '^ '^^ "^'^^^■" interesting. We see some in the woods not far from Port Moresby, and pigeons of various kinds in the settlement. The Goura pigeon is almost as big as a hen turkey, and it is more beautiful than a peacock. Its body is of a brilliant light blue ; its neck shines like an opal, and it has a crest of tiny blue feathers running high up from the back of its head which, when the sun touches it, shines as though it were set with jewels. I04 NORTHEASTERN NEW tJUINEA And then there arc the tiniest huniminf; birds, more l-)iiniant than our humming birds at home. There are red birds and parrots of most g()r,i;'eous coh^rs. There are cas- sowaries as big as young ostriches, with hairhke feathers resembling brown strings, and with feet so strong that a kick would break the skull of a man. We see a young cassowary, which has been tamed in Port Moresby, but are told that it is not a safe pet, for it eats the buttons from the workbasket, and it is by no means certain that it may not take a bite out of the kitten or peck at the baby. The most beautiful of all birds, however, is the bird of paradise, of which many varieties are found in New Guinea. This bird is comparatively small, but its feathers are beautiful. The golden bird of paradise has si.x long feathery tips on its head, and a great crest or crown, which rises out of the middle of its back, forming a canopy over it. Others of these birds have bright red feathers with velvetlike plumes encircling the base of the head, and tail feathers which stand up like wires. The feathers are .so fine that they are sent to Europe in great quantities for hats and bonnets. IS. NORTHEASTERN NEW GUINEA AND ADJACENT BRITISH ISLANDS AS we go on from island to island, we shall learn that almost every important group in the Pacific Ocean belongs either to the United vStates. Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, or Japan We have seen the vast i)osses- sions of the British in Australia and New Zealand and also in southeastern New Guinea. They have other islands AND ADJACENT BRITISH ISLANDS IO5 it) l,lic Pacific just to the cast of lis, iiichulini; tlic iMJis, the Tongas, and many others farther away. We learned some- thing of what France owns during our stay in New Caledonia, and now we are about to see some of the other British possessions. Leaving Port Moresby by steamer, we make our way to the eastward, sailing in and out among islands about the tail of New Guinea, and then coasting northward until we come to what was formerly Kaiser Wilhelms Land, or German New Guinea, and the Bismarck Archipelago. During the World War these possessions were taken by the British. The voyage is through coral seas all the way. There are many gulls and other marine birds flying over our ship, and now and then we see flying fish darting over the waves. Near the atolls sharks are swimming, and great tortoises float about in the water. Many years ago, we are told, whales were numerous in these warm seas. We pass many low islands with cocoanut palms growing upon them. The coral reefs continue along the northern coast of New Guinea and also about New Britain and other islands of the Bismarck Archipelago. Our first stop is at Madang, the chief British port on the north coast of New Guinea at the northern end of Astrolabe Bay. There is a steamer in the harbor loading pearl shells, coffee, and cotton. Custom officers come out to our ship, and on landing we find, however, that the town is small and chiefly inhabited by officials and men engaged in trading or in managing the cofifee, cotton, and rubber plantations, and the cocoanut groves which are found near the coast. Some are interested in gold mines io6 NORTHEASTERN NEW GUINEA in the l?isni;irtk Moiiiiliiiiis, llic peaks of whic h we sec far back at the south. The nativ^es here are much Hke those we saw at Port Moresby, sav^e that they are if anything; more wild and less anxious to work. Planters tell us that they have to import laborers from the islands near by and elsewhere to work the coffee and cotton. Many of the hu:! ■ '-iU upon piles.' Many tribes along; the north coast, where it is so hot, go almost naked, although they may paint or tattoo their bodies or give them a coat of grease. Some wear bright feathers in their heads, and bracelets and necklaces of shell. Many of the houses are built upon piles so high up that the people have to climb ladders to enter them. In other places there are houses in the trees for watchmen, and also for refuge in time of attack. AND ADJACENT BRITISH ISLANDS lO' It is but a sliort trip from Madanj^ to the Bismarck Archi- pelago. We first visit New Britain, and, making this our headquarters, coast about from one island to another. The Bismarck Archipelago, like New Guinea and other islands of this region, is largely volcanic. New Britain has active volcanoes, and every now and then the people hear the rumble of an earthquake, so that one can never y^4 -^rsikii:s oi iiii: Hawaiian islands The cookinj;" is done in an oven made h)- (ligi;ii]j; a hole in the ground and waUing it with stones. Stones are placed in the bottom and a stone arch is built over the top. A fire is then made inside, and when the stones are red hot the oven is ready for use. The arch is now knocked down and the food, having been wrapped in the leaves of banana and other plants, is laid on the red-hot stones. Green grass is spread over the bundles, and above that a layer of earth, a little hole being left in the top. Water is then poured into the hole and the hole covered up. As soon as the water reaches the hot stones it forms steam, and this cooks the food. Vegetables, fish, meat, and whole pigs are cooked in this way. Hot stones are put inside the pigs and under their shoulder blades to insure their being done through. The banana leaves with which the various viands are wraj)j:)ed keep in the juices, and the food is fit for a king. At nearly every native meal we have poi, and learn to like it. It is one of the chief foods of the natives, and in times past it held the same place among them that bread does with us. Poi is a sort of paste or mush made little Hawaiian cousins." THE INDUSTRIES OF THE HAWAHAN LSLANDS I4I of the root of the taro, a plant somewhat Uke the sweet potato or yam. The root is first ground to a paste and left until sHghtly fermented. It is usually served from a bowl into which each guest dips his hand and thus car- ries the poi to his mouth. This takes considerable skill, and it is quite a while before we are able to do it in the most polite way. Native grass hut. Our native friends are fond of sport. They like horses, and many of the boys and girls own their ponies. The girls ride astride and are not afraid to dash along the beach and ride far out into the water. The Hawaiians are fond of the sea. Not only do they ride upon it in boats and swim through it, but they take what might be called sled rides on the breakers as they dash in to the shore. We join in this sport and find it 142 A VISIT TO A VOLCANO delightful. Our sleds are boards about eii^ht feet long, a foot wide, aiul turned up at the end. Each of us takes one of these boards and pushes it before him as he swims out beyond the breakers to the coral reef not far from the shore. We take our stand on the reef, carefully watching the billows as they roll in from the ocean, and at just the right time throw ourselves flat on the board on top of the greatest of them. The mighty wave flies like the wind. We rise and we fall ; if we could look back, we should see other waves following behind. In a very few moments, however, we are high on the beach, thrown out upon the soft, white sand. We take our boards, go back, and ride in again, rejoicing in the warm water and in the fact of having had a sled ride in midsummer on the briny Pacific without cold fingers or toes. 20. A VISIT TO A VOLCANO WE are in the town of Hilo (he'lo) this morning, on the island of Hawaii, about to visit Kilauea (ke-lou-a'a), one of the largest active volcanoes of the world. How rainy it is ! The water comes down in torrents every few hours, and we go about our sight-seeing between the showers. Hilo lies on the eastern side of the island just under Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, two mighty mountains against which the winds from the ocean blow laden with moisture. As a result, it is about the rainiest town under the American flag and is surrounded by a vegetation the greenest of green. A little river runs through the town, pure mountain water flows along both sides of its streets, A VISIT TO A VOLCANO H3 and ill the country outside there are creeks at every few miles. There are large sugar plantations close to the town, and cocoanut trees and fern trees, as well as bam- boos and bananas scattered through it. Hilo is, next to Honolulu, the chief city of the Hawaiian Islands. Its harbors will accommodate the largest ocean steamers, and it has considerable commerce. Its wide Volcano of Mauna Loa. Streets are lighted with electricity ; it has numerous tele- phones, good churches and schools, and large stores andl hotels. We find ourselves among friends the moment we land, and have no trouble in arranging for carriages for our trip through the mountains. We can see the top of Mauna Kea as we stand in the city. It is 13,800 feet above us, and is the highest of all mountains in this part of the Pacific Ocean, although its sister, Mauna Loa, is almost as high. 144 A VI SI 1 K ) A \i )1.CA\() Maiina Kea is a volcano, but it died ages and ages ago. Mauna Loa is alive. It is a great fire mountain with veins of molten lava from which at times boiling rivers of lava flow down its sides, destroying everything in their path. Some of these rivers have come from the very top of the mountain, and others from the mighty crater of Kilauea, only about four thousand feet above the sea. The topmost crater has been in action many times. In 1880 it sent forth a deluge of white molten rock which flowed in a wide stream down the mountain from just above where we now are. It swept through the forest and did not stop until within a quarter of a mile of the harbor of Hilo. The lava hardened as it flowed, and we can see it now, cold and dead outside the town, a hideous black mass winding its way like a snake through the green. If we should go round the mountain, we should find other lava floods which have also come from Mauna Loa. There was one in 1852 just over Hilo, another in 1859 on the opposite side, and farther over still are the remains of the enormous flood of lava which it threw out in 1823. When the crater at the summit is in eruption, it crowns Mauna Loa with a pillar of fire, which can be seen at Hono- lulu, two hundred miles away. The whole crater then be- comes a flaming sea. The lava rises and breaks through the sides in mighty geysers, deluging the country. This crater is almost three miles wide and about ten miles in circumference. It is so wonderful that our government has decreed that it and Kilauea, another crater which is further down the slope, shall be a public park. A good road has been built to Kilauea, and we can easily see this volcano and its great lake of fire. A VISIT TO A VOLCANO 145 We take automobiles, and dash out of Hilo, with our hats, necks, and even our motors decorated with flowers by our friends upon saying good-by. The first part of our journey is through sugar plantations, the fields of pale green reaching away for miles on each side. We then go through a jungle and on by coffee fields, where we see the ripe red berries through the trees on the sides of the road. There are hedges of ferns, banks of ferns, and ferns springing out from the trunks of trees. Now and then there is a break in the dense vegetation, and we have a fine view of the shore far below us with the blue Pacific Ocean rolling up on the beach. The slope is quite gradual, but the air grows cooler as we rise, and when we reach the Volcano House on the edge of the crater, we find it almost as bracing as in our mountains at home. It is too late to explore the volcano, for there are cracks in the earth and we dare not walk about at night without a guide. We know we are near it by the strong smell of burning sulphur, by the steam jets here and there bursting through the mountain, and by the clouds of fire hanging over the crater. We are told, however, that we can not see more until morning, and hence go to bed. Our dreams are full of volcanoes. Now we are flying from molten rivers of lava, and now tottering on the edge of the crater, and now a slip has thrown us down into the fire. We fall with a thud, only to find that the edge of the bed was the rim of the volcano, and that we have rolled out on the floor. We get up at daybreak to watch the sunrise, and then walk to the mighty black pit we have come so far to see. The steam oozes out of cracks all about us, the earth is ftUR COLONIES — 9 146 A VlSir TO A N'OLCANO hot to our feet, and here and there we can look down into a crack thiough which the white-hot lava is flowing. At last we reach the rim of the crater, and stand there several hundred feet above the lava floor that surrounds the lake of melted lava which the natives have called "The House of Everlasting Burning." We are on the edge of a pit almost eight miles in circumference. It is about three miles from where we are standing to the opposite side, and almost two miles across it in the other direction. Be careful where you step ! The walls of the pit are steep, and if you should fall, you would roll five hundred feet before you struck those masses of lava below. See the sulphur in the earth all about us ! Smell the sulphurous smoke which the wind is blowing toward us from the burn- ing lake. It almost takes away our breath, and we put our handkerchiefs to our noses to keep out the fumes. Picking our way around the rim of the crater we reach a place where the slope is more gentle, and crawl down the sides to the floor of black lava. We tremble a little as we slowly walk over it, for there are cracks here and there through which we can see the fiery mass flowing, and into which we thrust our canes and bring them out burning. How rough the floor is ! It is covered with lava rocks and chunks of lava of all shapes and sizes. It looks like a mass of black ice which has been broken and then tossed about upon a stormy sea and frozen again. A dense, sulphurous smoke surrounds us. It gets into our lungs and makes them sore. Our throats pain us, and we gasp for pure air. We fan ourselves with our hats as our guide takes us carefully across the burning cracks to A VISIT TO A \'OLCANO 147 the flaming lake where the fiery molten mass is bubbling and boiling, now and then spitting up molten fire, remind- ing us of the geysers we saw in New Zealand. The face of the lake often changes. Sometimes a crust of black lava forms, only to be broken by some fresh force below, and perhaps thrown high up into the crater. ^^^^^^^^^ys»^!mjJBII^B|BB!IIPipPi IB ^^^fl^^^P^IM^-^- ^^ ' g--^'''~'^i: . •' *:;•'■, >,.«,, ■ .:..:*-,.--',-'. ■ ■ -^■■iaU. •'-. " It looks like a mass of black ice." See, there is some lava going up now! It flies forth like liquid gold and falls outside the burning lake on the crust not far from our feet. We jump back, with our hearts in our throats, and watch the molten mass as it lies there on the crust. See, it is changing! Its fiery gold is turning to copper. It grows darker and darker as it cools, and at last is as black as the crust upon which it lies. The guide tells us it is dangerous where we are standing, and leads us farther away. 148 THE ISLAND OF GUAM A little later ho takes his staff and slips down close to the lake and dips it into the lava, some of which sticks to it. He then brings the staff up, and, before it is cold, knocks off the lava and then presses a cent into it. He does this again and again until he has a piece of lava hold- ing a penny for each of our party. The lava cools while we wait, and we shall each take our penny home to show to our friends. 21. THE ISLAND OF GUAM WE are again on the water steaming westward through the sunny Pacific below the Tropic of Cancer. Our course is a little to the south, for we are bound for the Philippines, and have planned to stop at Guam (gwam) on the way. Our ship is a government transport carrying soldiers and army supplies to our colonial possessions, and it is only by special permit from the Presi- dent of the United States that we are allowed to travel upon it. What a magnificent vessel it is! It is finer than any we have yet seen during our tour of the Pacific Ocean, so broad that it would fill a roadway fifty feet wide from fence to fence, and so deep that if the keel stood on the ground, THE ISLAND OF GUAM I49 we should be almost even with the tops of the trees as we walk the hurricane deck or climb about in the rigging. The vessel is divided up into rooms, compartments, and quarters. There are about two thousand men on board, including sailors, soldiers, and ofificers, and it takes a vast deal of food to supply them. The kitchen is enormous ; there is a bakery where a score of men knead away day after day making bread for us all, and cold storage rooms where the meat, vegetables, and fruits put on board at Honolulu or San Francisco are kept fresh throughout the voyage. The ship is heated by steam and Hghted by elec- tricity. It has exercise decks and reading rooms, where are also a piano and an organ and other musical instru- ments. The soldiers are of all classes, and our life on the ocean is not unlike that of a camp. The American flag floats over us. We are awakened every morning by the sound of the bugle, and the bugle calls us to breakfast, dinner, and supper. It gives the signals for guard-mounting, inspection, and exercise, and early in the evening warns us to put out our lights and get into bed. Some of the time we live with the officers in the cabins and at other times with the private soldiers, lying on sheets of canvas so stretched between iron pipes that they form comfortable beds. The men sleep one above the other, in tiers of such bunks ; and we enjoy ourselves as we lie there chatting with them, and listening to their stories of camp life and battle. And then there are games upon deck. The men are glad to play quoits and shovel board with us when off duty, and some of them even teach us to drill, allowing us 150 'rilK ISLAND 1)1- Cl'AM in form a little siiiiad of our own. The days ^o too fast, and when, after more than a week, we see a low island of blue rising from the sea, and are told it is Guam, we can hardly believe it. Nevertheless it is true. We might sail across the Atlan- tic from New York to Liverpool and not go so far as we have now come from Honolulu on our way to the Philip- pines, and we have still almost one third of the journey to make. Guam is more than thirty-three hundred miles from the Hawaiian Islands, three thousand miles from Samoa, more than fifteen hundred miles from Manila, and about thirteen hundred miles southeast of Yokohama, Japan. It is somewhat like Tutuila, a supply point for coal and other things on the highroads of the ocean. It is one of the Ladrones, an islet archipelago hundreds of miles long which was discovered by Magellan in 1521, and which belonged to Spain until our war with that country, when Guam was ceded to the United States. At about the same time the rest of the Ladrones were sold by Spain to Germany. Guam is the largest of these islands, but it is only thirty miles long and from three to nine miles in width. It is valuable to us only on account of its position. Now we are nearer and can see that the island is vol- canic, and covered with green. It is made up of low- mountains or hills, with stretches of sand and lowlands along the coast, and especially at the north and south ends. Most of it is guarded by coral reefs, and our transport has to move slowly in entering the harbor of San Louis d'Apra (san lu'e da'pra), where we shall land. The island is shaped like the sole of a shoe, and this harbor is on the outside not far from the instep. THE ISLAND OF GUAM 151 The governor comes out to the transport ; it is in his launch that we go to the shore, and with him we drive to the town of Agana (a-gan'ya), the largest on the island, situated about seven miles up the coast. The road skirts the beach all the way, and the ride is delightful. We go under beautiful palms, whose cocoanuts make our mouths water as we think of the sweet juice within. We pass street in Agana. many rice fields where brown-skinned men are plowing with the ungainly buffaloes which serve as the farm and draft horses of Guam. Here and there we see little huts thatched with palm leaves looking out of the trees, and now and then pass brown-skinned men, women, and children clad in white or colored cottons riding or walking along the road. Tiie M'omen have loose gowns with very full sleeves, and the 152 THE ISLAND OF GUAM men ami lioys wear their shirts outside their trousers. They are the natives, our little brown cousins of Guam ; they are much like the Filipinos, and are the descendants of people who have come here from the Philipj)inc Islands. We have but a short time on the island, our travels be- ing confined to a day in Agana and a trip to the north and south coast. Agana has only seven or eight thousand pe()j)le. It has a church or so, the government offices, a few wooden buildings, some white adobe houses roofed with red tiles, and many huts made of bamboo poles covered with palm leaves. There are a few stores and a school building or so. Many of the natives speak Span- ish, and some know enough English to act as our guides. In our travels outside Agana we now and then ride up into the mountains to hunt the deer and wild hogs for which Guam is noted. We see many birds, including starlings, crows, snipes, owls, and wild ducks. There are fruit-eat- ing doves with rosy crowns, green backs, and yellow and purple breasts, and also the reed warbler which sings melo- diously. We visit the farms on the fertile plains. They are small, for the territory is well divided among the people. The chief products are rice, cacao, sugar, and corn. There are also groves of bananas and cocoanut trees, and some copra is made for export. All together, however, the industries are few, and the island is of no commercial importance. The climate is hot, and at this time too wet for comfort- able travel. It rains every few hours, the showers have made the roads muddy, and we are glad when we are again back on the transport and on the way to the Philippines. GENERAL VIEW OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 1 53 22. GENERAL VIEW OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS WE talk much of the Philippines as we steam on toward Manila. Several of the officers on the transport have been stationed on the islands, and we sit with them out under the awnings on deck and look ov^er the government maps, studying our colonial possessions of the western Pacific. The Philippine Islands were discovered only about twenty-nine years after Columbus came to America. All Europe was then excited by the stories of the New World, and many adventurous men started westward to look up new waterways and new lands. Among others was Fer- dinand Magellan, a Portuguese navigator, who commanded a squadron equipped by Charles V of Spain. Magellan had already visited the Malay Archipelago by going eastward, and he hoped to find a westward route to it and Asia. No one then knew how wide the Pacific Ocean was, and we may suppose that Magellan thought that Asia lay only a short distance on the other side of the lands discovered by Columbus. At any rate, he sailed from Spain in 15 19 to the eastern coast of South America and made various explorations, traveling southward along that coast until he came to the Strait of Magellan, through which he crossed into the Pacific Ocean. Magellan was the first to find the strait, and it was named after him. He had bad weather on the Atlantic side of lower South America, but it was so pleas- ant after he had passed through the strait that he named PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 801. E Of MILES lAo \M aX* 'r'° MANILA BRITISH O 'SULU (jO^P*> <^ /OSUASI ,>^ O S i B B S iS^i Loneltude 154 GEXERAI. VIEW OE THE nilLIPPIXE ISLANDS I 55 the sea the Pacific, or quiet ocean. The Pacific had been discovered by Balboa before this, but Magellan gave it its name. Sailing to the northward and westward, Magellan went on and on until he discovered the Ladrone Group, to which Guam belongs. A little later, on March 16, 1521, he sighted the Philippines and landed on the island of Cebu (sa-boo'), in about the center of the archipelago. Here he met the king of Cebu, who acknowledged alle- giance to Spain and was baptized as a Christian, with hundreds of his followers. A short time after this Ma- gellan tried to subdue the people of Mactan, a little island lying off Cebu, and was killed by an arrow shot by a native. The king of Cebu thereupon rebelled and the squadron was forced to leave. It sailed southward and westward, touching at Borneo, and then went on to the Moluccas, where it got a cargo of spices. One ship then sailed for Europe by way of the Cape of Good Hope, and finally reached Spain, having made the first voyage around the world. Magellan named the islands the St. Lazarus Islands because they were discovered on St. Lazarus Day, but the name was afterward changed to the Philippine Islands, in honor of Philip II of Spain, the son of Charles V. Thus the Spaniards got their title to the Philippines by right of discovery. They conquered most of the natives from time to time and converted them to Christianity. They held the islands until the close of the Spanish- American War, when by the treaty made at Paris thev were ceded to us upon the payment of twenty million dollars to Spain. 