SPECIAL EDITION
WITH THE WORLD’S
GREAT TRAVELLERS
EDITED BY CHARLES MORRIS
AND OLIVER H. G. LEIGH
Vol. I
CHICAGO
UNION BOOK COMPANY
1901
Copyright 1896 and 1897
BY
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
Copyright 1901
E. R. DuMONT
Painting by Spada
CONTENTS.
List of Illustrations
VOLUME I
PREFACE.
Next to actual travel, the reading of first-class travel stories by men and women of genius is the finest aid to the broadening of views and enlargement of useful knowledge of men and the world’s ways. It is the highest form of intellectual recreation, with the advantage over fiction-reading of satisfying the wholesome desire for facts. With all our modern enthusiasm for long journeys and foreign travel, now so easy of accomplishment, we see but very little of the great world. The fact that ocean voyages are now called mere “trips” has not made us over-familiar with even our own kinsfolk in our new dependencies. Foreign peoples and lands are still strange to us. Tropic and Arctic lands are as far apart in condition as ever; Europe differs from Asia, America from Africa, as markedly as ever. Man still presents every grade of development, from the lowest savagery to the highest civilization, and our interest in the marvels of nature and art, the variety of plant and animal life, and the widely varied habits and conditions, modes of thought and action, of mankind, is in no danger of losing its zest.
These considerations have guided us in our endeavor to tell the story of the world, alike of its familiar and unfamiliar localities, as displayed in the narratives of those who have seen its every part. Special interest attaches to the stories of those travellers who first gazed upon the wonders and observed the inhabitants of previously unknown lands, and whose descriptions are therefore those of discoverers.
One indisputable advantage belongs to this work over the average record of travel: the reader is not tied down to the perusal of a one-man book. He has the privilege of calling at pleasure upon any one of these eminent travellers to recount his or her exploit, with the certainty of finding they are all in their happiest vein and tell their best stories.
The adventures and discoveries here described are gathered from the four quarters of the globe, and include the famous stories of men no longer living, as well as those of present activity. Many of the articles were formerly published in the exhaustive work entitled, “The World’s Library of Literature, History and Travel” [The J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia].
For the rich variety and quality of our material we are indebted to many travellers of note, and to the courtesy of numerous publishers and authors. Among these it is desired to acknowledge particularly indebtedness to the
WITH THE WORLD’S
GREAT TRAVELLERS.
NEW DEPENDENCIES OF THE UNITED STATES.
OLIVER H. G LEIGH.
[The trend of events makes it certain that our geographical knowledge is going to be enlarged by personal investigation. The boom of Dewey’s big guns sent us to our school-books with mixed feelings as to the practical value of much of our alleged learning. The world suddenly broadened as we gazed in surprise. Hawaii invited itself into the circle of new relations. The near West Indies and the remote Philippines craved peculiar attentions. Whether moved by commercial zeal, official duty or the profitable curiosity of pleasure or scientific investigation, he is in the highest sense a patriotic benefactor of his own country and the land he visits, who devotes his energies to making Americans more intimately acquainted with the communities now linked with the most powerful of nations.]
The scope of holiday travel, or tours of profitable investigation, has been widely extended by the new relationship between the United States and Hawaii, now included in its possessions, and the former Spanish islands over which it exercises a kindly protectorate. Through the usual channels public sentiment is being formed upon the resources and responsibilities of the new dependencies. Many will be attracted to Cuba, Porto Rico, Hawaii, and even to the remote Philippines, by considerations of a practical kind. No truer patriotic motive can inspire the American traveller than the desire to develop the natural resources, and, by consequence, the social welfare of a dependent community Whether bent on business, pleasure, or official duty in the service of the United States the prospective voyager, and the friends he leaves behind him, will profit by these gatherings from the impressions and experiences of former travellers.
