AMERICAN NOTES

by Rudyard Kipling

With Introduction

Introduction

In an issue of the London World in April, 1890, there appeared thefollowing paragraph: "Two small rooms connected by a tiny hall affordsufficient space to contain Mr. Rudyard Kipling, the literary hero ofthe present hour, 'the man who came from nowhere, ' as he says himself, and who a year ago was consciously nothing in the literary world. "

Six months previous to this Mr. Kipling, then but twenty-four years old, had arrived in England from India to find that fame had preceded him. Hehad already gained fame in India, where scores of cultured and criticalpeople, after reading "Departmental Ditties, " "Plain Tales from theHills, " and various other stories and verses, had stamped him for agenius. 

Fortunately for everybody who reads, London interested and stimulatedMr. Kipling, and he settled down to writing. "The Record of BadaliaHerodsfoot, " and his first novel, "The Light that Failed, " appearedin 1890 and 1891; then a collection of verse, "Life's Handicap, beingstories of Mine Own People, " was published simultaneously in London andNew York City; then followed more verse, and so on through an unendingseries. 

In 1891 Mr. Kipling met the young author Wolcott Balestier, at thattime connected with a London publishing house. A strong attachment grewbetween the two, and several months after their first meeting theycame to Mr. Balestier's Vermont home, where they collaborated on "TheNaulahka: A Story of West and East, " for which The Century paid thelargest price ever given by an American magazine for a story. Thefollowing year Mr. Kipling married Mr. Balestier's sister in London andbrought her to America. 

The Balestiers were of an aristocratic New York family; the grandfatherof Mrs. Kipling was J. M. Balestier, a prominent lawyer in New York Cityand Chicago, who died in 1888, leaving a fortune of about a million. Hermaternal grandfather was E. Peshine Smith of Rochester, N. Y. , a notedauthor and jurist, who was selected in 1871 by Secretary HamiltonFish to go to Japan as the Mikado's adviser in international law. Theancestral home of the Balestiers was near Brattleboro', Vt. , and hereMr. Kipling brought his bride. The young Englishman was so impressed bythe Vermont scenery that he rented for a time the cottage on the "BlissFarm, " in which Steele Mackaye the playwright wrote the well known drama"Hazel Kirke. "

The next spring Mr. Kipling purchased from his brother-in-law, BeattyBalestier, a tract of land about three miles north of Brattleboro', Vt. , and on this erected a house at a cost of nearly $50, 000, which he named"The Naulahka. " This was his home during his sojourn in America. Herehe wrote when in the mood, and for recreation tramped abroad over thehills. His social duties at this period were not arduous, for to hishome he refused admittance to all but tried friends. He made a study ofthe Yankee country dialect and character for "The Walking Delegate, " andwhile "Captains Courageous, " the story of New England fisher life, wasbefore him he spent some time among the Gloucester fishermen with anacquaintance who had access to the household gods of these people. 

He returned to England in August, 1896, and did not visit America againtill 1899, when he came with his wife and three children for a limitedtime. 

It is hardly fair to Mr. Kipling to call "American Notes" firstimpressions, for one reading them will readily see that the impressionsare superficial, little thought being put upon the writing. They seemsuper-sarcastic, and would lead one to believe that Mr. Kipling isantagonistic to America in every respect. This, however, is not true. These "Notes" aroused much protest and severe criticism when theyappeared in 1891, and are considered so far beneath Mr. Kipling's realwork that they have been nearly suppressed and are rarely found ina list of his writings. Their very caustic style is of interest to astudent and lover of Kipling, and for this reason the publishers believethem worthy of a good binding. 

G. P. T. 

Contents

AT THE GOLDEN GATE

AMERICAN POLITICS

AMERICAN SALMON

THE YELLOWSTONE

CHICAGO

THE AMERICAN ARMY

AMERICA'S DEFENCELESS COASTS

I. AT THE GOLDEN GATE

 "Serene, indifferent to fate, Thou sittest at the Western Gate; Thou seest the white seas fold their tents, Oh, warder of two continents; Thou drawest all things, small and great, To thee, beside the Western Gate. "

THIS is what Bret Harte has written of the great city of San Francisco, and for the past fortnight I have been wondering what made him do it. 

There is neither serenity nor indifference to be found in these parts;and evil would it be for the continents whose wardship were intrusted toso reckless a guardian. 

Behold me pitched neck-and-crop from twenty days of the high seas intothe whirl of California, deprived of any guidance, and left to draw myown conclusions. Protect me from the wrath of an outraged communityif these letters be ever read by American eyes! San Francisco is a madcity--inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people, whosewomen are of a remarkable beauty. 

When the "City of Pekin" steamed through the Golden Gate, I saw withgreat joy that the block-house which guarded the mouth of the "finestharbor in the world, sir, " could be silenced by two gunboats from HongKong with safety, comfort, and despatch. Also, there was not a singleAmerican vessel of war in the harbor. 

This may sound bloodthirsty; but remember, I had come with a grievanceupon me--the grievance of the pirated English books. 

Then a reporter leaped aboard, and ere I could gasp held me in histoils. He pumped me exhaustively while I was getting ashore, demandingof all things in the world news about Indian journalism. It is an awfulthing to enter a new land with a new lie on your lips. I spoke the truthto the evil-minded Custom House man who turned my most sacred raiment ona floor composed of stable refuse and pine splinters; but the reporteroverwhelmed me not so much by his poignant audacity as his beautifulignorance. I am sorry now that I did not tell him more lies as I passedinto a city of three hundred thousand white men. Think of it! Threehundred thousand white men and women gathered in one spot, walkingupon real pavements in front of plate-glass-windowed shops, and talkingsomething that at first hearing was not very different from English. Itwas only when I had tangled myself up in a hopeless maze of small woodenhouses, dust, street refuse, and children who played with empty kerosenetins, that I discovered the difference of speech. 

"You want to go to the Palace Hotel?" said an affable youth on a dray. "What in hell are you doing here, then? This is about the lowest ward inthe city. Go six blocks north to corner of Geary and Markey, then walkaround till you strike corner of Gutter and Sixteenth, and that bringsyou there. "

I do not vouch for the literal accuracy of these directions, quoting butfrom a disordered memory. 

"Amen, " I said. "But who am I that I should strike the corners of suchas you name? Peradventure they be gentlemen of repute, and might hitback. Bring it down to dots, my son. "

I thought he would have smitten me, but he didn't. He explained that noone ever used the word "street, " and that every one was supposed to knowhow the streets ran, for sometimes the names were upon the lamps andsometimes they weren't. Fortified with these directions, I proceededtill I found a mighty street, full of sumptuous buildings four and fivestories high, but paved with rude cobblestones, after the fashion of theyear 1. 

Here a tram-car, without any visible means of support, slid stealthilybehind me and nearly struck me in the back. This was the famous cablecar of San Francisco, which runs by gripping an endless wire rope sunkin the ground, and of which I will tell you more anon. A hundred yardsfurther there was a slight commotion in the street, a gathering togetherof three or four, something that glittered as it moved very swiftly. Aponderous Irish gentleman, with priest's cords in his hat and a smallnickel-plated badge on his fat bosom, emerged from the knot supportinga Chinaman who had been stabbed in the eye and was bleeding like apig. The by-standers went their ways, and the Chinaman, assisted by thepoliceman, his own. Of course this was none of my business, but I ratherwanted to know what had happened to the gentleman who had dealtthe stab. It said a great deal for the excellence of the municipalarrangement of the town that a surging crowd did not at once block thestreet to see what was going forward. I was the sixth man and the lastwho assisted at the performance, and my curiosity was six times thegreatest. Indeed, I felt ashamed of showing it. 

There were no more incidents till I reached the Palace Hotel, aseven-storied warren of humanity with a thousand rooms in it. All thetravel books will tell you about hotel arrangements in this country. They should be seen to be appreciated. Understand clearly--and thisletter is written after a thousand miles of experiences--that moneywill not buy you service in the West. When the hotel clerk--the manwho awards your room to you and who is supposed to give youinformation--when that resplendent individual stoops to attend to yourwants he does so whistling or humming or picking his teeth, or pausesto converse with some one he knows. These performances, I gather, are toimpress upon you that he is a free man and your equal. From his generalappearance and the size of his diamonds he ought to be your superior. There is no necessity for this swaggering self-consciousness of freedom. Business is business, and the man who is paid to attend to a man mightreasonably devote his whole attention to the job. Out of office hours hecan take his coach and four and pervade society if he pleases. 

In a vast marble-paved hall, under the glare of an electric light, sat forty or fifty men, and for their use and amusement were providedspittoons of infinite capacity and generous gape. Most of the menwore frock-coats and top-hats--the things that we in India put on at awedding-breakfast, if we possess them--but they all spat. They spat onprinciple. The spittoons were on the staircases, in each bedroom--yea, and in chambers even more sacred than these. They chased one intoretirement, but they blossomed in chiefest splendor round the bar, andthey were all used, every reeking one of them. 

Just before I began to feel deathly sick another reporter grappled me. What he wanted to know was the precise area of India in square miles. Ireferred him to Whittaker. He had never heard of Whittaker. He wanted itfrom my own mouth, and I would not tell him. Then he swerved off, justlike the other man, to details of journalism in our own country. Iventured to suggest that the interior economy of a paper most concernedthe people who worked it. 

"That's the very thing that interests us, " he said. "Have you gotreporters anything like our reporters on Indian newspapers?"

"We have not, " I said, and suppressed the "thank God" rising to my lips. 

"Why haven't you?" said he. 

"Because they would die, " I said. 

It was exactly like talking to a child--a very rude little child. Hewould begin almost every sentence with, "Now tell me something aboutIndia, " and would turn aimlessly from one question to the other withoutthe least continuity. I was not angry, but keenly interested. The manwas a revelation to me. To his questions I returned answers mendaciousand evasive. After all, it really did not matter what I said. He couldnot understand. I can only hope and pray that none of the readers of the"Pioneer" will ever see that portentous interview. The man made me outto be an idiot several sizes more drivelling than my destiny intended, and the rankness of his ignorance managed to distort the few poor factswith which I supplied him into large and elaborate lies. Then, thoughtI, "the matter of American journalism shall be looked into later on. Atpresent I will enjoy myself. "

No man rose to tell me what were the lions of the place. No onevolunteered any sort of conveyance. I was absolutely alone in this bigcity of white folk. By instinct I sought refreshment, and came upon abarroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backsof their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institutionof the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as muchas you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man canfeed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. 

Later I began a vast but unsystematic exploration of the streets. Iasked for no names. It was enough that the pavements were full of whitemen and women, the streets clanging with traffic, and that the restfulroar of a great city rang in my ears. The cable cars glided to allpoints of the compass at once. I took them one by one till I could go nofurther. San Francisco has been pitched down on the sand bunkers of theBikaneer desert. About one fourth of it is ground reclaimed from thesea--any old-timers will tell you all about that. The remainder is justragged, unthrifty sand hills, to-day pegged down by houses. 

From an English point of view there has not been the least attemptat grading those hills, and indeed you might as well try to grade thehillocks of Sind. The cable cars have for all practical purposes madeSan Francisco a dead level. They take no count of rise or fall, butslide equably on their appointed courses from one end to the other of asix-mile street. They turn corners almost at right angles, cross otherlines, and for aught I know may run up the sides of houses. There isno visible agency of their flight, but once in awhile you shall passa five-storied building humming with machinery that winds up aneverlasting wire cable, and the initiated will tell you that here is themechanism. I gave up asking questions. If it pleases Providence to makea car run up and down a slit in the ground for many miles, and if fortwopence halfpenny I can ride in that car, why shall I seek the reasonsof the miracle? Rather let me look out of the windows till the shopsgive place to thousands and thousands of little houses made of wood (toimitate stone), each house just big enough for a man and his family. Letme watch the people in the cars and try to find out in what manner theydiffer from us, their ancestors. 

It grieves me now that I cursed them (in the matter of book piracy), because I perceived that my curse is working and that their speech isbecoming a horror already. They delude themselves into the belief thatthey talk English--the English--and I have already been pitied forspeaking with "an English accent. " The man who pitied me spoke, so faras I was concerned, the language of thieves. And they all do. Where weput the accent forward they throw it back, and vice versa where wegive the long "a" they use the short, and words so simple as to be pastmistaking they pronounce somewhere up in the dome of their heads. How dothese things happen?

Oliver Wendell Holmes says that the Yankee school-marm, the cider andthe salt codfish of the Eastern States, are responsible for what hecalls a nasal accent. I know better. They stole books from across thewater without paying for 'em, and the snort of delight was fixed intheir nostrils forever by a just Providence. That is why they talk aforeign tongue to-day. 

"Cats is dogs, and rabbits is dogs, and so's parrots. But this 'eretortoise is an insect, so there ain't no charge, " as the old portersaid. 

A Hindoo is a Hindoo and a brother to the man who knows his vernacular. And a Frenchman is French because he speaks his own language. But theAmerican has no language. He is dialect, slang, provincialism, accent, and so forth. Now that I have heard their voices, all the beauty of BretHarte is being ruined for me, because I find myself catching through theroll of his rhythmical prose the cadence of his peculiar fatherland. Getan American lady to read to you "How Santa Claus Came to Simpson'sBar, " and see how much is, under her tongue, left of the beauty of theoriginal. 

But I am sorry for Bret Harte. It happened this way. A reporter askedme what I thought of the city, and I made answer suavely that it washallowed ground to me, because of Bret Harte. That was true. 

"Well, " said the reporter, "Bret Harte claims California, but Californiadon't claim Bret Harte. He's been so long in England that he's quiteEnglish. Have you seen our cracker factories or the new offices of the'Examiner'?"

He could not understand that to the outside world the city was worth agreat deal less than the man. I never intended to curse the people witha provincialism so vast as this. 

But let us return to our sheep--which means the sea-lions of the CliffHouse. They are the great show of San Francisco. You take a train whichpulls up the middle of the street (it killed two people the daybefore yesterday, being unbraked and driven absolutely regardless ofconsequences), and you pull up somewhere at the back of the city on thePacific beach. Originally the cliffs and their approaches must have beenpretty, but they have been so carefully defiled with advertisements thatthey are now one big blistered abomination. A hundred yards fromthe shore stood a big rock covered with the carcasses of the sleeksea-beasts, who roared and rolled and walloped in the spouting surges. No bold man had painted the creatures sky-blue or advertised newspaperson their backs, wherefore they did not match the landscape, which waschiefly hoarding. Some day, perhaps, whatever sort of government mayobtain in this country will make a restoration of the place and keep itclean and neat. At present the sovereign people, of whom I have heard somuch already, are vending cherries and painting the virtues of "LittleBile Beans" all over it. 

Night fell over the Pacific, and the white sea-fog whipped through thestreets, dimming the splendors of the electric lights. It is the use ofthis city, her men and women folk, to parade between the hours of eightand ten a certain street called Cairn Street, where the finest shops aresituated. Here the click of high heels on the pavement is loudest, herethe lights are brightest, and here the thunder of the traffic is mostoverwhelming. I watched Young California, and saw that it was, atleast, expensively dressed, cheerful in manner, and self-assertingin conversation. Also the women were very fair. Perhaps eighteen daysaboard ship had something to do with my unreserved admiration. Themaidens were of generous build, large, well groomed, and attired inraiment that even to my inexperienced eyes must have cost much. CairnStreet at nine o'clock levels all distinctions of rank as impartiallyas the grave. Again and again I loitered at the heels of a couple ofresplendent beings, only to overhear, when I expected the level voiceof culture, the staccato "Sez he, " "Sez I" that is the mark of the whiteservant-girl all the world over. 