156 GENKRAL VIEW OF THE nilLirPINE ISLANDS Our route from Guam is somewhat the same as that of Magellan, and as we near the islands we see that they are, in respect to our homes, almost on the opposite side of the globe. There are two clocks on the transport, one ot which keeps Washington time and the other shi[) time, the latter being changed every day to correspond with our longitude. By comparing the two as the days go on, we find the ship time is now actually more than thirteen hours ahead of that of our national capital, so that when it is high noon at Washington it is after one o'clock the next morning at Manila. We go again and again to look at the clocks, and imagine what our friends are doing at home. It puzzles us why the time is so different, and how the days are kept the same all over the world. We know that as we go westward the sun rises one hour later for every fifteen degrees of longitude, and that if we kept going on in that direction for the whole three hundred and sixty degrees, or the entire circumference of the earth, we should lose a day, and upon arriving at home should be one day behind our fellows who had remained there since we left. We might think we were landing on Saturday, and start out to work or play before we knew it was Sunday instead. In taking a trip around the world in the opposite direction, we should find ourselves at the close one day ahead. In order to have the same date all over the world, mari- ners going westward add a day on crossing a meridian of longitude fixed upon for that purpose, and going eastward one day is dropped. The meridian chosen is the one hundred eightieth. When we crossed this meridian from Honolulu to (kiam, the captain put up a notice in the saloon which read : — GENERAL VIEW OV THE lillLlPPINE ISLANDS 1 57 "Toim.ii>iM\K islands and ;ib()ut as nuich as the combined areas of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. Luzon (loo-zon') is as big as Ohio, and Min- danao (niin-dii-na'o) as big as Indiana. Samar (sa'mar), Negros (na'gros), Panay (pa-nl'), and Palawan (pa-la' wan) are each about the size of Connecticut, and Leyte (la'ta) is larger than Delaware. The islands are largely volcanic, having mountains covered with valuable timber, and filled with coal, iron, copper, and other minerals, and valleys and plains where the soil is so fertile that it produces large crops of sugar, rice, tobacco, and hemj), and all sorts of tropical fruits. The country is everywhere well watered. It has some navigable rivers and lakes, and many excellent harbors. The Philippines lie in the North Torrid Zone, but the climate is good the greater part of the year, and so tem- pered by the winds from the sea and the mountains that our people can live here in comfort. The hottest months are April, May, and June, and the coldest are November, December, January, and February. There is also, in the interior and on the western coa.sts, a dry season from about the first of November until the end of May, and a rainy season between June and October, inclusive. These islands are not like New Guinea, the vast country we visited north of Australia, a wild land sparsely inhabited by savages. There are wild men, it is true, but the greater part of the inhabitants are Christians, and many others also are more or less civilized. The population is large. When Uncle Sam adopted the Filipinos, he made a mighty addition to our national family. Our little brown cousins out here are about one GENERAL VIEW OF THE rHILIPriNE ISLANDS 159 twelfth of our whole population. That is, if Uncle Sam could put all of his people into one field and mix them thoroughly, one in each dozen would be a brown-skinned Filipino. There are over eight million people in the islands, including several different races and many tribes, each of which has its own peculiar habits and customs. There are, in the first place, the Negritos (na-gre'tos), who are sup- posed to be the first inhabitants, and to have come from New Guinea. They are little black men with frizzly hair, who live in the highest mountains and other inaccessible places. They are few in number, and are widely scattered. Next are the Indonesians, composing about sixteen tribes, found chiefly in the island of Mindanao. They are gener- ally savage, or at the best semicivilized. They have tall and strong frames, light yellow skins, aquiline noses, and wavy black hair. Last, and more important than the two other classes, are the Malayans, who form almost the whole population. They are the descendants of Malays who have come here from time to time from Malaysia and intermarried with the Negritos and Indonesians, and also with the Chinese, Japanese, and Europeans who have found their way to the islands. Of this mixed class there are more than seven millions ; some of them are pagans, some are Mohammedan Moros, and the remainder, comprising the "There are wild men, it is true." l6o CEXHRAl. VIKW OF llli: rilll.HTlNE ISLANDS most of the Malayans, arc Christians. In addition to the natives there arc also some Spaniards and other Euroi)cans, and now that we have the islands, many Americans. But we shall see the j)eo{)le themselves as we travel over the country. The natives are different in different parts of the archipelago, and, broadly speaking, the islands "Visayans. people much like the Tagalos," may be divided into three zones, according to the predomi- nant races which inhabit them. The northern zone, where we shall first land, embraces Luzon and its neighboring islands. There are the people with whom we had the most trouble when we took possession of the country. They are Tagalos (ta-gal'os) and other similar tribes, many of them well educated and all having more or less civilization. South of Luzon and north of Mindanao is what might be called the middle zone. It consists of the Visayan MANILA, THE CAPITAL OF THE PHILIPPLNES l6l (ve-sa'yiin) Islands, inhabited by Visayan people much hke the Tagalos, although they are more peaceful and not so courageous. They are also civilized, having many villages and towns, plantations and farms. South of this Visayan Island Zone lies the third and last zone, the zone of the Moros or our Mohammedan cousins. It includes the great island of Mindanao, the pear-shaped island of Basilan, the island of Palawan, and the hundreds of islands of the Sulu Group which may be seen dotting the water like a series of stepping stones from Mindanao to Borneo. These zones we must remember are not inhabited entirely by the above-mentioned races. Each island has its wild tribes which live in the mountains, and the chief races have different tribes or families, each having its own language. There are so many odd natives that we feel rather queer when we remember that they are all now under control of the United States, and as such our cousins under our great Uncle Sam. ot*:c 23. MANILA, THE CAPITAL OF THE PHILIPPINES THE day is just breaking, but we are already on deck at the prow of the ship looking at the coast of Luzon. On both sides of us are low, green hills with smoky blue mountains behind them, and right in front is a little green island with the sun rising over it. That island is Cor- regidor (c6r-ra-he-thor'), from which the Spaniards fired 1 62 THK I'llIl.ll'PlNKS at Admiral Dewey as he sailed into the Kay of Manila to fight his great battle. It divides the entrance to the bay into two channels, and the Stars and Stripes floating over it shows that it is now held by American soldiers. We follow the same course that Dewey took and are soon in the bay. What an enormous body of water it is! In its center we are almost out of sight of land, and the blue hills become a faint haze in the distance. It takes us sev- eral hours to cross over to Manila on the opposite side. We pass ships of all kinds on the way, and anchor at last near the mouth of the Pasig River in one of the busiest harbors on this side the world. There are ships from China, Japan, Australia, and India all about us ; there are vessels from Europe, taking on and putting off cargo, and transports and other ships from the United States ; there are steamers coming in from and going out to different parts of the Philippines, and sailing vessels from the many islands about. Saucy little tug- boats are hauling huge barges, called "cascoes," steam launches are flying over the waves, and ferryboats for Cavite (ka-ve'ta) and other places are moving by us loaded with passengers. There are scores of rowboats worked by brown-skinned oarsmen and fishing boats bringing their catch to the markets. We ride to the shore in one of the government launches, making our way in and out through the shipping of the wide Pasig River, and are landed in the heart of the city. Here we take carromatas, the two-wheeled pony cabs of the Philippines, for the hotel. Our drivers are little brown men in white clothes, who whip up their ponies and race MANILA, THE CAPITAL 1 63 through the streets, clashing in and out ol the mass ol carts, wagons, and cabs so recklessly that our hearts are in our throats all the way, and we scarcely see the strange sights about us. We arrive safely, however, and later on become used to such driving, and like it, especially as the weather is too hot for walking. After a dinner at the hotel we visit the church of Saint Sebastian, on the edge of Manila, for a bird's-eye view of the city. A black-gowned priest opens the door, and with him we walk up and up the hundreds of steps of the slim, spiral staircase to the top of the tower, where we have all Manila below us. The city lies on a plain backed by blue mountains which reach on and on about the silvery waters of the great bay. The buildings are low one and two story houses with the domes and towers of churches rising above them ; there are green trees here and there showing out above the house roofs. The city skirts the bay for miles, extending far back and losing itself in a green plain spotted with trees. There are in all about twenty square miles of buildings, and as we look we can see something of the impor- tance of our Philippine capital. Manila has about as many people as Indianapolis; it is the chief center of commerce and trade for all of the islands, and it is one of the princi- pal cities of this thickly populated part of the globe. Take your field glass and look at it more closely. See how the plain is cut up by the wide streets crossing one another at all sorts of angles. The waterways are as many as in the cities of Holland. That stream just be- low is the Pasig River, which flows from the Laguna de Bay, a great lake not far away, to the Bay of Manila. It OUR COLONIES — lO 164 TIIK rilll-llTlXES is n;ivii;ablc for small slcaiiicrs, and ihcrc arc canals run- ning out from it in every direction, enabling boats to reach any part of the city. Now notice the mass of houses on the left of the river with the big wall about them. That is Old Manila con- nected with the business part of the city by the Bridge of Spain, which you can see crossing the Pasig. It is there The EscoUa, Manila. that many of the officials have their offices, and there also are many churches and monasteries, colleges and schools. That monument on the bank of the river was erected by the Spaniards to Ferdinand Magellan. The part of the city outside the wall and on the other side of the river is where most of the people live, and where nearly all the business is done. The Escolta (es- col'ta), the chief business street, is just over the bridge, and the markets are across another bridge still farther away. MANILA, THE CAPITAL 1 65 Beyond the walled city skirting the bay are Malate (ma-la'ta) and other suburbs, fine residence sections, and between them and the walled city facing the sea is the Luneta, the park where fashionable Manila comes to drive and listen to the music from five o'clock until dusk every afternoon. We can see the moving crowd through the field glass, and the music, though faint, floats up to our ears. Let us turn our backs to the city and look at the fields. They are as green as our country in June. The plain is dotted here and there with clumps of bamboo and tall palms. There are vegetable gardens, patches of rice, and groves of bananas, with roads and streams running through them. The sun hangs low as we look, and its rays catch the crowd of men and women coming back to Manila from their work outside the city, making bright-colored ribbons through the green fields. Most of the men are dressed in white cotton, and the women wear black shawls and red skirts, which the sun's rays turn to streaks of red and black as they move over the green. Suppose we go down and take a walk through the streets. They are thronged with people, and we have a good chance to see some of the strange characters of this very strange city. We are moving along with hundreds of little men. women, and children, our brown-skinned cousins of the Philippine Islands. There are Filipinos of all classes, ages, and sizes. Some of the boys go along hand in hand, and the girls are walking with their arms around the waists of their friends. Hear the people talking as they move onward. Their 1 66 TIIK rilll.ll'Ii.NKS language is musical and somewhat like Spanish, but we can not understand it. Now and then a girl laughs, and her white teeth show out against her brown skin. The Filipi- nos are by no means bad looking. They are straight and well formed, although not so tall as we are. They have black eyes, almost slanting, and coarse black hair. Their lips are not thick, and their noses are as straight as our Filipino children own. They look clean, and we learn that most of them take a bath every day. See those two women with their hair down their backs. They have come from a dip in one of the canals, and can not do up their hair until it is dry. Other women wear their hair in great knots on the tops of their heads. Many of them are bareheaded, and most of the boys have no hats. What a curious dress ! The women and girls wear MANILA, THE CAPITAL 167 Filipino family. a flowing skirt around which is wound a broad strip of cloth tucked in at the waist and forming a sort of over- skirt. Above this is a waist of gauze made low at the neck, with bell-like sleeves cut off at the elbow. The stuff is so thin that the skin shows through, and it must be delightfully cool ; it is made of the fiber of the pineapple and other plants. Around the neck is a broad starched collar. Many of the women wear heelless slippers and the girls are barefooted. Take a look at the men. What would you think if half the men and boys of your town should come out with their shirts outside their trousers ? That is what they do here. It seems strange at first; but it is cooler to wear one's shirt in that way, and we must remember that we are not very far north of the P^^quator. Some shirts are so thin that we can see the brown skin showing through as they l6S TIIF. nilLIlTlNES llap .ilxiiil in the hn'ivc. Tlu' men ol Uic bcllci" classes wear eoats, and some have on suits of white muslin. Many Americans here are dressed in white linen or yellow khaki, and they tell us we had best buy such suits for our- selves. We meet better clad natives as we go into the Escolta, and find that the Filipinos of the higher classes dress much as we do. How crowded it is ! The sidewalks are about three feet wide, with hardly room enough for three persons abreast. We are often shoved into the roadway and have to look out for the automobiles, carts, carromatas, and carriages which are hurrying in both directions. Every coachman is flogging his pony, and we wonder if the Filipinos know how to drive slowly. The only slow things on the road are the carabaos, or water buffaloes, dragging great drays loaded with hemp, tobacco, and all sorts of goods. There come two now, one following the other, each pulHng a dray. Jump into this doorway and wait until they pass. Did you ever see animals so ugly ? They are of the cow family, but I am sure no respectable American cow would acknowledge the relationship. Their skins look more like that of a pig, and the thin, bristling black hair so stands out upon them that you can see the dark skin shining through. Most of the carabaos are black, although we now and then sec some blond ones with white hair and a rosy red hide. They are all very dirty, for they are like pigs, in that they wallow in the mud. They delight in the water, and must have their baths several times a day, or they will grow crazy. For this reason the drivers of the carts MANILA, THE CAPITAL 169 stop now and then as they cross a river or canal, and allow their beasts to take a ten-minute bath. The huge animals walk down the steps and lie down, with nothing but their heads showing out. We may see scores of them so bath- ing during any half-hour's walk along the waterways of Manila. Carabaos, or water buffaloes. The carabaos are very valuable to the Philippines. They are strong, and can plow and harrow the muddy rice fields, where a horse or mule would sink through. They haul the drays in the towns, and do all kinds of draft work and farm work. Provided they get their baths, they are gentle. The children are fond of them, and boys and girls ride them as they feed in the pasture, and that without bridle or saddle. Carabaos give milk like cows, and their meat takes ihe place (jf beef among the poorer classes. Here we are in the Escolta, the chief business street 170 TIIF. rilllllM'INES of Manila. The stores are smaller than at home, and each has one or two famihes living above it. Most of the stores hnve awnings out over the sidewalks ; some have fe, '^?»w/¥fMPfSi opanish signs, and not a few are still owned by Spaniards. W ***H, . "' Turning a corner we enter a quarter where nearly all the stores are Chinese. They look like little caves cut out of the walls, and are so full of cali- coes and other merchandise that there is no room for cases or counters. The goods are piled up on the shelves, or hung from the ceilings, and even piled out- side on the streets. The upper floors of the buildings extend over, shading the sidewalk, and in the windows above we see yellow - skinned, almond - eyed women and children looking out. The Chinese are great traders, and many have come here to do business. There are many thousand in Manila, and more than fifty thousand in the Philippine Islands. They sell merchandise in all parts of the archipelago. Some go about with packs of goods on their shoulders, peddling their wares from house to house; others are mechanics, and others work in the streets and on the plantations. t:^ ' Some go about with packs on their shoulders.'' HOME LIFE AND JHE MARKETS 171 24. HOME LIFE AND THE MARKETS WE have many friends in Manila, and through them are able to visit all classes of the people. Our first call is on the family of a Filipino official, who hves just out of the city. His house is a great two-storied building, with a beautiful garden about it shaded with palms and other tropical trees. A wide drive leads to the entrance, and we go upstairs to reach the living rooms of the family. The better class Filipinos live on the second floor, because it is more healthful well up from the ground. The servants have their quarters below, and the carriages and horses are often kept there. Our friend's house has many large rooms with high ceilings and wide, airy halls. There is a balcony around the whole house at the second floor, into which the rooms open, and this balcony is walled with windows of lattice work, composed of the shells of pearl oysters so thin that they let in the light while they keep out the heat. The pearl windows are moved back in the evening, and the air blows through the house, making it delightfully cool. The house is well furnished. It has its piano and organ, for the Filipinos are fond of music. There are large tables, many chairs of bent wood, and sofas of woven rattan. We are shown the sleeping rooms. The beds are twice as large as ours, and each has above it a mosquito netting which is let down at night. There are no springs. The bedsteads are covered with cane like a chair seat, and a tliin comfort or mat takes the place of the thick mattress we \\jvc ;ii liouie. In a warm climate like this tiie chief 172 TMK rillliriMNES thing is to kccj) cool, and \vc ha\c already learned to like beds of this kind, although at hrst wc rolled over and over trying to find a soft spot on the mats. The pillows are of hair, stuffed hard, and each bed has a long, hard bolster for one to throw his leg over while sleeping. We take dinner with the family ; everything is well cooked, and the meal is not unlike our dinners at home. Our ne.xt visit is to a small merchant in a crowded part of the city. His house is on the level of the street. The entrance is through a garden about ten feet wide and twenty feet long, covered with a thatched roof through which banana trees have grown. These have extended their broad leaves over it, and keep the garden quite cool. There are seats on each side of the walk, and here we find several of the family sitting. Our hosts rise and shake hands with us, and the mother leads us into the house. We first enter a narrow hallway with a little bedroom on each side and a dining room and kitchen at the end. The latter rooms and the garden are where the family live during the day. Each room is about twelve feet square, neatly kept, but well blackened with smoke. Very few of the Filipino houses have chim- neys, and in many the cooking is done with charcoal, which makes but little smoke. In other places, such as this, sticks and bits of wood are used, and the smoke gets out as it can. The dining room serves also as the i)arlor. It has a floor of red brick, and its furniture consists of two chairs and a cane-seated lounge, the latter being hung to the ceiling to be kept out of tiie way until needed. It is let down during our visit, and the wife of the merchant bids HOME LIFE AND THE MARKETS 1 73 lis siL down. Slic is a conitorlablc-lookini;, brnwii-skiiined little lady with white teeth and a pleasant smile. She shows us the sleeping rooms on each side the hall. Each room is just wide enough for the bed of split bam- boo poles fastened to a framework of larger bamboos, which stands within. The people prefer to sleep on such poles rather than on hair, feathers, or straw. We go with our hostess to the kitchen. The cook- ing arrangement is merely a ledge of bricks and mortar running along one side of the room. In the top are four holes, each about as big as a tin wash basin, with a hole cut through the ledge under it to furnish a draft. In each hole burn about a dozen sticks laid one on top of another. Upon the fire rest bowls of black clay, in which the family dinner is cooking. Our FiUpino friend lifts up the lids of the bowls and shows us their contents, and asks us to stay and take dinner. The first bowl con- tains rice, the second has a fish stew, the third is full of boiled beans, while in the fourth is a hash of vegetables and pork cut into small bits. The smell is delicious, but our time is so short that we can not accept her kind invi- tation. So we say good-by, and walk on to the markets which are not far away. Much of the business of the Philippine Islands is done in the markets. Every city and village has its market ]ilace, often in the park or square in the center, where the people meet daily to buy and sell. Here are many huts or booths of bamboo framework thatched with palm leaves, in which men and women merchants squat, with their goods piled about them or hung up on poles over- head. The floors serve for both chair and counter, for 174 TIIK I'llII.II'riNES tlicic [he rii.sloiiicis sil, ;incl ihcic the iiicicluiMls spread ^out their wares. Not only fowls and eggs, fish and meats, vegetables and fruit, and all kinds of food, but clay stoves, wooden ware, household utensils, as well as clothes, shoes, and dry goods, are sold in the markets. At some towns there are fairs at given times of the month or year, when people Every cif. ■■ : . .', . m • ;>: ■ : : from miles around come together to buy and sell. The markets of Manila are large, and their buildings are better than those of the country towns, but the scenes in them are much the same. We make our way through the drays and carts sur- rounding the market, and enter the dense crowd of women and men within. How noisy it is ! Some are buying and selling, some laughing and chatting, and some hurrying to and fro with great burdens on their backs or heads. HOME LIFE AND THE MARKETS 1 75 All trading is by bargaining, and the people are yell- ing and screeching out their offers to buy and refusals to sell. Each protests that the other will ruin him until the purchase is made, when usually he smiles, and the two laugh and chat together as though they had not been almost quarreling before. How many women there are ! They do most of the selling, and most of the buying as well. The porters are women. Those girls with hats as big as umbrellas have come in from the country with something to sell. The Manila market is divided up into streets, each hav- ing its own kind of business. Here is a section selling nothing but clothes. It is like a bazaar with many cells, each owned by a brown-skinned woman merchant. The dealers are bareheaded, and we can see their little bare feet sticking out of their skirts as they sit on the floor, and show us their goods. Each woman has a money box beside her, and all are keen at a bargain. Passing on we go into another street where they are selling nothing but shoes. And such shoes! The most of them have wooden soles with only a strip of leather over the toes or the instep. Some are rain shoes with toes and heels extending several inches below the soles, so that the wearer is kept well above the water and mud. None of the shoes confine the heel, and as the people seldom wear stockings, their bare feet may be seen bobbing up and down as they walk. Farther on we find stoves and cooking utensils. The shopkeepers are selling pots, pans, and kettles made of red clay. The stove most common is a clav bowl with little knobs inside it to hold the pots above the charcoal fire 176 THE PHILIPPINES built in the bottom. A separate stove is used for each dish, and in rich men's houses a dozen fires may be going at once. We spend some time among the rice sellers who are measuring out rice from the enormous baskets in which it is kept. Rice is the bread of the Philippines, and every family buys some every day. Not far away is the fish market, where are all kinds of fish, fresh and dried, from minnows, not so big as a baby's little finger, to fish so large that they are cut in slices for steaks. Many fish are sold alive, being kept in baskets of bamboo so tightly woven that they will hold water. Every customer feels the fish before buying, to make sure that it is fresh, and then the peddler kills it by pounding it on the back with a stick. It is interesting to see the chickens and pigeons in baskets and cages of loosely woven bamboo. Hogs are kept until wanted, and there are pens of the dearest little guinea pigs, which are sold to be eaten as we eat rabbits or squirrels. Among the most delicious things sold are the fruits. There are bananas, large and small, with skins red, yellow, and white ; there are lemons, oranges, pineapples, and great balls of breadfruit. We each try a slice of the papaw, a fruit as big as a musk melon, and not unlike it, although it grows on a tree. It tastes sweet, but is rather insipid, so we buy something else. We are delighted with the mango, a rich yellow fruit as large round as your fist, and often si.x inches in length. This is the queen of the fruits of the I'hi1ii)])incs. It has a long, narrow seed sur- rounded by flesh which is deliciously sweet, with a slight HOME LIFE AND THE MARKETS 1 77 turpentine flavor. It <;ro\vs on a tree, found almost every- where in Luzon, and also in other parts of the Philip- pines. A few cents pays for all the fruit we can eat, and we walk on, peeling bananas and munching them as we go. Among the vegetables are lettuce, cabbage, sweet pota- toes, onions, the green shoots of the bamboo, as well as many things strange to our eyes. One of the woman ped- dlers picks up a handful of the white roots she is selling, and asks us to buy. We each take a root and bite into it, but spit it out quickly. It is as hot as fire, our tongues and lips smart as though they were poisoned, and we take quick bites of banana to cool them. This root is ginger. It grows wild in the woods, and is used by the natives to make a weak tea and a fish sauce. What are the queer nuts in that tray on the other side of the ginger .'' They look like green butternuts. There is a little pile of lime near them, with palm leaves and tobacco beside it. See that old woman who has come up. She picks up a nut and bites into it. As she opens her mouth, we notice her gums are apparently bleeding. Her tongue is red, and her teeth seem to drip blood. She has a quid inside her left cheek which she chews now and then during her talk with the root seller. She is chewing the betel, a nut like those on the tray. The betel nut is the fruit of the areca palm. It is cut up and mixed with lime and tobacco, and thus chewed, making the saliva the color of blood. The habit is com- mon not only throughout the PhiUppine Islands, but also in Siam, Burma, and other parts of the world. It has much the same effect as tobacco upon those who use it. 178 'IllK I'llll.ll'I'INKS 25. A TRIP THROUGH TH?: COUNTRY — RICi:, SL'GAR, AND TOBACCO WI'^ leave Manila this m()rniii<; to sec sonicthino; of the Filipinos on their farms, and in their towns and villages. Our journey will last several weeks, for Luzon is the largest island of the Philippines, and includes more than a third of all the land in the group. It has about half of their entire population, and is the best developed and the wealthiest of all. It has many resources, and we shall see some of the chief industries of the archipelago during the journey. Our first trip is through the rich valley which runs from Manila northward to the Gulf of Lingayen (len-ga-yan'). This valley is more than one hundred miles long, and in places fifty miles wide. The oldest railroad of the Philip- pines runs through it, and we go on the cars. How delightful it is ! We have shot out of the city and are speeding along over a plain bordered on each side by magnificent mountains as blue as the Alleghanies in mid- summer. The car windows are open, and the fresh air blows through. On each side of the track are vast fields of rice, dotted here and there with groves of bananas, patches of Indian corn, or the pale green of little sugar plantations. Now we pass a clump of tall, feathery bam- boos, and now a road or stream lined with these beautiful trees. We can see but few houses from the car windows, al- though some of the towns are made up of a single street several miles long. The houses are hid by the bamboos A TRIP TIIROUtUI THE COUNTRY 179 ;r»5^i^i?