The approach to Havana at daybreak overwhelms the senses with the gorgeous beauties of the sky and landscape. Foul as the harbor may be with city drainage it seems a silvery lake encircled with the charms of Paradise and over-arched with indescribable glories of celestial forms and hues and ever-changing witcheries wrought by the frolicsome sun in his ecstasy of morning release. Strange that where nature most lavishes her wealth of charms and favors, the listlessness of perverse man responds in ungrateful contrasts rather than in harmonies. Havana has the interest of age, with the drawbacks incident to hereditary indifference to progressive change. As in all important cities there are sharp contrasts in its quarters. With long avenues of stately mansions, marble-like and colonnaded, and exquisitely designed courtyards, there are unpaved thoroughfares with an open sewer in the mid-roadway, flanked by tenement houses with a family in each room. Most of Havana’s two hundred thousand citizens live in one-story buildings, lacking conveniences which the poorest American considers necessities. The older streets are mere alleys, about twenty feet wide, of which the sidewalks take up seven. Light and ample ventilation are obtained by grated window-openings without frames or glass. The dwellings and public buildings throughout Cuba are planned to give free passage to every zephyr that wafts relief from the oppressive heat. This is not because the thermometer mounts much higher than it does in the United States, for it never touches the records of our great cities, where a hundred in the shade is not unknown. From 80 to 50 degrees is the year’s average, and it is this steady continuance of warmth that tries strength and temper.
In the better districts of Havana the driveways are twenty-three feet and the sidewalks about ten feet wide. Politeness keeps native and foreign men hopping up and down the foot deep curb to allow ladies a fair share of elbow-room on the pavements. Your guest-chamber in a well-to-do family residence has probably a window twenty by eight feet, sashless, but with several lace curtains and shutters to suit the weather. The walls are tinted with the Spaniard’s eye for rich color display, the massive furniture is solid carved old mahogany, and the graceful mosquito curtains suggest experiences better left untold. House-rent is high, owing to the heavy taxation, which will doubtless be modified after American administration has put the city in a sanitary condition. Flour used to cost the poorer classes from two to three times its price in the United States.
Before we leave the capital for the interior we must note two or three of the time-mellowed edifices, which give the flavor of old-world mediævalism to the island. The gloomy Morro Castle is familiar in the chronicles of the war. It stands guard at the water-gate of the city, a grim-visaged dungeon that echoes with the despairing groans of more victims of cruel oppression than can ever be counted. A more cheerful landmark is the old Cathedral, looking as if it dates further back than 1724, cooped up in its crowded quarter. Here rest the ashes of Columbus, say the faithful, and they are probably right. He died in Spain May 20, 1506. In 1856, his bones were brought to San Domingo and from there were transferred in January, 1796, to this Cathedral, where they rest in the wall behind the bust and tablet to his memory. The elaborate monument under the dome is a splendid work of art. Four life-size sculptured ecclesiastics bear a sarcophagus on their shoulders. There is also a supposed portrait bust on a mural tablet.
The Spanish element in the city is popularly said to be an exaggeration of the old country quality. The Tacon theatre holds three thousand people. Cafés and restaurants abound, and never lack customers. Some day Havana may be transformed into a nearer Paris, with a larger American colony than haunts the dearer city across the sea. Cuba has nearly the same area as England. The Province of Havana has a population of 452,000, of whom 107,500 are black. Large tracts of the island have not yet been explored. The long years of intermittent battling between the Cubans and Spaniards have grievously hindered progress in all directions. Nature is bountiful beyond belief, yet her overtures have been scorned, partly because of native inertia, but mainly through dread of loss. Both sides have been guilty of laying waste vast areas of cultivated land, ruining its husbandmen, capitalists and laborers alike. The millennium bids fair to come before long. Peace is restoring confidence. The reign of justice will bring capital and labor back to the soil and tempt American migration to the cities and towns, where life can be
Havana has the cosmopolitan air. Clubs, cafés, and entertainments abound and flourish. Its suburbs and nearby towns afford all the allurements the modern city-man seeks in country life. The rural charms of Marianao are unsurpassed in any land. Ornately simple architecture marks the columned houses of its best street. Around it are the cosy cottages in their luxuriant gardens, and beyond these the open country, a veritable Eden of foliage, flowers and fruit. In one spot a famous old banyan tree has thrown out its limbs, thrusting them deep into the soil till they have sprouted and spread over a five-acre field.
