Read Ebook: Beggars by Davies W H William Henry

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Ebook has 471 lines and 66039 words, and 10 pages

Filipino lighters drowsing in the evening shadows 160

The docile water buffalo is used to walking in mud 160

One can throw a brick and hit seven cathedrals in Manila 161

Cool and silent are the mossy streets of the walled city of Manila 161

In China drinking-water, soap-suds, soup and sewers all find their source in the same stream 176

Shanghai youngsters putting their heads together to make us out 176

This old woman is laying down the law to the wild young things of China 177

China could turn these mud houses into palaces if she wished--she is rich enough 177

Fujiyama 192

Sea, earth and sky 193

This Hindu has usurped the job of the chieftains' daughters 224

An Indian coolie village 224

A Maori Haka in New Zealand 225

A Maori canoe hurdling race 225

Three views of a Maori woman 240

A group of whites and half-castes in Samoa 241

A ship-load of "picture-brides" arriving at Seattle 241

A Maori woman with her children 241

Beauty is more than skin-deep 256

A half-caste Fijian maiden 257

A full-blooded Fijian maiden 257

Fijian village 272

Little fish went to this market 272

Good luck must attend these traders at the doors of the cathedrals in Manila 273

A Fijian bazar is a red letter day 273

The mountains are called the Remarkables 284

The Blue Mountains of Australia 284

Australia denuding herself 285

Australia is not all desert and plain 288

People are small amidst Australia's giant tree ferns 289

Japan's first reaction to foreign influence 304

Second stage in Westernization 304

Third stage in Westernization 305

Fourth stage in Westernization 305

Lord Lansdowne and Baron Tadasu Hayashi 352

Prince Ito 352

Dr. Sun Yat-Sen 352

Thomas W. Lamont 353

Wellington Koo 353

Yukio Osaki, M.P. and Ex-Minister of Justice 353

BOOK ONE

HISTORICAL AND TRAVEL MATERIAL

THE HEART OF THE PACIFIC

... stared at the Pacific--and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise-- Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Exactly four centuries after the event immortalized by Keats, I outstripped Balboa's most fantastic dreams by setting out upon the Pacific and traversing the length and breadth of it. "It is a sight," we are told, "in beholding which for the first time any man would wish to be alone." I was. But whereas Balboa's desires were accomplished in having obtained sight of the Pacific, that achievement only whetted mine. He said:

You see here, gentlemen and children mine, how our desires are being accomplished, and the end of our labors. Of that we ought to be certain, for, as it has turned out true what King Comogre's son told of this sea to us, who never thought to see it, so I hold for certain that what he told us of there being incomparable treasures in it will be fulfilled. God and His blessed Mother who have assisted us, so that we should arrive here and behold this sea, will favor us that we may enjoy all that there is in it.

The story of how far he was so assisted is part of the tale of this book, for in all the wanderings which are the substance of my accomplishment I can recall having met with but a half-dozen of Balboa's kinsmen. Instead there are streaming backward and forward across the Pacific descendants of men Balboa hated and of others of whom he knew nothing.

Balboa was the first to see the ocean. He had left his men behind just as they were about to reach the peak from which he viewed it. But he was not the first to step upon its shores. He sent some of his men down, and of them one, Alonso Martin, was the first to have that pleasure. Martin dipped his sword dramatically into the brine and took possession of it all as far as his mind's eye could reach. Yet to none of the men was this vast hidden world more than a vision and a hope, and the accidental name with which Magellan later christened it seems, by virtue of the motives of gain which dominated these adventurers, anything but descriptive. To be pacific was not the way of the kings of Castile; nor, sad to say, is it the way of most of their followers.

What was it that Balboa took possession of in the name of his Castilian kings? Rather a courageous gamble, to say the least. The dramatic and fictional possibilities of such wholesale acquisition are illimitable. In the mid-Pacific were a million or more savage cannibals; in the far-Pacific, races with civilizations superior to his own. At that very time China was extending the Great Wall and keeping in repair the Grand Canal which had been built before Balboa's kings were chiefs. Japan was already a nation with arts and crafts, and a social state sufficiently developed to be an aggressive influence in the Oriental world, making inroads on Korea through piracy. Korea was powerful enough to force Japan to make amends. Four years after Balboa's discovery the Portuguese arrived in Canton and opened China for the first time to the European world. The Dutch were beginning to think of Java. It was hardly Balboa's plan to make of all these a little gift for his king: his act was but the customary flourish of discoverers in those days. Men who loved romance more than they loved reality were ready to wander over the unknown seas and rake in their discoveries for hire. Balboa, Magellan, Drake, roamed the seas out of sheer love of wind and sail. Many a man set forth in search of treasure never to be heard from again; some only to have their passage guessed by virtue of the signs of white blood in the faces of some of the natives. For two hundred years haphazard discoveries and national jealousies confused rather than enlightened the European world. But late in the eighteenth century, after a considerable lessening of interest in exploration, Captain James Cook began that memorable series of voyages which added more definite knowledge to the geographical and racial make-up of the South Seas than nearly all the other explorers put together. The growth of the scientific spirit and the improvement in navigation gave him the necessary impetus. Imbued with scientific interest, he went to observe the transit of Venus and to make close researches in the geography of the Pacific. But to George Vancouver falls the praise due to a constructive interest in the people whose lands he uncovered. Wherever he went he left fruits and domestic animals which contributed much to the happiness of the primitives, and probably laid the foundation for the future colonization of these scattered islands by Europeans.

Backward and forward across the Pacific through four centuries have moved the makers of this new Atlantis. First from round Cape Horn, steering for the setting sun, then from the Australian continent to the regions of Alaska, these shuttles of the ages have woven their fabric of the nations. Now the problem is, what is going to be done with it?

I suppose I was really no worse than most people in the matter of geography when I set forth on my venture. Though the Pacific had lain at my feet for two years, I seem to have had no definite notions of the "incomparable treasures" that lay therein. Japan was stored away in my mind as something to play with. Typee, the cannibal Marquesas--ah! there was something real and vigorous! Then the South Sea maidens! Ideal labor conditions in New Zealand! Australia was Botany Bay; the Philippines, the water cure. Confucius was confusion to me, but Lao-tsze, the great sage of China--in his philosophy I had found a meeting-ground for East and West.

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