^f^?i^J«s*^.", ,/.// ■f.sai hJ- '^^ ' 4« " — vast fields of rice." and other trees which shade them. There are no buildings in the fields. Most of the people live in villages scattered along the roads, as in many countries of Europe. Some of them walk several miles to their work every day. There is but little stock. We see neither cows nor sheep. The ponies of Luzon are raised in other sections, and the only animals visible are the carabaos, and now and then an ugly black pig. The carabaos are everywhere. They drag farm carts with solid wooden wheels a yard in diameter, and haul sleds where the ground is so soft that carts can not be used. We see them in the mud of the rice fields, going along, with their heads down, drawing rude one-handled plows. In many places they are ridden by men or children ; and still stranger they are often ridden by birds. Every other buffalo we see in the fields has a OUk COLONIES ^ 1 I i8o TIIK I'llll iri'iNES liiid oil his back. There is one now (|iiietly feeding uitli a great white crane roosting on him. Farther on is an- other, upon which stands a crow. Each bird is picking at its buffalo, but the buffalo understands it. He knows that the birds are good flycatchers, and that they live on the insects that feed upon him. "We see them in the mud of the rice fields." Look again at the fields. Those devoted to rice are surrounded by low, mud walls upon which green grass and wild flowers are growing. The walls are to keep in the water with which the rice is flooded, and they also form paths through the fields. You can see people walking upon them, and carabaos ridden by children going to or coming from pasture. In some places the rice is still green, but more often it is of a rich golden color with well-headed stalks. That A TRIP THROUGH THE COUNTRY l8l rice is ready for harvest. The seeds from which it came were planted in beds months ago, and the little sprouts were set out one at a time in the mud, so that the field, when finished, looked like one of our wheat fields in the spring. Then the rainy season came on and gave the land a good soaking. It covered the sprouts with water, and they grew. The fields now look much like our oats or wheat when ready for harvest ; they are fit for cutting ; after that the rice must be thrashed and hulled. Rice is the chief food crop of the Philippines, and we shall see the people working in it almost everywhere during our travels. There is a field where they are harvesting now. See those big-hatted women whose red skirts show out above the yellow grain ! Each has a little knife in her hand ; she is cutting the rice stalk by stalk, and binding it up in fat sheaves not bigger than a good-sized bouquet. Farther on is a field in which the sheaves are shocked up, and next to it one where men are thrashing. A blind- folded carabao is walking over the straw to tread the rice out. Sometimes men and women jump up and down upon the rice to thrash it, and sometimes the grains are pulled from the stalk through sawlike machines. After this the hulls must be pounded off with hard wooden pestles in a mortar made of a block of tough wood. Nearly every farmer has such a mortar, and one of the daily chores of the boys and girls of the family is to pound the rice out. After being hulled, the grain is winnowed by throwing it up in the air .so that the chaff blows away. Farther up the valley we come into a region where the soil is l)etter fitted for sugar. The country seems flooded with a sea of pale green which rises and falls in waves i82 Tin; I'liii.ii'rixKs under the wind. We are now in the sugar lands, and for miles sec nothing but cane. Here and there men are l^lowing with water buffaloes. How rich the soil is ! The newly turned ground forms islands of black in the ocean of green. We see barefooted girls planting the crop, laying the bits of cane end to end in the furrows just as they did in Hawaii. How rude everything is! In the Hawaiian Islands there were steam plows, and all sorts of labor-saving machinery. Here the work is all done by hand. The girls are even using their bare feet to cover the cane, and fresh planting supplies are brought to the droppers on carabao sleds. In other fields they are cutting the ripe cane, and cart- ing or sledding it to rude mills where the juice is squeezed out and reduced to coarse sugar. This is one of the chief products of the Philippines, and we shall see many thriv- ing sugar plantations in the Visayan Islands farther south. We cross several rivers during our journey. The Philippines are well watered. There are brooks and creeks every few miles. The banks are lined with trees, and we frequently see boys fishing in the shade. The larger streams have boats and cascoes floating upon them, and we often pass a raft of timber or bamboo poles float- ing down to the market. Leaving the train we spend a night in one of the towns. They are much the same everywhere. Each has a plaza or open space in the center ujjon which face the church, the town oflfices, a store or so, and some of the best houses. The streets run out from the plaza ; they are often mere roads lined with houses oi' Inits. Many of the houses in the villages are thatched with A TRIP TlIROUCll THE COUNTRY i8- palm leaves; ihcir huts ha\c walls ol woven bamboo splints tied to a framework of bamboo poles. The roofs are of nipa palm leaves sewed together, and tied to the roof poles with strings of rattan. The leaves overlap one another like shingles, forming a water-tight covering. The roofs are often built on the ground, and carried \ through the streets to be placed on the walls. "The houses are built upon posts." The houses are built upon posts so that the floors are six or eight feet above the ground, and so high up that the carabaos, chickens, and hogs can be kept under them. The people must go up steps and ladders to get into their houses. Some of the better class country houses have two stories, like the houses we saw in Manila. They have a framework of timber, board walls, and large sliding win- l84 'III'" I'lIII.Il'PhN'KS ildws ot lallicc work oi" j;l;iss. They aic sokK)ni plas- tered or papered. The living rooms are on the second floor, as the people do not like to sleep near the ground. We leave the cars at Dagupaii (da-goo'pan), near the Gulf of Lingayen, and there take a coasting steamer for Aparri, a thriving port of northeastern Luzon at the mouth of the Cagayan (ka-ga-yan') River. This river is one of the larg- est in the archipelago, and it forms the outlet of a great valley containing some of the best tobacco lands of the world. It has annual floods which carry down the rich earth from the mountains and spread it over the fields, fertilizing them as Egypt is fertilized by the Nile. Our ship has come from Manila to Aparri for a cargo of tobacco. We see vessels loading tobacco as we drop anchor, and learn that hundreds of thousands of bales are annually shipped from Aparri. The captain introduces us to some of the planters, and we go with them on a little river steamer up the Cagayan Valley. This valley is, if anything, more beautiful than the region we have just left. The mountains are covered with trees, and on their lower slopes are thousands of patches of the rich dark green leaves of the tobacco plant. Here and there we see a great shed, thatched with palm leaves, used for curing the tobacco, and now and then pass a vil- lage in which the planters and workmen live. Tobacco plants are grown in seed beds or nurseries. The seed is sown, and the plants, when they have well sprouted, are set out so close together that there are sometimes ten thousand plants on one acre. This is done in October or November, and by March or April the leaves are ready for harvest. In the meantime the crop is carefully culti- A TRIP THROUGH THE COUNTRY 1 85 vated. It is weeded usually by women and girls who also go carefully over each plant every morning to pick off the worms. The leaves are cut off and then cured and sorted. They are packed in bundles of one hundred, and these bundles into bales so tightly pressed that each contains four thousand leaves. The bales are sent down to Aparri and thence shipped to the factories of Manila. The PhiHppine Islands are famous for their tobacco. The tobacco plant grows well in almost every part of the archipelago, and vast quantities of it are raised and ex- ported. Much of it is sent away in the cigars and ciga- rettes made at Manila. Some of the factories of that city employ thousands of hands, many of whom are women and girls noted for their skill in rolling cigars. In such factories one may see hundreds of girls sitting on the floor or on stools half a foot high, with low tables before them containing piles of the dark brown leaves. They work rapidly and some make hundreds of cigars in a day. Men and boys are also employed. A large amount of the tobacco is consumed in the Philippines, for not only men but also women, and some- times even boys and girls, smoke cigars and cigarettes. In the house and out they may be seen puffing away, and we are often politely invited to join in a smoke. At Aparri we are near the northern end of the Philip- pine archipelago. There are some little islands belonging to the United States north of Luzon, but our time is so limited that we shall not be able to visit them or to ex- plore Formosa, which is still farther north. There are ])e<)plc at Aparri, however, wlio know the latter island (juite well, and from them we learn much about it. lS6 Tin: I'lIII.II'I'INES Formosa bcloni;s to Japan, having; hccn ceded to that country by C'hiua at tlic close ot the Chincse-JaiJiinese War in 1895. It is a volcanic island and is in most re- spects like the Philippines. It is about one third the size of Luzon and has more than three million j)C()ple. It is so close to China that many of its inhabitants are Chinese, although there are savages in the mountains quite as wild as any of our Philippine tribes. Formosa is a very rich island. It has tea gardens and sugar plantations which are chiefly owned by Chinese and foreigners. Its mountains contain coal, iron, and gold, and they are covered with forests of valuable hard woods. The island has curious trees, including some yielding soaj), tallow, and camphor. The soap-tree fruit has seeds which can be used in the place of soap for washing ; the tallow trees, which are somewhat like our poplars, bear a white berry about as big as a pea, from which tallow is made; and the camphor tree produces the camphor of commerce. Camphor trees grow to a great size in Formosa, a single tree sometimes being twenty-five feet in circumference. The camphor comes from the sap obtained by cutting the tree into chips and boiling them. The mixture of water and chips is distilled and the result is pure camphor, which is run off into molds and cooled. It is exported to all parts of the world. Beginning at Formosa the empire of Japan extends in a long chain of islands, large and small, almost to Kam- chatka in Siberia, a distance of thousands of miles. The archipelago includes the Riu Kiu Islands, the four great islands which comprise the chief part of the empire, and the unimportant Kuriles (kdo'rils) still farther north. We THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS OF LUZON 1 8/ have fully described Japan during our travels in Asia, and we shall not further explore it, and for the same reason we shall not go to Hongkong off the east coast of China. We have hardly begun our explorations of the Philippine Islands, and, like good Americans, we want to give as much time as we can to our own possessions in this far- away part of the world. 26. THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS OF LUZON LEAVING Aparri, we mount horses and make our way back over the mountains to Manila, now going for miles through tall pines, and now cutting our way through forests of hard woods so bound together by vines that we can go but few miles a day. The hills are so steep in places that our horses almost fall backward, and when they de- scend, they keep their forefeet together and slide. The foothills and valleys are often covered with a wiry grass so high that we drop the reins and hold up our hands to prevent the grass cutting our faces as we ride through. A part of the trail is through the beds of mountain streams walled and roofed with bamboos and vines, mak- ing a green arbor miles in length, but so low in places that we have to hug the necks of the ponies to keep our heads on our shoulders, and so thick at both sides and on top that the hot sun can not get through. There are immense trees on both sides of us, and looking up we can often follow their trunks with our eyes for one hundred feet ov more to where the first limbs begin. Now we go through a grove of fern trees with branches i88 THE riiii.irriNES fifteen feet long^ and leaves of feathery lace ; and now into hills covered with cedars and pines. There are orchids everywhere and strange flowering plants. We try to make notes of the trees, but soon give up in despair. More than half of our Philippine territory is covered with timber, and the forests form much of its wealth. Six hun- dred and sixty-four varieties of native trees are already known ; and among these are fifty species from which rub- ber, gutta percha, and other gums are extracted. There are also banyan trees with great roots extending down from their branches. There are forests of the most beau- tiful hard woods, including ebony and the Filipino mahog- any. Along the coasts are cocoanut and other i)ahn trees and bamboos everywhere on the plains, along the streams and in the mountains as well. The bamboo grows in clumps of from a half dozen to two score or more stalks, which shoot up at a slight angle to a height of forty or fifty feet. The stalks are green with knots like a fishing pole, and little branches with leaves not unlike grass leaves at each knot. The stalks are of all sizes, some as small as a bab)''s finger and others as big as the leg of a man. The Filipino uses the bamboo for almost everything. The cane forms his milk can and water bucket. He splits it to ])ieces and weaves it into baskets and hats. He fastens it to a block of wood and makes a candle- stick, or with a shorter section an inkwell or a spittoon. The farmer uses rakes and harrows of bamboo, which he hauls to the field on a bamboo sled hitched to a carabao by a bamboo yoke, which he dri\'es ])crhaps with bamboo reins. The lisherman has nets of bamboo and lisliiny THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS OF LUZON 189 traps of the same. Water is carried over the fields in bamboo pipes, and many bridges are made of bamboo poles. Some of the houses have a bamboo framework with walls of woven bamboo splints looking like basket work and floors of bamboo poles. The native climbs into such a house up a ladder of bamboo, sits on the bamboo floor upon a bamboo stool, before a table which may have bamboo legs, and eats the shoots of the young bamboo, which are as delicious as any of our green vegetables at home. As we travel onward, now crossing a range of mountains and now a cultivated valley, we come upon many different peo- ple and tribes. We are in a new country at every few miles ; the people have a different lan- guage, so that the natives of one province often can not Filipino milkman. make themselves understood in other provinces near by. We shall have to get new interpreters every few days if we would study the people, although we can make our way through the settled portions of the country with Span- ish, for this language has long been taught in the schools. Nevertheless, only one Filipino in ten speaks Spanish, and outside the civilized reirions but few natives understand it. IQO iiii'; riiii.irriN'Es III oui shml loiir w c ran not src iiiiu h nl tin- wild int-n (it the Philippines. Ihe most ot the islands are still only- partial ly e.\]")lored, and some are almost unknown. The Philippines have eighty different tribes which are more or less savage. Some are very degraded and others semi- civilized, although they are pagans. In our trip over the mountains we see the Igorrotes (eg-gor-ro'tas), who have their own towns and villages. They are a fine -looking W race, tall, strong, and well formed, with brown skins, high cheek bones, and aqui- line noses. They are war- riors, and we are a little careful how we address those who have spears in their hands. The Igorrotes on ordinary occasions wear but little clothing, except a breech cloth and perhaps some tattooing. We see many thus clad at work in the fields. They have little farms on the foothills of northwestern Luzon, which they plow with carabaos and sometimes irrigate with rude aqueducts. They raise cof- fee, rice, and tobacco, as well as sweet potatoes and corn. They mine iron and copper and are skilled blacksmiths, making excellent lances and swords. We catch glimpses of other wild tribes in the different mountain regions, but the languages are strange and the Native of Luzon. THROUGH TIH-: MOUNTAINS OF LUZON 19I natives sometimes unfriendly. We have heard that there are still head hunters and cannibals among them, and although we can hardly believe this, we decide to let them alone as long as they do not molest us. Most of the natives we meet seem more afraid of us than we are of them. This is especially so of the Negritos (na-gre't5s), who are said to be the aborigines of the islands. They flee at our approach, and we sometimes catch glimpses of them as they hide behind rocks, peep- ing out at us as we pass. What curious people they are ! The word " Negrito " means little negro, and this word describes them. They are a race of black pygmies with woolly hair, thick lips, and flat noses. Most of them are naked save that the men wear a cloth about the loins, and the women a strip of cotton or bark forming a sort of skirt that reaches from the waist to the knees. Som.e women have also strings of beads about their necks. How ugly they look ! Their legs are spindling, their stomachs swell out, and their foreheads sink in. They are mentally and physically weak and are as degraded as any savages we have yet seen. They offer sacrifices to spirits which they believe to e.xist in the woods and moun- tains. The Negritos have no fixed habitations, but wander from place to place, sleeping in caves and in little shelters of bamboo poles bound with grass. Some grow patches of rice or Indian corn, but most of them live upon roots, wild fruits, and such game as they can find in the woods. They hunt deer and wild hogs with bows and arrows, and sometimes trap them with loops of rattan, spearing the 192 Tin; riiii.iri'iNKS animals when they are so tangled up in the loops that they can not escape. In the past many of the Negritos were enslaved by the other Filipino tribes, and we may meet some of these little negroes acting as servants as we go on with our travels ; for these people are to be found throughout the archipelago. Later, we make a trip up the Pasig River and in and along the coast of Laguna de Bay. We should like to Mayon volcano. visit the Mayon volcano at the southeastern end of the island, and the Taal at the southwest. The Taal volcano rises in a lake partially surrounded by mountains ; it is a thousand feet high, and its steaming crater is more than a mile wide. The Mayon volcano is one of the most beautiful mountains of the Philippines, and it equals almost any other mountain of the world in beauty. It is almost a half mile higher than Mount Washington, and is a perfect cone from the top of which rise plumes of feathery vapor which can be seen for miles out at sea. THE VISAYAN ISLANDS I93 27. THE VISAYAN ISLANDS — THE HEMP INDUSTRY WE have left Manila on one of the coasting steamers, and are now making our way from port to port through the Visayan Islands, which form the middle zone of our Philippine archipelago. They are of much the same nature as Luzon, composed of mountains and valleys with rich plains here and there along the coast. The land is everywhere green. The plains are covered with plantations of rice, sugar, and hemp, and the moun- tains are so wooded that they look blue in the distance, rolling on and on in smoky masses until lost in the low- hanging clouds. The coasts are bordered with cocoanut trees which here grow at their best, and under them are silver-gray villages of thatched huts, with fishing traps on the beach, and fishing inclosures fenced with bamboos extending far out from the shore. We pass quaint boats with outriggers manned by brown-skinned men and boys engaged in catching and trapping the fish for which the waters are noted. Some are gathering beche de mer, and others the pearl shells off the coral islands of the group. As we go onward, stopping at a new island every few days, we are surprised at the size of the Visayan Islands, and also at their resources and large population. These islands have about a fifth of all the land in the Philippines ; they are more than twice as large as Vermont. They have more than one third of all the people of the Philippines, or more than four times the combined population of the Solomons, the Fijis, New Caledonia, Samoa, the Carolines, 194 nil-; iiiii ii'i'iNKs aiul \hc 1 lawaiiiin Islamls. Tlicy have ihicc hiindicd aiul fifty towns, ranginy; from fifteen hundred to twenty-five thousand inhabitants each, and more than thirteen hundred and sixty villages with a total population of about two and one half millions. The most of the Visayan people are on the six larger islands of the group ; namely, Panay (pa-ni'), Negros (na'gros), Samar (sa'mar), Leyte (la' til), Cebu (sa-bbo'), and Bohol (bo-hdl'). These islands are also the richest. They abound in hard wood and in hemp, sugar cane, tobacco, and rice. They raise many kinds of vegetables and all sorts of tropical fruits. Some of them are rich in iron, copper, and coal, and others have gold, silver, and lead. The Visayan people arc somewhat similar to the natives of Luzon, although they have a different language. They live about the same way, and their villages are not unlike those we saw north of Manila. We stop at Cebu, the capital of Cebu Island, situated where Magellan made his treaty with the natives, and cross over to Mactan, just opposite, where he was killed. Cebu is one of the chief hemp ports of the Philippines, and we can now see how this important product is rai.sed and prepared for the markets. Do you know what hemp is ? P2very one of us has used it again and again. We have handled it as string and played with it as jumping rope. Some of our farmers bind their grain with it, our seamen use it to ])ull up and let down their sails, and it is made into all sorts of rojics from clotheslines to cables. Here in the Philippines the finer kinds are woven into cloth, and some varieties are THE VISAYAN ISLANDS I95 sent to Paris where they are made into hats, nets, and carpets. Hemp comes from the fibers of certain plants found in various parts of the world. Manila hemp, which is about the best of all, is the variety produced in the Philippines. It is the fiber of the same plant family that produces the banana. The hemp plant looks just like a banana plant, being composed of many wide leaves wrapped round and round a central stalk, which, when full grown, reaches a height of fifteen or more feet. The outer leaves are of a beautiful green ; they are about a foot wide and often ten feet in length. As they grow they branch out from the stalk, shading the ground. The hemp comes from the white inner leaves, which are wound tightly around the central stem, there being so many that the plant at its base is often ten inches thick. As it stands in the field it is as crisp as celery, and it can be chopped off with a carving knife or corn cutter. Each leaf has countless fibers extending through it, and these, when cleaned and dried, form the hemp of commerce. Hemp is raised in all of the Philippine Islands, and it is so largely exported that it brings in millions of dollars every year. At the town where we land on the coast of Leyte, we see hemp fibers spread out on fences to dry, and we see men baling the hemp. Later on we go out on horseback with one of the natives to visit his plantation, passing buffalo carts loaded with hemp coming in. We go by vast fields of hemp, and our friend takes us through a mile or so of hemp fields on his estate to a place where men are harvesting the crop. We follow him closely for OUK COLUNIES 12 196 iiiK I'll 11.1 ri'i.