As we traverse the garden landscape in any settled part of the island, and in Porto Rico, we note the habits of the rustic native in his interesting simplicity. Poor enough in all conscience, but wonderfully contented with his crust of bread, his cigarette, the family pig, bananas for the pickaninnies’ staple fare, and the frequent sips of rum which are to the West Indian laborer what beefsteak is to the American toiler. He is by no means a drunkard, and if he lacks book-learning he excels in some civic virtues of the homelier kind, and is not extravagant in his tailor-bills. The children’s costume is usually that of Eve before the fall, and the apparel of a goodly family might be bought for the price of a dude’s red vest.
Cock-fighting is the favorite native sport. It is encountered at any hour, anywhere. There are other sports, such as boar hunts, spearing fish, not to mention that of killing tarantulas, sand-flies, land-crabs, and the gentle crocodile. The thousand miles of steam railway in Cuba are unevenly distributed. From Havana the trip through Pinar del Rio gives an astounding revelation of the wealth of forest and soil and mines. Devastated as so much of this country was during the long years of dragging war, its charms of scenery and possibilities of development will work its speedy salvation. A single acre of choice land has produced $3,000 worth of tobacco.
Two crops of corn and two of strawberries grow each year, vegetables and many fruits are superabundant, yet wheat and flour are imported, and cotton, besides other important staples, can be successfully cultivated.
Journeying to the charming Isle of Pines, and then south and east through Matanzas, Santa Clara, and Puerto Principe to Santiago, there is the same invitation of Nature to come and enjoy all that makes earth lovely. The island is dotted with towns large and small having much the same characteristics as Havana. Her virgin forests have some of the richest woods known to commerce. Her hills hold stores of iron, copper, coal and other minerals. Her soil is ready to yield many-fold to the courageous cultivator. When the swords have been turned into plough-shares and the spears to pruning-hooks, there will come a new day for the native Cuban. He will feel himself liberated from the hindering rancors and jealousies, inevitable in the light of recent history, which alone now stand between his beautiful island and the prosperity that hovers, waiting his encouragement to alight. Then the traveller will return with reports of Havana rejuvenated, her harbor dredged and purified, her highways paved, homes made healthy and the whole island lifted to the higher and happier plane that will give the Pearl of the Antilles its rightful setting among the other gems of God’s earth.
Porto Rico, the “rich port,” so named by Columbus, came gladly under the American flag. Its population of about 900,000 has had a sorry time for three hundred years. They have been steeped in spiritless poverty from first to last, so used to the oppressor’s yoke that ambition seems to have been crushed. Yet their island is an earthly paradise, save for its rain-storms and occasional droughts. It is rich in undeveloped mineral deposits and splendid forests. Nature has helped to discourage native effort by providing the means of sustenance over-lavishly, in one sense. The people scattered through the interior find everything ready grown to hand. The bulk of the population throng the shore areas and are as listlessly happy with the minimum of life’s necessaries as are the animals.
Spain has left its mark upon the island, a mark representing a civilization not to be sneered at, though not of the modern stamp. Range through the island’s lovely valleys, struggle up its mountain slopes to isolated hamlets where primitive life lingers in all its bewildering unloveliness; thread the rude thoroughfare of its picturesque towns, and you will come upon replicas of the familiar Spanish church, the symbol and centre of an ever potent influence for good. With all its faults, this local haven of peace and good cheer has tempered the lot of generations that never fully realized the hopelessness of their fate. A venerable church peeping out of a leafy glade gives a touch of poetic grace to the landscape. It is something, perhaps, though not very much, that sectarian animosities do not embitter the easy minds of these peasants, who dwell together in enviable fraternity.
Porto Rico is only one of some thirteen hundred islands in the West Indies that are now in the American fold. It has several large towns that will intensely interest the traveller. San Juan, with twenty-five thousand inhabitants, is the principal city. A fine old military road runs from it across the mountains to Ponce, on the south shore. It is twenty feet wide, hard and dustless, winds along through eighty miles of scenery unsurpassed in any country, though the island is only forty miles directly across.
