Flash-lights From The Seven Seas Part 21

We climbed to the top of Taishan, and saw the "No-Character Stone"

erected by Emperor Chin, he who tried to drive learning out of China hundreds of years ago. We saw the spot on which Confucius stood, and glimpsed the Pacific Ocean, ninety miles away, on a clear day. It was a hard climb; but, when one stood on the top of this, the most sacred mountain of all China, he began to understand the spiritual loss that is China's when her wors.h.i.+ping-place is in the hands of aliens.

"And don't forget that Mencius, the first disciple of Confucius, was born and died in Shantung, too, when you are taking census of the spiritual values of Shantung to the Chinese," was a word of caution from the old missionary who was checking up on my facts for me. He had been laboring in China for a quarter of a century.

"And don't forget that the Boxer uprising originated in Shantung, and don't forget that it is called, and has been for centuries, 'the Sacred Province' by the Chinese. It is their 'Holy Land.' And don't forget that, from Shantung, coolies went to South Africa in the early part of this century and that the Chinese from Shantung were the first to get in touch with the western world. And don't forget that nine-tenths of the coolies who went to help in the war in France were from Shantung!" he added with emphasis. This was a thing that I well knew, for I had, only a few weeks before this, seen two thousand coolies unloaded from the _Empress of Asia_ at Tsingtao.

No, Shantung is not an appendix of China, as many Americans suppose; but it is the very heart and soul of China. It is China's "Holy Land." It is the "Cradle of China." It is the "Sacred Province of China." It is the shrine of her greatest sage. It is the home of "the oldest wors.h.i.+ping-place on earth." It is because of its spiritual values that China is unhappy about the loss of Shantung, and not because of its wealth of material things.

The failure of the world to understand what Shantung means to China and the failure of j.a.pan to understand that they cannot for many years stand out against the indignation of the entire world in continuing to keep Shantung is one of the great spiritual failures of the Far East in our century.

The second great failure is the tragic failure of an entire race of people; that of the Ainu Indians of j.a.pan.

It is a pathetic thing to see a human race dying out; coming to "The End of the Trail." But I was determined to see them, in spite of the fact that people told me I would have to travel from one end of j.a.pan to the other; and then cross four hours of sea before I got to Hokkaido, the most northern island of j.a.pan, where lived the tattered remnants of this once n.o.ble race.

The name of this dying race is p.r.o.nounced as if it were spelled I-new with a long I.

These are the people who inhabited j.a.pan before the present j.a.panese entered the land from Korea and drove them, inch by inch, back and north and west across j.a.pan. It was a stubborn fight, and it has lasted many centuries; but to-day they have been driven up on the island of Hokkaido, that northern frontier of j.a.pan where the overflow of j.a.pan is pouring at the rate of four thousand a year, making two million to date and only about fifty thousand of them Ainus.

"Are they like our American Indians in looks, since their history is so much like them?" I asked my missionary friend.

"Wait until you see them, and decide for yourself. I know very little about American Indians."

So one morning at three o'clock, after traveling for two days and nights from one end of j.a.pan to the other, and then crossing a strait between the j.a.pan Sea and the Pacific Ocean to the island, we climbed from our train, and landed in a little country railroad station.

It was blowing a blizzard, and the snow crashed into our faces with stinging, whip-like snaps.

I was appointed stoker for the small stove in the station while the rest of the party tried to sleep on the benches arranged in a circle, huddled as close as they could get to the stove.

We were the first party of foreigners of this size that had ever honored the village with a visit. And in addition to that we had come at an unearthly hour.

Who but a group of insane foreigners would drop into a town at three o'clock in the morning with a blizzard blowing? Either we were insane, or we had some sinister motives. Perhaps we were making maps of the seacoast.

And before daylight half of the town was peeking in through the windows at us. Then the policemen came. They were j.a.panese policemen, and did not take any chances on us. Even after our interpreter had told them that we were a group of scientists who had come to visit the Ainus they still followed us around most of the morning, keeping polite track of our movements.

About five o'clock that morning, as I was trying to catch a cat-nap, the newsboys of the village came to get the morning papers which had come in on the train on which we had arrived. They unbundled the papers in the cold station; their breath forming clouds of vapor; laughing and joking as they unrolled, folded and counted the papers; and arranged their routes for morning delivery.

It took me back to boyhood days down in West Virginia. I did the same thing as these j.a.panese boys were doing. I, too, arose before daylight, climbed out of bed, and went whistling through the dark streets to the station where the early morning trains dumped off the papers from the city. I, too, along with several other American boys of a winter morning, breathed clouds of vapor into the air, stamped my feet to keep them warm, and whipped my hands against my sides. I, too, unwrapped the big bundles of papers, and did it in the same way in which these j.a.panese boys did, by smas.h.i.+ng the tightly bound wrappers on the floor until they burst. I, too, counted, folded, put in inserts, arranged my paper-route and darted out into the frosty air with the snow crunching under my feet. How universal some things are. The only difference was that these boys were dressed in a sort of buccaneer uniform. They had on high leather boots, and belts around their coats that made them look as if they had stepped out of a Richard Harding Davis novel. But otherwise they went through the same processes as an American boy in a small town.

When the vanguard of villagers had come to inspect us, they at first tried to talk Russian to us. They had never seen any other kind of foreigners. They had never seen Americans in this far-off island.

When daylight came, we started out on a long tramp to the Ainu villages.

