Читать книгу An Epoch in History - P. H. Eley - Страница 4

CHAPTER I.

AN EPOCH IN HISTORY.

Table of Contents

Few people pause to think that Tuesday, the twenty-third day of July, nineteen hundred and one, not only placed a mile-stone on the road of civilization, but also marked an epoch in the history of the world.

That day placed a mile-stone on the road of civilization because it saw the culmination of one of the greatest movements ever attempted in behalf of common school education. It marked an epoch in the history of the world because, for the first time within the knowledge of man, a conquering people, instead of sending battalions of soldiers to hold the conquered in subjection, sent a carefully selected body of men and women to carry to them the benefits of a highly developed society.

It was on this day that the United States Government sent from San Francisco four hundred and ninety-nine trained men and women to establish throughout the Philippine Islands a system of free public schools.

The ball on the tower of the Ferry Building in San Francisco had just fallen, announcing the hour of noon on the one hundred and twentieth meridian, when the propellers began revolving and the United States Army Transport “Thomas” swung out into the middle of the bay, where it dropped anchor for a few moments while some belated boxes of lemons and a few other articles were added to the equipment of the steward’s department.

The anchor was again on its way to the surface when a row-boat driven by four oarsmen with drawn muscles and clenched teeth glided in under the bow of the ship. Its passenger, a belated teacher who at the last moment had wandered from the pier, was shouting for some one to throw him a rope, and a few moments later our last passenger whose silvery hair little indicated the probability of such a blunder was landed in a heap on the deck. Our ship was now under way and soon passed out of the Golden Gate bearing on and between her decks the largest number of teachers as well as the largest cargo of pedagogical equipment that any vessel in the history of the world ever bore to a foreign land to instruct an alien people. Late in the afternoon five whales came up and spouted and played around us. We passed on and as their fountains of spray disappeared in the distance the sun sank down to pay his wonted devotion before the shrine of night. We were alone.

By good fortune we went by way of the Hawaiian Islands and touched at Honolulu. We entered the harbor in the first faint light of the coming morn while the moon still shone with resplendent glory just above the nearer rim of the old extinct volcanic crater lying just behind the town. High points of land lay around us on three sides, while across the bay soft billowy clouds completed an enchanting circle from the spell of which none of us wished ever to escape.

No traveler who lands at Honolulu will feel unrequited for his time and his money should he visit two places in the vicinity of the town. The first is the Pali and the second, the Bishop Museum of Polynesian Ethnology.

The first is a gigantic precipice, reached by a few hours ride from the city by horse. As one reaches the precipice, there spreads out before him at a dizzying depth below a verdant plain, bounded in the distance by an emerald sea. The wind which always blows in tropical countries is gathered in between the long projecting arms of a mountain chain and rushes over the face of cliff with such force that it is said by travelers to be one of the strongest continual winds on the globe.

The Bishop Museum of Polynesian Ethnology contains the finest collection in existence of things illustrating the life and customs of Polynesia. Among other things, the visitor is shown the personal god of war of that sovereign whose grand-child was the last to hold the sceptre of the Kanakas. There are royal documents to prove that more than one thousand men have been beheaded before this grim-faced old idol. Here, too, is the famous robe of birds’ feathers, made to please the fancy of this same grim old monarch. The feathers of which this strange, but really elegant, robe is made are of a reddish color. The birds from which they were plucked were found only in the Hawaiian Islands and each bird had only four feathers, two being under each wing. The extinction of the bird is attributed to the making of this royal robe. So many of them were needed that hundreds of hunters were employed a score or more of years to secure the number required. Placing the wages of the hunters at a reasonable figure, the value of the robe is over three hundred thousand dollars.

At Honolulu one sees also that famous sport of the South Sea Islanders, surf-shooting. The native wades far out into the surf with a long narrow board and then sits astride of it upon the surface of the water. As the long billows come rolling in, he places his board upon the convex surface of an advancing wave, then, with the poise of a rope-dancer, he places his weight properly upon the plank and is shot forward with precipitate rapidity.

Between Honolulu and Manila lies the imaginary line where the days of the week are supposed to begin and end. It has long been a custom among sailors to hold the “Revels of Neptune” on the night after a vessel crosses either the International Date Line or the Equator, and the ship is then turned over to the crew. Even the petty officers of the ship are not free from being made the objects of the sport, and passengers of especial prominence have often been treated to a bath in a tub of cold water or had their faces lathered with a broom as a shaving brush while a bar of old iron served the purpose of a razor.

A naval lieutenant on the battleship which conveyed Napoleon from London to St. Helena, writing to one of the court ladies in London, states that Napoleon offered the sailors four hundred dollars in gold and actually gave them eighty-five dollars to escape being ducked in a tub of cold water and shaved with a rough iron hoop when they crossed the equator.* * Century Magazine for September, 1889.

We reached the line on Thursday night and awoke a few hours later on Saturday morning, having lost a day in revelry.