Every considerable town has its cathedral. That at Sabana Grande was built in 1610. Some of them have gorgeous altars and precious paintings. In one little church the figure of the Blessed Virgin is of pure gold. Another has an altar of silver.
The retail stores in the cities make little or no front display. The store is virtually a sample room, with extensive warehouses in the rear. Town life is, in its way, Parisian. The cathedral stands in a square or park, the promenade and gossiping ground for both sexes. The midday siesta is the rule, a two hours’ cessation from the round of toil. The evenings are given to music and dancing, or the merry chatter of groups as they enjoy the strains of the band. The lacy mantilla adds grace to the generally captivating beauty of the women, as they cunningly drape it over their heads to take the place of hats. The palms and cocoa-nut trees, the clusters of coffee-trees, the sugar-cane, the groves of oranges, lemons, bananas, and other fruits lend great beauty to the landscape. Tobacco is largely cultivated, with plenty of inducements for a more systematic treatment of a commodity which ought greatly to increase the wealth of the island.
Since it has come under American influence many improvements have been effected. The cities are treated to the modern system of drainage, and roads have been constructed which will make traffic between the towns easier and thus encourage trade.
Exceptionally fierce hurricanes and floods wrought havoc
Honolulu, the capital of the Hawaiian group, has long been an American city in all but name. The geographical position of the islands destined them to come within the pale of our civilization. Within a century the natives have been transformed from a state of animalism into a self-respecting, progressive people. While the aborigines have been rapidly dying out there has been a steady influx of new blood from various sources. The population is about 120,000, immigrants from Japan and Portugal forming a considerable proportion of the laboring class. Chinese immigration has been restricted.
The traveller might almost imagine himself in some New England or Pennsylvania town as he drives through the streets of Honolulu. The capital is laid out on the American plan, the churches and houses might have been transplanted by a cyclone, and the very attire of the people in general keeps up the illusion of being at home from home. The palace of the last king and queen bears as little relation to the hut of their great predecessor, Kamehameha the First, as do the New York tailor-made suits and dresses of the citizens of Honolulu to the scanty loin-cloth which their grandparents considered the height of Sandwich Islands fashion.
More and more will these lovely isles become the pleasure-grounds for our people and for all world-tourists. The important practical value of their annexation will be better understood if it ever becomes necessary to back up the essential principle of the Monroe Doctrine against foreign foes. As a growing metropolis Honolulu has charms of its own independent of the ideal climate and luxuriant flora of the twelve islands.
The narratives of the first travellers to Owhyee, as they styled it, glowed with descriptions of the voluptuous charms of the natives, whose life was a round of pleasure, untempered by the wholesome necessity for hard toil. It was a lotos land for all who sojourned there. The harmful consequences of unwholesome ease are not yet eradicated. Christianity has achieved almost miraculous triumphs, and the conditions of modern life in crowded communities are helping to harden the native temperament. The leper colony in Molokai is one of several sad sights which are, perhaps, better left unseen. Also the clandestine Saturnalia still kept up on the old lines, with some winking or dozing on the part of natives in authority.
Trips can be made to the surrounding islands, famous for their volcanic mountains and tropical verdure. The largest active crater in the world is that of Kilauea, being nine miles in circumference, with vertical sides about one thousand feet deep and at the bottom a lake of molten lava, boiling furiously in some parts and throwing off fibres like spun silk which float in the air. These craters are apt to break into activity without warning.
City life in Honolulu, as already remarked, can almost delude a Southerner into fancying himself at home. It is quite cosmopolitan in its degree. There are well-equipped hotels, an English library, street railways, electric lights, telephones, insurance offices, colonies and clubs of American and British lawyers, business men, physicians and journalists. Modern progress is strikingly impressed on the visitor who draws his own picture of the primitive semi-savages he expects to see, when he hears the familiar hum of mills and factories, the roar and pounding noises of foundries, and the imposing array of wharves and vessels. Hawaii is a natural hub of the wheel of world-traffic. From its ports there is a large and fast-growing steamship trade with the principal commercial centres all over the globe. We shall pass from Honolulu round to the Philippines in the easiest fashion. One is surprised at the number of Chinese and Japanese laborers in Hawaii, some of whom have prospered and own large business establishments. The foreign element in the labor field has been a source of mild trouble but is now in a fair way to solve itself. A gratifying feature is the public school system. Everywhere are centres of light and learning, promising a grand future for the island population. The abundant yield of rice, sugar, coffee, bananas, and other foodstuffs is mostly bought for the American people.