They were a mile or two away on the ocean. These people always build near the sea if they can. Fis.h.i.+ng is one of their main sources of food.

We spent the day in their huts. They live like animals. A big, square hut covered with rice straw and thatch, with a fence of the same kind of straw running around the house, forms the residence. The only fire is in the middle of the only room, and this consists of a pile of wood burning on a flat stone or piece of metal in the center. There is no chimney in the roof, and not even an opening such as the American Indians had in the tops of their tepees. I do not know how they live. The smoke finds its way gradually through cracks in the walls and roofs. One can hardly find a single Ainu whose eyes are not ruined. The smoke has done this damage.

The only opening in their houses besides the door is one north window, and it is never closed. In fact, there is no window. It is only an opening.

"Why is that? I'd think they would freeze on a day like this," I said to the guide.

"They keep it that way all winter, and it gets a good deal below zero here," he said.

"But why do they do it?" old Shylock demanded.

"It is part of their religion. They believe that the G.o.d comes in that window. They want it open, so that he can come in whenever he wishes. It offends them greatly when you stick your head through that window."

Pat tried it just to see what would happen, just like a man who looks into the barrel of a gun, or a man who takes a watch apart, or wants to hit a "dud" with a hammer just to see whether it is a dud. The result was bad. There was a sudden series of outlandish yells from the household. I think that every man, woman and child, including the dogs, of which there were many, started at once. I wonder now how Pat escaped alive, and only under the a.s.sumption that "the good die young" can I explain his escape.

I wanted some arrows to take to America as souvenirs; and, when an old Indian pulled out a lot of metal arrows on long bows with which he had killed more than a hundred bears, I was not satisfied. They were not the kind of arrows I wanted.

"What kind are you looking for?" I was asked.

"Flint arrow-heads," I responded.

"Why, man, these Indians have known the use of metals for five hundred years. The stone age with them is half a thousand years in the past."

"Have they a history?" I wanted to know.

My interpreter, who has much knowledge of these things, having worked among them for years, said, "All of the j.a.panese mythology is centered about the battles that took place when these Indians were driven out of j.a.pan proper step by step."

I was surprised to find that they were white people compared with the j.a.panese who were their conquerors. There are other marked differences.

The Ainus are broad between the eyes instead of narrow as are the j.a.panese. They are rather square-headed like Americans as compared with the oval of the j.a.panese face. They do not have markedly slant eyes, and they are white-skinned. They might feel at home in any place in America.

I have seen many old men at home who look like them, old men with beards. This came as a distinct surprise to me.

At each house, just in front of the ever-open window of which I have spoken, there is a little crude shrine. It is more like a small fence than anything that I know, a most crude affair made of broken bamboo poles. Flowers and vines are planted here to beautify this shrine, and every pole has a bear-skull on it. The more bear-skulls you have, the safer you are and the more religious you have become.

Pat was sacrilegious enough to steal a skull in order to get the teeth, which he wanted as souvenirs. I was chagrined and shocked at Pat's lack of religious propriety. However, I was enticed into accepting one of the teeth after Pat had knocked them out and stolen them.

"How do they wors.h.i.+p bears and kill them at the same time?" I queried the guide.

"That's a part of the wors.h.i.+p. They kill the bear, slowly singing and chanting as they kill him. They think that the spirit of every bear that they kill comes into their own souls. That's why they kill so many. That seventy-year-old rascal over there has killed a hundred. He is a great man in his tribe."

"If I was a bear," commented Pat, "I'd rather they wouldn't wors.h.i.+p me.

That's a funny way to show reverence to a G.o.d. I'd rather be their devil and live than be their G.o.d and die." Pat is sometimes loquacious. "They dance about the poor old bear as they kill him. One fellow will hurl an arrow into his side, and then cry out, 'O spirit of the great bear-G.o.d, come enter into me, and make me strong and brave like you! Come, take up thine abode in my house! Come, be a part of me! Let thy strength and thy courage be my strength and my courage!'"

"Then," said the interpreter, "he hurls another arrow into him."

"And what is Mr. Bear doing all that time?"

"Mr. Bear is helpless. He is captured first in a trap, and then kept and fattened for the killing. He is tied to a tree during the killing ceremony."

"All I gotta say is that they're darned poor sports," said Flintlock with indignation. "They're poor sports not to give Mr. Bear a fighting chance."

And old Flintlock has voiced the sentiments of the entire party.

Everybody that was at the Panama Pacific International Exposition will remember the magnificent statue of an Indian there. This Indian was riding a horse, and both were worn out and drooping. A spear which dragged on the ground in front of the pony was further evidence of the weariness of the horse and rider. The t.i.tle of this Fraser bronze was "The End of the Trail," and it was intended to tell the story of a vanis.h.i.+ng race, the American Indians. But even more could that picture tell the story of the Ainus of j.a.pan.

"They will be entirely extinct in a quarter of a century," our guide said. "They are going fast. They used to be vigorous and militant, as j.a.panese mythology shows. They were a fighting race. They built their houses by the sea. They used to go out for miles to fish, but now they are so petered out that they go only to the mouths of the rivers to fish. They used to hunt in the mountains, but they do not take hunting-trips any more. Venereal diseases and rum (saki) have depleted them year by year, just as in the case of our American Indians. They are largely sterile now. They used to build their own boats, but they build no more. It is a biological old age. Their day is through."