\i:s fear we may get lost. It is noon, but the i)lants are so near together that their great leaves join antl siiut out the sun ; there are no paths, and we can see but a few feet in any direction. Now and then we stumble upon a cocoa- nut tree, but, as a rule, there is nothing but hemp, hemp, hemp. Here and there is an open place where a stalk has been cut, but sprouts are growing about the stump, and we are Stripping hemp. told that a plantation once started reproduces itself many times. In forming new fields the sprouts from the older plants are pulled off and planted, and three years after that time the crop is ready for cutting. The only culti- vation necessary is to keep down the weeds and to set out fresh sprouts now and then. Let us watch them harvesting the hemp. Brown-skinned, I THE VISAVAN ISLANDS 197 half-naked men chop down the plants and tear them apart, throwing away the green outer leaves and taking the long white inner ones on their shoulders to the strippers. The strippers squeeze out the pulp and juice by drawing the hemp over a log upon which a dull knife is so hinged that it can be forced tightly down upon the leaf to press the pulp out as the man pulls it through. As the fiber comes out it is wrapped about a stick to keep it from breaking, and when finished it looks like a skein of fine silk. It now needs only to be dried in the sun to be ready for market. After drying, the hemp is twisted up like hanks of yarn, and taken to the warehouses, where it is sorted and packed for shipment to all parts of the world. Leaving Leyte we call at Negros to visit some of the sugar plantations for which that island is noted, and then sail on to Iloilo (e-lo-e'lo), on the south coast of Panay. Iloilo is the second city of the archipelago and the chief port of the Visayans ; it lies on an arm of the sea just off the strait, which runs between Panay and the little rocky island of Guimaras (ge-ma-ras'), having a wide and deep harbor. The ground about the town is low and sandy, but there are mountains behind it. There are cocoanut trees on the edge of the city, and we hear the wind rustling through their green leaves as we ride in one of the small boats to the shore. We are again in the home of the cocoanut, and from now on shall see men gathering and drying A bundle of hemp. iqS Till". riiiiirriNES cocoanut meal lor copia wherever we go. Nearly all the Visayan Islamls raise copra for e\j)ort, and vast quantities of it are produced in Mindanao and in the Sulu Archipelago still farther south. We spend but little time in Iloiio. It is only a small city, its best houses made of stone covered with stucco, and the "They are used for plowing." poorer ones of poles thatched with palm leaves. We shop at the stores, and visit factories and other establishments, but find them much the same as those of Luzon. We take exxursions out into the country either on horse- back or in carts hauled by cattle with humps on their backs. They are similar to the sacred cattle of India, being as fnie looking as a i)ure Jersey cow. They are used for plowing and all sorts of work. TllK VISAVAN ISLANDS 199 "That log is her water bucket. The Visayans outside the cities live much the same as the natives of Luzon. They are huddled together in vil- lages, and their houses are, if anything, more rude than those farther north. They are usually built w^ell up from the ground, so that one has to climb to the front door on a ladder of bamboo poles. The ladders have rungs about as big around as one's arm, and we sit on them now and then as we chat with the people. The rungs, in fact, are the front steps of the huts, and we frequently see the little ones playing upon them, turning over and over, and crawling in and out as in a gymnasium or circus. Out in the country the people have on less clothing than in the north. Little children wear cotton shirts which reach halfway to the knees, and the babies are often naked. Other things are equally primitive. See that girl in the field over there with a loir on her shoulder. That log; 200 llllL I'llll.Il'riNES is her water bucket, aiul she is l)ringin<^ a drink to her father. It is a bamboo tube six inches thick and twice as long as herself, with all the joints, except the one at the lower end, knocked out so that it will hold water. If she gives us a drink, we shall probably have to stand 1 A schoolboy. A schooigirl. behind her and allow her to lower the tube to the level of our mouths, and the chances are, if we do so, we shall get a cold bath during the drinking. Before leaving Iloilo we go to see our little brown cousins at school. The United States government has established schools in all parts of the islands, for it has determined that every Filipino shall have a good educa- MINDANAO AND THE MOROS 20I tion. The schools look much like ours, although the children ot the same age are smaller. They arc brown skinned, and they wear clothes which would seem odd in our schoolrooms at home. Every boy has his shirt outside his trousers, and both boys and girls are in their bare feet or in slippers without stockings. We arc surprised at the interest the children take in their studies. Every one throws up his hand as the teacher asks a question, and the answers are bright. The Filipinos are naturally intelligent, and anxious to learn. They all study English. They are being taught the principles of our government, and in time they will probably be as far advanced in American citizenship as our people at home. 28. MINDANAO AND THE MOROS WE are on the beach at Zamboanga (sam-bo-an'ga), on the great island of Mindanao, at the southern end of our PhiUppine archipelago. We are only about three hundred miles from the Equator; but the climate is by no means unpleasant, for the fresh air from the sea fans our faces, whispering a welcome as it sweeps through the palms overhead. Mindanao is by far the most important of the islands in the southern part of the Philippines. It is larger than Indiana, and although but little of it is inhabited by civilized people, it is one of the richest islands upon earth. Its soil will produce anything found in the northern parts of the archipelago, and it raises hemp, sugar, tobacco, and rice. It has all sorts of tropical 202 THP: rUlMPPINES fruits, and also pepper, cloves, nutmegs, and cinnamon. There are coffee fields within a mile of where we are sitting, and cocoanut trees may be seen by the millions on the lowlands of the coast. They are very tall, and some bear so many nuts that a single tree could furnish one for every day of the year. Mindanao is thought to be rich in coal, copper, iron, and gold. Its forests include teak, ebony, and Filipino mahogany, and its pasture lands support herds of horses, cattle, and carabaos. The island is mountainous, three great volcanic ranges crossing it from north to south. The middle range is the highest, containing Mount Apo, an active volcano. Mindanao is well watered. It has the largest river of the archipelago, the Rio Grande at the south ; and in addition two hundred other rivers as well as numerous lakes, some of which are quite large. This island is but thinly peopled. It is almost as large as Luzon, but it has not one seventh as many inhabit- ants, and most of its population is savage or at best semicivilized. Many of the inhabitants are Malayan tribes known as Moros, of whom we shall see a great deal as we take a trip around the coast. There are also Visayans in the northern and eastern provinces, and in the mountains are Negritos and wild Indonesians. We shall not dare travel through the interior unac- companied by soldiers. Many of the mountain people are barbarous in the extreme. Some use poisoned arrows, some have human sacrifices, and others might hunt us for our heads like the head-hunters of Formosa and Borneo. MINDANAO AND THE MOROS 203 Some of the Mindanao tribes build their houses in trees, and others put them high up on bamboo poles, crawling into them on notched sticks which they pull up at night. In some tribes the men are naked, and the women wear skirts only about a foot long. The Bagobos, who are found about the slopes of Mount Apo, wear ivory or shell earrings as big round, as a cup. There is a small button on the inside of the earring which goes through the lobe of the ear. They wear clothes of grass cloth. The men have embroidered jackets and short trunks, and the women jackets and skirts which reach to the knee. Both sexes are fond of jewelry, and the women wear strings of bells on their legs and heavy brass rings on their ankles. All these tribes are pagans, worshiping spirits which they believe to live in the trees and mountains. Our government is civilizing them ; some have begun farming, and there are many schools. The most interesting peo- ple in this part of the world are the Moros, of whom there are thousands in Mindanao, and also in the Sulu Archipelago. a Bagobo. So far the Filipinos among whom we have traveled have been either Christians or pagans. The Moros are Moham- medans ; that is, they believe in a religion founded by Mohammed, who was born in Arabia 570 years after Christ. This man claimed to have revelations from God which were collected into a book called the Koran. He had many folUnvcrs, who spread his religion by the sword and in other ways, until a large part of the human race 204 TlIK rinillTINES came tf) adopt it. There are millions of Mohammedans in Asia and Africa, and also in the islands of Malaysia, and especially Borneo. The Moros are supposed to be descended from the Dyaks of Borneo, who invaded this part of the world cen- turies ago. They were here when Magellan discovered the islands, and were so fierce that the Spaniards were not able to conquer them, or to keep them in complete sub- Group of Moros. jection. For a long time the Moros were noted as pirates. They had fleets of war vessels in which they sailed from Mindanao and Sulu to different parts of the Philippines, robbing the villages and killing the people, or carrying them back home as slaves. This piracy was not stopped until the Spaniards sent steam gunboats to suppress it. The Moros have their own towns and villages. They are largely fishers, but also do some farming in a rude way. MINDANAO AND THE MOROS 205 They are divided into tribes, each under its independent chief, or datto, and they have also several sultans to whom they owe a certain kind of allegiance. The dattos once had the absolute power of life and death over their subjects, and until the Americans came, they could, if they wished, A datto and his family, and Mr. Carpenter. order any one to be killed. They frequently make war upon one another, each going out to battle with his fight- ing men. They are brave and apparently hold life of but little account. Until recently all the rich Moros had slaves, and slavery still exists in some of the tribes, although the slaves are looked upon as members of the family. According to the religion of Mohammed every true believer has the right to four wives, and we shall meet many Moros who have more than one, though very few have so manv as four. 2o6 iiiK i'iiii.iri'i\i;> Such things, liowcvcr, ;iic hciiii; rapidly changed since the United States has taken jjossession ot the Philippine Islands. Our government now rules the Moros through the dattos, allowing the people to govern themselves, but, at the same time, endeavoring to prevent them from com- mitting crimes of all kinds. There is a large native town within a short walk of where we now are, and we can see the Moros at home. We first take a stroll along the wide streets of Zambo- anga, through which pmiing streams flow. The town is situated on the sea in a beautiful park facing the ocean. Its streets are lined with mango trees and cocoanut palms, and there are banana groves and coffee fields on the out- skirts. Everything is the greenest of green, and strange flowers, swayed by the sea breezes, nod to us as we walk by hou.se after house. The buildings are much like those of Iloilo, for Zamboanga is a Christian town, although it is our Mohammedan capital. Its population consists of Visayans, Chinese, and American officials and soldiers, and we now and then meet a Moro dressed in gay clothes and a turban. We cross a bridge, and within a short time find ourselves in one of the chief towns of the Moros. o^Kc 29. THE SULU ARCHIPELAGO WE are in the capital of one of the dattos of southern Mindanao. How different it is from our cities at home! All about us along the coast and back of it are hundreds of yellow and gray thatched huts, each fifteen or twenty feet square, built high upon poles under the THE SULU ARCHirEI.AGO 207 tallest of cocoanut trees. The floor of each hut is about six feet from the ground, reached by a wide ladder with round bamboo rungs. Some of the huts are quite large, and some have little verandas in front of them. '"Some of the huts are quite large," Let us look into one. It has but one room ; the floor is of bamboo poles covered with mats. There are no chairs or beds, and the people sit and sleep on these mats, men, women, and children lying down side by side. The Moros are as strange as their houses. There are scores of barefooted, brown-faced men all about us, scores of brown-skinned, half-naked boys, and naked babies almost under our feet. The men wear turbans of bright colors, loose jackets, and skin-ti,L;ht trousers in stripes of red, yellow, and blue. Some have straw hats over their turbans, ending at the crown in a tin cone, which shines 2o8 Tin: rim.iriMNKs like silver under the rays of the sun. Every man and boy wears a great kris or sword at his belt; some have spears and lances, and others carry guns and are apparently ready to shoot. There are also brown-skinned women in long gowns, and little girls clad the same way ; so that all together the crowd is the oddest we have yet seen. It seems stranger the longer we look. How fierce these people are, and how different in appearance from the Tagalos and Visayans ! Their faces are darker, their cheek bones are high, and they remind us of our American Indians. Notice their blood-red lips and black teeth. They all chew the betel and seem to think black teeth prettier than white ones. Look at the woman laughing over there at the right. Did you ever see such teeth in your life ? They are jet black and curve out at the front. They have been filed down with a stone, and she considers the curve a great beauty. All these women have their teeth filed in that way. The filing was done when they were grown up and ready for marriage. The ojieration is so painful that the girls often faint away under it, but it is the fashion, and all Moro girls want their teeth filed. After filing, the teeth are blackened, and the black is renewed every few weeks. We ask our guide something about the Moro customs as we walk on through the village. He tells us that mar- riage is a matter of bargain and sale, and that a fine-look- ing girl can usually be bought for ten dollars, or for a carabao, and perhaps a few presents. Strolling down the chief street of the village, we come to a house much larger than the others. This is the resi- dence of the datto or chief, who receives us kindlv, offer- THE SULU ARCHIPELAGO 209 ing us cigarettes to smoke and betel to chew ; but we refuse, thanking him for his courtesy. He tells us he is glad the Americans have taken possession of the country, and that he is proud of being an American citizen. A few days later we leave Zamboanga for a trip around the south coast of Mindanao, stopping here and there at A Sulu village. various ports until at last we reach Davao (da'va-o), a Christian town, at the head of Davao Bay, in the south- eastern end of the island. The mountains have been in sight all the way, and now as we sail up Davao Bay we see Mount Apo, out of whose sides clouds of vapor are rolling. At night the clouds are rosy with fire. We spend some time at Davao, and from there make trips into the forests. The trees are so bound together with vines that we have to follow the streams or cut our 210 'liii: riiiiii'i'iNES way tl"ir()ii;^h. There are monkeys of many kinds, some of great size and otliers not nuieh bigger than }'our two fists. There are almost as many parrots as in Australia and New Guinea, and we often see flocks of white parrots with tufts on their heads, parrots of bright red with green wings, and other birds noted for their whistling and singing. Mindanao has doves which have golden brown bodies and green wings, great white snipes, and strange birds as big as turkeys and of the same shape. It has white herons and wild pigeons three times as big as our pigeons at home. In the woods there are also wild hogs and deer of various kinds. The bird and animal life is wonderful, and we regret that we have not time to collect specimens to take home to our friends. Leaving Davao, we sail back along the southern coast of Mindanao and then go westward to the Sulu Archi- pelago, which lies between Mindanao and Borneo. The archipelago consists of i88 islands, but they are so small that you could crowd them all into the state of Rhode Island and have space to spare. The larger islands are volcanic and high, and the smaller mere coral beds, a few feet above the level of the sea. The largest island is Tawi Tawi, which has a mountain range running through it, but the most populous and most important is Sulu. It is there that the sultan lives, and there American officials and soldiers are stationed to keep him and his people in order. Outside of Sulu there is but little arable land, the chief exports being the pearl shells gathered from the seas of this resrion. Pearl fishintr is carried on here much as in THE SULU ARCHIPELAGO 211 Australia. The shells are shipped to Europe and to the United States, and according to custom the most of the pearls are given to the sultan. We land at the port of Sulu (soo-loo'), where our sol- diers are stationed. It is a deHghtful town of about a thou- sand inhabitants, mostly Christian Filipinos, Chinese, and Americans, and is on the edge of the sea. Sulu is sur- rounded by walls, and its streets are shaded by great trees, the limbs of which come together, making arbors which shield us from the tropical sun as we stroll through them. The houses are comfortable ; most of them were erected by the Spaniards, who also stationed soldiers here to keep the natives in order. The Moros live in villages along the coast or in the interior. Their houses are often built upon poles out from the shore, so that we walk over bridges to reach them, and so that the children can lish froni the bridges or the front doors. The women never sweep, for the dirt falls down into the sea through the cracks in the floor. The Sulu Moros dress much the same as the Moros of Mindanao. They are quite as fierce, and the men and boys all carry weapons. They have similar customs, and we are told that slavery was long common among them. We take a horseback ride across the island to the town of Maibun (ml-boon') on the south coast, where the sultan has his capital. Maibun is just like the other Moro villages we have seen, only larger. It lies on the sea, and the most of it consists of thatched houses built upon piles. The sultan's guard meets us on the edge of his village and escorts us to his Majesty's royal palace, a 212 BORNEO 213 great barn of a house with nothing- gorgeous about it. The sultan is not prepossessing, and he impresses us all the less favorably because he chews the betel and smokes during our audience. Our guide tells us that he is powerful because the Moros look up to him as a representative of their religion, and therefore think he has the right to rule over them. 30. BORNEO BORNEO is so near some of the Sulu Islands that a fast steamer could go from one place to the other in a few hours; but our vessel is small, and the journey from Sulu takes more than a day. The weather is fine, and the breeze tempers the hot rays of the sun. We pass many islets covered with green, and see the Ameri- can flag floating from places ujion them. The water is smooth and so beautifully clear that when the ship stops at an island or so on the way, we hang over the rail and watch the fish swimming far down below us. The variety of sea life is such that it reminds us of the Fijis and the coral islands of the southern Pacific. At last the mountains of Borneo come into view, a hazy blue line cutting the sky. They grow larger as we come nearer, and the shores, covered with cocoanut palms and other dense vegetation, are visible. Many fishing villages are now to be seen, built high upon piles like those of the Sulus. We wind in and out along the coast, and at last come to anchor in the beautiful harbor of Sandakan (san-da'k^niX and land on l^orneo, the third OUR COLONIES I : 214 'i'"t^ t:-'^^'i' i^'J^>it:s larj^cst island of the world. It is larger than any country of Europe with the excej)tion of Russia, and more than twice the size of the whole Philippine archipelago. Borneo is so large that we can hope to see but a small part of it. Its coast line is as long as the distance from New York to Liverpool, and if we would sail round it, we shcndd have to hire a ship of our own, for there are no regular steamers. There are no roads through the interior, and our information concerning it must come from a visit to the principal ports, and what we can learn from maps and the stories of travelers. This vast country has great mountains, mighty plains, and numerous rivers. It is wild in the extreme, and much of it has not been trodden by ci\'ilized man. The mountains and lowlands are covered with jungle and forest, the trees being bound together with rattans and other ropelike vines which make it almost impossible to cut one's way through. Many of the plains are flooded during the rainy season, and the rivers swarm with crocodiles. Borneo is a land of wild animals, including elephants, rhinoceroses, boars, deer, and bears. It has a great variety of monkeys, some very small and others of enormous size, such as the orang-outang, a sort of man ape. This animal looks much like a human being, al- though it is covered with hair. When grown it is about four feet in height ; it has long arms and short legs, and is so strong that it often kills the men who attack it. The orang-outang lives in the trees, swinging itself from branch to branch by its hands. It rarely comes to the ground except for food or water, and is inoffensive if unmolested. BORNEO 215 The island has snakes of the most deadly kind and great pythons, some of which are thirty or forty feet long. There are flying lizards of a golden green color, and lizards which climb up the walls of the houses catching flies. There are butterflies, some measuring six inches across the wings, and myriads of beetles of Orang-outang'. various kinds. The island is a world of natural wonders, as we shall see in our excursions out from the ports. The people, however, are the strangest of all. The popu- lation is about two millions in number, almost all savages. There are many different tribes, but they are chiefly Indo- nesians, called Dyaks (dl'aks). Those on the coast near Sandakan are much like the Moros, and they live the same way. Those of the interior are more savage than the 2l6 Till-: KAST INDIKS wildest (if our Filipinos, many of Ihcni ])iacticin<; head- hunting and being by no means iiaiticular whose heads they take. They lie in wait for tra\elers and kill them if they ean cateh them alone or in small parties, in order to secure their heads as trophies. They dry the heads thus taken and hang them up in their huts. The man who has the largest number of human heads is thought to be the bravest, and among some tribes it is said one is not esteemed of any account until he has cap tured at lea.st one head. Some of these people believe that the persons whose heads they take will become their slaves in the next world, and others that a new head hung upon the walls of their hut will bring the family jjrosjieritv, and make it successful in all Dyak woman. j^s Undertakings. The savages of Borneo, for whom we shall use the general term " Dvaks," look not unlike the best savage races of our Philippine Islands, although they are lighter in color, taller, and more active. They wear but little clothing, the men of some tribes having only a band of bark or cotton cloth about the loins, and the women short petticoats of bark or cotton. In other regions both men and women wear jackets. The BORNEO 217 Dyak's ear. Dyaks arc fond of dis})lay and have many ornaments peculiar to themselves. Some of the women wear corsets made of brass or lead rings strung on strips of rattan, which they wind about their waists and the lower parts of their bodies. A woman so dressed looks not unlike a barrel walking off upon legs with the head and arms sticking out of the top. The brass rings are often highly polished, so that the girls appear dressed in coats of bright mail. Many of both sexes wear enormous ear plugs and earrings, some of which are as big around as a napkin ring. The holes in the lobes of their ears are so large that they can carry a cigar in them; and one traveler says he measured one that was seven inches long. We ask how such holes are made and are told that the ear is pierced during babyhood. The hole is very small at first, but it is stretched by putting larger and larger plugs in it, so that when the child is grown up, he has a loop or hole in his ear from one to four inches long. The Dyaks file and blacken their teeth, sometimes so cutting the edges that they look like saws. They bore holes into the teeth and fit brass jMvots in them ; they also hollow them out like those of the Moros. In North Borneo many of the Dyaks live in villages, some having small farms. They raise fruit and rice and also tobacco and sugar cane. Both women and men labor in the fields, but the women do most of the work. More Dyak's teeth. 2l8 TIIK KASr I XL) IKS often, however, llie\' are tisliers ami huulers, and very expert hunters they are. They use dogs to help them, spearing the game when the dogs bring it to bay. They shoot poisoned arrows through blowpipes and catch croco- diles with a sharp wooden stick to which a rattan rope is attached. They bait the stick by thrusting it through a dead monkey. The crocodile swallows the monkey, and the sharp-pointed stick gets crosswise in his throat or stomach, and the harder he pulls the tighter it is fastened. After a while the crocodile is worn out, and he can then be pulled in and killed. The natives of Bor- neo live differently in different parts of the island. In some uroup ot uyaKS. tribes each family has its own house, and in others all dwell together in great thatched buildings with many com- partments, each compartment belonging to a family. In some villages there are bachelors' flats where the young unmarried men sleep and where travelers are kept over night. Their houses are generally upon poles high up from the ground, and in some places they are even built in BORNEO 219 the trees. The buildings arc much the same as in the PhiHppines, the walls and roofs being of the nipa palm and the framework of poles. Very little iron is used, everything being carefully fitted together, and the walls and roofs tied or sewed on with rattan. "Their houses are upon poles." All Borneo, although most of it is still in the hands of such savages, is now claimed by the British and the Dutch. The British possessions are by far the smaller. They include the states of North Borneo, Brunei (broo'ni), and Sarawak (sa-ra'wak) in the northern and north- western parts of the mainland. The rest of the island be- longs to Holland, being under the administration of the governor general of the Dutch East Indies, whom we may visit during our travels in Java. We spend a few days in Sandakan. It is the capital of North Borneo, and is therefore the residence of many 220 Tin-: i:ast indies English officials and merchants. It has about seven thou- sand peoi)lo, of whom perhaps half are Chinese. The English own the best stores, and their houses make Sanda- kan look more like one of the towns of northern Australia than like the Moro settlements we have just left. There is a good hotel, a newspaper office, and a museum in which we have a chance to see some of the curious things used by the natives. The English have brought much of the land near San- dakan under cultivation ; and we go out with them to visit their plantations of coffee, tobacco, and hemp. They show us places where vast numbers of rubber trees have been set out, and also cocoanut groves which they have planted to produce copra for Europe. We spend some time with the governor and other officials, and then take ship for Brunei and Sarawak along the west coast. The journey takes several days. We skirt the shores, seeing everywhere the same rich vegetation and low, jungle-covered plains w'ith great mountains behind them. We pass many Dyaks out fishing in their curious boats, and, sailing into Brunei, stop at the capital on a little river about fifteen miles from its mouth. We steam right up the river into the heart of the city and anchor among houses built upon piles. Some of the houses are appar- ently floating. The market is made up of stalls, each of which is a canoe, and the purchasers go from stall to stall in their boats. Brunei has a sultan, but as it is under English protection, it may be called a British possession. Our ship remains but a short time, and then steams on several hundred miles down the coast to Sarawak, which is also governed by the English. BORNEO 221 Sarawak has a j)opulation of about five hundred thou- sand Dyaks and Malays. It is one of the richest of the Borneo states, producing gold, silver, and diamonds as well as gutta-percha, camphor, beeswax, sago, pepper, and trop- ical fruits. It became a possession of England in a curious way. In 1839 when the tribes inhabiting it were fighting against one another, and their sultan could not control them, a rich Englishman, named Sir James Brooke, who was sailing about these seas in his own vessel, landed and came to the sultan's aid. He took the management of the government and brought about peace and good order. He did so well that he was made the actual ruler of the country with the title of Rajah Brooke, and some time after that Sarawak was declared to be under I^ritish protection. It is still ruled by the descendants of Sir James Brooke, who govern the island somewhat like an English colony. Our vessel stops at Kuching (koo'ching), the capital of Sarawak, a city of about twenty thousand people on the Sarawak River twenty-five miles from its mouth. The rajah has been informed of our coming, and we are well taken care of while we stay. He arranges a crocodile hunt for us and also a trip into the interior, where we have ex- citing adventures with monkeys and bears, and narrowly escape injury in our vain attempts to capture an orang- outang. The beast tears the flesh of our guide and then escapes through the trees. Returning to Kuching we rest there a few days in the comfortable homes of the English residents, and then take ship for Dutch Borneo, landing at Banjermassin (ban-yer-ma'.sin ), its chief cit)' on Ihc south coast. 