The pleasures and pains of the voyage to the Philippines have been the subject of too many public letters since the war to need re-telling. The two thousand islands which form the little-known archipelago are the homes of a number of mixed tribes, with whom the traveller will not crave intimate acquaintance for some time. In Luzon, the chief island, we may feel fairly at home, now that its all but pathless wilds, as well as its long-settled towns and hamlets, are sprinkled with American soldiers. In time, doubtless, scientific exploration will approximately fix the value of the mineral and arable fields of the archipelago. Until knowledge increases in this direction there will not be much inducement to roam among peoples with questionable manners, strange religions and outlandish dialects. The Tagal folk has reached, as regards the more favored class, a high degree of civilization. The Malay blood has peculiarities of its own. Under long-continued Spanish rule the Luzon native has developed intellectually and nurtured an ambition for self-government. This half-amicable, half-hostile relationship between the Spanish friars, who have been the spiritual, and perhaps still more the civic, trainers and masters of the natives, is a most interesting study for the newly arrived visitor.
Landing at Manila, the commercial centre and capital of the islands, we find ourselves in a city blending the characteristics of an old-fashioned Spanish town with the mild business air of a third-rate western port. The buildings speak of the tropical perils to be encountered. Dewey’s bombardment was more generous than the earthquakes and gales that smote the Cathedral. These visitations come oftener than those of angels. Houses are built low and massively on the ground floor, to insure that a one-story home shall remain when the upstairs section flies away. Terrific gales come unannounced and life is temporarily suspended until it is possible to swim into the streets and rake in the flotsam and jetsam that once lodged within your walls. Periodical rains lend variety to the novice’s experience. They descend in Niagaras, giving free and wholesome baths to the many who need them and to those who need them not, and give the mud lanes that serve for streets a timely cleaning up. The rainfall record has shown as much as 114 inches in a year.
Your hotel will be the perfection of cleanliness, but the window openings are vast and glass-panes are unknown. The mahogany bedstead is bedless, a mat of woven cane strips, bare of everything that can encourage warmth or harbor little neighbors, but winged visitors float in to remind the sleeper he is not in the Waldorf-Astoria, and then depart, perhaps. By day life can be very enjoyable. Churches, which are largely art-galleries also, fine squares and promenades, fashionable
The general aspect of Philippine scenery to the untutored eye of a stranger resembles the tropical views already described, allowance being made for differing conditions. When the fortunes of war brought the islands within our ken the principal trade was divided between Spain and outside countries. The treaty of 1898 brought the archipelago into closer trade relations, with mutual advantages. When Aguinaldo, the Tagal leader, declared his allegiance to the United States, the fact assured the establishment of a friendly arrangement which in time will bring high prosperity to the islands and civilization to their people. The two hundred thousand who live in and around Manila are mainly Christians.
Generally the natives with whom we are in closest contact are a civil and good-tempered people. Picturesque in costume, or the lack of it, they share with the scenery around the characteristic freedom from commonplace. Prolonged familiarity with modern methods of culture will take much of the charm out of life in the Philippines, replacing it, no doubt, with the practical methods which conduce to progress. A voyage to these distant islands affords a rare opportunity to trace the process of evolution from the simple and natural to the complex machinery which is grinding organized society into drab-tinted duplications of a rather uninteresting original.
WINTER AND SUMMER IN NEW ENGLAND.
HARRIET MARTINEAU.
[The “Society in America” and the “Retrospect of Western Travel,” by Harriet Martineau, contain many interesting pictures of life and scenery in the United States. Of the descriptive passages of the latter work we select that detailing her experience of winter weather in Boston, which she seems to have looked upon with true English eyes, and not with the vision of one “to the manner born.”]