This was depressing because, in spite of all that goes to the contrary, fine feathers ought to make fine birds. There was wealth--unlimitedwealth--in the streets, but not an accent that would not have been dearat fifty cents. Wherefore, revolving in my mind that these folk werebarbarians, I was presently enlightened and made aware that they alsowere the heirs of all the ages, and civilized after all. There appearedbefore me an affable stranger of prepossessing appearance, with a blueand an innocent eye. Addressing me by name, he claimed to have met me inNew York, at the Windsor, and to this claim I gave a qualified assent. I did not remember the fact, but since he was so certain of it, why, then--I waited developments. 

"And what did you think of Indiana when you came through?" was the nextquestion. 

It revealed the mystery of previous acquaintance and one or two otherthings. With reprehensible carelessness my friend of the light-blue eyehad looked up the name of his victim in the hotel register, and read"Indiana" for India. 

The provincialism with which I had cursed his people extended tohimself. He could not imagine an Englishman coming through the Statesfrom west to east instead of by the regularly ordained route. My fearwas that in his delight in finding me so responsive he would makeremarks about New York and the Windsor which I could not understand. And, indeed, he adventured in this direction once or twice, asking mewhat I thought of such and such streets, which from his tone I gatheredto be anything but respectable. It is trying to talk unknown New York inalmost unknown San Francisco. But my friend was merciful. He protestedthat I was one after his own heart, and pressed upon me rare and curiousdrinks at more than one bar. These drinks I accepted with gratitude, asalso the cigars with which his pockets were stored. He would show me thelife of the city. Having no desire to watch a weary old play again, Ievaded the offer and received in lieu of the devil's instruction muchcoarse flattery. Curiously constituted is the soul of man. Knowing howand where this man lied, waiting idly for the finale, I was distinctlyconscious, as he bubbled compliments in my ear, of soft thrills ofgratified pride stealing from hat-rim to boot-heels. I was wise, quothhe--anybody could see that with half an eye; sagacious, versed in theways of the world, an acquaintance to be desired; one who had tasted thecup of life with discretion. 

All this pleased me, and in a measure numbed the suspicion that wasthoroughly aroused. Eventually the blue-eyed one discovered, nay, insisted, that I had a taste for cards (this was clumsily worked in, but it was my fault, for in that I met him half-way and allowed himno chance of good acting). Hereupon I laid my head upon one side andsimulated unholy wisdom, quoting odds and ends of poker talk, allludicrously misapplied. My friend kept his countenance admirably, andwell he might, for five minutes later we arrived, always by the purestof chance, at a place where we could play cards and also frivol withLouisiana State Lottery tickets. Would I play?

"Nay, " said I, "for to me cards have neither meaning nor continuity; butlet us assume that I am going to play. How would you and your friendsget to work? Would you play a straight game, or make me drunk, or--well, the fact is, I'm a newspaper man, and I'd be much obliged if you'd letme know something about bunco steering. "

My blue-eyed friend erected himself into an obelisk of profanity. Hecursed me by his gods--the right and left bower; he even cursed the verygood cigars he had given me. But, the storm over, he quieted down andexplained. I apologized for causing him to waste an evening, and wespent a very pleasant time together. 

Inaccuracy, provincialism, and a too hasty rushing to conclusions, were the rocks that he had split on, but he got his revenge when hesaid:--"How would I play with you? From all the poppycock Anglice boshyou talked about poker, I'd ha' played a straight game, and skinnedyou. I wouldn't have taken the trouble to make you drunk. You never knewanything of the game, but how I was mistaken in going to work on you, makes me sick. "

He glared at me as though I had done him an injury. To-day I know how itis that year after year, week after week, the bunco steerer, who is theconfidence trick and the card-sharper man of other climes, secureshis prey. He clavers them over with flattery as the snake clavers therabbit. The incident depressed me because it showed I had left theinnocent East far behind and was come to a country where a man must lookout for himself. The very hotels bristled with notices about keeping mydoor locked and depositing my valuables in a safe. The white man in alump is bad. Weeping softly for O-Toyo (little I knew then that myheart was to be torn afresh from my bosom) I fell asleep in the clanginghotel. 

Next morning I had entered upon the deferred inheritance. There areno princes in America--at least with crowns on their heads--but agenerous-minded member of some royal family received my letter ofintroduction. Ere the day closed I was a member of the two clubs, andbooked for many engagements to dinner and party. Now, this prince, uponwhose financial operations be continual increase, had no reason, nor hadthe others, his friends, to put himself out for the sake of one Britonmore or less, but he rested not till he had accomplished all in mybehalf that a mother could think of for her debutante daughter. 

Do you know the Bohemian Club of San Francisco? They say its fameextends over the world. It was created, somewhat on the lines of theSavage, by men who wrote or drew things, and has blossomed into mostunrepublican luxury. The ruler of the place is an owl--an owl standingupon a skull and cross-bones, showing forth grimly the wisdom of the manof letters and the end of his hopes for immortality. The owl standson the staircase, a statue four feet high; is carved in the wood-work, flutters on the frescoed ceiling, is stamped on the note-paper, andhangs on the walls. He is an ancient and honorable bird. Under his wing'twas my privilege to meet with white men whose lives were not chaineddown to routine of toil, who wrote magazine articles instead of readingthem hurriedly in the pauses of office-work, who painted picturesinstead of contenting themselves with cheap etchings picked up atanother man's sale of effects. Mine were all the rights of socialintercourse, craft by craft, that India, stony-hearted step-mother ofcollectors, has swindled us out of. Treading soft carpets and breathingthe incense of superior cigars, I wandered from room to room studyingthe paintings in which the members of the club had caricaturedthemselves, their associates, and their aims. There was a slick Frenchaudacity about the workmanship of these men of toil unbending that wentstraight to the heart of the beholder. And yet it was not altogetherFrench. A dry grimness of treatment, almost Dutch, marked thedifference. The men painted as they spoke--with certainty. Theclub indulges in revelries which it calls "jinks"--high and low, atintervals--and each of these gatherings is faithfully portrayed inoils by hands that know their business. In this club were no amateursspoiling canvas, because they fancied they could handle oils withoutknowledge of shadows or anatomy--no gentleman of leisure ruining thetemper of publishers and an already ruined market with attempts to write"because everybody writes something these days. "

My hosts were working, or had worked for their daily bread with pen orpaint, and their talk for the most part was of the shop--shoppy--that isto say, delightful. They extended a large hand of welcome, and were asbrethren, and I did homage to the owl and listened to their talk. AnIndian club about Christmas-time will yield, if properly worked, anabundant harvest of queer tales; but at a gathering of Americansfrom the uttermost ends of their own continent, the tales are larger, thicker, more spinous, and even more azure than any Indian variety. Tales of the war I heard told by an ex-officer of the South over hisevening drink to a colonel of the Northern army, my introducer, who hadserved as a trooper in the Northern Horse, throwing in emendations fromtime to time. "Tales of the Law, " which in this country is an amazinglyelastic affair, followed from the lips of a judge. Forgive me forrecording one tale that struck me as new. It may interest the up-countryBar in India. 

Once upon a time there was Samuelson, a young lawyer, who feared notGod, neither regarded the Bench. (Name, age, and town of the man weregiven at great length. ) To him no case had ever come as a client, partlybecause he lived in a district where lynch law prevailed, and partlybecause the most desperate prisoner shrunk from intrusting himself tothe mercies of a phenomenal stammerer. But in time there happened anaggravated murder--so bad, indeed, that by common consent the citizensdecided, as a prelude to lynching, to give the real law a chance. Theycould, in fact, gambol round that murder. They met--the court in itsshirt-sleeves--and against the raw square of the Court House window atemptingly suggestive branch of a tree fretted the sky. No one appearedfor the prisoner, and, partly in jest, the court advised young Samuelsonto take up the case. 

"The prisoner is undefended, Sam, " said the court. "The square thing todo would be for you to take him aside and do the best you can for him. "

Court, jury, and witness then adjourned to the veranda, while Samuelsonled his client aside to the Court House cells. An hour passed ere thelawyer returned alone. Mutely the audience questioned. 

"May it p-p-please the c-court, " said Samuel-son, "my client's case isa b-b-b-bad one--a d-d-amn bad one. You told me to do the b-b-best Ic-could for him, judge, so I've jest given him y-your b-b-bay gelding, an' told him to light out for healthier c-climes, my p-p-professionalopinion being he'd be hanged quicker'n h-h-hades if he dallied here. B-by this time my client's 'bout fifteen mile out yonder somewheres. That was the b-b-best I could do for him, may it p-p-please the court. "

The young man, escaping punishment in lieu of the prisoner, made hisfortune ere five years. 

Other voices followed, with equally wondrous tales of riata-throwingin Mexico and Arizona, of gambling at army posts in Texas, of newspaperwars waged in godless Chicago (I could not help being interested, butthey were not pretty tricks), of deaths sudden and violent in Montanaand Dakota, of the loves of half-breed maidens in the South, andfantastic huntings for gold in mysterious Alaska. Above all, theytold the story of the building of old San Francisco, when the "finestcollection of humanity on God's earth, sir, started this town, and thewater came up to the foot of Market Street. " Very terrible were someof the tales, grimly humorous the others, and the men in broadcloth andfine linen who told them had played their parts in them. 

"And now and again when things got too bad they would toll the citybell, and the Vigilance Committee turned out and hanged the suspiciouscharacters. A man didn't begin to be suspected in those days till he hadcommitted at least one unprovoked murder, " said a calm-eyed, portly oldgentleman. 

I looked at the pictures around me, the noiseless, neat-uniformed waiterbehind me, the oak-ribbed ceiling above, the velvet carpet beneath. It was hard to realize that even twenty years ago you could see a manhanged with great pomp. Later on I found reason to change my opinion. The tales gave me a headache and set me thinking. How in the worldwas it possible to take in even one thousandth of this huge, roaring, many-sided continent? In the tobacco-scented silence of the sumptuouslibrary lay Professor Bryce's book on the American Republic. 

"It is an omen, " said I. "He has done all things in all seriousness, andhe may be purchased for half a guinea. Those who desire information ofthe most undoubted, must refer to his pages. For me is the dailyround of vagabondage, the recording of the incidents of the hour andintercourse with the travelling-companion of the day. I will not 'do'this country at all. "

And I forgot all about India for ten days while I went out to dinnersand watched the social customs of the people, which are entirelydifferent from our customs, and was introduced to men of many millions. These persons are harmless in their earlier stages--that is to say, aman worth three or four million dollars may be a good talker, clever, amusing, and of the world; a man with twice that amount is to beavoided, and a twenty million man is--just twenty millions. Take aninstance. I was speaking to a newspaper man about seeing the proprietorof his journal, as in my innocence I supposed newspaper men occasionallydid. My friend snorted indignantly:--"See him! Great Scott! No. If hehappens to appear in the office, I have to associate with him; but, thank Heaven! outside of that I move in circles where he cannot come. "

And yet the first thing I have been taught to believe is that money waseverything in America!

II. AMERICAN POLITICS

I HAVE been watching machinery in repose after reading about machineryin action. 

An excellent gentleman, who bears a name honored in the magazine, writes, much as Disraeli orated, of "the sublime instincts of an ancientpeople, " the certainty with which they can be trusted to manage theirown affairs in their own way, and the speed with which they are makingfor all sorts of desirable goals. This he called a statement or purviewof American politics. 

I went almost directly afterward to a saloon where gentlemen interestedin ward politics nightly congregate. They were not pretty persons. Someof them were bloated, and they all swore cheerfully till the heavy goldwatch-chains on their fat stomachs rose and fell again; but they talkedover their liquor as men who had power and unquestioned access to placesof trust and profit. 

The magazine writer discussed theories of government; these men thepractice. They had been there. They knew all about it. They banged theirfists on the table and spoke of political "pulls, " the vending of votes, and so forth. Theirs was not the talk of village babblers reconstructingthe affairs of the nation, but of strong, coarse, lustful men fightingfor spoil, and thoroughly understanding the best methods of reaching it. 

I listened long and intently to speech I could not understand--or but inspots. 

It was the speech of business, however. I had sense enough to know that, and to do my laughing outside the door. 

Then I began to understand why my pleasant and well-educated hosts inSan Francisco spoke with a bitter scorn of such duties of citizenship asvoting and taking an interest in the distribution of offices. Scores ofmen have told me, without false pride, that they would as soon concernthemselves with the public affairs of the city or state as rakemuck with a steam-shovel. It may be that their lofty disdain coversselfishness, but I should be very sorry habitually to meet the fatgentlemen with shiny top-hats and plump cigars in whose society I havebeen spending the evening. 

Read about politics as the cultured writer of the magazine regards 'em, and then, and not till then, pay your respects to the gentlemen who runthe grimy reality. 

I'm sick of interviewing night editors who lean their chair againstthe wall, and, in response to my demand for the record of a prominentcitizen, answer: "Well, you see, he began by keeping a saloon, " etc. I prefer to believe that my informants are treating me as in the oldsinful days in India I was used to treat the wandering globe-trotter. They declare that they speak the truth, and the news of dog politicslately vouchsafed to me in groggeries inclines me to believe, but Iwon't. The people are much too nice to slangander as recklessly as Ihave been doing. 

Besides, I am hopelessly in love with about eight American maidens--allperfectly delightful till the next one comes into the room. 

O-Toyo was a darling, but she lacked several things--conversation forone. You cannot live on giggles. She shall remain unmarried at Nagasaki, while I roast a battered heart before the shrine of a big Kentuckyblonde, who had for a nurse when she was little a negro "mammy. "

By consequence she has welded on California beauty, Paris dresses, Eastern culture, Europe trips, and wild Western originality, the queer, dreamy superstitions of the quarters, and the result is soul-shattering. And she is but one of many stars. 

Item, a maiden who believes in education and possesses it, with a fewhundred thousand dollars to boot and a taste for slumming. 

Item, the leader of a sort of informal salon where girls congregate, read papers, and daringly discuss metaphysical problems and candy--asloe-eyed, black-browed, imperious maiden she. 

Item, a very small maiden, absolutely without reverence, who can in oneswift sentence trample upon and leave gasping half a dozen young men. 

Item, a millionairess, burdened with her money, lonely, caustic, witha tongue keen as a sword, yearning for a sphere, but chained up to therock of her vast possessions. 

Item, a typewriter maiden earning her own bread in this big city, because she doesn't think a girl ought to be a burden on her parents, who quotes Theophile Gautier and moves through the world manfully, muchrespected for all her twenty inexperienced summers. 

Item, a woman from cloud-land who has no history in the past or future, but is discreetly of the present, and strives for the confidencesof male humanity on the grounds of "sympathy" (methinks this is notaltogether a new type). 