222 Tlir. KAST INDIES 31. TH]' DUTCH EAST INDIES TO-DAY we begin our travels through tlie vast pos- sessions belonging to Holland in this part of the world. They are known as the Dutch East Indies and include not only the greater part of Borneo and the western half of New Guinea, but almost the whole of the Malay Archipelago. They have a territory greater than the combined areas of our Atlantic states added to Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and North and South Dakota. Many of the islands are principalities in themselves. Sumatra is longer than the distance from New York to Chicago, and Java is longer than the distance from Phila- deli:)hia to Cleveland. The Moluccas have more territory than Ohio, Celebes (sel'c-bez) more than Missouri, Java more than New York, Dutch New Guinea almost as much as California, and Dutch Borneo more than any European country except Russia. The most of this vast territory, with the exception of Java, is wild and unexplored. The islands are of about the same character as those parts of New Guinea and Borneo which we have seen. There are few roads, they are inhabited by savages, and we shall be able to visit only their coasts. Our chief travels will be confined to Java, the most important of all the islands where the Dutch capital is situated, and where the i)eople are almost as civilized as our Eilipinos. Banjermassin, in Dutch Borneo where wq are now, is built almost entirely upon the water. It lies on a branch THE DUTCH EAST INDIES 223 of the Barito River, the most of its houses standiui^ upon piles so that the water flows beneath them when the river is high. The Barito is filled with craft of all de- scription : great barges, steam tugs, little canoes, bamboo rafts, and floating houses. It has about forty thousand people, and is a place of considerable trade. It lies in the heart of a country rich in gold, diamonds, and coal. During our stay we call upon the officials. They are Dutchmen who have been sent out from Holland to gov- ern the territory. Many of them speak English, and they tell us much concerning the country. They say that the people are not unlike those we saw in the north and that they are ruled, as far as possible, through the native chiefs with themselvcG and other Dutchmen as advisers, and that this is the custom throughout the whole archipelago. The Dutch territory includes most of the island, but it is wild and almost unexplored. After a day or so at Banjermassin our steamer goes on to Celebes, an odd-shaped island larger than any of the Philippines. Our first stop is at Makassar on the southwestern end. It is a thriving port with a good harbor. It has many snow-white buildings, the homes of the Dutch, and a vast number of bamboo huts shaded by bananas and cocoanut trees, the homes of the natives. The streets are filled with brown-skinned people, the men wearing about their waists bright-colored cloths which fall almost to their feet, and the women tight skirts and loose jackets of the same stuff. There are many Chinese and Arabs and a few Europeans. The natives remind us of our Filipino cousins, and we are told that many of them are Mohammedans. 224 TIIK KAST INDIES Wc visit the sui;";ii" plantations and rice fields near the city, and make a lew sliort trips out into the country, find- ing the vegetation not unlike that of the parts of Borneo we have just left. Taking ship again, we go around the upper end of the island to Menado to visit the coffee ])]antati<)ns which are an important feature of this part of Celebes, and thence on east to the Moluccas, where Magel- lan's ships, after leaving the Philippines, loaded up with spices for their long home voyage. Spices still grow in the Moluccas, and we stop at Amboina (am- boi'na), one of these islands, to visit the clove and nutmeg plantations. Clove trees are of a beautiful green, many of them thirty or forty feet high. Some of them are covered with blossoms which range in color from the green buds to the bright red. flowers of full bloom. The cloves are the blossoms which are picked when they are red. They are cured by smoking them over a slow wood fire. This turns them brown or black, and they are then ready for use. They are next packed up in bales and boxes and shipped to all parts of the world to be used in pickles and other such things. Clove trees are [)lanted and cultivated. They begin Natives of Celebes. THE DUTCH EAST INDIES 225 to bear when they are six years old, after which they will yield up to about seventy years, eacli tree giving about six pounds of cloves every year. Nutmegs grow upon trees not unlike our joear trees, but more beautiful. They have bright yellow blossoms and their fruit is more like a peach in color, although it is shaped somewhat like a pear. It is of the size of an apricot. As it ripens the pulp which is very thick splits open and shows the nutmeg or kernel surrounded by a network of crimson mace within. In preparing the fruit for the market, the pulpy outside is thrown awav and the nuts are dried slowly in ovens. The mace is taken off and mar- keted as one spice, while the kernel itself forms another, the nutmeg of commerce. About a million and a half pounds of nutmegs and several hundred thousand pounds of mace are exported from the East Indies every year. The nutmeg tree has its first fruit when it is ten years old, ^"*'^'S'- and after this it continues to bear a long time. A good tree annually produces about three pounds of nutmegs and one pound of mace. Raising nutmegs is carried on in the different islands of Malaysia, and the business is said to be profitable. New Guinea is very near the Moluccas, and we have here not only Malayans and Indonesians such as in the Philippines, but also many fri/.zly haired and dark- 226 TIIK KASr l\I)Ii:s skinned Papuans. We arc i^cttint; outside the rc^^ion of the Malays, and it we siiould sail directly south from where we are now, we should strike the coast of northern Australia not far from Tort Darwin, which we visited on our trip round that continent. For this reason the Moluccas have many things similar to both New Guinea and Australia. It has pouch-bearing animals. There are cassowaries, parrots of many colors, birds of paradise, and kinghshers, one variety of which has a bright red bill and brilliant blue feathers. Leaving the Moluccas, we sail on to New Guinea, mereW touching the great island before again turning westward. The Dutch possessions in New Guinea are about equal in extent to those of the British, but the country is so wild that we dc not attempt to explore it. We buy a few spears and some bows and arrows of the natives for trophies, and also several red i^arrots and some skins of the birds of para- dise, and then steam out toward the west on our long voyage to Java. Our course is a little to the southward. We enter the channel between Wetter Island and the island of Timor (te-mor'), and .sail along the coast of the latter, examining the shores through our glas.ses. Timor is about three times as large as Porto Rico. It is a volcanic island, as we can see from the ragged, rough mountains. The captain telis us that the people arc almost all savages, and that it does not pay him to stop there to trade. Timor is about equally divided between the Portuguese and Dutch. A little farther westward we jxiss P^lores, a volcanic island as long as the distance from Philadelphia to lioston. Our steamer does not stop, for the most of the trading there THE DUTCH EAST INDIES 227 is ill native sailing vessels. The chief exports arc a peculiar kind of bird's nests, tortoise shell, wax, sandal- wood, and cinnamon. The nests are found in caves ; they are lined and stuck together with the saliva of the birds. They are all shipped to China, where the natives boil them and make from them a clear soup of which they are very fond. Still farther west we coast Sumbawa (soom-ba'wa), noted for its volcanoes. The word " Sumbawa " means the land of fire, and this island seems well named, for we can see the steam rising in great clouds from some of its peaks. The crater of Mount Tambora is more than seven miles wide, and so large that a good-sized city might be dropped into it without touching the edges. The crater was caused by an eruption in 1815 when the whole top of the mountain, a mass higher and thicker than Mount Washington, was blown into the air. Before that time Tambora was thirteen thousand feet high. This eruption tore off about eight thousand feet, making so great an explosion that it was heard in Sumatra, a thousand miles away, and also on Ternate, nine hundred miles off in another direction. Our captain tells us that when the eruption of Tambora occurred, the ocean for miles about was covered with float- ing timber. Ashes so coated the water that ships could hardly make their way through them, and they so filled the air that it was pitch dark in the daytime for hours after the explosion occurred. At the same time the whirl- winds lashed the sea to a foam ; they tore up the largest trees by the roots and carried men, horses, and cattle for miles through the air. A town lying at the foot of Tam- bora was swallowed up, for the shore sank, and the sea 228 TIIK KAST INDIES came in aiul covered the eailli to a tle})lli oi eij^ht feet, and there it is to this day. Notwithstanding this, there are still people living on Sumbawa. It has towns and villages, and the natives work away as though they were not in con- stant danger of another eruption. As we sail farther westward, we pass Lom- bok and Bali, other volcanic islands more thickly populated, and thence go on by Ma- dura, an island where great quantities of salt are eva])orated from sea water, and then along the north coast of Java -...::. ■.■o:canoes in sight all the way. ■ vvith VOlcanOeS in sight all the way, until at last we come to the port for Batavia, the capital of the Dutch East Indies. o>Kc 32. BATAVIA, TMK DUTCH CAPITAL WE are walking along the wide canal which runs through the principal street of Batavia. On each side of us quaint houses, with white walls and overhanging roofs of red tiles, look dow^n upon and mirror themselves in the water. The buildings are like those in Dutch j)ic- i BATAVIA, THE DUTCH CAPITAL 229 tures, and were it not for the palm trees, the orchids, the groves of bananas, and the little brown natives we see everywhere, we might imagine ourselves in one of the cities of Holland. And so we are ! Batavia represents Holland. It is the capital of the Dutch East Indies, a territory about sixty times as large as Holland itself. Away out here near the Equator the Dutch government has built up a town, almost European, which is largely inhabited by Dutch officials and merchants, and from here the vast popu- lation of this East Indian empire is governed. Sado. We reach Batavia by train, for it lies a few miles back from the sea. At the station we take sados, little two- OUR COLONIES — I4 230 THE EAST INDIES wheeled vehicles drawn by ponies, and ride along the canal to the upper j^art of the city. Our brown-skinned, turbaned drivers sit crosslegged at the front, and we have seats behind with our legs hanging down over the back, so that we get good views as we dash through the city. We pass many little stores owned by Chinese mer- chants, then go by better buildings, and at last reach Weltevreden (wel'tr-vra-dm), where are the big hotels and where the most of the officials and Dutch merchants have their homes. How beautiful it is ! The houses are low, white struc- tures painted to represent marble, each having a great veranda upheld by Grecian columns. There are people sitting on the verandas. The front doors are open, and we can see that the rooms are wide, airy, and comfortably furnished. Nearly every house has a garden about it. Here the drive is lined with royal palms, and there it is shaded by trees so gigantic and beautiful that you will not see their like outside of Java. There is a store ! Great plants stand on its porch and in the garden before it. Next door is the Hotel des Indes, a vast structure in the shape of an L with banyan trees and palm trees in its court. We pass the Royal Museum and its bronze elephant given by the king of Siam, and drive on through the beautiful parks for which Batavia is noted. As we go, we see that the city has electric lights, street cars, and all other modern improvements. There is a boy crying the newspapers. That building farther on is a college; we are again in a land of telephones, telegraphs, and schools. We enter the stores. They have all sorts of goods such as are kept in our stores at home. Most BATAN'IA, THE DUTCH CAPITAL 231 uf the clerks can sjjcak ]{iiglish or German, and we have no trouble in supplying our wants. Java is the most valuable of Holland's possessions in the East Indies. The Dutch have governed it since the beginning of the seventeenth century, and under them it has become one of the most prosperous countries of the world. It has a great commerce. Batavia, where we now "Nearly every house has a garden." are, is one of the principal ports, and Surabaya in eastern Java is another, while there are smaller cities on the north and south coast. Surabaya is larger than Batavia, its trade being with Europe and Asia and all the islands of this archipelago. Java is very thickly populated. It is only a little larger than Luzon, but it has more than thirty million in- habitants. Of these all are Malayans, witli the exception OUK COLONIES — 14 232 IIIK KASl INDIES ol a lew llutusaiul l)uUli and sc\cral hundred thousand Chinese who have come here to trade. The Dutch manage Java through the natives. The chief officials, including the governor general who rules all the Dutch islands of this part of the world, are Dutch appointed by the queen of Holland. The smaller offices are held by natives, who have Dutch oflficials whom they call their elder brothers, to advise them and tell them just what they must do. There are twenty -two residences or states in Java, each of which has a native governor, with one of these elder brothers to direct him. The elder brother will not permit the natives to be ill treated, and at the same time he sees that they pay the taxes necessary for the support of the government. There are many native under oflficials, who are also helped by clerks from Holland, so that in reality the whole country is managed by the Hollanders, although the natives apparently govern. This is so not only in Java, but in most of the Dutch East Indies. The Dutch have a large army to enforce their orders, but they do not oppress the natives, and are doing all they can to better their condition. Native THE NATIVES OF JAVA 233 We take the train at Batavia, and in a short time reach Buitenzorg (boi'trn-zorci), where the governor general Hves. We are received at the palace and are shown through the grounds about it, inthiding the botanical garden, said to be the finest of the whole world. The governor general has a salary larger than that of our President. He lives in great state, and he often has soldiers with him when he goes about the country. The Dutch think it necessary to impress upon the natives that they are very rich and powerful and worthy of being their rulers. They insist on the natives paying them and all Europeans proper respect, and in some parts of Java we shall see men, women, and children squatting down on the road as we pass, and holding up their hands toward us as though they were saying their prayers. This was the way the lower classes treated their superiors when the Dutch first came, and it is thus they treat the nobles among the natives to-day. No native is permitted to smoke in the presence of an ofificial, and he must never come before one with his head uncovered. He must use a certain humble language when speaking to his superiors, and the superior has also a special language for servants. oJ«>ic 39. MADAGASCAR — THE EAST COAST IT is almost four hundred miles from St. Denis to Tama- tave. The voyage takes about two days on our slow- going steamer, and it is early morning when the cabin boy tells us to get ujj, for we are in sight of Madagascar. We jump from our beds and look out of the portholes. Our THE EAST COAST 2/5 vessel is sailing along a low coast, densely wooded, and backed by high mountains covered with green and half hidden in low-hanging clouds. That coast is a part of Madagascar, an island almost as long as Sumatra and of the same general shape, although wider. Madagascar consists of two great natural divisions : an interior plateau rising several thousand feet above the sea, with mountain peaks, some of which are almost two miles in height, extending above it ; and a comparatively level country surrounding the highlands and sloping down to the sea. The interior plateau, owing to its altitude, has a good climate ; but the low coast lands are unhealthy and malarious. They are bordered with a dense belt of forest which extends far up the slopes of the plateau ; and upon the plateau itself are rolling prairies covered with grass and spotted with farms. The island is rich. Its soil is fertile, and its mountains have deposits of gold, copper, iron, sulphur, and lead. We are now about halfway down the eastern coast, approaching Tamatave, its principal port. Now our steamer turns and moves slowly in toward the shore. We pass through an opening in the coral reef, and come to anchor at a long pier in an excellent harbor before a town unlike any we have yet seen. There are cocoanut, mango, and bamboo trees close to the beach, and back of it is a city of one-storied and two- storied, bright-colored houses, with a church tower or steeple here and there rising above it. Off at one side are many thatched huts, the homes of the natives, and behind are cultivated lands extending to the hills. The town is low and sandy, and right on the beach. 44 Lonaitiiih- 46 Ea^t from 48 GrcL-nwich 50 THE EAST COAST 277 Boats rowed by black-skinned men with white sheets wrapped around them come out to the steamer and take us ashore. As we land, other white-gowned men lay hold of our baggage, and carry it upon their shoulders or their heads up the sandy road to the hotel. The way is well shaded ; it is Hned with little peaked roofed houses with gardens about them. Natives of Madagascar. The street is crowded, and we move in and out of a throng of whites, yellows, browns, and blacks, all curiously clad. The whites are the French and other Europeans who live here to do business or take part in the govern- ment ; some of the yellows are East Indians engaged in trade ; and the browns and blacks are natives of Madagas- car, some from the interior and some from along the coast. 278 MADAGASCAR How odd tlicy look ! Many have woolly hair and black skins, and arc almost negroes in features, while others are brown, and more like the Malays or East Indians. The blacks are Betsimisarakas (bet-sim-is-a-ra'kas), a tribe found along the east coast; the others are Hovas, a more civil- ized people who live on the plateau which forms the most of the interior, and of whom we shall see more later on. " She is a Hova woman, riding in a filanzana." Notice how the natives are dressed. The men wear great straw hats, and they have white cotton cloths draped about their dark bodies, leaving the legs and feet bare. The women wear high-waisted gowns of bright- colored calicoes, which make them look tall. They are straight, and some are by no means bad looking. How their hair shines ! They wear no hats, and their hair is put up in little braids which stand out all over their heads, THE HOVAS AND THE CENTRAL PLATEAU 279 or are fastened together with string. They grease the hair with cocoanut oil, the rancid odor of which is borne by the wind to our nostrils. See their bare feet ! That wide space between the first and second toes comes from wearing sandals. Some of the people are squatting on the streets chatting ; others are moving to and fro carrying burdens. There comes a porter bringing hides to the steamer. The hides are hung upon a pole which rests on his shoulders. Be- side him walks a poor woman with a water jar on her head and some roots in her hand. Both stop as we pass them. See that woman coming down street high up between poles on the shoulders of men ! She is a Hova woman, riding in a filanzana, the cab or carriage of Madagascar. The filanzana is merely a seat with a leather back, and a rest for the feet, swung between two long poles, and fastened to them by bars of iron. The poles are borne by men, two in front and two behind, who thus carry travelers through the streets and over the country. Until very recently there have been no wagon roads, and it is in filanzanas that we shall travel through some parts of the interior. 40. THE HOVAS AND THE CENTRAL PLATEAU THE port of Tamatave where we now are is the chief gate to Madagascar. It is regularly visited by the steamers of several French shipping companies, and occa- sionally by boats from other parts of the world. At the extreme northern part of the island is the harbor of Diego- 28o MADACASCAR Suarez (dc-a'go-sw;i'ras), and on Ihc western side, the port of Majunga (nia-joon'i;a), at the mouth of the Betsi- boka River, from where we sail to Zanzibar after crossing the island. Much of Madagascar is so wild and unexplored that the exact population is not known, although it is supposed to be about three or four millions. Along the coast, and north of where we are now, live the l^etsimisarakas and other tribes; on the west coast are the Sakalavas (sak-a- la'vas), whose ancestors probably came across Mozambique Channel from Africa ; while on the plateau to the south are the Baras and Betsileos, who are also of African descent. The most important people arc the Hovas, in the central part of the great plateau, who number at least one third oi the whole population. They have brown skins and straight or wavy hair ; they look not unlike Malays, and are sup- posed to be the descendants of Malays who emigrated to Madagascar centuries ago. The Hovas were, for a long time, the ruling race of Madagascar. Their territory was large, and they admin- istered it in a semicivilized way. They had their own monarchs, and held more or less intercourse with other jnations of the world. Within the past few years, however, the French, who have long laid claim to Madagascar, have taken possession of the island and subdued the natives, making it a French colony. They have deposed and ban- ished the queen of the Hovas, and have chosen the old Hova capital, Tananarivo (ta-na-na-re'v6), which is almost in the center of the island, as their seat of government. We find French custom officials at Tamatave, and learn that there are French soldiers at all the jwrts, and that THE HOVAS AND TifE CENTRAL I'LAIEAU 281 the Fiench have an army to keep the country in order. Many of the soldiers are natives, who evidently feel very important as they march about with guns in their hands. They are dressed in zouave uniforms, and their black skins and bare feet stand out in strange contrast to their bright-colored cloth- ing. They are said to be good soldiers, and we need have no feai in making a journey across Mada- gascar, by way of the capital, through the lands of the Hovas. Tananarive is about one hundred miles in a straight line from Tama- tave, and the railroad to it runs some distance along the coast and then winds its way up the hills. We travel more slowly in order that we may study the country and people. We use pousse-pousse cars, little car- riages not unlike the jinrikshas of Native soldier. Japan. Each carriage has three men to help it along, one in the shafts and two pushing behind. We start early in the morning and travel for miles along the edge of th© sea, finding the salt air very refreshing. As we leave Tamatave, we pass men and women com- ing into the city to market. They all carry umbrellas, and many of them look gay in their bright-colored clothing. There are cocoanut trees here and there along the road, and when we become tired, we sit down and drink the sweet water from the green nuts which our porters get by climbing the trees. Now and then we see other species of OUR COLONIES — 17 282 MAr>A('..\S(\\R palms, aiul frct|iicnl]\- the iraxclcr's palm. This is a tree like a j^reat open fan. It has long leaves extending out on each side of its lean trunk. The stems of the leaves are hollow where they join the trunk, and they form troughs, as it were, in which tlic rain water collects in such quantities that one can always have a drink if he ,finds such a tree. We prefer, however, to quench our thirst from the water in the cocoanuts and from the many brooks we cross on the way. We travel rapidly, now and then passing through a village of thatched huts, consist- ing of one long street shaded by mangoes, palms, and other trees. The huts are made of the traveler's palm. The leaves form the roof, Travels, s palm. and the walls are of the leaves sewed to a pole framework. The floor is made of fthe ribs of the leaves, and it is raised off the ground by a foundation of palm trunks. The houses are rude. They have but little furniture, and the people usually sit and sleep on the floor. In one corner of each hut is a fireplace, a bo.\ filled with sand, with stones so laid ui)on it that they raise the pans and kettles up over the fire. The water buckets are bam- boo logs such as we saw in the Philippines, the ordinary THE IIOVAS AND THE CENTKAL PLA'l'EAU 283 "We stay over night at such villages." bucket being as big around as a man's arm, and often eight feet in length. We stay over night at such villages, hiring a hut or so for our party. We sleep on the floor, rolling up our coats for pillows, and spreading our traveling rugs on the rough mats to make our beds softer. Nevertheless, our sleep is not sound. The floors of the huts are several feet from the ground, and the fowls and dogs are kept under the houses. We hear the hens cackling and clucking; and the roosters crow long before morning. There are spiders and lizards crawling about, and we are charged to walk carefully in our bare feet lest we may step on a scorpion or other dangerous insect. The first part of the night the people chatter and sing in the neighboring houses and also outside in the streets. They stay up late, making up for lost sleep by resting at midday. 2S4 MADAGASCAR As we ^o farther inland and climb the hills to the pla- teau, we pass through forests. The trees are tall and bound together with creepers and vines. There are many tree ferns and beautiful orchids. The air grows cooler and more bracing as we rise. We wind about up the hills through valleys covered with rice fields, now crossing a stream, and now climbing places so steep that our human horses ask us to get out of the carriages and walk. At last we are through the forest and on the plateau. We travel over rolling prairies covered with grass uj^on which humped cattle arc feeding. We pass many small farms where men are plowing with hunn)ed oxen, four oxen often being hitched to one plow. We finally come to a hill where we have our first view of Tananarivo, the capital of Madagascar. The city is situated almost a mile above sea level in the heart of this mighty plateau. tt is built upon the top and sides of a ridge that is about a mile and a half long, and nearly five hundred feet high. The country is covered with rice fields, with rich pas- tures u])on which cattle are feeding, and with corn and other crops. There are many villages scattered over it, and away off in the distance is Tananarivo on its mighty hill. We show some money to our ])ousse-pousse men, and tell them to hurry. Thev go on the trot, running so fast that the perspiration stands out upon their black skins. As we come nearer, the town takes on a reddish tint. Many of its houses are of red brick and red stucco, which give it a rose color under the strong rays of this far southern sun. THE IIOVAS AND THE CENTRAL PLATEAU 285 At last we reach the edge of the hill and cross the wide drive which has been made about it. We wind our way up through one narrow street after another, finding the city less beautiful at closer view than it was in the dis- tance. Most of the streets are narrow with innumerable alleys crossing them in every direction. Many of the In Tananarive houses have mud walls about them ; there are frequent gulleys, and all together the town looks exceedingly rough. And still Tananarivo is a great city for this far-away island. It has all together about one hundred thousand people ; it has many comfortable two-storied houses with porches and galleries about them, and some fine public buildings. We visit the old palace of the queen, a great stone structure with galleries on all sides of it, and then go to the palace of the French governor general 286 m.