Flash-lights From The Seven Seas Part 2

Thousands of flames lighted up the sky that night. The little thatch houses, and the children in their quaint garbs moving against the flames composed a strange Oriental Rembrandt picture.

Streets! Streets! Streets!

Lights! Lights! Lights!

Somehow streets and lights go together.

We think of our great Broadway. We smile at our superior ingenuity when we think of the "Great White Way."

But for sheer beauty; fascinating, captivating, alluring, beauty; give me the Ginza in Tokyo on a summer evening; with its millions of twinkling little lights above the thousands of Oriental shops; with the sound of bells, the whistle of salesmen, the laughter of beautiful j.a.panese girls; the clacking of dainty feet in wooden shoes; and the indefinable essence of romance that hovers over a street of this Oriental type at night. I'll stake the romance, and beauty of the Ginza in Tokyo, against any street in the world. He who has looked upon the Ginza by night, has a Flash-Light of Flame; of tiny, myriad little flaming lights; burned into his memory; to live until he sees at last the lighted streets of Paradise itself.

Nor are the clothes of the Orient without their flaming colors.

The beautiful kimonos of the Geisha girls of j.a.pan; the crimson, gold, and rose glory of the Sing Song Girls of China; the flas.h.i.+ng reds of the brown-skinned Spanish belles of the Philippines, as they glide, like wind-blown Bamboo trees through the streets; and the lurid, livid, robes which men and women alike wear in Borneo and Java. In fact all of the clothes of the Orient, are flame-clothes. There are no quiet colors woven into the gown of the Oriental. The Oriental does not know what soft browns are. Crimson is the favorite color for man or woman. They even make their sails red, blue, green and yellow. The beautiful colors of the sailboats in the harbor of Yokohama is one of the first flas.h.i.+ng touches of the Orient that a traveler gets. From j.a.panese Obies, which clasp the waists of j.a.panese girls, to Javanese Sarongs, the flame and flash of crimson predominates in the gowns of both men and women. Where an American man would blush to be caught in any sort of a gown with crimson predominating save a necktie, the j.a.panese gentlemen, the Filipino, the Malay, and the Javanese all wear high colors most of the time. And the women are like splendid flaming bushes of fire all the time.

A Javanese bride is all flame as far as her dress is concerned. Her face is powdered; her eyebrows are pencilled a coal black; her arms and shoulders daubed with a yellow grease. As to her dress, the sarong is a flaming robe that covers her body to the b.r.e.a.s.t.s; red being the dominant color; with a crown of metal which looks like a beehive on her head.

Bra.s.s bracelets and ornaments on her graceful arms complete her costume.

Even the PaG.o.das and Temples of the Oriental lands are flame.

The most beautiful Temples of j.a.pan are the Nikko Temples.

"See Nikko and you have seen j.a.pan" is the saying that is well said.

But when one has spent weeks or a week, days or a day at Nikko; he comes away with an impression of beautiful, tall, terraced, red-lacquered PaG.o.das; beautiful, graceful red-gowned women; beautiful, architectural masterpieces of Oriental Temples; all finished in wonderful red lacquer; beautiful red-cheeked women in the village stores; beautiful red Kimonos for sale in the Curio shops; red berries burning against the wonderful green gra.s.s; and all set off, against and under, and crowned by wonderful green rows of great Cryptomaria trees.

These red Temples and these Red PaG.o.das--red with a red that is flaming splendor of the last word in the lacquer artist's skill; are like beautiful crimson jewels set in a setting of emerald.

And back of all these Flash-Lights of Flame one remembers the path of a single star on the smooth surface of Manila Bay at night; and the phosph.o.r.escent beauty of Manila Bay where great s.h.i.+ps cleave this lake of fire when the phosphorus is heavy of a Summer night; and every ripple is a ripple of flame. One remembers the continuous flash of heat lightning down in Borneo and on Equatorial Seas; and one remembers the Southern Cross; and the flash-lights of fire in a half-breed woman's eyes.

CHAPTER II

FLASH-LIGHTS PHYSICAL

The red dawn of tropical Java was near. The shadows of night were still playing from millions of graceful Palm trees which swung gently in the winds before the dawn.

Three ancient volcanos, still rumbling in blatant activity, loomed like gigantic monsters of the underworld, bulging their black shoulders above the earth. Before us lay a valley of green rice paddies.

We had roved over ancient Boroboedoer all night, exploring its haunted crannies and corners, listening to its weird noises; dreaming through its centuries of age; climbing its seven terraces. But in the approaching dawn, the one outstanding thrill of the night was that of a half-naked Javanese girl, who stood for an hour, poised in her brown beauty on the top of one of the Bells of Buddha, with some weird Javanese musical instrument, singing to the dawn.

Then it came.

"What? Her lover?"

No! The dawn! The dawn was her lover! Or, perhaps her lover was old Merapi.