Item, a girl in a "dive, " blessed with a Greek head and eyes, that seemto speak all that is best and sweetest in the world. But woe is me! Shehas no ideas in this world or the next beyond the consumption of beer(a commission on each bottle), and protests that she sings the songsallotted to her nightly without more than the vaguest notion of theirmeaning. 

Sweet and comely are the maidens of Devonshire; delicate and of graciousseeming those who live in the pleasant places of London; fascinating forall their demureness the damsels of France, clinging closely to theirmothers, with large eyes wondering at the wicked world; excellent in herown place and to those who understand her is the Anglo-Indian "spin" inher second season; but the girls of America are above and beyond themall. They are clever, they can talk--yea, it is said that they think. Certainly they have an appearance of so doing which is delightfullydeceptive. 

They are original, and regard you between the brows with unabashed eyesas a sister might look at her brother. They are instructed, too, in thefolly and vanity of the male mind, for they have associated with "theboys" from babyhood, and can discerningly minister to both vices orpleasantly snub the possessor. They possess, moreover, a life amongthemselves, independent of any masculine associations. They havesocieties and clubs and unlimited tea-fights where all the guests aregirls. They are self-possessed, without parting with any tenderness thatis their sex-right; they understand; they can take care of themselves;they are superbly independent. When you ask them what makes them socharming, they say:--"It is because we are better educated than yourgirls, and--and we are more sensible in regard to men. We have goodtimes all round, but we aren't taught to regard every man as a possiblehusband. Nor is he expected to marry the first girl he calls onregularly. "

Yes, they have good times, their freedom is large, and they do not abuseit. They can go driving with young men and receive visits from youngmen to an extent that would make an English mother wink with horror, andneither driver nor drivee has a thought beyond the enjoyment of a goodtime. As certain, also, of their own poets have said:--

 "Man is fire and woman is tow, And the devil he comes and begins to blow. "

In America the tow is soaked in a solution that makes it fire-proof, in absolute liberty and large knowledge; consequently, accidents do notexceed the regular percentage arranged by the devil for each class andclimate under the skies. 

But the freedom of the young girl has its drawbacks. She is--I say itwith all reluctance--irreverent, from her forty-dollar bonnet to thebuckles in her eighteen-dollar shoes. She talks flippantly to herparents and men old enough to be her grandfather. She has a prescriptiveright to the society of the man who arrives. The parents admit it. 

This is sometimes embarrassing, especially when you call on a man andhis wife for the sake of information--the one being a merchant of variedknowledge, the other a woman of the world. In five minutes your host hasvanished. In another five his wife has followed him, and you are leftalone with a very charming maiden, doubtless, but certainly not theperson you came to see. She chatters, and you grin, but you leavewith the very strong impression of a wasted morning. This has been myexperience once or twice. I have even said as pointedly as I dared to aman:--"I came to see you. "

"You'd better see me in my office, then. The house belongs to my womenfolk--to my daughter, that is to say. "

He spoke the truth. The American of wealth is owned by his family. Theyexploit him for bullion. The women get the ha'pence, the kicks are allhis own. Nothing is too good for an American's daughter (I speak here ofthe moneyed classes). 

The girls take every gift as a matter of course, and yet they developgreatly when a catastrophe arrives and the man of many millions goes upor goes down, and his daughters take to stenography or typewriting. Ihave heard many tales of heroism from the lips of girls who counted theprincipals among their friends. The crash came, Mamie, or Hattie, orSadie, gave up their maid, their carriages and candy, and with a No. 2Remington and a stout heart set about earning their daily bread. 

"And did I drop her from the list of my friends? No, sir, " said ascarlet-lipped vision in white lace; "that might happen to us any day. "

It may be this sense of possible disaster in the air that makes SanFrancisco society go with so captivating a rush and whirl. Recklessnessis in the air. I can't explain where it comes from, but there it is. The roaring winds of the Pacific make you drunk to begin with. Theaggressive luxury on all sides helps out the intoxication, and you spinforever "down the ringing grooves of change" (there is no small change, by the way, west of the Rockies) as long as money lasts. They makegreatly and they spend lavishly; not only the rich, but the artisans, who pay nearly five pounds for a suit of clothes, and for other luxuriesin proportion. 

The young men rejoice in the days of their youth. They gamble, yacht, race, enjoy prize-fights and cock-fights, the one openly, the otherin secret; they establish luxurious clubs; they break themselves overhorse-flesh and other things, and they are instant in a quarrel. Attwenty they are experienced in business, embark in vast enterprises, take partners as experienced as themselves, and go to pieces with asmuch splendor as their neighbors. Remember that the men who stockedCalifornia in the fifties were physically, and, as far as regardscertain tough virtues, the pick of the earth. The inept and the weaklydied en route, or went under in the days of construction. To thisnucleus were added all the races of the Continent--French, Italian, German, and, of course, the Jew. 

The result you can see in the large-boned, deep-chested, delicate-handedwomen, and long, elastic, well-built boys. It needs no little goldenbadge swinging from the watch-chain to mark the native son of the goldenWest, the country-bred of California. 

Him I love because he is devoid of fear, carries himself like a man, andhas a heart as big as his books. I fancy, too, he knows how to enjoy theblessings of life that his province so abundantly bestows upon him. Atleast, I heard a little rat of a creature with hock-bottle shouldersexplaining that a man from Chicago could pull the eye-teeth of aCalifornian in business. 

Well, if I lived in fairy-land, where cherries were as big as plums, plums as big as apples, and strawberries of no account, where theprocession of the fruits of the seasons was like a pageant in a DruryLane pantomime and the dry air was wine, I should let business slideonce in a way and kick up my heels with my fellows. The tale of theresources of California--vegetable and mineral--is a fairy-tale. You canread it in books. You would never believe me. 

All manner of nourishing food, from sea-fish to beef, may be bought atthe lowest prices, and the people are consequently well-developed and ofa high stomach. They demand ten shillings for tinkering a jammed lock ofa trunk; they receive sixteen shillings a day for working as carpenters;they spend many sixpences on very bad cigars, which the poorest of themsmoke, and they go mad over a prize-fight. When they disagree they do sofatally, with fire-arms in their hands, and on the public streets. Iwas just clear of Mission Street when the trouble began between twogentlemen, one of whom perforated the other. 

When a policeman, whose name I do not recollect, "fatally shot EdHearney" for attempting to escape arrest, I was in the next street. Forthese things I am thankful. It is enough to travel with a policeman ina tram-car, and, while he arranges his coat-tails as he sits down, tocatch sight of a loaded revolver. It is enough to know that fifty percent of the men in the public saloons carry pistols about them. 

The Chinaman waylays his adversary, and methodically chops him to pieceswith his hatchet. Then the press roars about the brutal ferocity of thepagan. 

The Italian reconstructs his friend with a long knife. The presscomplains of the waywardness of the alien. 

The Irishman and the native Californian in their hours of discontent usethe revolver, not once, but six times. The press records the fact, andasks in the next column whether the world can parallel the progress ofSan Francisco. The American who loves his country will tell you thatthis sort of thing is confined to the lower classes. Just at present anex-judge who was sent to jail by another judge (upon my word I cannottell whether these titles mean anything) is breathing red-hot vengeanceagainst his enemy. The papers have interviewed both parties, andconfidently expect a fatal issue. 

Now, let me draw breath and curse the negro waiter, and through himthe negro in service generally. He has been made a citizen with a vote, consequently both political parties play with him. But that is neitherhere nor there. He will commit in one meal every betise that a senllionfresh from the plow-tail is capable of, and he will continue to repeatthose faults. He is as complete a heavy-footed, uncomprehending, bungle-fisted fool as any mem-sahib in the East ever took into herestablishment. But he is according to law a free and independentcitizen--consequently above reproof or criticism. He, and he alone, inthis insane city, will wait at table (the Chinaman doesn't count). 

He is untrained, inept, but he will fill the place and draw the pay. Now, God and his father's fate made him intellectually inferior to theOriental. He insists on pretending that he serves tables by accident--asa sort of amusement. He wishes you to understand this little fact. Youwish to eat your meals, and, if possible, to have them properly served. He is a big, black, vain baby and a man rolled into one. 

A colored gentleman who insisted on getting me pie when I wantedsomething else, demanded information about India. I gave him some factsabout wages. 

"Oh, hell!" said he, cheerfully, "that wouldn't keep me in cigars for amonth. "

Then he fawned on me for a ten-cent piece. Later he took it upon himselfto pity the natives of India. "Heathens, " he called them--this woollyone, whose race has been the butt of every comedy on the native stagesince the beginning. And I turned and saw by the head upon his shouldersthat he was a Yoruba man, if there be any truth in ethnological castes. He did his thinking in English, but he was a Yoruba negro, and the racetype had remained the same throughout his generations. And the room wasfull of other races--some that looked exactly like Gallas (but thetrade was never recruited from that side of Africa), some duplicates ofCameroon heads, and some Kroomen, if ever Kroomen wore evening dress. 

The American does not consider little matters of descent, though by thistime he ought to know all about "damnable heredity. " As a general rulehe keeps himself very far from the negro, and says things about himthat are not pretty. There are six million negroes, more or less, inthe States, and they are increasing. The American, once having made themcitizens, cannot unmake them. He says, in his newspapers, they ought tobe elevated by education. He is trying this, but it is likely to bea long job, because black blood is much more adhesive than white, andthrows back with annoying persistence. When the negro gets religion hereturns directly as a hiving bee to the first instincts of his people. Just now a wave of religion is sweeping over some of the SouthernStates. 

Up to the present two Messiahs and a Daniel have appeared, and severalhuman sacrifices have been offered up to these incarnations. The Danielmanaged to get three young men, who he insisted were Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, to walk into a blast furnace, guaranteeing non-combustion. They did not return. I have seen nothing of this kind, but I haveattended a negro church. They pray, or are caused to pray by themselvesin this country. The congregation were moved by the spirit to groans andtears, and one of them danced up the aisle to the mourners' bench. Themotive may have been genuine. The movements of the shaken body werethose of a Zanzibar stick dance, such as you see at Aden on thecoal-boats, and even as I watched the people, the links that bound themto the white man snapped one by one, and I saw before me the hubshi(woolly hair) praying to a God he did not understand. Those neatlydressed folk on the benches, and the gray-headed elder by the window, were savages, neither more nor less. 

What will the American do with the negro? The South will not consortwith him. In some States miscegenation is a penal offence. The North isevery year less and less in need of his services. 

And he will not disappear. He will continue as a problem. His friendswill urge that he is as good as the white man. His enemies--well, youcan guess what his enemies will do from a little incident that followedon a recent appointment by the President. He made a negro an assistantin a post-office where--think of it!--he had to work at the next deskto a white girl, the daughter of a colonel, one of the first familiesof Georgia's modern chivalry, and all the weary, weary rest of it. The Southern chivalry howled, and hanged or burned some one in effigy. Perhaps it was the President, and perhaps it was the negro--but theprinciple remains the same. They said it was an insult. It is not goodto be a negro in the land of the free and the home of the brave. 

But this is nothing to do with San Francisco and her merry maidens, herstrong, swaggering men, and her wealth of gold and pride. They boreme to a banquet in honor of a brave lieutenant--Carlin, of the"Vandalia"--who stuck by his ship in the great cyclone at Apia andcomported himself as an officer should. On that occasion--'twas at theBohemian Club--I heard oratory with the roundest of o's, and devoured adinner the memory of which will descend with me into the hungry grave. 

There were about forty speeches delivered, and not one of them wasaverage or ordinary. It was my first introduction to the American eaglescreaming for all it was worth. The lieutenant's heroism served as a pegfrom which the silver-tongued ones turned themselves loose and kicked. 

They ransacked the clouds of sunset, the thunderbolts of heaven, thedeeps of hell, and the splendor of the resurrection for tropes andmetaphors, and hurled the result at the head of the guest of theevening. 

Never since the morning stars sung together for joy, I learned, had anamazed creation witnessed such superhuman bravery as that displayedby the American navy in the Samoa cyclone. Till earth rotted in thephosphorescent star-and-stripe slime of a decayed universe, thatgod-like gallantry would not be forgotten. I grieve that I cannot givethe exact words. My attempt at reproducing their spirit is paleand inadequate. I sat bewildered on a coruscating Niagara ofblatherum-skite. It was magnificent--it was stupendous--and I wasconscious of a wicked desire to hide my face in a napkin and grin. Then, according to rule, they produced their dead, and across the snowytablecloths dragged the corpse of every man slain in the Civil War, andhurled defiance at "our natural enemy" (England, so please you), "withher chain of fortresses across the world. " Thereafter they glorifiedtheir nation afresh from the beginning, in case any detail should havebeen overlooked, and that made me uncomfortable for their sakes. How inthe world can a white man, a sahib, of our blood, stand up and plasterpraise on his own country? He can think as highly as he likes, but thisopen-mouthed vehemence of adoration struck me almost as indelicate. Myhosts talked for rather more than three hours, and at the end seemedready for three hours more. 

But when the lieutenant--such a big, brave, gentle giant--rose to hisfeet, he delivered what seemed to me as the speech of the evening. I remember nearly the whole of it, and it ran something in thisway:--"Gentlemen--It's very good of you to give me this dinner and totell me all these pretty-things, but what I want you to understand--thefact is, what we want and what we ought to get at once, is a navy--moreships--lots of 'em--"

Then we howled the top of the roof off, and I for one fell in love withCarlin on the spot. Wallah! He was a man. 

The prince among merchants bid me take no heed to the warlike sentimentsof some of the old generals. 

"The sky-rockets are thrown in for effect, " quoth he, "and whenever weget on our hind legs we always express a desire to chaw up England. It'sa sort of family affair. "

And, indeed, when you come to think of it, there is no other country forthe American public speaker to trample upon. 

France has Germany; we have Russia; for Italy Austria is provided; andthe humblest Pathan possesses an ancestral enemy. 

Only America stands out of the racket, and therefore to be in fashionmakes a sand-bag of the mother country, and hangs her when occasionrequires. 

"The chain of fortresses" man, a fascinating talker, explained to meafter the affair that he was compelled to blow off steam. Everybodyexpected it. 

When we had chanted "The Star Spangled Banner" not more than eighttimes, we adjourned. America is a very great country, but it is notyet heaven, with electric lights and plush fittings, as the speakersprofessed to believe. My listening mind went back to the politiciansin the saloon, who wasted no time in talking about freedom, but quietlymade arrangements to impose their will on the citizens. 

"The judge is a great man, but give thy presents to the clerk, " as theproverb saith. 

And what more remains to tell? I cannot write connectedly, because Iam in love with all those girls aforesaid, and some others who do notappear in the invoice. The typewriter is an institution of which thecomic papers make much capital, but she is vastly convenient. She and acompanion rent a room in a business quarter, and, aided by a typewritingmachine, copy MSS. At the rate of six annas a page. Only a woman canoperate a typewriting machine, because she has served apprenticeship tothe sewing machine. She can earn as much as one hundred dollars amonth, and professes to regard this form of bread-winning as her naturaldestiny. But, oh! how she hates it in her heart of hearts! When I hadgot over the surprise of doing business with and trying to give ordersto a young woman of coldly, clerkly aspect intrenched behind gold-rimmedspectacles, I made inquiries concerning the pleasures of thisindependence. They liked it--indeed they did. 'Twas the natural fateof almost all girls--the recognized custom in America--and I was abarbarian not to see it in that light. 

