CHAPTER 37
SOME REFERENCES TO BURMA, CEYLON, COCHIN-CHINA, TURKESTAN, PERSIA
IN MADAGASCAR I was made an honorary member of the Academie Malgache. There are only half a dozen honorary members, including the President of France.
The French authorities jealously guard the rare fossils that have been found in Madagascar, where so much of the flora and fauna, ancient and modern, belongs alone to Madagascar.
They were very courteous to me. I was lucky enough to discover a perfect specimen of the egg of the Æpyornis Titans, the greatest of the extinct prodigious birds, and was permitted to remove it from the country in order that I might present it to the University of Michigan. Also I obtained bones of the Æpyornis, flying and amphibious lemurs, and a complete skeleton of the pigmy hippopotamus, a rare fossil. I shot a large modern hippo in Africa to contrast the lilliputian with. They now form a striking contrast in the museum of the University of Michigan.
The Colonial geologist and mineralogist aided me in obtaining a complete collection of the minerals and rocks of Madagascar for the Michigan College of Mines.
English missionaries have done a praiseworthy work in Madagascar. They went there nearly a hundred years ago. Now out of a population of between three and four millions, there are more than five hundred thousand enrolled Christians.
At Fort Dauphin we found an American Swedish Lutheran mission establishment of cheerful, wholesome, self-sacrificing missionaries doing fine work. No one could have been extended more consideration and kindness than we were given by all the missionaries. The most unusual Consul Porter, British official representative, stationed at Antananarivo, could not have done more for his King than he and his charming family did for us.
The United States Consul to Madagascar, a high-grade Negro, Mr. James G. Carter, at Tamatave, was thoughtful, polite, and efficient. The color line is not drawn officially or socially and Yankee Consul Carter was having the time of his life.
Madagascar is apart from routes of common travel. It is never visited by the tourist class and has not been spoiled. I am referring to Madagascar very briefly here because I am at work upon a more elaborate manuscript concerning it, which I hope to complete for publication.
In Ceylon we visited the Anuradhpura district where extensive ruins dating from the golden days of Buddhism are being uncovered and preserved. It is a fever stricken region. Not unlikely this caused the decay of the strong peoples that competed successfully in their time in all the activities of the known world. They were at their best about 300 B.C. One has only to go to Ceylon and read the Ramayana to have both regard and respect for the ancient Cingalese.
We reached Burma in time to participate in the hundredth anniversary of the arrival of the American Baptist missionary Adoniram Judson. He really opened Burma. The British followed, as they have been often guided by the blazed trails made in remote portions of the world by American missionaries.
No river trip in the world surpasses in interest that of the Irawaddy. When we were at Bhamo the Tibetans, Chinese and English were guarding their frontier and frequent clashes came.
The most productive ruby mines in the world are along the Irawaddy. American drillers have developed rich oil fields just as they have done at Baku. Mandalay had the plague and three hundred a day were dying from it when we were there.
Fascinating indeed is Old Pagan, once the mightiest seat of Buddhism and still showing eight thousand pagodas and dagobas. When Genghiz Khan appeared before it in the thirteenth century, there were standing thirteen thousand temples of Buddha. The King tore down five thousand to obtain material for use in strengthening his fortifications. The Great Khan captured and sacked the city despite all this and a brave defense.
Our English word “pagan” comes from here just as our word “meander” is from the tortuous river that laves the ruined foundation of Diana’s ancient Ephesus.
In Siam we found an American, Jens Westengaard, of Chicago, living in a palace as adviser to the King, and ranking only next below the sacred white elephant. The story of Westengaard and his splendid work in Siam, and his potential life throughout is dramatic and exhausts the imagination. He is indeed a creditable American.
Cochin-China, French China, is well administered. Saigon is a miniature Paris. The French manage their colonies with sympathy, understanding, real interest and strive for unalloyed justice. The colonial work of the highest and most unselfish character in the world is that done by our country in the Philippines. Next comes France.
In Persia we encountered the failure of Morgan Shuster. If he had been permitted to carry out his plans, Shuster might have done wonders for Persia. But it was not in the cards. England and Russia were as determined upon the ravishment of Persia as the latter has been of Turkestan, and the former of India. Mr. Schuster’s absolute tactlessness, and complete failure to grasp the situation, only hastened the clenching of the iron bands.