\da(;ascar and scvcial other ^•overniiient buildings. VVc visit the schools and spend some time in the churches, learning that most of the people are Christians, and that missiona- ries have long been at work among them. Friday is the great maikct day when the natives come in from all parts of the country to buy and sell. We go to the market place at that time. It is filled with strange- looking people among whom are some of the uncivilized blacks, the Baras and Betsileos from the soutli. The wares are of every description, including beautiful silks and cot- tons woven in Madagascar, native pottery, and all sorts of food and grains. There are most delicious pineapples, bananas, and oranges, and bushels of peanuts quite as good as those we have at home. In one part of the market cattle are sold, and in another hides. We learn that hides are among the chief exports of Madagascar, and that some are shipped from here to the United States. We see the queer-looking natives hand- ling the skins, and wonder as we do so whether parts of our shoes may not have scampered over this great plateau on the back of a humped cow like the ones now offered for sale. The workings of commerce are such that we can hardly tell from what strange parts of the world come the things we eat and w^ear. In Reunion we saw the vanilla which flavors our ice cream and soda water, in Sumatra we tasted the pepper which seasons our food, and in Australia watched men shearing the wool which may possibly form our clothes for next winter. If this leather under our feet could talk, it might tell tales of the .soil we are tramping just now ; it might sing a song of a South AMONG THE SAKALAVAS 287 American republic, or possibly describe how it covered a tenderloin steak which once galloped over a Texas prairie with a cowboy behind it. If all things about us could talk, we should not need to travel to learn how strange the world is. 41. AMONG THE SAKALAVAS LEAVING Tananarivo, we make our way in filanzanas across the high plains to the western edge of the plateau, and then wind in and out down the hills to the sea. Toward the end of our journey we are able to take boats on the Betsiboka River, and after a little more than a week from our starting time, we find ourselves in Ma- junga, the thriving sea- port of the northwestern coast. Our journey has been a hard one, and by no means so pleasant as that through central and eastern Madagascar. On the plateau we had to deal with the Hovas ; but here in the west we are among the Sakala- vas, a black jieoplc with Sakalavn mon. 3F THE MEniTFRRANE.W SEA pink, sky blue, and l)riL;hl yellow. I'hcrc arc many white houses, rctl houses, and houses of brown, gra)', and purple. The buildings are close to the sidewalks. They have roofs of red tiles, and the whole city is a patchwork with as many colors as Joseph's coat. The natives are Portuguese, not unlike those of Madeira, although their dress is very different. The better class women wear hoods of blue broadcloth, for all the world like gigantic sunbonnets with capes which reach almost to the feet. Some of the men wear high hats of blue cloth, and they have large capes over their shoulders. The poorer women have shawls or handkerchiefs about their heads, and their dresses are as bright colored as the walls of their houses. We take donkeys and ride about through the towns. Donkeys are used for all sorts of work. They carry great loads on their backs, they haul carts, and are also the chief riding animals. Each of us has a donkey boy who runs along behind with a long stick or goad in his hand, beating the animal when he slackens his pace. We find the farming r.ude in the extreme, but the soil is so rich that the islands are of some commercial importance. 46. THE BALEARIC ISLES WK have left the Azores and arc passing through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea. That great yellow rock on the left, with the guns frown- ing out of its fortifications, is Gibraltar. It belongs to the English, and is a part of the continent of Europe. The THE BALEARIC ISLES 303 ragged, rocky mountains on our right are in Morocco, on the continent of Africa. The sea in front of us reaches on and on for more than two thousand miles, separating these continents, forming the highways of travel between them. How bright the sun is, and how beautiful and blue is the water ! It is rippling under the wind, and thousands of black porpoises are leaping and racing at the front, back, and sides of our vessel. They stay with us for hours. We move slowly eastward, and then, turning north, call at the Balearic (bal-e-ar'Tk) Islands belonging to Spain. The Balearic Archipelago consists of four principal islands and several smaller ones, formed by the highest parts of a subterranean ridge which here extends far out from the continent. The islands, all told, have an area not much greater than half that of Porto Rico. The first two we pass are Formentera(for-men-ta'ra) and Iviza (e-ve'tha). They are small and low, but are covered with orchards and vineyards. Farther on is Majorca, the largest of the group, about the size of Rhode Island, and farther still, Minorca, which is ne.xt in size. Both are rugged and mountainous, and both are of importance to trade, although not so much so now as in the past. The Balearic Isles were famous in the days of old Rome. They were noted for their slingers, and one Roman general had to put skins over his boats to protect his men from missiles thrown by the natives. During the Middle Ages these islands were among the chief markets of Europe. They traded with France, Spain, Italy, and Africa ; and ships from Asia, loaded with goods brought by caravans from the interior, came across the Mediter- 304 THE BALEARIC ISLES 305 ranean Sea to Majorca, and there transferred their freight to other vessels bound for the European countries near by. When the Cape of Good Hope was discovered, Asiatic products were sent south around Africa, and the islands lost this trade. They are now chiefly dependent upon the coasts nearest them. They export oil, almonds, oranges, lemons, and capers to Marseilles, and wine, pigs, and vegetables to Barcelona, and also to Algiers and Italy. Our first stopping place is in the beautiful harbor of Palma, the capital of the archipelago. It is a Spanish city of more than sixty thousand people, lying right on the sea, and extending up the hills at the back. Not far from the shore is a great cathedral built centuries ago, and on the hills above we can see windmills which remind us of Holland. Here and there palm trees are waving over the houses. The streets are narrow, and the houses not unlike those of Madeira. The people are polite, and we enjoy their quaint costumes, which resemble those of the peasants of some parts of Spain. We gallop on donkeys out into the country through roads lined with thorny cochineal plants and other cacti. There are many orange trees, gnarly olive orchards, smooth-leaved fig trees, and also pomegranates. Much of Majorca is kept like a garden. The soil is as rich as that of California ; single orange trees have pro- duced more than two thousand oranges in one season, and grapes grow in such luxuriance that one bunch would furnish a lunch for a class of schoolboys. There are also apples, cherries, and peaches, and indeed almost every kind of fruit. 3o6 ISLANDS UF THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA 47. CORSICA AND ELBA AFTER leaving Palina, we sail on to Port Mahon in Minorca and there take a ship for Ajaccio (a-yat'cho) on the French island of Corsica. Ajaccio is the capital of Corsica, and is especially noted because it is the town in which Napoleon was born. The city has several statues to its great hero, and many of its people can explain just why Napo- leon lost the battle of Waterloo, and are sure that if he had been feeling well that day, he would have been \ictorious. The Corsicans are a nation of fighters. Their little island is rugged and mountain- ous and not very rich, but they are proud of their courage and would, it is said, much rather fight than farm. We see children playing soldiers in the streets, and notice that the people are rather sober and serious. Most of the women dress in black, and the men are grave and reserved. Although Corsica belongs to France, its people look more like Italians than Frenchmen. They speak Italian and were for many centuries governed from Italy. In 1768 the island was given over to P^rance and it is now ruled as a department or province of that country. Napoleon's house, Ajaccio. CORSICA AND ELBA 307 Corsica is beautiful. Its mountainous character can be seen far out at sea. There are hills about the harbor of Ajaccio and back of them well-wooded mountains, some of which are snow capped at this time of the year. Some of the valleys have excellent crops ; there are many vine- yards and fine groves of olives and oranges. After a stroll about Ajaccio we take the train for Bastia, the leading city on the north coast of Corsica, where we find a steamer which lands us in Elba. We have now seen where Napoleon was born, and where he spent his last days and was buried. This little island of Elba is another spot connected with his career. When he was first defeated by the forces of Europe and com- pelled to give up the French throne, he was allowed to retain the title of Emperor, and told he could have this little island of Elba as his empire. He was brought here and given a sum of money eight times as much as the salary of our President to support himself and his court. He came here May 4, 18 14, but the next February secretly left for France, where he raised another army and marched against his enemies, who finally defeated him at the battle of Waterloo. Elba now belongs to Italy, being governed as a part of the province nearest it on the mainland. It is only about as large as the District of Columbia, and it has but a few thousand people. The surface of the island is mountain- ous. There are extensive iron mines, the ore of which is so fine that it is exported to the United States and Eng- land for making Bessemer steel. We spend a few hours at Portoferrajo (por'to-fer-rii' yo), the principal city, and then sail southward for the island ol Sartlinia. 308 ISLANDS OF TIIK Mi:i)H KRKANKAN SEA 48. SARDINIA AND SICILY THE two largest of the Mediterranean islands belong to Italy. I'hey are Sardinia, south of Corsica, larger than Rhode Island and Massachusetts combined, and Sicily, at the toe of the Italian boot, which is much larger still. Both islands are rugged and mountainous, both have ricli valleys and plains, and both are inhabited by people of the same race as the Italians. Sicily is the richer and more important; but Sardinia lies right on our route, and we visit it first. Leaving Elba, we sail southward along the coast of Corsica, and then skirt the eastern shores of Sardinia until we reach the end of the island and enter the port of Cagliari (kal'ya-re), its capital. We are in sight of mountains all the way. They are heavily wooded and capped with fleecy white clouds. Some of the peaks are more than a mile high, and parts of the shore are rugged in the extreme. Our little steamer goes lazily along, and we lean over the rail, watching the land with our field glasses. We can make out the olive orchards and vineyards of the foothills, and are told that the woods higher up contain cork trees, chestnuts, oaks, and j)ines. Coming into Cagliari Bay, we are in an amphitheater of which the sea is the floor, and the hills, covered with build- ings forming the city, are the encircling tiers. There are many boats and shi])s in the harbor, for Cagliari is the center of the life and trade of the island. It is a quaint town, with narrow streets which we have to climb to get from one place to another. SARDINIA AND SICILY 309 We land, and make our way about through the city. The sidewalks are crowded. All sorts of work goes on in the open air. Here a cobbler is mending boots right out on the street. A little farther on a tailor is sewing, while down in that alley you may see a girl washing clothes. There are many peddlers showing their wares, rosy-cheeked children play about in the dirt, and donkeys, dogs, and goats wind their way in and . out through the crowd. The people are dark faced, with rosy cheeks. Both men and women wear bright colors, and all together the scene is a gay one. The better parts of the town are more open. There are many churches, and we frequently see priests and nuns in black or white gowns going about from one church to another. The island of Sardinia is well known in history. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians had settlements upon it, and it was once called the granary of the Romans. Some parts of it are still fertile, but its lowlands are unhealthful and malarial, and it is of no great importance in the com- merce of the Mediterranean. It is different with Sicily, which we are now about to visit. That island produces about one third of the wine of Italy, half the barley, a large part of the wheat, and nine tenths of the fruit. It might be called Italy's farm and market garden, and it is so situated that it is one of the chief commercial centers of this part of the world. It is but a short ride by sea from Cagliari to Palermo, the capital. We enter a fine bay guarded by two rugged mountains, and come to anchor in front of the plain in which the city lies. The plain is called La Conca d'Oro, 310 ISLANDS OF THE MEDITFRRANFAN SEA or the .shell ol j;<)lcl, hocaiiSL- ol ils Icililc soil and its vast orchards of oranges, lemons, and other fruits. Palermo lies right on the bay under the shadow of the mountains. It is a magnificent town, as large as Washing- ton, with wide streets and many fine buildings. Mount Etna. We spend some time in wandering about it, and then take a train for other parts of the island. We visit Mes- sina, a thriving seaport on the northeastern coast just opposite Italy and near the strait through which the ships go from Genoa and Naples on their way to Egypt and the Indian Ocean. We stop at Catania at the foot of Mount Etna and ride some distance up the mountain, although not to the top. We are now on the highest volcano in pLurope. Mount Etna rises far above Vesuvius, and as we look at it, we see that SARDINIA AND SICILY 311 it is covered with snow. The mountain is now smoking, although not in actual eruption, as it has been at many times in the past. In recent times it has often burst forth, throwing out a deluge of hot lava, ashes, and rocks which covered the farms, vineyards, and villages in its course. Much of our time in Sicily is spent in traveling about through the country. The island is a beautiful one, and every step brings a new and strange pic- ture. The land is divided up into large estates, which are rented out to peasants who labor under overseers or perhaps on shares. The peasants live in villages and go out to their work. Their houses are rude, usually built of stone or brick covered with plaster. The people live chiefly on wheat, dried olives, green fruits, and sour cheese, with Sicilian giri. now and then a bit of pork or goat's flesh. We see goats everywhere. In the cities they are driven from house to house and milked while the customers wait. Do you know what sulphur is ? If you do not, you can learn something about it by striking a match or by getting a bit of it at the drug store and lighting it. It is a hard, brittle, yellow substance, which gives lorth a pale blue flame, the fumes of which will make you cough and almost 312 ISLANDS OF TIIK MLDITKURAXKAN SEA suffocate you. It is of value in luakiiiL;' matches, gunpow- der, and medicines, and in man\' kinds of manufactures. VVc saw some sulpliur in the volcanoes we visited during our tour of the Pacific. There are also sulphur mines here and there in the earth. Mount l^^.tna sometimes vomits forth sul[)hur mixed with its lava, but the chief supplies of Sicilian suljjhur come from sulphur mines far away from the volcano. The sulphur lies in veins in the earth. It is dug t)ut by men and boys, just as our people mine coal. The ore is carried to the surface, and then smelted or otherwise treated to remove the imjnirities, after which it is shipped to different parts of the world. 49. MALTA AND THL: GRFXIAN ISLKS AFFAV hours by steamer from Sicily bring us to -Malta> a rocky little island with smaller islands about it. belonging to Great Britain. Malta itself is only nine miles wide and twenty miles long, but it is valuable because of its excellent harbor at Valctta, and because it lies almost midway on the route from the Strait of Gibraltar through the Mediterranean Sea to the Suez Canal. As we see the i.sland from our steamer, it appears to be without vegetation. The fields are inclosed in stone walls, the hills are terraced with stones, and it is only w^here the orange, lemon, and olive trees stand out above the walls that green is to be seen. There are many ships at the wharves of Valetta ; and we make our way through a crowd of Italians, English, Turks, Greeks, and sailors from everywhere, up the steep MALTA AND THE GRECIAN ISLES 313 Streets to the main part of the city. We go along the Strada Reale, the best business street, looking at the beau- tiful Maltese lace in the show windows, and at the silver filigree work which might almost be called lace in silver. We take donkeys and ride out to spend a day with the peasants. They have small farms surrounded by stone walls which prevent the land from washing away, and also serve to keep out the robbers. They live in little houses built of stone, with flat roofs and rough doors and win- dows. They cook upon charcoal brasiers, and their food is scanty and plain. The peasants seldom have meat ; they live mainly on brown bread, macaroni, olive oil, and goat's -milk cheese, and sometimes fish and fruit. They go to work early, but rest a couple of hours in the middle of the day, and always take a nap after dinner. The people are everywhere busy, but they are gener- ally ready to stop and chat with us through our inter- preter. The men are in their shirt sleeves ; they wear trousers of coarse blue cotton, and most of them are bare- footed. The women dress just as simply, having coarse dresses with hoodlike mantles which reach to tlie waist. "They live in little houses built of stone. 314 ISLANDS <)i' nil': miidi tiikkankan ska Our donkeys arc excellent, and lliey trol as last as ponies. The air from the sea is fresh and cool, and we enjoy ourselves as we ride from one little farm to another, now stoi)pint( to eat the blood-red oran<;es common to Malta, and now drinking a glass of warm milk fresh from the goat. Malta is noted for its goats. They are excellent milking animals, some giving as much as a quart daily. ICvery morning the goats are brought from the country into the towns and milked at the doors of the customers. From Valetta we take ship for the Ionian Islands, off the western and southern coasts of Greece, calling first at Zante, not far from the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth. The Ionian Islands are many in number, and seven of them are of some importance. They have all together an area not much larger than the area of Rhode Island, and their population is little more than two hundred thousand. Only one third of them are Greeks, the others being Jews and people of the mixed races from the countries about. The skies of Greece are wonderfully clear, the climate is delightful, and the soil is so fertile that oranges, lemons, grapes, and other kinds of fruits grow luxuriantly. Upon the island of Zante there are great vineyards devoted to Zante currants, a seedless grape which is dried and shipped all over the world. It is sold in almost every grocery store, and we have often eaten it in cakes and plum puddings. From Zante we go north to Corfu, an island noted for its beauty, and then move around the southern coast of Greece to the archipelago in the ^Egean Sea. This archipelago consists of many small volcanic islands. CRKIK, RIIODKS, AND CVPRUS 315 of which some are little more than rocks of white marble ; some are almost barren, and others have olive orchards and vineyards built in terraces on the sides of the hills. The people live in little flat-roofed houses painted white. They are mostly Greeks, or of the mixed race found in this region, many of them being sailors and fishermen. Some of these islands belong to Turkey, having a popula- tion more or less Mohammedan, while those nearest Greece are inhabited chiefly by Christians of the Greek Catholic Church. 50. CRETE, RHODES, AND CYPRUS COASTING southward, we call at Crete, formerly a dependency of Turkey, but now a part of the king- dom of Greece, having its representatives in the Greek parliament at Athens. Crete is a long narrow island about as big as Porto Rico. It has a chain of mountains running through it, Mount Ida being two thousand feet higher than Mount Washington. The mountains of Crete have numerous caves, including one on the slope of Mount Ida in which the ancient Greeks supposed the Minotaur lived. This was a terrible monster with a human body and the head of a bull, which, according to tradition, ate nothing but human flesh. Every year, so the story goes, the king of Crete compelled Athens to send seven boys and seven girls to be fed to this monster, and this continued until a brave young prince, named Theseus, came here and fought the Minotaur and cut off his head. We call at the town of Candia, on the northern coast. OUR COLONIES — I9 3l6 ISLANDS OF TIIK MF.I )rrKKRAXi:AX- SKA The pcoi)lo arc nuich like tliose we saw in ihe Grecian islands. They have oval faces, pointed chins, and dark, rosy cheeks. Many of the men wear white shirts, blue waistcoats, and long boots, with their trousers gathered in at the knees. Some have red fez caps, and others wear hoods. The chief business of Crete is farming and fruit raising, the principal products being olives, oranges, lemons, and wines. Leaving Candia, we next call at Rhodes, where we get a ship which takes us to Cyprus, at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. Rhodes has been a very important island in the past, and it was once a great commercial center, having trade with Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece, and other parts of Europe. Its capital, the famous city of Rhodes, at its northern end, was in ancient times one of the finest cities of the world, noted for its schools and culture. The island formerly belonged to Turkey, but since the World War it has been under Italian control. The great city of the past has disappeared, and in its place is a town of about thirty thousand people, made up of Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Jews, and Italians. The island is mountainous, with many well-watered valleys. It produces wine, wax, honey, lemons, oranges, and figs, and has some manufactures of silks. It was upon Rhodes that the famed Colossus stood. This was a statue as high as a country church steeple, jnit up to the god of the sun, in honor of the success- ful defense of Rhodes, about three hundred years before Christ. The people erected it at the entrance of the port, so that it was seen by ships coming in, just as the great Statue of Liberty is seen in the harbor of New York. CRETE, RHODES, AND CYPRUS 317 They were years in building it, and when completed it was considered one of the seven wonders of the world. It was finally destroyed by an earthquake about 224 b.c, and its fragments lay where they fell for almost one thousand years. Cyprus is the third largest island of the Mediterranean. As we near it from Rhodes, it looks like two islands, for it has two mountain ranges running along its north "and south coasts, with a large plain between them. As we get nearer, the mountains seem to grow in size, and the real shape of the island becomes more apparent. We steam around the southern side, calling first at Limissos and then at Larnaka, the chief port, with a very poor harbor. We land, and make our way through the town, and then take horses and ride across country to Nikosia, the capi- tal. We pass many little fields of wheat and barley on our way. Now and then we see a cotton plantation, and up on the hills olive orchards and vineyards. Farming is the chief business of Cyprus ; although the country is very rough, and there is much waste land. Cyprus now belongs to Great Britain, being governed by a high commissioner appointed by the king of Eng- land. The island is noted for its antiquities ; and many statues, vases, and other curiosities used ages ago have been dug out of the ground and sent to museums all over the world. The people are mainly of the Greek race, and most of them belong to the Greek Catholic Church, although some few are Mohammedans. There are many schools, including high schools, and several newspapers are pubUshed in Greek. The people elect many of their own officers and fix their own taxes. THE WEST INDIES 319 51. THE WEST INDIES — GENERAL VIEW WE have crossed the Mediterranean Sea, have passed out through the Strait of Gibraltar, and are again steaming over the billowy Atlantic. We are on our way to the West Indies, that mighty archipelago which, begin- ning about Florida in North America, extends in a great curve to the mouth of the Orinoco River in South America, walling in the Caribbean Sea from the Atlan- tic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. The West Indies are among the most important islands of the globe, and they are especially interesting to us because their people are our next-door neighbors. Porto Rico, one of the larger islands, is an American colony, and we have close political and trade interests with Cuba, the largest and most important island of all. Let us take a general view of the W^est Indies before we begin to explore them. They are divided into three principal groups : the Bahamas, off the southeast coast of Florida ; the Greater Antilles, comprising Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, and Porto Rico, with the smaller islands about them, south of the Bahamas ; and the Lesser Antilles, which extend from Porto Rico to the mouth of the Orinoco River. With the exception of the Bahamas, which are low and of coral formation, the most of the archipelago is moun- tainous, some parts having active volcanoes. The Greater and Lesser Antilles are merely the peaks of a high moun- tain range, which extends far down into the bed of the ocean. The mountains are covered with forests, the trees 320 Tlir. WF.ST INDIES of which include mahogany and dyevvoods ; the lowlands are largely sugar ])lantations ; all the fruits of the tropics grow in profusion, and the islands are so beautiful that they are often spoken of as " The Gems of the Ocean." The most of them lie in the tropics, but they are in the track of the tratle M'inds, and the highlands are delight- fully cool. The archipelago has a rainy season toward the end of the summer, and a dry one from December to April, while in the early fall there are frequent hurricanes. We all know how the West Indies were discovered. The Bahamas were first seen by Columbus in 1492, and during the same year he visited also Cuba and Haiti. He had no idea of our great hemisphere, but supposed himself near the coast of India or some part of Asia, and therefore called the new islands the West Indies. The Greater Antilles were colonized by the Spaniards, and they at first claimed the whole archipelago. They were not able to hold the islands, however, which gradually passed out of their hands. Cuba is now independent, Porto Rico and several of the Virgin Islands are ours, and Haiti is divided into two re- publics. Jamaica, the Bahamas, and some of the Lesser Antilles belong to the British, and other islands are owned by the French and Dutch. The West Indies are bound together with telegra})h cables. Many lines of steamers connect them with one another and with the chief ports of our Atlantic and Gulf coasts, and also with Europe. We shall have no trouble in making our way from one place to another, and shall frequently meet Americans who are doing business in the islands. THE LKSSKR AN'IIIJ.ES 32 1 52. THE LESSER ANTILLES OUR first travels through the West Indies shall be in the Lesser Antilles. We are nearing them now. That island at the front over the prow of the ship is Bar- bados (bar-ba'dos), belonging to England. It is our first port of call. As we come closer we can see the cocoanut trees lining the shores. We observe that the island is of coral formation, and we sail carefully to avoid the coral reef, through a break in which we enter the harbor of Bridgetown. The moment our steamer casts anchor it is surrounded by boats filled with negro men and women bringing tropi- cal fruits, shells, and other things for sale. We land, and find ourselves in one of the quaintest towns we have yet seen. The buildings are of wood or of coral rock. Many are of two and three stories ; some have awnings over the streets, and we can walk from store to store in the shade. How bright everything is and how dusty ! The white coral roads are dazzling under the sun, and we are warned to buy smoked glasses to shield our eyes during our rides over the island. See the sugar ! There are