"Well, and after?" said I. "What happens?"

"We work for our bread. "

"And then what do you expect?"

"Then we shall work for our bread. "

"Till you die?"

"Ye-es--unless--"

"Unless what? This is your business, you know. A man works until hedies. "

"So shall we"--this without enthusiasm--"I suppose. "

Said the partner in the firm, audaciously:--"Sometimes we marry ouremployees--at least, that's what the newspapers say. "

The hand banged on half a dozen of the keys of the machine at once. "YetI don't care. I hate it--I hate it--I hate it--and you needn't look so!"

The senior partner was regarding the rebel with grave-eyed reproach. 

"I thought you did, " said I. "I don't suppose American girls are muchdifferent from English ones in instinct. "

"Isn't it Theophile Gautier who says that the only difference betweencountry and country lie in the slang and the uniform of the police?"

Now, in the name of all the gods at once, what is one to say to a younglady (who in England would be a person) who earns her own bread, andvery naturally hates the employ, and slings out-of-the-way quotations atyour head? That one falls in love with her goes without saying, but thatis not enough. 

A mission should be established. 

III. AMERICAN SALMON

The race is neither to the swift nor the battle to the strong; but timeand chance cometh to all. 

I HAVE lived!

The American Continent may now sink under the sea, for I have taken thebest that it yields, and the best was neither dollars, love, nor realestate. 

Hear now, gentlemen of the Punjab Fishing Club, who whip the reachesof the Tavi, and you who painfully import trout over to Octamund, and Iwill tell you how old man California and I went fishing, and you shallenvy. 

We returned from The Dalles to Portland by the way we had come, thesteamer stopping en route to pick up a night's catch of one of thesalmon wheels on the river, and to deliver it at a cannery downstream. 

When the proprietor of the wheel announced that his take was twothousand two hundred and thirty pounds weight of fish, "and not a heavycatch neither, " I thought he lied. But he sent the boxes aboard, andI counted the salmon by the hundred--huge fifty-pounders hardly dead, scores of twenty and thirty pounders, and a host of smaller fish. Theywere all Chenook salmon, as distinguished from the "steel head" and the"silver side. " That is to say, they were royal salmon, and Californiaand I dropped a tear over them, as monarchs who deserved a better fate;but the lust of slaughter entered into our souls, and we talked fish andforgot the mountain scenery that had so moved us a day before. 

The steamer halted at a rude wooden warehouse built on piles in alonely reach of the river, and sent in the fish. I followed them up ascale-strewn, fishy incline that led to the cannery. The crazy buildingwas quivering with the machinery on its floors, and a glittering bank oftin scraps twenty feet high showed where the waste was thrown after thecans had been punched. 

Only Chinamen were employed on the work, and they looked likeblood-besmeared yellow devils as they crossed the rifts of sunlight thatlay upon the floor. When our consignment arrived, the rough wooden boxesbroke of themselves as they were dumped down under a jet of water, andthe salmon burst out in a stream of quicksilver. A Chinaman jerked upa twenty-pounder, beheaded and detailed it with two swift strokes of aknife, flicked out its internal arrangements with a third, and case itinto a blood-dyed tank. The headless fish leaped from under his hands asthough they were facing a rapid. Other Chinamen pulled them from the vatand thrust them under a thing like a chaff-cutter, which, descending, hewed them into unseemly red gobbets fit for the can. 

More Chinamen, with yellow, crooked fingers, jammed the stuff into thecans, which slid down some marvellous machine forthwith, soldering theirown tops as they passed. Each can was hastily tested for flaws, and thensunk with a hundred companions into a vat of boiling water, there tobe half cooked for a few minutes. The cans bulged slightly after theoperation, and were therefore slidden along by the trolleyful to menwith needles and soldering-irons who vented them and soldered theaperture. Except for the label, the "Finest Columbia Salmon" was readyfor the market. I was impressed not so much with the speed of themanufacture as the character of the factory. Inside, on a floor ninetyby forty, the most civilized and murderous of machinery. Outside, threefootsteps, the thick-growing pines and the immense solitude of thehills. Our steamer only stayed twenty minutes at that place, but Icounted two hundred and forty finished cans made from the catch of theprevious night ere I left the slippery, blood-stained, scale-spangled, oily floors and the offal-smeared Chinamen. 

We reached Portland, California and I crying for salmon, and areal-estate man, to whom we had been intrusted by an insurance man, metus in the street, saying that fifteen miles away, across country, weshould come upon a place called Clackamas, where we might perchance findwhat we desired. And California, his coat-tails flying in the wind, ranto a livery-stable and chartered a wagon and team forthwith. I couldpush the wagon about with one hand, so light was its structure. The teamwas purely American--that is to say, almost human in its intelligenceand docility. Some one said that the roads were not good on the way toClackamas, and warned us against smashing the springs. "Portland, " whohad watched the preparations, finally reckoned "He'd come along, too;" and under heavenly skies we three companions of a day set forth, California carefully lashing our rods into the carriage, and theby-standers overwhelming us with directions as to the saw-mills we wereto pass, the ferries we were to cross, and the sign-posts we were toseek signs from. Half a mile from this city of fifty thousand souls westruck (and this must be taken literally) a plank road that would havebeen a disgrace to an Irish village. 

Then six miles of macadamized road showed us that the team could move. A railway ran between us and the banks of the Willamette, and anotherabove us through the mountains. All the land was dotted with smalltownships, and the roads were full of farmers in their town wagons, bunches of tow-haired, boggle-eyed urchins sitting in the hay behind. The men generally looked like loafers, but their women were all welldressed. 

Brown braiding on a tailor-made jacket does not, however, consort withhay-wagons. Then we struck into the woods along what California called acamina reale--a good road--and Portland a "fair track. " It wound in andout among fire-blackened stumps under pine-trees, along the corners oflog fences, through hollows, which must be hopeless marsh in the winter, and up absurd gradients. But nowhere throughout its length did I see anyevidence of road-making. There was a track--you couldn't well get offit, and it was all you could do to stay on it. The dust lay a foot thickin the blind ruts, and under the dust we found bits of planking andbundles of brushwood that sent the wagon bounding into the air. Thejourney in itself was a delight. Sometimes we crashed through bracken;anon, where the blackberries grew rankest, we found a lonely littlecemetery, the wooden rails all awry and the pitiful, stumpy head-stonesnodding drunkenly at the soft green mullions. Then, with oaths andthe sound of rent underwood, a yoke of mighty bulls would swing down a"skid" road, hauling a forty-foot log along a rudely made slide. 

A valley full of wheat and cherry-trees succeeded, and halting ata house, we bought ten-pound weight of luscious black cherries forsomething less than a rupee, and got a drink of icy-cold water fornothing, while the untended team browsed sagaciously by the road-side. Once we found a way-side camp of horse-dealers lounging by a pool, readyfor a sale or a swap, and once two sun-tanned youngsters shot down ahill on Indian ponies, their full creels banging from the high-pommelledsaddle. They had been fishing, and were our brethren, therefore. Weshouted aloud in chorus to scare a wild cat; we squabbled over thereasons that had led a snake to cross a road; we heaved bits of barkat a venturesome chipmunk, who was really the little gray squirrel ofIndia, and had come to call on me; we lost our way, and got the wagon sobeautifully fixed on a khud-bound road that we had to tie the two hindwheels to get it down. 

Above all, California told tales of Nevada and Arizona, of lonely nightsspent out prospecting, the slaughter of deer and the chase of men, ofwoman--lovely woman--who is a firebrand in a Western city and leadsto the popping of pistols, and of the sudden changes and chancesof Fortune, who delights in making the miner or the lumber-man aquadruplicate millionaire and in "busting" the railroad king. 

That was a day to be remembered, and it had only begun when we drew reinat a tiny farm-house on the banks of the Clackamas and sought horse feedand lodging, ere we hastened to the river that broke over a weir not aquarter of a mile away. Imagine a stream seventy yards broad dividedby a pebbly island, running over seductive "riffles" and swirling intodeep, quiet pools, where the good salmon goes to smoke his pipe aftermeals. Get such a stream amid fields of breast-high crops surroundedby hills of pines, throw in where you please quiet water, long-fencedmeadows, and a hundred-foot bluff just to keep the scenery from growingtoo monotonous, and you will get some faint notion of the Clackamas. The weir had been erected to pen the Chenook salmon from going furtherup-stream. We could see them, twenty or thirty pounds, by the score inthe deep pools, or flying madly against the weir and foolishly skinningtheir noses. They were not our prey, for they would not rise at a fly, and we knew it. All the same, when one made his leap against the weir, and landed on the foot-plank with a jar that shook the board I wasstanding on, I would fain have claimed him for my own capture. 

Portland had no rod. He held the gaff and the whiskey. Californiasniffed up-stream and down-stream, across the racing water, chosehis ground, and let the gaudy fly drop in the tail of a riffle. I wasgetting my rod together, when I heard the joyous shriek of the reel andthe yells of California, and three feet of living silver leaped into theair far across the water. The forces were engaged. 

The salmon tore up-stream, the tense line cutting the water like atide-rip behind him, and the light bamboo bowed to breaking. Whathappened thereafter I cannot tell. California swore and prayed, andPortland shouted advice, and I did all three for what appeared to behalf a day, but was in reality a little over a quarter of an hour, andsullenly our fish came home with spurts of temper, dashes head on andsarabands in the air, but home to the bank came he, and the remorselessreel gathered up the thread of his life inch by inch. We landed him ina little bay, and the spring weight in his gorgeous gills checked ateleven and one half pounds. Eleven and one half pounds of fightingsalmon! We danced a war-dance on the pebbles, and California caught meround the waist in a hug that went near to breaking my ribs, while heshouted:--"Partner! Partner! This is glory! Now you catch your fish!Twenty-four years I've waited for this!"

I went into that icy-cold river and made my cast just above the weir, and all but foul-hooked a blue-and-black water-snake with a coral mouthwho coiled herself on a stone and hissed male-dictions. 

The next cast--ah, the pride of it, the regal splendor of it! the thrillthat ran down from finger-tip to toe! Then the water boiled. He brokefor the fly and got it. There remained enough sense in me to give himall he wanted when he jumped not once, but twenty times, before theup-stream flight that ran my line out to the last half-dozen turns, andI saw the nickelled reel-bar glitter under the thinning green coils. Mythumb was burned deep when I strove to stopper the line. 

I did not feel it till later, for my soul was out in the dancing weir, praying for him to turn ere he took my tackle away. And the prayer washeard. As I bowed back, the butt of the rod on my left hip-bone and thetop joint dipping like unto a weeping willow, he turned and acceptedeach inch of slack that I could by any means get in as a favor from onhigh. There lie several sorts of success in this world that taste wellin the moment of enjoyment, but I question whether the stealthy theft ofline from an able-bodied salmon who knows exactly what you are doing andwhy you are doing it is not sweeter than any other victory within humanscope. Like California's fish, he ran at me head on, and leaped againstthe line, but the Lord gave me two hundred and fifty pairs of fingers inthat hour. The banks and the pine-trees danced dizzily round me, but Ionly reeled--reeled as for life--reeled for hours, and at the end ofthe reeling continued to give him the butt while he sulked in a pool. California was further up the reach, and with the corner of my eye Icould see him casting with long casts and much skill. Then he struck, and my fish broke for the weir in the same instant, and down the reachwe came, California and I, reel answering reel even as the morning starssing together. 

The first wild enthusiasm of capture had died away. We were both atwork now in deadly earnest to prevent the lines fouling, to stall off adown-stream rush for shaggy water just above the weir, and at the sametime to get the fish into the shallow bay down-stream that gave thebest practicable landing. Portland bid us both be of good heart, andvolunteered to take the rod from my hands. 

I would rather have died among the pebbles than surrender my right toplay and land a salmon, weight unknown, with an eight-ounce rod. Iheard California, at my ear, it seemed, gasping: "He's a fighter fromFightersville, sure!" as his fish made a fresh break across the stream. I saw Portland fall off a log fence, break the overhanging bank, andclatter down to the pebbles, all sand and landing-net, and I dropped ona log to rest for a moment. As I drew breath the weary hands slackenedtheir hold, and I forgot to give him the butt. 

A wild scutter in the water, a plunge, and a break for the head-watersof the Clackamas was my reward, and the weary toil of reeling in withone eye under the water and the other on the top joint of the rod wasrenewed. Worst of all, I was blocking California's path to the littlelanding bay aforesaid, and he had to halt and tire his prize where hewas. 

"The father of all the salmon!" he shouted. "For the love of Heaven, getyour trout to bank, Johnny Bull!"

But I could do no more. Even the insult failed to move me. The rest ofthe game was with the salmon. He suffered himself to be drawn, skip-pingwith pretended delight at getting to the haven where I would fain bringhim. Yet no sooner did he feel shoal water under his ponderous bellythan he backed like a torpedo-boat, and the snarl of the reel told methat my labor was in vain. A dozen times, at least, this happened erethe line hinted he had given up the battle and would be towed in. He wastowed. The landing-net was useless for one of his size, and I would nothave him gaffed. I stepped into the shallows and heaved him out with arespectful hand under the gill, for which kindness he battered me aboutthe legs with his tail, and I felt the strength of him and was proud. California had taken my place in the shallows, his fish hard held. I wasup the bank lying full length on the sweet-scented grass and gasping incompany with my first salmon caught, played and landed on an eight-ouncerod. My hands were cut and bleeding, I was dripping with sweat, spangledlike a harlequin with scales, water from my waist down, nose peeled bythe sun, but utterly, supremely, and consummately happy. 

The beauty, the darling, the daisy, my Salmon Bahadur, weighed twelvepounds, and I had been seven-and-thirty minutes bringing him to bank! Hehad been lightly hooked on the angle of the right jaw, and the hook hadnot wearied him. That hour I sat among princes and crowned heads greaterthan them all. Below the bank we heard California scuffling with hissalmon and swearing Spanish oaths. Portland and I assisted at thecapture, and the fish dragged the spring balance out by the roots. Itwas only constructed to weigh up to fifteen pounds. We stretched thethree fish on the grass--the eleven and a half, the twelve and fifteenpounder--and we gave an oath that all who came after should merely beweighed and put back again. 

How shall I tell the glories of that day so that you may be interested?Again and again did California and I prance down that reach to thelittle bay, each with a salmon in tow, and land him in the shallows. Then Portland took my rod and caught some ten-pounders, and my spoon wascarried away by an unknown leviathan. Each fish, for the merits of thethree that had died so gamely, was hastily hooked on the balance andflung back. Portland recorded the weight in a pocket-book, for he wasa real-estate man. Each fish fought for all he was worth, and none moresavagely than the smallest, a game little six-pounder. At the end ofsix hours we added up the list. Read it. Total: Sixteen fish; aggregateweight, one hundred and forty pounds. The score in detail runs somethinglike this--it is only interesting to those concerned: fifteen, elevenand a half, twelve, ten, nine and three quarters, eight, and so forth;as I have said, nothing under six pounds, and three ten-pounders. 

Very solemnly and thankfully we put up our rods--it was glory enough forall time--and returned weeping in each other's arms, weeping tears ofpure joy, to that simple, bare-legged family in the packing-case houseby the water-side. 