For, there, as we too, climbed to her strategic pinnacle of glory on top of the Buddha Bell to watch the dawn that she had called up with her weird music and her subtle brown beauty; before us, stretched thousands of acres of green rice paddies, spread out like the Emerald lawn of an Emerald Springtime in Heaven. Below us two silver streams of water met and wedded, to go on as one.

As we stood there that morning on the top of Boroboedoer's highest bell, lines of Edna St. Vincent Millay swung into my soul:

"All I could see from where I stood Was three tall mountains and a wood."

Only in this instance all I could see were three volcanos. And the one in the center, old Merapi was belching out a trail of black smoke. These three volcanos, take turns through the centuries. When one is working the other two rest. When one ceases its activity, one of the others takes up the thundering anthem and carries it on for a few years or centuries and then lapses into silence, having done its part. While we were there it was Merapi's turn to thunder and on this particular morning Merapi was busy before daylight.

For fifty miles along the horizon, a trail of black smoke swept like the trail of black smoke which a train leaves in its wake on a still day.

There was not another cloud in the eastern skies. Nothing but that trail of black smoke as we stood on the top of Boroboedoer at dawn and watched.

Then something happened. It was, as if some magician had waved a magic wand back of the mountain. The rising sun was the magician. We saw its heralds spreading out, like great golden fan-ribs with the cone of the volcano, its direct center of convergence. Then before our astonished, our utterly bewildered, and our fascinated eyes, that old volcanic cone was changed to a cone of gold. Then the golden cone commenced to belch forth golden smoke. And finally the trail of smoke for fifty miles along the horizon became a trail of golden smoke.

This was a Flash-Light that literally burned its way into our memories to remain forever.

There is another Flash-Light Physical which has to do with another volcano which I mentioned in the preceding chapter. Bromo is its name.

It is still there, down on the extreme eastern end of Java, unless in the meantime the old rascal has taken it into his demoniacal head to blow himself to pieces as he threatened to do the day we lay on our stomachs, holding on to the earth, with the sides trembling beneath us.

Old Bromo was well named. It reminds one of Bromo-Seltzer. I had heard of him long before I reached Java. I had heard of the Sand Plains down into the midst of whose silver whiteness he was set, like a great conical gem of dark purple by day and fire by night.

Travelers said "You must see Bromo! You must see Bromo! If you miss everything else see Bromo! It's the most completely satisfactory volcano in the world."

It was two o'clock in the morning when we started on little rugged Javanese ponies up Bromo's steep slopes.

At daybreak we reached the mile high cliff which looks down into the world-famous Sand Sea. It was a sea of white fog. I have seen the same thing at the Grand Canyon and in Yosemite looking down from the rims. I thought of these great American canyons as I looked down into the Bromo Sand Sea. By noon this was a great ten-mile long valley of silver sand which glittered in the sunlight like a great silver carpeted ballroom floor. Tourists from all over the world have thrilled to its strange beauty. Like the gown of some great and ancient queen this silver cloth lies there; or like some great silver rug of Oriental weaving it carpeted that valley floor at noon.

But at daybreak it was a sea of mist into which it looked as if one might plunge, naked to the skin and wash his soul clean of its tropical sweat and dirt; a fit swimming pool for the G.o.ds of Java, of whom there are so many.

Then something happened as we stood looking down into that smooth sea of white fog, rolling in great billows below us. There was a sudden roar as if an entire Hindenburg line had let loose with its "Heavies." There was a sudden and terrific trembling of the earth under our feet which made us jump back from that precipice in terror.

Then slowly, as if it were on a great mechanical stage, the perfect cone of old rumbling Bromo, from which curled a thin wisp of black smoke, bulged its way out of the center of that sea of white fog, rising gradually higher and higher as though the stage of the morning had been set, the play had begun, and unseen stage hands behind the curtain of fog, with some mighty derrick and tremendous power were lifting a huge volcano as a stage piece.

Then came the quick, burning tropical sun, shooting above the eastern horizon as suddenly as the volcanic cone had been lifted above the fog.

This hot sun burned away the mists in a few minutes and there, stretching below us, in all its oriental beauty was the sinewy, voluptuous form of the silver sand sea--Bromo's subtle mistress.

There is another Physical Flash-light that will never die.

Coming out of the Singapore Straits one evening at sunset, bound for the island of Borneo across the South China Sea, I was sitting on the upper deck of a small Dutch s.h.i.+p. The canvas flapped in the winds. A cool, tropical breeze fanned our faces. Back of us in our direct wake a splas.h.i.+ng, tumbling, tumultuous tropical sunset flared across the sky.

It was crimson glory. In the direct path of the crimson sun a lighthouse flashed its blinking eyes like a musical director with his baton beating time.

I watched this flas.h.i.+ng, lesser, light against the crimson sunset and was becoming fascinated by it.