All of the countries engaged in the great European holocaust have at one time or another despoiled and oppressed weaker peoples of the world. One of the most guilty is Belgium. Her Congo brutalities curdled the blood of all who knew them. Do nations reap as they sow? Like individuals? I think so.
In Turkestan and throughout the “sealed dominions of the Czar” we found, as all must find who go or read, much to engross one and arouse conjecture and imaginative thought. Old Maracanda and Merv, and the valley of the Granicus, where Clitus saved Alexander’s life, only to be stabbed to death by him in a drunken fit a short time afterwards. Alexander did not die of a broken heart because of no more worlds to conquer. There were plenty. He died of remorse, at thirty-three, because he had, while drunk, murdered his favorite general and best beloved friend Clitus, to whom he owed his life. There is much evidence that in a fit of sorrow over his crime he committed suicide. No, Alexander did not die for want of worlds to master. He died because he failed to conquer himself.
The country is bleak along the Perso-Turkestan frontier and much of it a desert. At oases there were nomadic peoples, with home-woven, camel’s-hair tents and garments, and many camels, sheep, goats and asses.
Most of the shoreline of the Aral and Caspian Sea is forbidding, gray and ashen as death. Baku is a busy, but not an attractive city. Krasnovodsk, Enzeli, and Resht are as nearly impossible as human hives can be. Resht is a disease-breeding mudhole, considerably below the level of the Caspian. Kiva and Bokhara are just as they were in Biblical times.
Once in Transcaucasia all is different. The valleys contain a people that have spirit. Russia is building throughout with unusual activity, and the work is done to last. Just as much life as in the most exciting boom days of Oklahoma, and in addition everything is done with a view to permanency.
Tashkent, in Turkestan, is quite a modern city. Tiflis in Transcaucasia, is much more so. Between them the space is unfinished. At Geok Tepee, where Skobeleff captured the beards of the prophet, horsetail battle flags mark the final conquest.
In Siberia there is a great development going on. In many ways Siberia is the hope of Russia. Men and women of independent thought and courage were exiled there. Often when their term of exile had finished, they remained in their new abode. George Kennan’s picture of Siberia is unjust, unkind and untrue. I have been three times across the remarkable domain that the robber Yermak gave to his Czar, and have tried to know Siberia fairly. It is not as cold as Saskatchewan either in summer or winter, and always they raise more wheat than the railroad can haul. Irkutsk is really the literary and modern art center of Russia, because tolerance in Russia for the humanities first began thereabouts.
Siberian and Russian towns generally are not overchurched. They are classified practically as one church, two church and three church towns and so on. If a community can support one church that is all it is permitted, until it grows to a point where, without great difficulty, it can support two. I am inclined to think that religion in Russia is less an economic burden than in any other country in the world. There seems to be a gradual rapprochement of the Greek and Episcopal churches. Their amalgamation would be a good thing for them and for the world no doubt.
It was the early part of the year 1914. Everywhere we saw Russian soldiers moving toward the Austrian and German borders. There is an old Bengali saying that when soldiers are on the move watch for trouble. We had been away from newspapers for many weeks. Nevertheless I concluded that war was going on or about to start. In a few weeks it burst on Europe like an elemental demon, leading hosts of vampires and furies.
Rabindranath Tagore, of whom we saw much and delightfully while in Calcutta, had in conversation predicted, like a prophet of old, that the world would quake with wholesale murder and India would be avenged. He could not have dreamed it would be so soon.
I was in his home when the money of the Nobel prize for literature was handed to him. He cared deeply for the generous recognition of the East by the West, but there is no East or West in the world of love and art. But he cared most because he could further endow his boys’ school at Bolpur, where he is training young men who will carry on the dream of his life. That is the restoration of the pure ancient Brahmanism, the first monotheistic religion the world knows anything about. It has degenerated into a depraved animistic Hinduism.
To call Tagore a Hindu, as is commonly done, is to call Bergson a disciple of Nietzsche.
Through home missionary organizations called Brahmo Samaj they are endeavoring to convert the bull kissing Hindus.
I told Tagore what he was teaching is really Christianity. He agreed with me, but added that it was better policy to name it Neo-Brahmanism.
It is the spiritual hope of India.