The old farmer recollected days and nights of fierce warfare with theIndians "way back in the fifties, " when every ripple of the ColumbiaRiver and her tributaries hid covert danger. God had dowered him with aqueer, crooked gift of expression and a fierce anxiety for the welfareof his two little sons--tanned and reserved children, who attendedschool daily and spoke good English in a strange tongue. 

His wife was an austere woman, who had once been kindly, and perhapshandsome. 

Very many years of toil had taken the elasticity out of step and voice. She looked for nothing better than everlasting work--the chafingdetail of housework--and then a grave somewhere up the hill among theblackberries and the pines. 

But in her grim way she sympathized with her eldest daughter, a smalland silent maiden of eighteen, who had thoughts very far from the mealsshe tended and the pans she scoured. 

We stumbled into the household at a crisis, and there was a deal ofdownright humanity in that same. A bad, wicked dress-maker had promisedthe maiden a dress in time for a to-morrow's rail-way journey, andthough the barefooted Georgy, who stood in very wholesome awe of hissister, had scoured the woods on a pony in search, that dress neverarrived. So, with sorrow in her heart and a hundred Sister-Anne glancesup the road, she waited upon the strangers and, I doubt not, cursed themfor the wants that stood between her and her need for tears. It wasa genuine little tragedy. The mother, in a heavy, passionless voice, rebuked her impatience, yet sat up far into the night, bowed over a heapof sewing for the daughter's benefit. 

These things I beheld in the long marigold-scented twilight andwhispering night, loafing round the little house with California, whoun-folded himself like a lotus to the moon, or in the little boardedbunk that was our bedroom, swap-ping tales with Portland and the oldman. 

Most of the yarns began in this way:--"Red Larry was a bull-puncher backof Lone County, Montana, " or "There was a man riding the trail met ajack-rabbit sitting in a cactus, " or "'Bout the time of the San Diegoland boom, a woman from Monterey, " etc. 

You can try to piece out for yourselves what sort of stories they were. 

IV. THE YELLOWSTONE

ONCE upon a time there was a carter who brought his team and a friendinto the Yellowstone Park without due thought. Presently they came upona few of the natural beauties of the place, and that carter turned histeam into his friend's team, howling:--"Get out o' this, Jim. All hell'salight under our noses!"

And they called the place Hell's Half-Acre to this day to witness if thecarter lied. 

We, too, the old lady from Chicago, her husband, Tom, and the goodlittle mares, came to Hell's Half-Acre, which is about sixty acres inextent, and when Tom said:--"Would you like to drive over it?"

We said:--"Certainly not, and if you do we shall report you to the parkauthorities. "

There was a plain, blistered, peeled, and abominable, and it was givenover to the sportings and spoutings of devils who threw mud, and steam, and dirt at each other with whoops, and halloos, and bellowing curses. 

The places smelled of the refuse of the pit, and that odor mixed withthe clean, wholesome aroma of the pines in our nostrils throughout theday. 

This Yellowstone Park is laid out like Ollendorf, in exercises ofprogressive difficulty. Hell's Half-Acre was a prelude to ten or twelvemiles of geyser formation. 

We passed hot streams boiling in the forest; saw whiffs of steam beyondthese, and yet other whiffs breaking through the misty green hills inthe far distance; we trampled on sulphur in crystals, and sniffed thingsmuch worse than any sulphur which is known to the upper world; and sojourneying, bewildered with the novelty, came upon a really park-likeplace where Tom suggested we should get out and play with the geysers onfoot. 

Imagine mighty green fields splattered with lime-beds, all the flowersof the summer growing up to the very edge of the lime. That was ourfirst glimpse of the geyser basins. 

The buggy had pulled up close to a rough, broken, blistered cone ofspelter stuff between ten and twenty feet high. There was trouble inthat place--moaning, splashing, gurgling, and the clank of machinery. A spurt of boiling water jumped into the air, and a wash of waterfollowed. 

I removed swiftly. The old lady from Chicago shrieked. "What a wickedwaste!" said her husband. 

I think they call it the Riverside Geyser. Its spout was torn and raggedlike the mouth of a gun when a shell has burst there. It grumbled madlyfor a moment or two, and then was still. I crept over the steaminglime--it was the burning marl on which Satan lay--and looked fearfullydown its mouth. You should never look a gift geyser in the mouth. 

I beheld a horrible, slippery, slimy funnel with water rising andfalling ten feet at a time. Then the water rose to lip level with arush, and an infernal bubbling troubled this Devil's Bethesda beforethe sullen heave of the crest of a wave lapped over the edge and made merun. 

Mark the nature of the human soul! I had begun with awe, not to sayterror, for this was my first experience of such things. I stepped backfrom the banks of the Riverside Geyser, saying:--"Pooh! Is that all itcan do?"

Yet for aught I knew, the whole thing might have blown up at a minute'snotice, she, he, or it being an arrangement of uncertain temper. 

We drifted on, up that miraculous valley. On either side of us werehills from a thousand or fifteen hundred feet high, wooded from crest toheel. As far as the eye could range forward were columns of steam in theair, misshapen lumps of lime, mist-like preadamite monsters, still poolsof turquoise-blue stretches of blue corn-flowers, a river that coiled onitself twenty times, pointed bowlders of strange colors, and ridges ofglaring, staring white. 

A moon-faced trooper of German extraction--never was park so carefullypatrolled--came up to inform us that as yet we had not seen any ofthe real geysers; that they were all a mile or so up the valley, andtastefully scattered round the hotel in which we would rest for thenight. 

America is a free country, but the citizens look down on the soldier. Ihad to entertain that trooper. The old lady from Chicago would have noneof him; so we loafed alone together, now across half-rotten pine logssunk in swampy ground, anon over the ringing geyser formation, thenpounding through river-sand or brushing knee-deep through long grass. 

"And why did you enlist?" said I. 

The moon-faced one's face began to work. I thought he would have a fit, but he told me a story instead--such a nice tale of a naughty littlegirl who wrote pretty love letters to two men at once. She was a simplevillage wife, but a wicked "family novelette" countess couldn't haveaccomplished her ends better. She drove one man nearly wild with thepretty little treachery, and the other man abandoned her and came Westto forget the trickery. 

Moon-face was that man. 

We rounded and limped over a low spur of hill, and came out upon a fieldof aching, snowy lime rolled in sheets, twisted into knots, riven withrents, and diamonds, and stars, stretching for more than half a mile inevery direction. 

On this place of despair lay most of the big, bad geysers who know whenthere is trouble in Krakatoa, who tell the pines when there is a cycloneon the Atlantic seaboard, and who are exhibited to visitors under prettyand fanciful names. 

The first mound that I encountered belonged to a goblin who wassplashing in his tub. 

I heard him kick, pull a shower-bath on his shoulders, gasp, crack hisjoints, and rub himself down with a towel; then he let the water out ofthe bath, as a thoughtful man should, and it all sunk down out of sighttill another goblin arrived. 

So we looked and we wondered at the Beehive, whose mouth is built upexactly like a hive, at the Turban (which is not in the least like aturban), and at many, many other geysers, hot holes, and springs. Someof them rumbled, some hissed, some went off spasmodically, and otherslay dead still in sheets of sapphire and beryl. 

Would you believe that even these terrible creatures have to be guardedby the troopers to prevent the irreverent Americans from chipping thecones to pieces, or, worse still, making the geyser sick? If you take asmall barrel full of soft-soap and drop it down a geyser's mouth, thatgeyser will presently be forced to lay all before you, and for daysafterward will be of an irritated and inconstant stomach. 

When they told me the tale I was filled with sympathy. Now I wish thatI had soft-soap and tried the experiment on some lonely little beast faraway in the woods. It sounds so probable and so human. 

Yet he would be a bold man who would administer emetics to the Giantess. She is flat-lipped, having no mouth; she looks like a pool, fiftyfeet long and thirty wide, and there is no ornamentation about her. Atirregular intervals she speaks and sends up a volume of water overtwo hundred feet high to begin with, then she is angry for a day and ahalf--sometimes for two days. 

Owing to her peculiarity of going mad in the night, not many people haveseen the Giantess at her finest; but the clamor of her unrest, men say, shakes the wooden hotel, and echoes like thunder among the hills. 

The congregation returned to the hotel to put down their impressionsin diaries and note-books, which they wrote up ostentatiously in theverandas. It was a sweltering hot day, albeit we stood some-what higherthan the level of Simla, and I left that raw pine creaking caravansaryfor the cool shade of a clump of pines between whose trunks glimmeredtents. 

A batch of United States troopers came down the road and flungthemselves across the country into their rough lines. The Mexicancavalryman can ride, though he keeps his accoutrements pig-fashion andhis horse cow-fashion. 

I was free of that camp in five minutes--free to play with the heavy, lumpy carbines, have the saddles stripped, and punch the horsesknowingly in the ribs. One of the men had been in the fight with"Wrap-up-his-Tail, " and he told me how that great chief, his horse'stail tied up in red calico, swaggered in front of the United Statescavalry, challenging all to single combat. But he was slain, and a fewof his tribe with him. 

"There's no use in an Indian, anyway, " concluded my friend. 

A couple of cow-boys--real cow-boys--jingled through the camp amid ashower of mild chaff. They were on their way to Cook City, I fancy, and I know that they never washed. But they were picturesque ruffiansexceedingly, with long spurs, hooded stirrups, slouch hats, furweather-cloth over their knees, and pistol-butts just easy to hand. 

"The cow-boy's goin' under before long, " said my friend. "Soon as thecountry's settled up he'll have to go. But he's mighty useful now. Whatwould we do without the cow-boy?"

"As how?" said I, and the camp laughed. 

"He has the money. We have the skill. He comes in winter to play pokerat the military posts. We play poker--a few. When he's lost his money wemake him drunk and let him go. Sometimes we get the wrong man. "

And he told me a tale of an innocent cow-boy who turned up, cleaned out, at an army post, and played poker for thirty-six hours. But it wasthe post that was cleaned out when that long-haired Caucasian removedhimself, heavy with everybody's pay and declining the proffered liquor. 

"Noaw, " said the historian, "I don't play with no cow-boy unless he's alittle bit drunk first. "

Ere I departed I gathered from more than one man the significant factthat up to one hundred yards he felt absolutely secure behind hisrevolver. 

"In England, I understand, " quoth the limber youth from the South, --"inEngland a man isn't allowed to play with no fire-arms. He's got to betaught all that when he enlists. I didn't want much teaching how toshoot straight 'fore I served Uncle Sam. And that's just where it is. But you was talking about your Horse Guards now?"

I explained briefly some peculiarities of equipment connected with ourcrackest crack cavalry. I grieve to say the camp roared. 

"Take 'em over swampy ground. Let 'em run around a bit an' work thestarch out of 'em, an' then, Almighty, if we wouldn't plug 'em at easeI'd eat their horses. "

There was a maiden--a very little maiden--who had just stepped out ofone of James's novels. She owned a delightful mother and an equallydelightful father--a heavy-eyed, slow-voiced man of finance. The parentsthought that their daughter wanted change. 

She lived in New Hampshire. Accordingly, she had dragged them up toAlaska and to the Yosemite Valley, and was now returning leisurely, viathe Yellowstone, just in time for the tail-end of the summer season atSaratoga. 

We had met once or twice before in the park, and I had been amazed andamused at her critical commendation of the wonders that she saw. From that very resolute little mouth I received a lecture on Americanliterature, the nature and inwardness of Washington society, the precisevalue of Cable's works as compared with Uncle Remus Harris, and a fewother things that had nothing whatever to do with geysers, but werealtogether pleasant. 

Now, an English maiden who had stumbled on a dust-grimed, lime-washed, sun-peeled, collarless wanderer come from and going to goodness knowswhere, would, her mother inciting her and her father brandishing anumbrella, have regarded him as a dissolute adventurer--a person to bedisregarded. 

Not so those delightful people from New Hampshire. They were good enoughto treat him--it sounds almost incredible--as a human being, possiblyrespectable, probably not in immediate need of financial assistance. 

Papa talked pleasantly and to the point. 

The little maiden strove valiantly with the accent of her birth and thatof her rearing, and mamma smiled benignly in the background. 

Balance this with a story of a young English idiot I met mooning aboutinside his high collar, attended by a valet. He condescended to tellme that "you can't be too careful who you talk to in these parts. " Andstalked on, fearing, I suppose, every minute for his social chastity. 

That man was a barbarian (I took occasion to tell him so), for hecomported himself after the manner of the head-hunters and hunted ofAssam who are at perpetual feud one with another. 

You will understand that these foolish stories are introduced in orderto cover the fact that this pen cannot describe the glories of the UpperGeyser Basin. The evening I spent under the lee of the Castle Geyser, sitting on a log with some troopers and watching a baronial keep fortyfeet high spouting hot water. If the Castle went off first, they saidthe Giantess would be quiet, and vice versa, and then they told talestill the moon got up and a party of campers in the woods gave us allsomething to eat. 

Then came soft, turfy forest that deadened the wheels, and twotroopers on detachment duty stole noiselessly behind us. One was theWrap-up-his-Tail man, and they talked merrily while the half-brokenhorses bucked about among the trees. And so a cavalry escort was withus for a mile, till we got to a mighty hill strewn with moss agates, and everybody had to jump out and pant in that thin air. But howintoxicating it was! The old lady from Chicago ducked like anemancipated hen as she scuttled about the road, cramming pieces of rockinto her reticule. She sent me fifty yards down to the hill-side to pickup a piece of broken bottle which she insisted was moss agate. 

"I've some o' that at home, an' they shine. Yes, you go get it, youngman. "

As we climbed the long path the road grew viler and viler till itbecame, without disguise, the bed of a torrent; and just when thingswere at their rockiest we nearly fell into a little sapphire lake--butnever sapphire was so blue--called Mary's Lake; and that between eightand nine thousand feet above the sea. 

Afterward, grass downs, all on a vehement slope, so that the buggy, following the new-made road, ran on the two off-wheels mostly till wedipped head-first into a ford, climbed up a cliff, raced along down, dipped again, and pulled up dishevelled at "Larry's" for lunch and anhour's rest. 

Then we lay on the grass and laughed with sheer bliss of being alive. This have I known once in Japan, once on the banks of the Columbia, whattime the salmon came in and California howled, and once again in theYellowstone by the light of the eyes of the maiden from New Hampshire. Four little pools lay at my elbow, one was of black water (tepid), oneclear water (cold), one clear water (hot), one red water (boiling). My newly washed handkerchief covered them all, and we two marvelled aschildren marvel. 

"This evening we shall do the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, " said themaiden. 

"Together?" said I; and she said, "Yes. "

The sun was beginning to sink when we heard the roar of falling watersand came to a broad river along whose banks we ran. And then--I mightat a pinch describe the infernal regions, but not the other place. TheYellowstone River has occasion to run through a gorge about eight mileslong. To get to the bottom of the gorge it makes two leaps, one ofabout one hundred and twenty and the other of three hundred feet. Iinvestigated the upper or lesser fall, which is close to the hotel. 

Up to that time nothing particular happens to the Yellowstone--its banksbeing only rocky, rather steep, and plentifully adorned with pines. 