hogsheads and bags of it on the wharves ; there are barrels of rum, and the rich smell of molasses fills the air. This little island is one great sugar plantation. It is only about twice as large as the District of Columbia, but it has thousands of acres of sugar fields, a large number of sugar mills, and some dis- tilleries which make rum, Barbados is as thickly populated as any island we have 322 THE WEST INDIES visited, and the most of its people are ne<^roes. The streets are filled with blacks and mulattoes, nearly all dressed in white. The men wear white shirts and trousers and white straw hats, and the women white or colored dresses and bright-colored turbans. How straight the women are ! There come two with bundles on their heads. It is this way of carrying things that gives them their erect figures. Street in Bridgetown. Farther on is a black policeman with a white helmet. There are black soldiers and black merchants, lawyers, and doctors. This is the case with most of the Lesser Antilles and also of Jamaica and Haiti. The blacks were brought as slaves from Africa to work the sugar plantations. They were afterward freed, and they now form an important part of the island population, and on many of the West Indies the most important part. The sugar estates of THE LESSER ANTILLES 323 Cutting sugar cane. Barbados are largely owned by colored people, although the island belongs to England and is ruled by a governor sent out from that country. Leaving Barbados, we sail for Trinidad, stopping at Kingstown, the capital of St. Vincent, and at St. George in Grenada, another English island below. Both Grenada and St. Vincent are volcanic. They have a rich soil and raise all sorts of tropical fruits, including spices and the cacao from which chocolate is made. Trinidad is the largest of the Lesser Antilles. It is a rectangular island lying so close to the South American continent that we could cross over in a very few hours. It is thickly populated, having about three hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. Tlie isUiuil is devoted tu sugar, and among its jicople 3^4 TlIK WKSr INDIKS are eighty-five thousand Hindus who have come here to work on the sugar estates. We see Hindus and Chinese among the blacks and whites at the wharf of Port of Spain, where we land ; the vegetation is like that of Cey- lon, and wc wonder if we are not off the coast of southern India, instead of off South America. Port of Spain. Port of Spain is the capital of Trinidad. It is a well- kept little city with all modern improvements. It has places where we can hire automobiles, and we ride about over the country, visiting the sugar, coffee, and cacao plantations. Now we stop to gather flowers. and ferns by the roadside, now to watch the butterflies, which are so beautiful in this part of the world, and again to laugh at the monkeys, which angrily scold at us out of the trees. Our most interesting trip from Port of Spain is to La Brea, a little ])cninsula on Trinidad about thirty-six miles away. Upon this peninsula is nn asjihalt lake, whose THE LESSER ANTILLES 325 contents have furnished the pavements of many an American city. We have all heard of asphalt, and many of us have walked or ridden upon it. It is a sort of pitchlike sub- stance, mixed with sand, which melts when heated, but when cold is as hard as stone. This stuff can be spread over a road, making it perfectly smooth. It can be put upon paper or other material and made into roofing, or it can be used for walks and floors. Lake of pitch. Near La Brea, in the top of a hill about 1 30 feet above the sea, there is a lake of such pitch. It is a mile and a half in circumference, and in it there are several million tons of asphalt. We go to La Brea by sea, smelling the pitch as we near the peninsula. The beach is coated with hard pilch, and 326 THE WEST INDIES there are grayish black pitch pebbles upon it. We make our way up the black road to the top of the hill, and at last stand on the border of the lake. It looks somewhat like a great sheet of asphalt pavement, dotted with little islands of grass or stunted trees. It has cracks filled with water, and in some places gas is coming out. We see men on the lake digging pitch, and start across it. At the center our boots sink in almost to our ankles, and we hurry on, fearing we may get fast in the pitch and not be able to pull ourselves out. Nevertheless our feet are comparatively clean. There is so much water and oil in the asphalt that it does not stick. We take up some and wring the water out of it with our hands, and are told we might knead it an hour before it would become sticky. Vast quantities of this asphalt arc shipped away every year, but the stuff gradually rises and fills the places dug out, so that one really does not know how much there is. Near the lake there are places for purifying the asphalt. It is boiled in huge caldrons and then run off into barrels, in which shape it goes to the markets. Returning to Port of Spain, we are at a loss to know where to go next. We might visit Tobago (to-ba'go), a mountainous little island belonging to Great Britain, peo- pled by negroes, or sail along the northern coast of South America to visit Curasao (kob-ra-so'), belonging to the Dutch, and other little islands of that region. We wish, however, to continue our explorations of the Lesser An- tilles, and hence make our way northward to St. Lucia, belonging to Great Britain. We go by the Pitons, two mighty rocks of the shape of gigantic cones two thousand THE LESSER ANTILLES 327 feet high, and call at Castries (cas-tre'), the capital. Our steamer goes right up to the wharves, and we watch the ships taking on coal while we wait. The island is volcanic and wild in the extreme. Castries is an excellent coaling station, but otherwise of little importance. Our next stop is at Martinique, where we land at Fort de France and climb Mont Pelee, the terrible volcano which ruined the town of St. Pierre and a great part of the island a few years ago. The volcano is less than a mile high, but it periodically bursts forth into awful erup- tions, which deluge farms and villages, destroying multi- tudes of people. Martinique has many fertile valleys, and its appearance is somewhat like that of Tutuila in Samoa. It belongs to France and is governed by that country, although its people are chiefly mulattoes. They look much like the natives of Barbados, save that the women wear dresses of brighter colors and have great hoops in their ears. The products are sugar and cacao, and the fruits of the tropics. From Martinique we go north to the British island of Dominica, so named because Columbus discovered it on Sunday. It is volcanic and is chiefly noted for its sugar. Farther north still is Guadeloupe (ga-dench. They speak it well, too. Many children of the better classes are sent to Paris to be educated, and French is the language of the schools. It is also used in the government ofifices and in the stores. The poorer people speak a mixture of French and the native language. Port au Prince has wide streets which cross one another HAITI, rilK ISI.AXI) OF TTIE TWO ULACK KKPL'm.ICS 35 I "Along the road are cabins in which the poor people live. at right angles. It has some stone and brick houses and many of wood. On the edge of the city are villas with palms and other trees about them, and in the town busi- ness buildings and large frame structures containing the government offices. We take carriages for a drive out into the countrv. Our black coachman takes us rapidly through the dust up hill and down. We go by many small farms and now and then a large estate owned by a black. Along the road are cabins or shacks in which the poor people live ; many of them are shiftless and livs-J^^om hand to mouth. In the far interior the people are ignorant and supersti- tious, and in the mountains some are said to be almost as barbarous as the savages of Central Africa. They believe in witches and spirits, and it is charged that they sometimes have human sacrifices. oi'R c(H.()Nu-:s — 21 352 TlIK WKST INDIES 56. JAMAICA WK arc still in a land of the blacks. Jamaica is a British possession, but its people are almost all negroes. It was discovered by Columbus about two years after he had first set foot upon these islands. It was settled by the Spaniards who held it for about a century and a half, when the l^rilish took possession of it by con- quest. The Spaniards oppressed the Indians so that they all died off, and at the time the British came the island was almost deserted. The l^ritish soon bci^an to see the value of Jamaica for sugar, and they set out plantations, importing negro slaves bv the thousands to work them. There were more than three hundred thousand slaves here at the beginning of the last century, at which timethe slave trade was abolished, and after that the freed slaves and their children formed the most of the population. There are about a million people in the island of Jamaica, and of these all but a few thousand are colored. There are fifteen thou- sand whites and also about fifteen thousand Ivast Indians, who have been brought in to \vork upon the {plantations. Let us take a look at the map and see what a valuable position Jamaica has in the Caribbean Sea. It is just south of the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti, where almost all the ships going between the Panama Canal and Europe, and also between the Canal and our Atlantic states, must })ass. The island has excellent harbors, and it is so situated that vessels can stop here on their way for coal and supplies. JAMAICA 353 The principal harbor is Port Royal, in front of Kingston, the capital, wiicrc wc now arc. The water is so deep here that the largest ocean steamers can call. There at our right is a ship bound for Boston with a cargo of oranges, bananas, and pineapples, and on the left one is coming in from England with goods for the natives. It will probably take back sugar, coffee, ginger, and other native products. Jamaica is by no means small. It is larger than Porto Rico, and is the largest of the British possessions in this archipelago. The island has great natural resources. It is mountain- ous, but the vegetation extends to the highest peaks, and there are many rich valleys and coastal plains devoted to sugar. Fine coffee is raised on the highlands, and tropi- cal fruits are found almost everywhere. Fruit pays better than anything else, oranges, bananas, and pineapples being annually exported to the United States. Jamaica has orchards of cacao, nutmeg, cinnamon, and allspice trees. The allspice is an evergreen tree, which grows to the height of thirty feet. It has berries about the size of a pea, each of which contains two round, dark brown seeds which taste like nutmegs, cinnamon, and cloves ground up together. The berries are picked green and dried in the sun, after which they look like black pepper. They are valuable for flavoring pickles, pastry, and cake. Another export is ginger. This plant is grown in small patches. The roots are broken up and set out much like potatoes. They sprout rapidly, sending out stalks covered with leaves from one to three feet in height. When the stalks are withered, the new roots are full grown and ready 354 nil-; \\i;si iM)ii:s for digging;. Tlicy are taken out, rleaned, and scaUlctl in boiling water. y\fter this they are spread out in the sun to dry and then packed up for export to our country and Europe. Ginger is valuable for medicine, for making pre- serves, and also for the gingerbread, cookies, aiid snaps we all like so much. We enjoy our travels in Jamaica. Every one si)eaks English, and we can stop and talk to the colored boys "We stay one dsy in Kingston." and girls wherever we go. We stay one day in Kingston, taking a carriage and driving about the town. Many of its houses are of )ellow brick, with stores on the ground floors and high steps leading to the second stories, where most of the people live. W^e drive out to the parade ground to watch the drill. The soldiers are fine-looking colored men, wearing red turbans, white jackets, and blue trousers. JAMAICA 355 Like all P^nglish islands, Jamaica is well governed, and its larger cities have modern improvements. Kingston has electric lights and an electric railroad, and it is connected with all parts of the island by telegraph. Jamaica has one thousand government schools where children are taught free. It has short railroads and good country roads. We can go by carriage to any part of it, and on horseback to the very tops of the mountains. One of our pleasantest experiences is such an excursion. We leave Kingston and ride through sugar plantations, past many small farms including fields of bananas and coffee, and then climb up the hills into the clouds. The higher summits of the Blue Mountains are always veiled in clouds. There are little clouds on their sides through which we sometimes ride, coming out to find the sun shin- ing brightly on the upper side. The views are magnificent. As we ascend we can see the Caribbean Sea far below us, with the ocean steamers going in and out of Port Royal apparently no larger than canoes. The buildings of Kingston now look like toys, and the little farm huts are mere spots on the landscape. The vegetation changes as we go upward. In the low- lands are groves of cocoanut palms, higher up there are forests with many orchids and long hanging creepers, while on the top are fern beds and groves of tree ferns. At this altitude most mountains are barren, but here the moisture is so great that everything is the greenest of green. Now we have descended the mountains and are again in the lowlands. We stop at a cabin made of mud with a thatched root, and talk with the people. They are negroes as jolly and good-natured as our negroes at 356 TIIK WKSr INDIKS home. The children bring oranges and bananas, and ask us to buy. There are many women at work in the fields, and in some places we observe them breaking stones on the road. They seem to do more work than the men. They cut sugar cane, hoe corn, and carry great bundles. "The women seem to do more work than the men." As we return to the city we see many women bringing fruit and vegetables into Kingston on donkeys and on their heads. We visit the market to get a supply of fresh fruit before going on board. Here most of the peddlers are women, and It is a woman porter who carries our pine- apples, bananas, and oranges to the ship. She puts the whole in a basket which she lifts to the top of her head and goes off on a trot. We follow behind, and in a short time are again on the steamer, ready for our voyage to Cuba. CUBA, THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES 357 57. CUBA, THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES WE are now to visit the largest, richest, and most valuable island of the West Indies, an island which the Spaniards called " The Pearl of the Antilles," and one so important to us that we have to a certain extent taken it under our protection. This is Cuba, so situated that it commands the two entrances to the Gulf of Mexico by the Strait of Florida and the Yucatan Channel, and also the Windward Passage, which is the chief entrance from the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean Sea. If the entrances to the Gulf were shut off, it would disturb the commerce of our southern states and of the whole Mississippi valley, and the closing of the Windward Passage would be of great damage to our trade with South America and that which comes by way of the Isthmus of Panama. Cuba is so important to the United States that in our treaty relations we have provided that the island shall never make any agreement with any foreign power which might endanger its independence, that it shall not incur foreign debts beyond what its current revenues can easily pay, and that it shall not do anything that might affect us or our trade. We have also the right to establish naval stations on the island, and, on the whole, our relations with it are such that, although it is an independent republic, it is generally looked upon as a dependency of the United States, and many think that it will some day ask to be admitted to the Union. Notice the shape of the island as it lies on the map. CUBA, THE PEARL OE THE ANTILLES 359 The Spaniards compared it to a bird's tongue, with the root in the Caribbean Sea and the tip just licking the Yucatan Channel. How long and how narrow it is, and how winding its coast! If the coast line could be stretched out, it would be longer than the distance from Boston to San Francisco and back, and on every part of it there are excellent harbors, so that it is easy to export the products by sea. Now look again at the map. Cuba is like a cornucopia, or horn of plenty, and this word just describes it. It is the most fertile of all the West Indies. It has no deserts, no barren hills, and only a few large swamps. Much of it is still wild, but almost the whole can be tilled. The eastern part is mountainous, but the mountains are green to cocoanut paims. their tops, and they have valuable forests and minerals. The middle is made up of gently sloping plains, upon which are the largest and richest sugar fields of the world, and in the west are picturesque mountains with beautiful val- leys, where is produced the finest tobacco known to man. The whole island is covered with a luxuriant vegetation. It has more than three thousand native plants and millions 360 TIIK WKSr INDIES of acres of valuable forests. It has twenty-six varieties of palms, the finest of mahogany and dyewoods, and also trees bearing tropical fruits. There are flowers every- where ; and beautiful birds, including different varieties of parrots, are found in the woods. Is it any wonder that the Spaniards thought it a jewel .-' Cuba was discovered by Columbus, and settled by the Spaniards. When Columbus first came, it had several hundred thousand Indians, ruled by nine independent chiefs. The Indians had slight forms and pleasant faces, and the explorers said they were a good people. They were gentle and friendly. They had huts as well built as those of the poorer Cubans of to-day, and near them little farms, where they cultivated cotton, pineapples, tobacco, manioc, and Indian corn. The Spaniards enslaved them, and treated them so cruelly that they soon disappeared. After that, negro slaves were imported to take the place of the Indians, about a million negroes being brought over from Africa for this purpose. Then the slaves were freed, and they, \vith their descendants, form a large part of the population of the island to-day. Cuba has now more than two and one half million peo- ple, including whites, blacks, and mulattoes. The whites are mostly the descendants of the Spaniards. There are more of them than any of the others, and they form the ruling class, owning most of the land. They include emi- grants from Spain and other parts of Southern Europe, and also Americans, Germans, English, and French. The blacks are the descendants of the slaves, and the mulattoes come from the negroes who have intermarried with the whites, and also with the Chinese who were brought in CUBA, THE PEARL OF THE ANIILLES 361 years ago to work on the plantations. Many of the whites are wealthy and well educated. Some are graduates of the best of our colleges, and others have studied in Europe. Spanish is the language used everywhere ; but many of the people speak English, as well, and we shall have no trouble in traveling about. Sugar plantation. We leave Port Royal in the morning, and shortly after dinner get our first sight of Cuba. There are cocoanut trees lining the shore, and behind them are great moun- tains, rolling one over the other, their tops in the clouds. We make our way slowly along between Haiti and Cuba, sailing over the very spot where our fleet con- quered that of Spain during the .Spanish-American War, and staying for a few hours at Santiago. We can see nothing of Santiago until we come into the 362 THE WEST INDIF.S harbor. The channel is narrow, and we have to wind this way and that to get through. VV^e cross the place where Hobson sank the Mcrrimac, go by Morro Castle, a great fort on a bluff at the right, and finally anchor in front of a city of white buildings, witii roofs of red tiles, backed by smoky blue mountains. It is Santiago, the chief city of eastern Cuba. The buildings are small and of the Spanish style, making us think of Madeira. They are usually of one or two stories, close to the street, with walls painted in all the colors of the rainbow. Many of them have large win- dows, with iron bars, so that they look much like prisons. They have heavy barred doors. We shop awhile at the stores, and then return to the wharves, where we watch the ships taking on copper and iron ore from the mountains near by. The ore is brought by train and boat to Santiago, and thence exported to the United States and Europe. We are still looking on when the steamer whistles its warning to leave. We hurry on board, and soon find our- selves out at sea, some distance from land. We sail for a time in a northeasterly direction, and then, rounding Cape Maisi, turn to the northwest and steam along until at last we come to the port of Havana. 58. HAVANA WE are in Havana, a city of over three hundred thousand, situated on a plain about a beautiful har- bor. It is the capital of Cuba, and the largest city of the HAVANA 363 West Indies. How gay everything is ! The tropical sun beats down upon the bright-colored houses. Its rays are dancing on the roofs of red tiles, and on walls of red, sky- blue, rose-pink, and cream-yellow, dazzling our eyes and making us think of a kaleidoscope rather than a great business city. Street scene, Havana. We land and make our way through one narrow street after another. We go through the Prado, in the center of which is a wide promenade with two rows of trees on each side, where the people walk in the cool of the evening. Here and there are squares or plazas filled with trees, with seats under them, on which people are sitting. We pass many fine buildings, including the government palace, the cathedral, the theater, and the large hotels. The most of the buildings are low, one-storied structures, although in the best business and residence sections we find 364 THE WESr INDIES some of two and three stories. The houses are made of <;reat blocks of stone covered with stucco. They have enormous doors and windows, some so barred with iron that the people behind them appear to be looking out of a prison. They are of the Spanish order : each house built around a court or patio, which contains plants and flowers, and sometimes a fountain. It is in the patios that the people sit and chat in the cool of the evening. The rooms are large and the ceilings high ; the floors are of marble, bricks, or porcelain tiles. It is so warm in Havana that great care is taken to keep cool. We spend some time in the stores. They open out on the street, the whole front in some cases being taken away during the daytime, so that they remind us of the bazaars we saw in the far eastern islands. There are but few large establishments such as we have at home, although many stores which look small have warehouses behind, packed with fine goods. Only a few of us speak Spanish, and although there are manv Americans in Havana, it is necessary to have an in- terpreter to make ourselves understood. The Cubans are polite, and the moment they learn we are Americans, they are more polite than ever, for they look upon us as their brothers and sisters. The United States buys far more of their products than any other country, and in return the Cubans purchase from us much of their food, clothing, machinery, farm tools, and other things. Most of our explorations are in the morning and evening, for we adopt Cuban customs during our stay. For instance, •I would be foolish to try to do business at noon, for at that time the stores and business places are shut. The Cubans HAVANA 3G5 take only a cup of coffee, a roll, and perhaps some fruit upon rising ; they do not have a substantial breakfast until about eleven o'clock, after which they enjoy a nap or a chat with their friends, not returning to work until one o'clock, or possibly later. Their dinners are much like ours, and are served in the evening when the day's work is over. After dinner they walk or drive out, or stay at home with their families, sitting on the balconies or in the patios, enjoying the air. We have friends in Havana, and through them meet some of the better class people. Their homes are beauti- fully furnished, and quite as comfortable as our own. Our friends speak Spanish, English, and French, and through them we learn that many Cubans are sent to the United States or Europe to be educated. This is so, notwithstand- ing there are now good schools in Havana, and common schools almost everywhere throughout Cuba, a large num- ber having been established since the Spanish-American War. Havana has colleges and a university, and it has girls' schools of all kinds. Many of the lower classes are still very ignorant, and comparatively few can read and write. They are improving, however ; and now that they are free, their condition will grow better and better. We enjoy our strolls about the city by moonlight. There are thousands in the plazas, on the streets, and in the cafes. There are gay carriages, and men upon horseback. The Cubans are fond of music, and we hear pianos, guitars, and singing almost everywhere. On Sunday we go to the cathedral. The women present are dressed in black, with black lace shawls called mantillas wrapped around their heads and falling down over the 366 TIIK WKS'I INDIKS shouUlcrs. Rlac"k is the color used b\- the women of the better classes on the streets, although ihey wear all sorts of gay colors at home. We spend one morning in the market, and find it crowded with all sorts of people, buying and selling. There are a thousand different stalls, and many thousand customers. We count eighty different kinds of game, twenty varieties of potatoes, and sweet potatoes, and then go on to the tropi- cal fruits, which are sold in large quantities. We buy a ripe pineapple for five cents, eat bananas which almost melt in our mouths, and orange after orange until we can not eat more. We have tasted Cuban oranges before and have learned to eat them as the Cubans do. We find them for sale on every street corner, and the peddler fixes the fruit for us. He pares off the skin with a sharp knife much as we pare an apple, taking off every white particle and just breaking the little globules within. He then sticks a fork into the orange and hands it to us. We suck out the juice, rolling the oranges around as we do so. This is the way our oranges are served with every breakfast. We like it so well we shall advise our friends to try it at home. Before leaving Havana we visit the President and Vice President, and also the Senate and House of Representa- tives. Cuba is now a republic. The country is divided into six provinces or states, and its people elect their own ofificers. We learn that it is far better off than it was under the Spaniards. The cities are cleaner and more healthful. New railroads are being built. The wild lands are being reclaimed, and the people are improving in civi- lization and wealth. UN THE SUCIAR AND TOliACCC) I'LANTAllONS 367 59. ON THE SUGAR AND TOBACCO PLANTATIONS WE have left Havana and are slowly making our way through some of the country districts of Cuba. We have visited all the large cities. We have stayed awhile at Matanzas and Cardenas, important sugar ports on the north coast, east of Havana, and crossed the island to the great sugar market at Cienfuegos (se-en-fwa'gos) on the south. We rested awhile at Santa Clara and Cama- guey, thriving cities on the central plain, and are now going back to Havana. What a beautiful island this is, and how rich the soil ! Outside Havana we saw acres of pineapples, the great red balls sprouting out of the earth, surrounded by long, prickly green leaves. We have ridden through fields of banana trees loaded with fruit, and everywhere we go there are great palms standing out alone on the landscape, or forming the avenues to some rich planter's house. Cuba has twenty-six varieties of palm trees, including the royal palm, the most beautiful known to man, and the cocoanut palm, whose green nuts give us a drink