Flash-lights From The Seven Seas Part 1

Flash-lights from the Seven Seas.

by William L. Stidger.

INTRODUCTION

BY BISHOP FRANCIS J. McCONNELL

The Rev. William L. Stidger is one of the most thoroughly alive men in the ministry today. He sees quickly, reacts instantaneously, and knows how to bring others to a like alertness of mental and spiritual seizure.

If it be said of him that he is impressionistic it must be remembered that the impressions are made on a mind of sound purpose and communicated to others for the sake of the truth behind the impression.

His narratives of travel do not belong in the guide-book category or in that of the scientific geography. But if you wish to know what it would be like to visit yourself the countries described, the reading of Mr.

Stidger's sketches will help you. If it be said that what one after all is getting is the Stidger view, it must not be forgotten that the Stidger view is marvellously vital and enkindling. The Stidger vitality is bracing and health-giving. It is a tonic for all of us who are getting a little old and sluggish. The contagion of youth and energy are in this book: it will reach and stir all who read.

FRANCIS J. MCCONNELL

_Pittsburgh, Pa._

FOREWORD

That vast stretch of opal islands; jade continents; sapphire seas of strange sunsets; mysterious ma.s.ses of brown-skinned humanity; brown-eyed, full-breasted, full-lipped and full-hipped women; which we call the Orient, can only be caught by the photographer's art in flash-light pictures.

It is like a photograph taken in the night. It cannot be clear cut. It cannot have clean outlines. It can only be a blurred ma.s.s of humanity with burdens on their shoulders; humanity bent to the ground; creaking carts; weary-eyed children and women; moving, moving, moving; like phantom shadow-shapes; in and out; one great maze through the majestic ages; one confused history of the ancient past; emerging; but not yet out into the sunlight!

Such ma.s.ses of humanity; such dim, uncertain origins of unfathered races; these can only be caught and seen as through a gla.s.s darkly.

Paul Hutchinson, my friend, in "The Atlantic Monthly" says of China what is true of the whole Orient:

"In this vast stretch of country, with its poor communications, we can only know in part. When one sets out to generalize he does so at his own peril. The only consolation is that it is almost impossible to disprove any statement; for, however fantastical, it is probably in accord with the facts in some part of the land."

The facts, fancies, and fallacies of this book are gleaned from the rovings and ramblings of a solid year of over fifty-five thousand miles of travel; through ten separate countries: j.a.pan, Korea, China, the Philippine Islands, French Indo-China, the Malay States, Borneo, Java, Sumatra and the Hawaiian Islands; across seven seas: the Pacific Ocean, the Sea of j.a.pan, the North China Sea, the Yellow Sea, the South China Sea, the Malacca Straits, and the Sea of Java; after visiting five wild and primitive tribes: the Ainu Indians of j.a.pan, the Igorrotes of the Philippines, the Negritos of the same islands; the Dyaks of Borneo, and the Battaks of Sumatra; face to face by night and day with new races, new faces, new problems, new aspirations, new ways of doing things, new ways of living, new evils, new sins, new cruelties, new fears, new degradations; new hopes, new days, new ways, new nations arising; new G.o.ds, and a new G.o.d!

When one comes back from such a trip, having fortified himself with the reading of many books written about these far lands, in addition to his travel, one still has the profound conviction that, after all is said, done, and thought out, the only honest way to picture these vast stretches of land and humanity is to confess that all is in motion; like a great ma.s.s of bees in a hive, one on top of the other, busy at buzzing, buying, selling, living, dying, climbing, achieving; groping in the dark; moving upward by an unerring instinct toward the light.

At nights I cannot sleep for thinking about that weird, dim, misty panorama of fleeting, flashing pictures; those thousands of Javanese that I saw down in Sourabaya, who have never known what it means to have a home; who sleep in doorways by night, and along the river banks; where mothers give birth to children, who in turn live and die out under the open sky. Nor can I forget that animal-like beggar in Canton who dug into a gutter for his food; or those hideous beggars, by winter along the railway in Shantung; or the naked one-year-old child covered with sores which a beggar woman in the Chinese section of Shanghai held to her own naked breast. Those pictures and a thousand others abide.