At the falls it comes round a corner, green, solid, ribbed with a littlefoam, and not more than thirty yards wide. Then it goes over, stillgreen, and rather more solid than before. After a minute or two, you, sitting upon a rock directly above the drop, begin to understand thatsomething has occurred; that the river has jumped between solid cliffwalls, and that the gentle froth of water lapping the sides of the gorgebelow is really the outcome of great waves. 

And the river yells aloud; but the cliffs do not allow the yells toescape. 

That inspection began with curiosity and finished in terror, for itseemed that the whole world was sliding in chrysolite from under myfeet. I followed with the others round the corner to arrive at the brinkof the canyon. We had to climb up a nearly perpendicular ascent to beginwith, for the ground rises more than the river drops. Stately pine woodsfringe either lip of the gorge, which is the gorge of the Yellowstone. You'll find all about it in the guide books. 

All that I can say is that without warning or preparation I looked intoa gulf seventeen hundred feet deep, with eagles and fish-hawkscircling far below. And the sides of that gulf were one wild welter ofcolor--crimson, emerald, cobalt, ochre, amber, honey splashed with portwine, snow white, vermilion, lemon, and silver gray in wide washes. Thesides did not fall sheer, but were graven by time, and water, and airinto monstrous heads of kings, dead chiefs--men and women of the oldtime. So far below that no sound of its strife could reach us, theYellowstone River ran a finger-wide strip of jade green. 

The sunlight took those wondrous walls and gave fresh hues to those thatnature had already laid there. 

Evening crept through the pines that shadowed us, but the full gloryof the day flamed in that canyon as we went out very cautiously toa jutting piece of rock--blood-red or pink it was--that overhung thedeepest deeps of all. 

Now I know what it is to sit enthroned amid the clouds of sunset as thespirits sit in Blake's pictures. Giddiness took away all sensation oftouch or form, but the sense of blinding color remained. 

When I reached the mainland again I had sworn that I had been floating. 

The maid from New Hampshire said no word for a very long time. Then shequoted poetry, which was perhaps the best thing she could have done. 

"And to think that this show-place has been going on all these days an'none of we ever saw it, " said the old lady from Chicago, with an acidglance at her husband. 

"No, only the Injians, " said he, unmoved; and the maiden and I laughed. 

Inspiration is fleeting, beauty is vain, and the power of the mind forwonder limited. Though the shining hosts themselves had risen choiringfrom the bottom of the gorge, they would not have prevented her papaand one baser than he from rolling stones down those stupendousrainbow-washed slides. Seventeen hundred feet of steep-est pitch andrather more than seventeen hundred colors for log or bowlder to whirlthrough!

So we heaved things and saw them gather way and bound from white rock tored or yellow, dragging behind them torrents of color, till the noise oftheir descent ceased and they bounded a hundred yards clear at the lastinto the Yellowstone. 

"I've been down there, " said Tom, that evening. "It's easy to get downif you're careful--just sit an' slide; but getting up is worse. An'I found down below there two stones just marked with a picture of thecanyon. I wouldn't sell these rocks not for fifteen dollars. "

And papa and I crawled down to the Yellowstone--just above the firstlittle fall--to wet a line for good luck. The round moon came up andturned the cliffs and pines into silver; and a two-pound trout came upalso, and we slew him among the rocks, nearly tumbling into that wildriver. 

 . . . . . . 

Then out and away to Livingstone once more. The maiden from NewHampshire disappeared, papa and mamma with her. Disappeared, too, theold lady from Chicago, and the others. 

V. CHICAGO

 "I know thy cunning and thy greed, Thy hard high lust and wilful deed, And all thy glory loves to tell Of specious gifts material. "

I HAVE struck a city--a real city--and they call it Chicago. 

The other places do not count. San Francisco was a pleasure-resort aswell as a city, and Salt Lake was a phenomenon. 

This place is the first American city I have encountered. It holdsrather more than a million of people with bodies, and stands on the samesort of soil as Calcutta. Having seen it, I urgently desire never tosee it again. It is inhabited by savages. Its water is the water of theHooghly, and its air is dirt. Also it says that it is the "boss" town ofAmerica. 

I do not believe that it has anything to do with this country. They toldme to go to the Palmer House, which is overmuch gilded and mirrored, and there I found a huge hall of tessellated marble crammed with peopletalking about money, and spitting about everywhere. Other barbarianscharged in and out of this inferno with letters and telegrams in theirhands, and yet others shouted at each other. A man who had drunk quiteas much as was good for him told me that this was "the finest hotel inthe finest city on God Almighty's earth. " By the way, when an Americanwishes to indicate the next country or state, he says, "God A'mighty'searth. " This prevents discussion and flatters his vanity. 

Then I went out into the streets, which are long and flat and withoutend. And verily it is not a good thing to live in the East for anylength of time. Your ideas grow to clash with those held by everyright-thinking man. I looked down interminable vistas flanked with nine, ten, and fifteen-storied houses, and crowded with men and women, and theshow impressed me with a great horror. 

Except in London--and I have forgotten what London was like--I hadnever seen so many white people together, and never such a collection ofmiserables. There was no color in the street and no beauty--only a mazeof wire ropes overhead and dirty stone flagging under foot. 

A cab-driver volunteered to show me the glory of the town for so muchan hour, and with him I wandered far. He conceived that all this turmoiland squash was a thing to be reverently admired, that it was good tohuddle men together in fifteen layers, one atop of the other, and to digholes in the ground for offices. 

He said that Chicago was a live town, and that all the creatureshurrying by me were engaged in business. That is to say they were tryingto make some money that they might not die through lack of food to putinto their bellies. He took me to canals as black as ink, and filledwith un-told abominations, and bid me watch the stream of traffic acrossthe bridges. 

He then took me into a saloon, and while I drank made me note that thefloor was covered with coins sunk in cement. A Hottentot would not havebeen guilty of this sort of barbarism. The coins made an effect prettyenough, but the man who put them there had no thought of beauty, and, therefore, he was a savage. 

Then my cab-driver showed me business blocks gay with signs and studdedwith fantastic and absurd advertisements of goods, and looking down thelong street so adorned, it was as though each vender stood at his doorhowling:--"For the sake of my money, employ or buy of me, and me only!"

Have you ever seen a crowd at a famine-relief distribution? You knowthen how the men leap into the air, stretching out their arms above thecrowd in the hope of being seen, while the women dolorously slap thestomachs of their children and whimper. I had sooner watch famine reliefthan the white man engaged in what he calls legitimate competition. Theone I understand. The other makes me ill. 

And the cabman said that these things were the proof of progress, andby that I knew he had been reading his newspaper, as every intelligentAmerican should. The papers tell their clientele in language fitted totheir comprehension that the snarling together of telegraph-wires, theheaving up of houses, and the making of money is progress. 

I spent ten hours in that huge wilderness, wandering through scores ofmiles of these terrible streets and jostling some few hundred thousandof these terrible people who talked paisa bat through their noses. 

The cabman left me; but after awhile I picked up another man, who wasfull of figures, and into my ears he poured them as occasion required orthe big blank factories suggested. Here they turned out so many hundredthousand dollars' worth of such and such an article; there so manymillion other things; this house was worth so many million dollars;that one so many million, more or less. It was like listening to a childbabbling of its hoard of shells. It was like watching a fool playingwith buttons. But I was expected to do more than listen or watch. He demanded that I should admire; and the utmost that I could saywas:--"Are these things so? Then I am very sorry for you. "

That made him angry, and he said that insular envy made me unresponsive. So, you see, I could not make him understand. 

About four and a half hours after Adam was turned out of the Garden ofEden he felt hungry, and so, bidding Eve take care that her head was notbroken by the descending fruit, shinned up a cocoanut-palm. That hurthis legs, cut his breast, and made him breathe heavily, and Eve wastormented with fear lest her lord should miss his footing, and so bringthe tragedy of this world to an end ere the curtain had fairly risen. Had I met Adam then, I should have been sorry for him. To-day I findeleven hundred thousand of his sons just as far advanced as their fatherin the art of getting food, and immeasurably inferior to him inthat they think that their palm-trees lead straight to the skies. Consequently, I am sorry in rather more than a million different ways. 

In the East bread comes naturally, even to the poorest, by a littlescratching or the gift of a friend not quite so poor. In less favoredcountries one is apt to forget. Then I went to bed. And that was on aSaturday night. 

Sunday brought me the queerest experiences of all--a revelation ofbarbarism complete. I found a place that was officially described as achurch. It was a circus really, but that the worshippers did not know. There were flowers all about the building, which was fitted upwith plush and stained oak and much luxury, including twisted brasscandlesticks of severest Gothic design. 

To these things and a congregation of savages entered suddenly awonderful man, completely in the confidence of their God, whom hetreated colloquially and exploited very much as a newspaper reporterwould exploit a foreign potentate. But, unlike the newspaper reporter, he never allowed his listeners to forget that he, and not He, was thecentre of attraction. With a voice of silver and with imagery borrowedfrom the auction-room, he built up for his hearers a heaven on the linesof the Palmer House (but with all the gilding real gold, and allthe plate-glass diamond), and set in the centre of it a loud-voiced, argumentative, very shrewd creation that he called God. One sentence atthis point caught my delighted ear. It was apropos of some question ofthe Judgment, and ran:--"No! I tell you God doesn't do business thatway. "

He was giving them a deity whom they could comprehend, and a goldand jewelled heaven in which they could take a natural interest. Heinterlarded his performance with the slang of the streets, the counter, and the exchange, and he said that religion ought to enter into dailylife. Consequently, I presume he introduced it as daily life--his ownand the life of his friends. 

Then I escaped before the blessing, desiring no benediction at suchhands. But the persons who listened seemed to enjoy themselves, and Iunderstood that I had met with a popular preacher. 

Later on, when I had perused the sermons of a gentleman called Talmageand some others, I perceived that I had been listening to a very mildspecimen. Yet that man, with his brutal gold and silver idols, hishands-in-pocket, cigar-in-mouth, and hat-on-the-back-of-the-head styleof dealing with the sacred vessels, would count himself, spiritually, quite competent to send a mission to convert the Indians. 

All that Sunday I listened to people who said that the mere fact ofspiking down strips of iron to wood, and getting a steam and iron thingto run along them was progress, that the telephone was progress, and thenet-work of wires overhead was progress. They repeated their statementsagain and again. 

One of them took me to their City Hall and Board of Trade works, andpointed it out with pride. It was very ugly, but very big, and thestreets in front of it were narrow and unclean. When I saw the faces ofthe men who did business in that building, I felt that there had been amistake in their billeting. 

By the way, 'tis a consolation to feel that I am not writing to anEnglish audience. Then I should have to fall into feigned ecstasies overthe marvellous progress of Chicago since the days of the great fire, toallude casually to the raising of the entire city so many feet abovethe level of the lake which it faces, and generally to grovel before thegolden calf. But you, who are desperately poor, and therefore by thesestandards of no ac-count, know things, will understand when I write thatthey have managed to get a million of men together on flat land, andthat the bulk of these men together appear to be lower than Mahajans andnot so companionable as a Punjabi Jat after harvest. 

But I don't think it was the blind hurry of the people, their argot, andtheir grand ignorance of things beyond their immediate interests thatdispleased me so much as a study of the daily papers of Chicago. 

Imprimis, there was some sort of a dispute between New York and Chicagoas to which town should give an exhibition of products to be hereafterholden, and through the medium of their more dignified journals thetwo cities were yahooing and hi-yi-ing at each other like oppositionnewsboys. They called it humor, but it sounded like something quitedifferent. 

That was only the first trouble. The second lay in the tone of theproductions. Leading articles which include gems such as "Back of suchand such a place, " or, "We noticed, Tuesday, such an event, " or, "don't"for "does not, " are things to be accepted with thankfulness. All thatmade me want to cry was that in these papers were faithfully reproducedall the war-cries and "back-talk" of the Palmer House bar, the slang ofthe barber-shops, the mental elevation and integrity of the Pullman carporter, the dignity of the dime museum, and the accuracy of the excitedfish-wife. I am sternly forbidden to believe that the paper educatesthe public. Then I am compelled to believe that the public educate thepaper; yet suicides on the press are rare. 

Just when the sense of unreality and oppression was strongest upon me, and when I most wanted help, a man sat at my side and began to talk whathe called politics. 

I had chanced to pay about six shillings for a travelling-cap wortheighteen-pence, and he made of the fact a text for a sermon. He saidthat this was a rich country, and that the people liked to pay twohundred per cent, on the value of a thing. They could afford it. He saidthat the government imposed a protective duty of from ten to seventyper cent on foreign-made articles, and that the American manufacturerconsequently could sell his goods for a healthy sum. Thus an importedhat would, with duty, cost two guineas. The American manufacturer wouldmake a hat for seventeen shillings, and sell it for one pound fifteen. In these things, he said, lay the greatness of America and theeffeteness of England. Competition between factory and factory kept theprices down to decent limits, but I was never to forget that this peoplewere a rich people, not like the pauper Continentals, and that theyenjoyed paying duties. 

To my weak intellect this seemed rather like juggling with counters. Everything that I have yet purchased costs about twice as much as itwould in England, and when native made is of inferior quality. 

Moreover, since these lines were first thought of, I have visited agentleman who owned a factory which used to produce things. He owned thefactory still. Not a man was in it, but he was drawing a handsome incomefrom a syndicate of firms for keeping it closed, in order that it mightnot produce things. This man said that if protection were abandoned, a tide of pauper labor would flood the country, and as I looked at hisfactory I thought how entirely better it was to have no labor of anykind whatever rather than face so horrible a future. 

Meantime, do you remember that this peculiar country enjoys paying moneyfor value not received? I am an alien, and for the life of me I cannotsee why six shillings should be paid for eighteen-penny caps, or eightshillings for half-crown cigar-cases. When the country fills up to adecently populated level a few million people who are not aliens will besmitten with the same sort of blindness. 

But my friend's assertion somehow thoroughly suited the grotesqueferocity of Chicago. 

See now and judge! In the village of Isser Jang, on the road toMontgomery, there be four Changar women who winnow corn--some seventybushels a year. Beyond their hut lives Purun Dass, the money-lender, whoon good security lends as much as five thousand rupees in a year. JowalaSingh, the smith, mends the village plows--some thirty, broken at theshare, in three hundred and sixty-five days; and Hukm Chund, who isletter-writer and head of the little club under the travellers' tree, generally keeps the village posted in such gossip as the barber and themid-wife have not yet made public property. 

Chicago husks and winnows her wheat by the million bushels, a hundredbanks lend hundreds of millions of dollars in the year, and scores offactories turn out plow-gear and machinery by steam. Scores of dailypapers do work which Hukm Chund and the barber and the midwife perform, with due regard for public opinion, in the village of Isser Jang. Sofar as manufactories go, the difference between Chicago on the lake, and Isser Jang on the Montgomery road, is one of degree only, and not ofkind. As far as the understanding of the uses of life goes, Isser Jang, for all its seasonal cholers, has the advantage over Chicago. 

Jowala Singh knows and takes care to avoid the three or fourghoul-haunted fields on the outskirts of the village; but he is noturged by millions of devils to run about all day in the sun and swearthat his plowshares are the best in the Punjab; nor does Purun Dassfly forth in an ekka more than once or twice a year, and he knows, ona pinch, how to use the railway and the telegraph as well as any son ofIsrael in Chicago. But this is absurd. 