every time we ride through the country. There are pastures on which fat cattle are feeding, and many sugar plantations. Central Cuba is little more than a vast sugar estate divided up into large and small farms. Here they are plowing the fields with machine plows, and there the same work is done by oxen which pull the plows along by yokes attached to their horns. There are thousands of colored people at work. We see them planting the 368 THE WEST INDIES cane, just as in llawaii and ja\a, l)ut arc lold that the soil is so rich here that the j)lanting" need be done only once every five or six years ; and that if the cane be properly cut, a new crop will sprout out from the old stalks even longer. Cuba is said to have better sugar soil than any other country. The land is not fertilized, but nevertheless it yields more cane sugar than any other island, and, at times, produces as much as two billion pounds in one year. Sugar cane was introduced about twenty-five years after the landing of Columbus, and Cuba has had sugar planta- tions from that time to this. Many of the sugar estates are owned by wealthy men, who employ large capital to run them. Some have mills which grind a thousand tons of cane in twenty-four hours, and some estates have railroads upon them to carry the cane from the fields to the factory. Some have so many laborers that the houses on one estate form a little town. We see many women among the workers. They are plant- ing, hoeing, and cutting the cane ; the overseers tell us they work quite as well as the men. Some plantations have nurseries, where the babies and little children are watched over by the old women, while their mothers are at work in the fields. Cuba grows better tobacco than any other country of the world. This plant will thrive in any part of the island, but the best varieties are raised in the mountainous prov- ince of Pinar del Rio (pe-nar' del re'o), west of Havana, where there is a strip of land about eighty miles long and twenty miles wide which produces the finest tobacco of the world. It is so fine that it commands very high prices, the choicest leaves bringing as much as four dollars a pound. ON THE SUCAR AND TOIIACCO PLANTATIONS 369 Tobacco field. Tobacco is usually raised on small farms, for it requires great care and labor. The plants are grown in beds, from seeds so small that you could hold more than a thousand of them in one hand. The seeds are sown in September, and in six or seven weeks the plants are about eight inches high and ready to be set out. This work must be done with great care, and by hand. After this they are well cultivated, and are pruned with the thumb nail, as this is less liable to injure them than a knife. About January they are almost ripe. They have grown as tall as a man, and their dark green leaves are turning yellow. The stalks are now cut into sections of two leaves each, and the sections are hung on poles and carried to the drying sheds, where they remain until properly cured. After this the leaves are fermented and then made up OUR Cot.ONIES 370 THE WEST IXKIKS into bundles. The InuuUes are jxacked uj"» in bales of one hundred ten pounds each, and are thus shipped to all parts of the world. About eij^hty thousand people are employed in cultivating Cuban tobacco, and in the fac- tories of Havana and other cities a vast number are engaged in manufacturing it into cigars and cigarettes. The crop amounts to many million dollars a year. o>9<<' 60. THE BAHAMAS AND THE BERMUDAS WE sail from Havana to the northeast, going so close to Florida that we can see the coast with our glasses. The air is warm, and the w^ater is warmer than the air, for we are traveling through the Gulf Stream, that warm ocean current which flows between banks of cold water through the straits of Florida along our Atlantic coast. There is much seaweed floating in it, and we try in vain to catch some by throwing lines out at the stern of our steamer. How blue the water is, and how beautiful ! It is smooth most of the time, and our ship cuts its way through it, leaving a long track behind. Now we are approaching the Bahamas, a group of many little coral islands belong- ing to Great Britain. They have all together an area about the size of Connecticut, and a population of only a few thousand souls. It was upon one of them, San Salvador, that Columbus landed when he discovered the new world. We pass the green island of Andros and a little later see the palm trees of New Providence rising above the THF RATTAMAS AND THE P.KRMl'DAS 371 white buildings on the harbor of Nassau. y\ndros is the largest of the Bahamas, but New Providence is the most important, Nassau being the caj)ital. We land and stroll about the town, admiring its cozy houses and beautiful gardens. Most of the people we meet are blacks and mu- lattoes, although there are some whites, includ- ing many English and Americans who have come here for their health on account of the climate. We find the hotel comfortable, and after a good dinner take car- riages for a drive over the island. We visit the Queen's Staircase, a flight of huge steps cut out of the solid rock from one of the forts down to the beach, and in the evening take a ride on the " Lake of Fire," not far from the city. We have all seen lightning bugs fly through the air. In this lake there are many little organisms which might be called the lightning bugs of the sea, for they .seem to coat the water with fire. At times, when the lake is quiet, there is no light whatever ; but at others, when it is moving, these little organisms emit light just like the light- ning bug, and the water seems to be tlaniing. As our Bahama children. 372 Till'. WKST INDIKS boat moves, it leaves a trail (»t lire, ami when a boatman dives down into the water, he is apparent!)' outlined in Hames. Much of our stay in the Bahamas is spent upon the sea. The water is exceedino^ly clear, and boats with bottoms of ])late class have been constructed so that we can look down from them and observe the fishes swimminjr about. ."^^""^ Sorting sponges We also see great sponges lying here and there on the rocks. Off the Bahamas are the best sponge fishing grounds of the world, as much as a million pounds of sponges being gathered iji a single year. The sponges are obtained by divers, or by fishing for them with a hook attached to a ])ole. The fishermen ha\e buckets with glass bottoms. By putting such a bucket into the water and looking into it, they can se'c clear t<» the bottom, no THE BAHAMAS AND THK BERMUDAS 373 matter if the water be rough. When they spy a good sponge, they thrust down their poles, catch it with a hook, and pull it up. When the sponge first comes out, it is black and sticky, — a soft-bodied animal that looks much like a marine plant. It is left in the sun a short time, while the softer parts decay. The skeleton is then cleaned, "The salt is hoed and shoveJed into carts." bleached, and dried for export. Sponges are trimmed and sorted before they are sold. They are pressed into bales and shipped to all parts of the world. Another industry of tlie Bahamas, including the Turks and Caicos (ki'kds) Islands at the eastern end of the group, is salt making. The sea water is admitted to lagoons or beds, so made that the sea can be shut out from them. After the lagoons are full the openings are closed, when the hot sun soon evaporates the water, leaving the salt 374 'l"'"' I'-KKMIDAS lyin<^ upon the i;r()Uiul. There is so much produced in this way that it is gathered up for shipment to different parts of the world. The salt is hoed and shoveled into carts 1)V negroes, and carried to the ])orts. Leaxing the l^ahamas we next call at the l^ernuidas, a group of islands somewhat similar to the Bahamas, lying' north of the West Indies, in about the same latitude as Charleston, South Carolina. They also belong to luig- land, and are of great importance as a naval and coaling station. The English have men-of-war here ready to start out to defend their possessions, and they also have docks and other conveniences for the rejxur of their navy. There is a garrison of English soldiers on the island. The Bermudas are of coral formation, but the soil ui)()n them is so rich and the climate so mild that all sorts of flowers grow luxuriantly. Geraniums blot)m all the \'ear round, and one can have roses from Christmas to Christ- mas. There are oleanders everywhere, some so tall that hedges are made of them. One of the great crops of the island is lilies, which are grown both for their bulbs and for flowers. At Easter time many of the fiowers are shipped to New York, and later on the bulbs are dug up and ex- ported. Bermuda also sends us onions and early potatoes; and as these things can be raised here when it is still winter in the United States, they bring high prices. We stay a day or so at Hamilton, the capital of the l>er- mudas, awaiting a steamer to take us back to our homes. We call u])on the governor, visit the parade grounds where the soldiers are drilling, and then ride about on our bicycles, looking at one little flower farm after another, but all the while longing for the time of our sailing to come. TIIK ISLANDS ()!• ICK AND SNOW 375 At last the hour arrives, and we go on board. Our steamer is turned to the northwest. We have a few days' pleasant sailing when we sight Sandy Hook, and a little later on find ourselves landed in New York on our own dear American soil. 61. THK ISLANDS OF ICE AND SNOW THERE are some important islands which we have passed by in our long journey around the world, be- cause they are already described in other books of this series. We have been forced to omit other unimportant ones on account of their small commercial or industrial value, or because they were so far out of the line of our travels. The British Isles we visited while we were traveling in Europe. The Japanese archipelago and Hongkong we saw when in Asia, Tierra del Fuego (te-er'ra del fwa'g5) was explored during our tour of the Grand Division of South America, and the seal islands of Alaska, Vancouver, and the fishing banks of Newfoundland we learned about in our journeys in North America. Among other interesting islands are these of the great archipelago about the North Pole. These islands belong to various countries, but chiefl)' to Great l^ritain, Russia, and Denmark. They are in the far north, vast wastes of ice and snow with icebergs floating about them and with glaciers extending out into the sea. They are in the region of long da\'s and long nights, where, for some months, the sun never sets, and where for other months it 376 TlIK ISLANDS (Jl 1< K AND SNOW is dark all the da)' ihrouL;]!. Thcsi' islands arc inliabited by Kskimos and other halt-savage people ot the same nature, who dress in furs and live l)y hunting- and fishing, having' rude huts built ol stone, or blocks of ice and snow. They have no domestic animals, but dogs and reindeer. There arc many such tribes, each having its own customs, but all more or less alike. The most important of these islands are (ireenland and loehmd, which belong chieti)' to Denmark. Greenland is by far the largest island on the globe. It is about one fourth the size of the United States without Alaska and our outlying colonies, and more than three fourths of it is covered with an enormous bed of ice man)' feet thick. The icy bed is so large that if it could be lifted up and sjiread over our country, it would cover all of our Atlantic states with the exception of Georgia and l^'lorida. The ice ends in glaciers at the shores, or some distance back from them. In the interior it covers mountains and val- leys, although some of the mountains are more than two miles in height. Here and there the ocean runs far into the land, and at places glaciers or frozen rivers move slowly down to the water, breaking off from time to time in great masses w^ith a noise like thunder. It is said that more than a billion tons of ice push out from the shores of Greenland into the sea every year. This vast country is sparsely populated. It has all to- gether only several hundred Danes and some thousands of Eskimos. The Danes govern the island. They have little trading places along the coast where they bring wheat, coffee, sugar, and tobacco ; and exchange them with the THE ISLANDS OF ICE AND SXOW 377 Eskimo children. natives for furs, sealskins, dried fish, and the down of the eider duck. Some of them have little gardens where they raise lettuce, cabbages, and radishes in the few summer months. The Eskimos usually live near the shore. They have little huts of stone or turf and, in the winter, of snow and ice blocks. They are hunters and fishers, catching seal and walrus, the latter animal furnishing a great part of their food. They net ducks and other birds, and some- times kill musk oxen and even polar bears. They drink melted snow water, and do much of their cooking in a rude way, with fish oil and blubber. They rely chiefly ujion their clothing to keep warm, sleeping in fur bags at night. The men and the women have much the same dress, both wearino- stockinus and trousers of sealskin, with the 37^ TIIK ISLANDS ()!• UK AND S\( )\V ;. ~ZC^u~„;.r - ^ AHcfTc - - ,- Ic rue: E r-±»^V»^* I fur Uuncd inwartl, and also skin stockings and boots. The men have jackets and hoods of fur, and the women sometimes have pouches or pockets sewed to the back of their garments ; in these the babies are carried until they are old enough to walk. The Eskimos make boats of driftwood, covered with sealskin, and also sleds formed of bone, wood, and skin, in which they travel over the frozen ice, drawn by dogs. They are all together of a low grade of civilization, and of not much importance in the work of the world. Iceland is not so cold as Greenland, although it lies only a short distance to the eastward ; for its climate is tem- pered by the warm wdnds from the ocean. It is not un- inhabitable, and it has woods of stunted beech, and pastures upon which cattle thrive. There are many farms which support sheep, and, others on which hardy horses are reared. Iceland is about the size of Ohio. It is very mountain- ous, and it has enormous volcanoes which have thrown out so much lava that they have covered about one tenth of its surface. There are all together more than one hundred volcanoes and many hot springs, notwithstanding that the country is so far north, and that it has great glaciers and vast fields of snow. We are especially interested in Iceland, because it was 1 J "" _,,»'«■ '^^#J'f°^i'= K ^ ICELAND w vX^* I Kaupst&dr. I — «CALFOP fcfTLES "ibo THE ISLANDS OF ICE AND SNOW 379 one of the homes of the Norsemen, a peoj)le who, it is claimed, discovered America ahiiost five hundred years be- fore Columbus made his first voyage across the Atlantic. I'he country is now ruled by Denmark, and is peopled largely by Danes. Most of the natives live by rearing cattle and sheep, and by fishing. The capital is Reikiavik (ri'ke-a-vik), a thriving little city on the west coast. Here the governor general lives, and here the little parliament which makes the laws has its sitting. Reikiavik has good schools, a national library, and a museum. Not far from Iceland are the Faroe Islands, twenty-four in number, inhabited by people similar to the Icelanders, who devote themselves to sheep rearing and fishing. Not very far away from the Faroes are the Shetland Islands, noted for their beautiful ponies ; and nearer Scotland are the Orkneys and Hebrides, belonging to that country. Farther northeast of Greenland, and inside the Arctic Circle, are Spitzbergen, Franz Josef Land, and, nearer the Russian and Siberian coast, Nova Zembla, the New Siberia Islands, and others. Most of the latter islands have no permanent inhabit- ants, but they are visited by hunters from Siberia, who cross over with their reindeer to take advantage of the short grass, moss, and other kinds of stunted vegetation found there. They also go to hunt the bears, foxes, and other animals which live on the islands. Passing on eastward and going through the Bering Strait, we find some large islands lying between Asia and North America. The Alaskan archipelago has many islands and islets ; the Aleutian chain and the Kuril Islands, which are largely volcanic, are of considerable 380 isi.AXi):=^ AKorxn axd aroi'T south amkrtca extent, and the j^reat island ot Sakhalin (sa-Ra-l)en'), off the east coast of Siberia, is six hundred miles long, and at one place more than one hundred miles wide. This island has valuable coal beds, oil fields, and gold mines. It has luxuriant forests, a climate in which grains and potatoes will grow, and the waters surrounding it are so rich in fish that it is said the fisheries there will some day be the most important of the whole world. SakhaUn now belongs partly to Japan and partly to Russia. The northern part of the island is a Russian prison settlement inhabited by exiles and convicts, sent there to work in the mines. The southern part belongs to Japan. It is noted for its fisheries, and its vast forest of fir trees. 62. ISLANDS AROUND AND ABOUT SOUTH AMERICA WI''. shall take one more trip before we close our explorations of the great island world. As we look over the globe we see that we have visited the waters about Australia, Europe, Asia, Africa, and North Amer- ica, but have passed South America by. South America has, however, but few island groups near it, and none of very great importance with the ex- ception of the archijielago of Tierra del Euego about its extreme southern end, which we visited during our jour- neys in South .America There are a few islands, however, which are deserving of mention. The Galapagos Archipelago, lying on the ISLANDS AROL'NI) AND AI'.oL'r SOUTFl AMF.RKA 38 r Equator almost directly west of J'Lcuador, is a little ^i;roup especially noted for its large turtles, and the Guano Islands, farther south along the coast, are famous for the millions of birds which roost upon them and live and die there, making a valuable fertilizer, which is sent by the shipload to Europe and the United States. "Millions of birds live and die there" The Guano Islands are masses of volcanic rock rising out of the ocean ojjposite the great desert of western South America. The rain never washes them, and they are bare of everything green. The birds li\-e on the fish of the waters about. Many of them are pelicans which have great bills with ])ouches under them, in which they scoop the fish up out of the water, eating until they can eat no more. The}' then climb upon these islands and lie about until they have digested their food. There are 382 IS1,ANDS AKOLM) AMJ AliOLT SoLTll AMl-.KKA also vast flocks of sea gulls and other birds which bring the fish they catch to the islands, and sometimes seals crawl up out of the water and die upon them. This has gone on for ages, and, since there is but Httle rain, a great mass of manure accumulated, which was so valuable that nearly all of it has been mined and carried away in ships, bringing in to the people of Peru, to whom the islands belong, many millions of dollars. South of the guano beds and farther west is an island belonging to Chile, which is especially interesting to us. It is known as Juan Fernandez (ho()-an' f er-nan'deth ), and is the island upon which Alexander Selkirk, the sailor whose adventures inspired the story of Robinson Crusoe, was cast away. Selkirk had fallen out with the captain and mutinied, and he was given the choice of being hanged or left alone on this desert island. He declined the hanging, and was landed with a small supply of pro- visions. He lived all alone on the island for four years and four months, when an English war vessel, attracted by his watch fires, called and t(«)k him to England. While there he wrote the story of his adventures, and it is sup- posed that it was this story that suggested to Daniel Defoe the tale of Robinson Crusoe, although Defoe, having a better knowledge of the islands in the southern part of the Caribbean Sea, has made his story to correspond to them in its descrijjtions of scenery, ])r()ducts, and plants. It is but a short distance from Juan F'ernandez to Valpa- raiso, the chief ])()rt of Chile, and from there one can get shijjs which will take him down through the Strait of Ma- gellan to tile Faiklands. about 250 miles east of the South American continent. These islands arc farther south than ISLANDS ARUU-ND A.\D ABuU 1' SUUTll AMERICA 583 On the island of Juan Fernandez. any other place we have visited in our tour ; but, owing to the \varm ocean currents flowing by them, the grass is green all the year round. The islands all told have only about two thirds as much land as Massachusetts ; but the}' support hundreds of thousands of the finest sheep, and more than half a million dollars' worth of wool is exported every year. The Falklands are about the windiest islands on the globe. The cold winds blow every day, and almost all day long. They blow so hard that not a tree can live, and the people say that potatoes are sometimes blown out of the ground. It is alwaws cloud v there. The air is moist; there are many swamps, and nature is tlrcnry. The Falklands are owned by Great P>ritain, and their people are nearly all Scotchmen. The capital, Port Stan- ^.S4 1>I..\M)S AUolNl) AMI Al'.ori' S( )l' 1 1 1 AMKRICA ley, is a little town ol seven lunulretl inhabitants, with luiglish chnrches and sehouls, antl cottages not unlike our own houses. The shepherds live in little huts at wide distances from one another, so that a child has olten to ride five or ten miles if he would have a game with his next-door neigh- bor. They are so far apart that they can not have schools like ours, so the government furnishes traveling school- masters who go from one shepherd's home to another to teach the children. The teacher stays with each family a fortnight, and then, having laid out a course of study, he goes on to the next familv. which may live twenty miles away. After a time he gets back to his old pupils and examines them on what they have studied during his absence. Below the latitude of the I-'alklands there are several small islands claimed by various countries, but none of commercial importance. With the exception of Tierra del Fuego, there is no other land so far south of the Equa- tor that has any value whatever. The Falklands are the farthest south of all commercial and industrial regions. INDEX Acheenese, 251. Adelaide, 34-39. Admiralty Islands, no. Agana, Guam, 15 1. Aleutian Islands, 379. Allspice, 353. Alps, New Zealand, 76. Andaman Islands, 264. Antilles, The Lesser, 321-329. Ants, 52, 56, 64. Aparri, 184. Apia, 126. Apo, Mount, 209. Apples, Tasmanian, 71. Asphalt, 325. Auckland, 84. Australia, General, 12-69; Ants, 52, 56 ; Birds, 50-52 ; Desert, 37 ; Farmers, 29-34; Gold Mining, 39- 44; Government of, 16; Great Lakes, 36; Money, 20; Natives, 60-65 > Pl^i^ts and Animals, 44-52 ; People, 21, 55; Post Office, 22; Sheep and Wool, 24-34, Azores, The, 300. Bagobas, 203. Bahamas, The, 370-374. Balearic Islands, 302-305. Ballarat, 39. Bamboo, 188-200. Banjermassin, 222. Barbados, 321. Batavia, 228-233. Battaks, 252. Beche de Mer, 109. Bermudas, The, 374. Betel (hewing, 177. Bight, Great Australian, 67. Birds, Australian, 50-52, 68; Guam, 152 ; New Guinea, 103, 104. Bismarck Archipelago, 104-107. Bonaparte, Napoleon, 293, 306-307, 347- Boomerangs, 64. Borneo, 204, 213-223. Buccaneers, 347. Buddhists, 267. Cagayan River, 184. Caicos Islands, 373. Camphor, 186. Canary Islands, 295-298, Cannibals, 113. Cape Maisi, 362. Cape Verde Islands, 294. Carabao, The, 168, 179. Carolines, The, no. Cebu, 194. Celebes, 223. Ceylon, 264-271. Chagos Islands, 271. Christchurch, 80. Cinnamon, 269. Cloves, 224. Cochineal, 297. Cocoanuts, 125, 269, 344. Coffee, Hawaii, 137-138; Java, 246, Porto Rico, 338. Colossus of Rhodes, The, 316. Columbus, Christopher, 320, 346, 349, 352, 360, 379. Commerce, Wonders of, 71, 260. Cook, Captain James, 14, 55, 90, 131. Cook Islantls, III. Copra, 125. 385 386 1X1 )FX (Joral, 54, 57, 100 ; riankns, 115. (.'DrrcgidDr, Islam 1 nf, ihi. Corsica, 30(1. Crete, 315. Cuba, 357-370 Cyprus, 317. Dagupan, 1S4. Danish Islands, 376-379. Davau, 209. Duminicaii Republic, 344-35 !• Dunedin, 80. Dutch Horneo, 222. Dutch Kast Indies, 222-257. Dyaks, 215-219. Elba, 307. EUice Islands, iii. Emus, 51, 65. Eskimos, 377. Etna, Mount, 310. Falklands, The, 382, 383. Fanning Island, iii. Faroe Islands, 379. Fiji Islands, III-II9. F'lores, 226. Formosa, i86. Franz Josef Land. 37Q. French Islands, Madagascar, 274-289; Pacific, 91-95. GiJapagos Islands, 380. iiilhert Islands, m. (iinger, 353. (iold Mining in Australia, 39-44. (ireat Barrier Reef, 53. Cireenland, 376. (irenada, 323. (iuadeloupe, 327. (Juam, 148-153. (luano Islands, 381. Haiti, 344-351 ; Covernment, 347. Hamilton, Alexander, 327. Havana, 362-366 ; Markets, 366. Hawaiian Islands, 127-148; Indus- tries, 135-140; Natives, 131, 139- 141; N'oUanoes, 142-148. Head Hunters, 216. Hebrides, The, 379. Hemp, 194-197. Hilo, 142. Flindoos. 237, 324. * Hobart, 69. Honolulu, 127, 132-134. Hovas, The, 278-287. Iceland, 378. Igorrotes, 190. Ilo Ilo, 197. Indians, Cuba, 360; Haiti, 346. Indigo, 243. Indonesians, 159. Ionian Islands, 314. Ivory, 291. Jamaica, 352-356. Jamestown, 293. Japanese Islands, 110, 186. Java, 228-248; Industries of, 241-248; Natives, 232-241. Johore, 263. Juan Fernandez Islands, 382. Kandy, 267. Kangaroos, 47, -65. Kauri f^um, 84. Kava, 124. Kingston, 353. Klings, 261. Kuching, 221. Kurile Islands, 186, 379 I.acadive Islands, 27I. I.adrones, 1 10. Laguiia de Bay, 192. Lemurs, 28S. Leyte Island, 197. Lillies, Hernuida, 374. Loyalty Island, 94. Luzon, 1 61- 192. INDEX 387 Madagascar, 274-289. Madeira Islands, 29S. Magellan, 153, 164, 194, 224. Makassar, 223. Malayans, 159. Maldive Island, 271. Malta, 312-314. Manila, 161-177; Bay, 162. Maoris, 89, 90. Marcu Polo, 251. Marquesas Island, 94. Marshall Islands, 1 10. Martinique, 327. Mauritius, 271. Mayon Volcano, 192. Melbourne, 43. Menezes, 95. Mindanao, 201-211. Mohammedans, 203, 237. Moluccas, 224. Mores, 201-213. Mo/.amt)ique, 291. Murray River, 35. Nassau, 371. Negritos, 159, 191. Negros, 197. Nevis Island, 327. New Britain, 107. New Caledonia, 91-93. New Guinea, 95-107, 225; British, 95-104; Natives, 106. New Providence Island, 370. New Zealand, 73-90; liirds, 78; Government, 83; Hot Lakes, 86-89; Sheep, 79-82. Nicobar Islands, 264. North Borneo, 219. Noumea, 91-93. Nova Zembla, 379. Nutmegs. 225. Orang-outang, 215. Orkneys, 379. Pago Pago, 120. Palermo, 310. Palmerston, 60. Panay, 197. Papua, Territory of, 97. Paumotu Islands, 94. Pearls, 57-60, 65, 109. Pemba Island, 291. Pepper, 256. Pertii, 66. Philippine Islands, 153-213; Climate, 158; Forests, 187; Fruits, 176; Markets, 173; People, 159; Schools, 200 ; Villages, 182. Pineapples, 139, 343. Platypus, 49. Polynesians, 122. Port au Prince, 350, 351. Port Darwin, 62. Port Lewis, 271. Port Moresby, 98. Porto Rico, 329-344; Government of, 336; Villages, 340. Port Royal, 353. Queensland, 53-60. Quinine, 247. Rabbits, Australian, 34. Reikiavik, 379. Reunion, 273. Rhinoceros, 251. Rhodes, 316. Rice, Hawaii, 138; Java, 242; Philip- ]iines, 180. Riu Kiu Islands. 186. RuarinL:; Forties, 73. i\iii)ins(in Crusoe, 382. Sago, 255. Saint Christopher, 327. Saint Helena, 292. Saint Lucia, 326. Saint Thomas, 32S. Saint X'incent, 294, 323. Sakalavas, 287-289. Sakhalin, 380. Salt, 373. 388 i\i)i:x SaniDn, I I') -I 27. Sandakan, 21^^, 219. San Juan, 332-337. Santiaj;o, 361. Santu 1 )iiniingi), 348-350, Sarawak, 220. Sardinia, 30S. Selkirk, Ak-\an.l<.r, 3S2. Seychc-rKs, The, 271. Sharks, 00. Sheep, Australia, 24-34; New Zea- I land, 79-S2. Shetland Island, 379. Sicily, 309. Singa|)ore, 257-264. Society Islands, 94. Sokotra, 291. Solomon Islands, loS. South Australia, 34-39. Southern Ocean, 67. Spitzbergen, 379. Sponges, 372. Stevenson, Robert Louis, 127. Sugar, Barbados, 321 ; Cuba, 367-36S; Haiti, 346; Hawaii, 135-137; Java, 243; Mauritius, 272; I'hilippines, 181 ; Porto Rico, 338, 342. Sulphur, 31 1. Sulu Islands, 209, 210-213. Sumatra, 249-257. Sumbawa, 227. Surabaya, 231. Surf Riding, 141. Sydney, i()-23. Taal N'olcano, 19^. 'lamatave. 275. Tambora, Mount. 227. Tananarivo, 2S0-287. Taro, 109, 141. Tasman ( ilacier, 75. Tasmania, O9-73. Tea, 244. Teneriffe, 296. Thursday Island, 59. Tierra del Fuego, 380. Timor, 226. Toi)acco, Cuba, 368-370; Pliilijipines, 184; Sumatra, 255; Used as Money, 98. Tobago, 326. Tonga lslan