One has the feeling that if he could go back, again, and again, and again to these far sh.o.r.es, and live with these peoples and die with them, then he would begin faintly to understand what it all means and where it is all headed.

And this author, for one, is honest in saying that, in spite of careful investigation, in spite of extensive travel and a sympathetic heart, he sees but dimly. The very glory of it all, the age of it all, the wonder of it all, the mysterious beauty and thrill of it all; the thrill of these ma.s.ses of humanity, their infinite possibilities for future greatness; like a great blinding flash of glory, dims one's eyes for a time.

But, now, that he has, through quiet meditation and perspective, had a chance to develop the films of thought, he finds that he has brought back home pictures that one ought not to keep to one's self; especially in this day, when, what happens to Asia is so largely to determine what happens to America.

So, out of the dark room, where they have been developing for a year, and out of the dim shadows of that mysterious land whence they came, they are printed and at the bottom of each picture shall be written the humble words:

"Flash-Lights from the Seven Seas"

WILLIAM L. STIDGER.

_Detroit, Michigan._

FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS

CHAPTER I

FLASH-LIGHTS OF FLAME

Fire! Fire! Fire everywhere!

Fire in the sky, fire on the sea, fire on the ships, fire in the flowers, fire in the trees of the forest; fire in the Poinsetta bushes which flash their red flames from every yard and jungle.

In the tropical lands flowers do not burst into blossom; they burst into flame. Great bushes of flaming Poinsetta, as large as American lilac bushes, burst into flame over night in Manila.

That great tree, as large as an Oak, which they call "The Flame of the Forest," looks like a tree on fire with flowers. One will roam the world over and see nothing more beautiful than this great tree which looks like a ma.s.sive umbrella of solid flame.

Every flower in the Orient seems to be a crimson flower. The tropical heat of the Philippines, Java, Borneo, Sumatra, the Malay States and India's far reaches; with beautiful Ceylon, and Burma; seems to give birth to crimson child-flowers.

The sunsets burst into bloom, as well as the flowers. There is no region on earth where sunsets flare into birth and die in a flash-light of glory and beauty like they do in the regions of the South China Sea. For months at a stretch, every night, without a break, the most wildly gorgeous, flaming, flaring, flashing crimson sunsets crown the glory of the days.

I have been interested in catching pictures of sunsets all over the world. I have caught hundreds of sunsets with the Graflex; and other hundreds have I captured with a Corona, just as they occurred; and I have never seen a spot on earth where the sunsets were such glorious outbursts of crimson and golden beauty as across the circling sh.o.r.es of Manila Bay.

Night after night I have sat in that ancient city and watched these tumultuous, tumbling, Turner-like flashes of color.

One night the sky was flame from sea to zenith across Manila Bay. It was like a great Flame of the Forest tree in full bloom. Against this sky of flaming sunset-clouds, hundreds of ships, anch.o.r.ed in the bay, lit their lesser crimson lights; while, now and then, a battleship which was signaling to another ship, flashed its message of light against the fading glow of glory in the crimson sunset.

"It is light talking unto light; flash unto flash; crimson unto crimson!" said a friend who sat with me looking out across that beautiful bay.

The picture of that flaming sunset, with the great vessels silhouetted against it; with the little lights on the ships, running in parallel rows; and the flashing lights of signals from the masts of the battleship will never die in one's memory.

It was a quiet, peaceful scene.

But suddenly, like a mighty volcano a burst of flame swept into the air at the mouth of the Pasig River. It leapt into the sky and lighted up the entire harbor in a great conflagration. The little ships stood out, silhouetted against that great flaming oil tanker.

"It's a ship on fire!" Otto exclaimed.

"Let's go and see it!" I added.

Then we were off for the mouth of the Pasig which was not far away.