The East is not the West, and these men must continue to deal with themachinery of life, and to call it progress. Their very preachersdare not rebuke them. They gloss over the hunting for money and thethrice-sharpened bitterness of Adam's curse, by saying that such thingsdower a man with a larger range of thoughts and higher aspirations. Theydo not say, "Free yourselves from your own slavery, " but rather, "If youcan possibly manage it, do not set quite so much store on the things ofthis world. "

And they do not know what the things of this world are!

I went off to see cattle killed, by way of clearing my head, which, asyou will perceive, was getting muddled. They say every Englishman goesto the Chicago stock-yards. You shall find them about six miles from thecity; and once having seen them, you will never forget the sight. 

As far as the eye can reach stretches a town-ship of cattle-pens, cunningly divided into blocks, so that the animals of any pen can bespeedily driven out close to an inclined timber path which leads to anelevated covered way straddling high above the pens. These viaducts aretwo-storied. On the upper story tramp the doomed cattle, stolidlyfor the most part. On the lower, with a scuffling of sharp hoofs andmultitudinous yells, run the pigs, the same end being appointed foreach. Thus you will see the gangs of cattle waiting their turn--as theywait sometimes for days; and they need not be distressed by the sight oftheir fellows running about in the fear of death. All they know is thata man on horseback causes their next-door neighbors to move by means ofa whip. Certain bars and fences are unshipped, and behold! that crowdhave gone up the mouth of a sloping tunnel and return no more. 

It is different with the pigs. They shriek back the news of the exodusto their friends, and a hundred pens skirl responsive. 

It was to the pigs I first addressed myself. Selecting a viaduct whichwas full of them, as I could hear, though I could not see, I marked asombre building whereto it ran, and went there, not unalarmed by straycattle who had managed to escape from their proper quarters. A pleasantsmell of brine warned me of what was coming. I entered the factoryand found it full of pork in barrels, and on another story more porkun-barrelled, and in a huge room the halves of swine, for whose behoofgreat lumps of ice were being pitched in at the window. That room wasthe mortuary chamber where the pigs lay for a little while in state erethey began their progress through such passages as kings may sometimestravel. 

Turning a corner, and not noting an overhead arrangement of greasedrail, wheel, and pulley, I ran into the arms of four evisceratedcarcasses, all pure white and of a human aspect, pushed by a man clad invehement red. When I leaped aside, the floor was slippery under me. Alsothere was a flavor of farm-yard in my nostrils and the shouting of amultitude in my ears. But there was no joy in that shouting. Twelve menstood in two lines six a side. Between them and overhead ran the railwayof death that had nearly shunted me through the window. Each man carrieda knife, the sleeves of his shirt were cut off at the elbows, and frombosom to heel he was blood-red. 

Beyond this perspective was a column of steam, and beyond that waswhere I worked my awe-struck way, unwilling to touch beam or wall. Theatmosphere was stifling as a night in the rains by reason of the steamand the crowd. I climbed to the beginning of things and, perched upon anarrow beam, overlooked very nearly all the pigs ever bred in Wisconsin. They had just been shot out of the mouth of the viaduct and huddledtogether in a large pen. Thence they were flicked persuasively, a fewat a time, into a smaller chamber, and there a man fixed tackle on theirhinder legs, so that they rose in the air, suspended from the railway ofdeath. 

Oh! it was then they shrieked and called on their mothers, and madepromises of amendment, till the tackle-man punted them in their backsand they slid head down into a brick-floored passage, very like a bigkitchen sink, that was blood-red. There awaited them a red man witha knife, which he passed jauntily through their throats, and thefull-voiced shriek became a splutter, and then a fall as of heavytropical rain, and the red man, who was backed against the passage-wall, you will understand, stood clear of the wildly kicking hoofs and passedhis hand over his eyes, not from any feeling of compassion, but becausethe spurted blood was in his eyes, and he had barely time to stick thenext arrival. Then that first stuck swine dropped, still kicking, intoa great vat of boiling water, and spoke no more words, but wallowedin obedience to some unseen machinery, and presently came forth atthe lower end of the vat, and was heaved on the blades of a bluntpaddle-wheel, things which said "Hough, hough, hough!" and skelped allthe hair off him, except what little a couple of men with knives couldremove. 

Then he was again hitched by the heels to that said railway, and passeddown the line of the twelve men, each man with a knife--losing with eachman a certain amount of his individuality, which was taken away in awheel-barrow, and when he reached the last man he was very beautifulto behold, but excessively unstuffed and limp. Preponderance ofindividuality was ever a bar to foreign travel. That pig could have beenin case to visit you in India had he not parted with some of his mostcherished notions. 

The dissecting part impressed me not so much as the slaying. They wereso excessively alive, these pigs. And then, they were so excessivelydead, and the man in the dripping, clammy, not passage did not seem tocare, and ere the blood of such a one had ceased to foam on the floor, such another and four friends with him had shrieked and died. But a pigis only the unclean animal--the forbidden of the prophet. 

VI. THE AMERICAN ARMY

I SHOULD very much like to deliver a dissertation on the American armyand the possibilities of its extension. You see, it is such a beautifullittle army, and the dear people don't quite understand what to do withit. The theory is that it is an instructional nucleus round whichthe militia of the country will rally, and from which they will get astiffening in time of danger. Yet other people consider that thearmy should be built, like a pair of lazy tongs--on the principle ofelasticity and extension--so that in time of need it may fill up itsskeleton battalions and empty saddle troops. This is real wisdom, be-cause the American army, as at present constituted, is made upof:--Twenty-five regiments infantry, ten companies each. 

Ten regiments cavalry, twelve companies each. 

Five regiments artillery, twelve companies each. 

Now there is a notion in the air to reorganize the service on theselines:--Eighteen regiments infantry at four battalions, four companieseach; third battalion, skeleton; fourth on paper. 

Eight regiments cavalry at four battalions, four troops each; thirdbattalion, skeleton; fourth on paper. 

Five regiments artillery at four battalions, four companies each; thirdbattalion, skeleton; fourth on paper. 

Observe the beauty of this business. The third battalion will have itsofficers, but no men; the fourth will probably have a rendezvous andsome equipment. 

It is not contemplated to give it anything more definite at present. Assuming the regiments to be made up to full complement, we get an armyof fifty thousand men, which after the need passes away must be cut downfifty per cent, to the huge delight of the officers. 

The military needs of the States be three: (a) Frontier warfare, anemployment well within the grip of the present army of twenty-fivethousand, and in the nature of things growing less arduous year by year;(b) internal riots and commotions which rise up like a dust devil, whirlfuriously, and die out long before the authorities at Washington couldbegin to fill up even the third skeleton battalions, much less huntabout for material for the fourth; (c) civil war, in which, as the casein the affair of the North and South, the regular army would be swampedin the mass of militia and armed volunteers would turn the land into ahell. 

Yet the authorities persist in regarding an external war as a thing tobe seriously considered. 

The Power that would disembark troops on American soil would be capableof heaving a shovelful of mud into the Atlantic in the hope of fillingit up. Consequently, the authorities are fascinated with the idea of thesliding scale or concertina army. This is an hereditary instinct, foryou know that when we English have got together two companies, onemachine gun, a sick bullock, forty generals, and a mass of W. O. Forms, we say we possess "an army corps capable of indefinite extension. "

The American army is a beautiful little army. Some day, when allthe Indians are happily dead or drunk, it ought to make the finestscientific and survey corps that the world has ever seen; it doesexcellent work now, but there is this defect in its nature: It isofficered, as you know, from West Point. 

The mischief of it is that West Point seems to be created for thepurpose of spreading a general knowledge of military matters among thepeople. A boy goes up to that institution, gets his pass, and returnsto civil life, so they tell me, with a dangerous knowledge that he isa suckling Von Moltke, and may apply his learning when occasion offers. Given trouble, that man will be a nuisance, because he is a hideouslyversatile American, to begin with, as cock-sure of himself as a mancan be, and with all the racial disregard for human life to back him, through any demi-semi-professional generalship. 

In a country where, as the records of the daily papers show, men engagedin a conflict with police or jails are all too ready to adopt a militaryformation and get heavily shot in a sort of cheap, half-constructedwarfare, instead of being decently scared by the appearance of themilitary, this sort of arrangement does not seem wise. 

The bond between the States is of an amazing tenuity. So long as theydo not absolutely march into the District of Columbia, sit on theWashington statues, and invent a flag of their own, they can legislate, lynch, hunt negroes through swamps, divorce, railroad, and rampageas much as ever they choose. They do not need knowledge of their ownmilitary strength to back their genial lawlessness. 

That regular army, which is a dear little army, should be kept toitself, blooded on detachment duty, turned into the paths of science, and now and again assembled at feasts of Free Masons, and so forth. 

It is too tiny to be a political power. The immortal wreck of theGrand Army of the Republic is a political power of the largest and mostunblushing description. It ought not to help to lay the foundations ofan amateur military power that is blind and irresponsible. 

By great good luck the evil-minded train, already delayed twelve hoursby a burned bridge, brought me to the city on a Saturday by way of thatvalley which the Mormons, over their efforts, had caused to blossom likethe rose. Twelve hours previously I had entered into a new world where, in conversation, every one was either a Mormon or a Gentile. It is notseemly for a free and independent citizen to dub himself a Gentile, butthe Mayor of Ogden--which is the Gentile city of the valley--told methat there must be some distinction between the two flocks. 

Long before the fruit orchards of Logan or the shining levels of theSalt Lake had been reached, that mayor--himself a Gentile, and onerenowned for his dealings with the Mormons--told me that the greatquestion of the existence of the power within the power was beinggradually solved by the ballot and by education. 

All the beauty of the valley could not make me forget it. And the valleyis very fair. Bench after bench of land, flat as a table against theflanks of the ringing hills, marks where the Salt Lake rested for awhilein its collapse from an inland sea to a lake fifty miles long and thirtybroad. 

There are the makings of a very fine creed about Mormonism. To beginwith, the Church is rather more absolute than that of Rome. Drop thepolygamy plank in the platform, but on the other hand deal lightly withcertain forms of excess; keep the quality of the recruit down to thelow mental level, and see that the best of all the agriculturalscience available is in the hands of the elders, and there you havea first-class engine for pioneer work. The tawdry mysticism and theborrowing from Freemasonry serve the low caste Swede and Dane, theWelshman and the Cornish cotter, just as well as a highly organizedheaven. 

Then I went about the streets and peeped into people's front windows, and the decorations upon the tables were after the manner of the year1850. Main Street was full of country folk from the desert, come in totrade with the Zion Mercantile Co-operative Institute. The Church, Ifancy, looks after the finances of this thing, and it consequently paysgood dividends. 

The faces of the women were not lovely. In-deed, but for the certaintythat ugly persons are just as irrational in the matter of undivided loveas the beautiful, it seems that polygamy was a blessed institution forthe women, and that only the dread threats of the spiritual power coulddrive the hulking, board-faced men into it. The women wore hideousgarments, and the men appeared to be tied up with strings. 

They would market all that afternoon, and on Sunday go to thepraying-place. I tried to talk to a few of them, but they spoke strangetongues, and stared and behaved like cows. Yet one woman, and not analtogether ugly one, confided to me that she hated the idea of Salt LakeCity being turned into a show-place for the amusement of the Gentiles. 

"If we 'have our own institutions, that ain't no reason why peopleshould come 'ere and stare at us, his it?"

The dropped "h" betrayed her. 

"And when did you leave England?" I said. 

"Summer of '84. I am Dorset, " she said. "The Mormon agent was verygood to us, and we was very poor. Now we're better off--my father, an'mother, an' me. "

"Then you like the State?"

She misunderstood at first. 

"Oh, I ain't livin' in the state of polygamy. Not me, yet. I ain'tmarried. I like where I am. I've got things o' my own--and some land. "

"But I suppose you will--"

"Not me. I ain't like them Swedes an' Danes. I ain't got nothin' to sayfor or against polygamy. It's the elders' business, an' between you an'me, I don't think it's going on much longer. You'll 'ear them in the'ouse to-morrer talkin' as if it was spreadin' all over America. TheSwedes, they think it his. I know it hisn't. "

"But you've got your land all right?"

"Oh, yes; we've got our land, an' we never say aught against polygamy, o' course--father, an' mother, an' me. "

On a table-land overlooking all the city stands the United Statesgarrison of infantry and artillery. The State of Utah can do nearlyanything it pleases until that much-to-be-desired hour when the Gentilevote shall quietly swamp out Mormonism; but the garrison is kept therein case of accidents. The big, shark-mouthed, pig-eared, heavy-bonedfarmers sometimes take to their creed with wildest fanaticism, and inpast years have made life excessively unpleasant for the Gentile when hewas few in the land. But to-day, so far from killing openly or secretly, or burning Gentile farms, it is all the Mormon dare do to feebly tryto boycott the interloper. His journals preach defiance to the UnitedStates Government, and in the Tabernacle on a Sunday the preachersfollow suit. 

When I went there, the place was full of people who would have been muchbetter for a washing. 

A man rose up and told them that they were the chosen of God, the electof Israel; that they were to obey their priests, and that there was agood time coming. I fancy that they had heard all this before somany times it produced no impression whatever, even as the sublimestmysteries of another faith lose salt through constant iteration. Theybreathed heavily through their noses, and stared straight in front ofthem--impassive as flat fish. 

VII. AMERICA'S DEFENCELESS COASTS

JUST suppose that America were twenty days distant from England. Then aman could study its customs with undivided soul; but being so verynear next door, he goes about the land with one eye on the smoke of theflesh-pots of the old country across the seas, while with the other hesquints biliously and prejudicially at the alien. 

I can lay my hand upon my sacred heart and affirm that up to to-day Ihave never taken three consecutive trips by rail without being delayedby an accident. That it was an accident to another train makes nodifference. My own turn may come next. 

A few miles from peaceful, pleasure-loving Lakewood they had managed toupset an express goods train to the detriment of the flimsy permanentway; and thus the train which should have left at three departed atseven in the evening. I was not angry. I was scarcely even interested. When an American train starts on time I begin to anticipate disaster--avisitation for such good luck, you understand. 

Buffalo is a large village of a quarter of a million inhabitants, situated on the seashore, which is falsely called Lake Erie. It is apeaceful place, and more like an English county town than most of itsfriends. 

Once clear of the main business streets, you launch upon miles and milesof asphalted roads running between cottages and cut-stone residences ofthose who have money and peace. All the Eastern cities own this fringeof elegance, but except in Chicago nowhere is the fringe deeper or moreheavily widened than in Buffalo. 

The American will go to a bad place because he cannot speak English, and is proud of it; but he knows how to make a home for himself and hismate, knows how to keep the grass green in front of his veranda, and howto fullest use the mechanism of life--hot water, gas, good bell-ropes, telephones, etc. His shops sell him delightful household fitmentsat very moderate rates, and he is encompassed with all manner oflabor-saving appliances. This does not prevent his wife and his daughterworking themselves to death over household drudgery; but the intentionis good. 