I believe no one attempts to praise the climate of New England. The very low average of health there, the prevalence of consumption and of decay of the teeth, are evidences of an unwholesome climate which I believe are universally received as such. The mortality among children throughout the whole country is a dark feature of life in the United States.... Wherever we went in the North we heard of the “lung fever” as a common complaint, and children seemed to be as liable to it as grown persons.
The climate is doubtless chiefly to blame for all this, and I do not see how any degree of care could obviate much of the evil. The children must be kept warm within-doors; and the only way of affording them the range of the house is by warming the whole, from the cellar to the garret, by means of a furnace in the hall. This makes all comfortable within; but, then, the risk of going out is very great. There is far less fog and damp than in England, and the perfectly calm, sunny days of midwinter are endurable; but the least breath of wind seems to chill one’s very life. I had no idea what the suffering from extreme cold amounted to till one day, in Boston, I walked the length of the city and back again in a wind, with the thermometer seven degrees and a half below zero. I had been warned of the cold, but was anxious to keep an appointment to attend a meeting. We put on all the merinoes and furs we could muster, but we were insensible of them from the moment the wind reached us. My muff seemed to be made of ice; I almost fancied I should have been warmer without it. We managed getting to the meeting pretty well, the stock of warmth we had brought out with us lasting till then. But we set out cold on our return, and by the time I got home I did not very well know where I was and what I was about. The stupefaction from cold is particularly disagreeable, the sense of pain remaining through it, and I determined not to expose myself to it again. All this must be dangerous to children; and if, to avoid it, they are shut up through the winter, there remains the danger of encountering the ungenial spring....
Every season, however, has its peculiar pleasures, and in the retrospect these shine out brightly, while the evils disappear.
On a December morning you are awakened by the domestic scraping at your hearth. Your anthracite fire has been in all night; and now the ashes are carried away, more coal is put on, and the blower hides the kindly red from you for a time. In half an hour the fire is intense, though, at the other end of the room, everything you touch seems to blister your fingers with cold. If you happen to turn up a corner of the carpet with your foot, it gives out a flash, and your hair crackles as you brush it. Breakfast is always hot, be the weather what it may. The coffee is scalding, and the buckwheat cakes steam when the cover is taken off. Your host’s little boy asks whether he may go coasting to-day, and his sisters tell you what days the schools will all go sleighing. You may see boys coasting on Boston Common all the winter day through, and too many in the streets, where it is not so safe.
To coast is to ride on a board down a frozen slope, and many children do this in the steep streets which lead down to the Common, as well as on the snowy slopes within the enclosure where no carriages go. Some sit on their heels on the board, some on their crossed legs. Some strike their legs out, put their arms akimbo, and so assume an air of defiance amid their velocity. Others prefer lying on their stomachs, and so going headforemost, an attitude whose comfort I could never enter into. Coasting is a wholesome exercise for hardy boys. Of course, they have to walk up the ascent, carrying their boards between every feat of coasting; and this affords them more exercise than they are at all aware of taking.
As for the sleighing, I heard much more than I experienced of its charms. No doubt early association has something to do with the American fondness for this mode of locomotion, and much of the affection which is borne to music, dancing, supping, and all kinds of frolic is transferred to the vehicle in which the frolicking parties are transported. It must be so, I think, or no one would be found to prefer a carriage on runners to a carriage on wheels, except on an untrodden expanse of snow. On a perfectly level and crisp surface I can fancy the smooth, rapid motion to be exceedingly pleasant; but such surfaces are rare in the neighborhood of populous cities. The uncertain, rough motion in streets hillocky with snow, or on roads consisting for the season of a ridge of snow with holes in it, is disagreeable and provocative of headache. I am no rule for others as to liking the bells; but to me their incessant jangle was a great annoyance. Add to this the sitting, without exercise, in a wind caused by the rapidity of the motion, and the list of désagrémens is complete. I do not know the author of a description of sleighing which was quoted to me, but I admire it for its fidelity. “Do you want to know what sleighing is like? You can soon try. Set your chair on a spring-board out on the porch on Christmas-day; put your feet in a pailful of powdered ice; have somebody to jingle a bell in one ear, and somebody else to blow into the other with the bellows, and you will have an exact idea of sleighing.”