When you have seen the outside of a few hundred thousand of these homesand the insides of a few score, you begin to understand why the American(the respectable one) does not take a deep interest in what they call"politics, " and why he is so vaguely and generally proud of the countrythat enables him to be so comfortable. How can the owner of a daintychalet, with smoked-oak furniture, imitation Venetian tapestry curtains, hot and cold water laid on, a bed of geraniums and hollyhocks, a babycrawling down the veranda, and a self-acting twirly-whirly hose gentlyhissing over the grass in the balmy dusk of an August evening--howcan such a man despair of the Republic, or descend into the streets onvoting days and mix cheerfully with "the boys"?

No, it is the stranger--the homeless jackal of a stranger--whoseinterest in the country is limited to his hotel-bill and arailway-ticket, that can run from Dan to Beersheba, crying:--"All isbarren!"

Every good American wants a home--a pretty house and a little piece ofland of his very own; and every other good American seems to get it. 

It was when my gigantic intellect was grappling with this questionthat I confirmed a discovery half made in the West. The natives ofmost classes marry young--absurdly young. One of my informants--not thetwenty-two-year-old husband I met on Lake Chautauqua--said that fromtwenty to twenty-four was about the usual time for this folly. Andwhen I asked whether the practice was confined to the constitutionallyimprovident classes, he said "No" very quickly. He said it was a generalcustom, and nobody saw anything wrong with it. 

"I guess, perhaps, very early marriage may account for a good deal ofthe divorce, " said he, reflectively. 

Whereat I was silent. Their marriages and their divorces only concernthese people; and neither I travelling, nor you, who may come after, have any right to make rude remarks about them. Only--only coming froma land where a man begins to lightly turn to thoughts of love not beforehe is thirty, I own that playing at house-keeping before that age rathersurprised me. Out in the West, though, they marry, boys and girls, fromsixteen upward, and I have met more than one bride of fifteen--husbandaged twenty. 

"When man and woman are agreed, what can the Kazi do?"

From those peaceful homes, and the envy they inspire (two trunks anda walking-stick and a bit of pine forest in British Columbia are notsatisfactory, any way you look at them), I turned me to the lake frontof Buffalo, where the steamers bellow to the grain elevators, and thelocomotives yell to the coal-shutes, and the canal barges jostle thelumber-raft half a mile long as it snakes across the water in tow of alaunch, and earth, and sky, and sea alike are thick with smoke. 

In the old days, before the railway ran into the city, all the businessquarters fringed the lake-shore where the traffic was largest. To-daythe business quarters have gone up-town to meet the railroad; the laketraffic still exists, but you shall find a narrow belt of red-brickdesolation, broken windows, gap-toothed doors, and streets where thegrass grows between the crowded wharves and the bustling city. To thelake front comes wheat from Chicago, lumber, coal, and ore, and a largetrade in cheap excursionists. 

It was my felicity to catch a grain steamer and an elevator emptyingthat same steamer. The steamer might have been two thousand tons burden. She was laden with wheat in bulk; from stem to stern, thirteen feetdeep, lay the clean, red wheat. There was no twenty-five per cent dirtadmixture about it at all. It was wheat, fit for the grindstones as itlay. They manoeuvred the fore-hatch of that steamer directly under anelevator--a house of red tin a hundred and fifty feet high. Then theylet down into that fore-hatch a trunk as if it had been the trunk of anelephant, but stiff, because it was a pipe of iron-champed wood. Andthe trunk had a steel-shod nose to it, and contained an endless chain ofsteel buckets. 

Then the captain swore, raising his eyes to heaven, and a gruff voiceanswered him from the place he swore at, and certain machinery, also inthe firmament, began to clack, and the glittering, steel-shod nose ofthat trunk burrowed into the wheat, and the wheat quivered and sunkupon the instant as water sinks when the siphon sucks, because the steelbuckets within the trunk were flying upon their endless round, carryingaway each its appointed morsel of wheat. 

The elevator was a Persian well wheel--a wheel squashed out thinand cased in a pipe, a wheel driven not by bullocks, but by muchhorse-power, licking up the grain at the rate of thou-sands ofbushels the hour. And the wheat sunk into the fore-hatch while a manlooked--sunk till the brown timbers of the bulkheads showed bare, andmen leaped down through clouds of golden dust and shovelled the wheatfuriously round the nose of the trunk, and got a steam-shovel ofglittering steel and made that shovel also, till there remained of thegrain not more than a horse leaves in the fold of his nose-bag. 

In this manner do they handle wheat at Buffalo. On one side of theelevator is the steamer, on the other the railway track; and the wheatis loaded into the cars in bulk. Wah! wah! God is great, and I do notthink He ever intended Gar Sahai or Luckman Narain to supply Englandwith her wheat. India can cut in not without profit to herself when herharvest is good and the American yield poor; but this very big countrycan, upon the average, supply the earth with all the beef and bread thatis required. 

A man in the train said to me:--"We kin feed all the earth, jest aseasily as we kin whip all the earth. "

Now the second statement is as false as the first is true. One of thesedays the respectable Republic will find this out. 

Unfortunately we, the English, will never be the people to teach her;because she is a chartered libertine allowed to say and do anythingshe likes, from demanding the head of the empress in an editorialwaste-basket, to chevying Canadian schooners up and down the AlaskaSeas. It is perfectly impossible to go to war with these people, whatever they may do. 

They are much too nice, in the first place, and in the second, it wouldthrow out all the passenger traffic of the Atlantic, and upset thefinancial arrangements of the English syndicates who have invested theirmoney in breweries, railways, and the like, and in the third, it's notto be done. Everybody knows that, and no one better than the American. 

Yet there are other powers who are not "ohai band" (of thebrotherhood)--China, for instance. Try to believe an irresponsiblewriter when he assures you that China's fleet to-day, if properlymanned, could waft the entire American navy out of the water and intothe blue. The big, fat Republic that is afraid of nothing, becausenothing up to the present date has happened to make her afraid, is asunprotected as a jelly-fish. Not internally, of course--it would bemadness for any Power to throw men into America; they would die--but asfar as regards coast defence. 

From five miles out at sea (I have seen a test of her "fortified" ports)a ship of the power of H. M. S. "Collingwood" (they haven't run her ona rock yet) would wipe out any or every town from San Francisco to LongBranch; and three first-class ironclads would account for New York, Bartholdi's Statue and all. 

Reflect on this. 'Twould be "Pay up or go up" round the entire coastof the United States. To this furiously answers the patrioticAmerican:--"We should not pay. We should invent a Columbiad in Pittsburgor--or anywhere else, and blow any outsider into h--l. "

They might invent. They might lay waste their cities and retire inland, for they can subsist entirely on their own produce. Meantime, in a warwaged the only way it could be waged by an unscrupulous Power, theircoast cities and their dock-yards would be ashes. They could constructtheir navy inland if they liked, but you could never bring a ship downto the water-ways, as they stand now. 

They could not, with an ordinary water patrol, despatch one regimentof men six miles across the seas. There would be about five millionexcessively angry, armed men pent up within American limits. These menwould require ships to get themselves afloat. The country has no suchships, and until the ships were built New York need not be allowed asingle-wheeled carriage within her limits. 

Behold now the glorious condition of this Republic which has no fear. There is ransom and loot past the counting of man on her seaboardalone--plunder that would enrich a nation--and she has neither a navynor half a dozen first-class ports to guard the whole. No man catches asnake by the tail, because the creature will sting; but you can build afire around a snake that will make it squirm. 

The country is supposed to be building a navy now. When the ships arecompleted her alliance will be worth having--if the alliance of anyrepublic can be relied upon. For the next three years she can be hurt, and badly hurt. Pity it is that she is of our own blood, looking at thematter from a Pindarris point of view. Dog cannot eat dog. 

These sinful reflections were prompted by the sight of the beautifullyunprotected condition of Buffalo--a city that could be made to pay upfive million dollars without feeling it. There are her companies ofinfantry in a sort of port there. A gun-boat brought over in pieces fromNiagara could get the money and get away before she could be caught, while an unarmored gun-boat guarding Toronto could ravage the towns onthe lakes. When one hears so much of the nation that can whip the earth, it is, to say the least of it, surprising to find her so temptinglyspankable. 

The average American citizen seems to have a notion that any Powerengaged in strife with the Star Spangled Banner will disembark men fromflat-bottomed boats on a convenient beach for the purpose of being shotdown by local militia. In his own simple phraseology:--"Not by a darnedsight. No, sir. "

Ransom at long range will be about the size of it--cash or crash. 

Let us revisit calmer scenes. 

In the heart of Buffalo there stands a magnificent building which thepopulation do innocently style a music-hall. Everybody comes hereof evenings to sit around little tables and listen to a first-classorchestra. The place is something like the Gaiety Theatre at Simla, enlarged twenty times. The "Light Brigade" of Buffalo occupy the boxesand the stage, "as it was at Simla in the days of old, " and the otherssit in the parquet. Here I went with a friend--poor or boor is the manwho cannot pick up a friend for a season in America--and here was shownthe really smart folk of the city. I grieve to say I laughed, becausewhen an American wishes to be correct he sets himself to imitate theEnglishman. This he does vilely, and earns not only the contempt of hisbrethren, but the amused scorn of the Briton. 

I saw one man who was pointed out to me as being the glass of fashionhereabouts. He was aggressively English in his get-up. From eye-glassto trouser-hem the illusion was perfect, but--he wore with evening-dressbuttoned boots with brown cloth tops! Not till I wandered about thisland did I understand why the comic papers belabor the Anglomaniac. 

Certain young men of the more idiotic sort launch into dog-carts andraiment of English cut, and here in Buffalo they play polo at fourin the afternoon. I saw three youths come down to the polo-groundfaultlessly attired for the game and mounted on their best ponies. Expecting a game, I lingered; but I was mistaken. These three shiningones with the very new yellow hide boots and the red silk sashes hadassembled themselves for the purpose of knocking the ball about. Theysmote with great solemnity up and down the grounds, while the littleboys looked on. When they trotted, which was not seldom, they roseand sunk in their stirrups with a conscientiousness that cried out"Riding-school!" from afar. 

Other young men in the park were riding after the English manner, inneatly cut riding-trousers and light saddles. Fate in derision hadmade each youth bedizen his animal with a checkered enamelled leatherbrow-band visible half a mile away--a black-and-white checkeredbrow-band! They can't do it, any more than an Englishman, by takingcold, can add that indescribable nasal twang to his orchestra. 

The other sight of the evening was a horror. The little tragedy playeditself out at a neighboring table where two very young men and two veryyoung women were sitting. It did not strike me till far into the eveningthat the pimply young reprobates were making the girls drunk. They gavethem red wine and then white, and the voices rose slightly with themaidens' cheek flushes. I watched, wishing to stay, and the youths dranktill their speech thickened and their eye-balls grew watery. It wassickening to see, because I knew what was going to happen. My friendeyed the group, and said:--"Maybe they're children of respectablepeople. I hardly think, though, they'd be allowed out without any betterescort than these boys. And yet the place is a place where every onecomes, as you see. They may be Little Immoralities--in which case theywouldn't be so hopelessly overcome with two glasses of wine. They maybe--"

Whatever they were they got indubitably drunk--there in that lovelyhall, surrounded by the best of Buffalo society. One could do nothingexcept invoke the judgment of Heaven on the two boys, themselves halfsick with liquor. At the close of the performance the quieter maidenlaughed vacantly and protested she couldn't keep her feet. The fourlinked arms, and staggering, flickered out into the street--drunk, gentlemen and ladies, as Davy's swine, drunk as lords! They disappeareddown a side avenue, but I could hear their laughter long after they wereout of sight. 

And they were all four children of sixteen and seventeen. Then, recanting previous opinions, I became a prohibitionist. Better it isthat a man should go without his beer in public places, and contenthimself with swearing at the narrow-mindedness of the majority; betterit is to poison the inside with very vile temperance drinks, and to buylager furtively at back-doors, than to bring temptation to the lipsof young fools such as the four I had seen. I understand now why thepreachers rage against drink. I have said: "There is no harm in it, taken moderately;" and yet my own demand for beer helped directly tosend those two girls reeling down the dark street to--God alone knowswhat end. 

If liquor is worth drinking, it is worth taking a little trouble to comeat--such trouble as a man will undergo to compass his own desires. Itis not good that we should let it lie before the eyes of children, andI have been a fool in writing to the contrary. Very sorry for myself, Isought a hotel, and found in the hall a reporter who wished to know whatI thought of the country. Him I lured into conversation about his ownprofession, and from him gained much that confirmed me in my viewsof the grinding tyranny of that thing which they call the Press here. Thus:--I--But you talk about interviewing people whether they like it ornot. Have you no bounds beyond which even your indecent curiosity mustnot go?

HE--I haven't struck 'em yet. What do you think of interviewing a widowtwo hours after her husband's death, to get her version of his life?

I--I think that is the work of a ghoul. Must the people have no privacy?

HE--There is no domestic privacy in America. If there was, what thedeuce would the papers do? See here. Some time ago I had an assignmentto write up the floral tributes when a prominent citizen had died. 

I--Translate, please; I do not understand your pagan rites andceremonies. 

HE--I was ordered by the office to describe the flowers, and wreaths, and so on, that had been sent to a dead man's funeral. Well, I wentto the house. There was no one there to stop me, so I yanked thetinkler--pulled the bell--and drifted into the room where the corpselay all among the roses and smilax. I whipped out my note-book and pawedaround among the floral tributes, turn-ing up the tickets on the wreathsand seeing who had sent them. In the middle of this I heard some onesaying: "Please, oh, please!" behind me, and there stood the daughter ofthe house, just bathed in tears--I--You unmitigated brute!

HE--Pretty much what I felt myself. "I'm very sorry, miss, " I said, "to intrude on the privacy of your grief. Trust me, I shall make it aslittle painful as possible. "

I--But by what conceivable right did you outrage--HE--Hold your horses. I'm telling you. Well, she didn't want me in the house at all, and between her sobs fairly waved me away. I had half the tributesdescribed, though, and the balance I did partly on the steps when thestiff 'un came out, and partly in the church. The preacher gave thesermon. That wasn't my assignment. I skipped about among the floraltributes while he was talking. I could have made no excuse if I had goneback to the office and said that a pretty girl's sobs had stopped meobeying orders. I had to do it. What do you think of it all?

I (slowly)--Do you want to know?

HE (with his note-book ready)--Of course. How do you regard it?

I--It makes me regard your interesting nation with the same shudderingcuriosity that I should bestow on a Pappan cannibal chewing the scalpoff his mother's skull. Does that convey any idea to your mind? It makesme regard the whole pack of you as heathens--real heathens--not the sortyou send missions to--creatures of another flesh and blood. You ought tohave been shot, not dead, but through the stomach, for your share in thescandalous business, and the thing you call your newspaper ought to havebeen sacked by the mob, and the managing proprietor hanged. 

HE--From which, I suppose you have nothing of that kind in your country?

Oh! "Pioneer, " venerable "Pioneer, " and you not less honest press ofIndia, who are occasionally dull but never blackguardly, what could Isay? A mere "No, " shouted never so loudly, would not have met the needsof the case. I said no word. 

The reporter went away, and I took a train for Niagara Falls, which aretwenty-two miles distant from this bad town, where girls get drunk ofnights and reporters trample on corpses in the drawing-rooms of thebrave and the free!