Part 36

MONDAY, APRIL 28.—We are approaching the Blessed Country of Bad Weather again. This morning the sky is as threatening as it is on the morning when you give a picnic, and when you wish it would do one thing or the other. No country can amount to much without bad weather: the trouble with Africa and Arizona is too much fine weather.... The Mediterranean, which we all dreaded, was as smooth last night as a millpond, and shows no disposition today to change its pacific character.... The first thing you think of, on boarding a ship, is that funny people travel. We meet a few nice, normal, sane people, but most of them are freaks. On every ship we meet the foolish son of a rich man, who is allowed to travel to keep him away from home. The woman traveler is nearly always peculiar; she is usually an old widow with money, and as ugly as she is cranky. There is a professional traveler always met with who has no sense, and very little politeness, but he has been everywhere. It is a mistake to imagine that only rich and agreeable people are met in traveling. The best people remain at home; we have met neither dukes nor princesses on the trip, and very few we remember from one ship to another.... There is a kind of traveler who annoys you by his looks. A man of this type came on board at Port Said. He is a faded-out old rat with gold teeth, very thin and sandy hair, and a waxed moustache. He is quite impatient because he has not created a flutter on board, since it is plain to be seen that he has traveled a great deal; he is not content to wait a few days, until news of his exploits gets about easily and naturally.... Another man came on board at Port Said who is accompanied by a wife and three daughters. The ship is crowded, and this man, who is paying five fares, sleeps on the floor! People are that foolish about traveling. People generally are as crazy and disagreeable about traveling as the English are about Sports.... The women have great respect for the bishop of their church, but they have greater respect for a woman traveling with a maid. Every woman believes she is entitled to a maid. There is a woman on board who has one. The other women say she is the slouchiest dressed person on the ship. You may say that is envy, but it isn’t: it’s the truth.... When you buy anything, pay for it in cash. It is so easy to sign a check, or have it charged. When the passengers buy wines, they sign their names to a slip of paper, and settle once a week. One of the amusing things on board is to see the men studying their bar bills. Every passenger thinks he has been robbed, but his signature confronts him for every item, and he cannot get a fair start at indignation.... The New York banker, Mr. Hepburn, mentioned elsewhere as returning from a hunt, does not have much confidence in the future of Africa. It has too many pests and too much dry weather, he says. Besides, much of the country is volcanic, and the soil a thin vegetable and leaf mold. Mr. Hepburn says that while hunting, one of his guides was an Englishman who was once a member of parliament, with an income of $60,000 a year. But he went the pace, and spent his money, and is now a guide in Africa at $5 a day. Another guide in the Hepburn party was a man named Cunningham, who was attached to the Roosevelt expedition. Cunningham is a very noted man, and receives $400 a month for his services. Although Mr. Hepburn is a New York banker, a former comptroller of the currency, and noted big-game hunter, it is so dull on board that he spends a good deal of his time teaching Adelaide card tricks. He is an elderly man, and so modest and polite that we regard him as a credit to his country.... A party of eight came on board at Port Said, and I am glad they are not Americans. They are English or Colonials, and have taken the ship. They are very superior in three particulars: 1. They went to Port Said two weeks ago in the “Tabora,” a larger and newer ship than the “Burgermeister;” 2. They were in Cairo four days; 3. They have been in Palestine. They sit together in the dining-room, and every other word they use is “Tabora,” a leviathan of 8,000 tons. These people are going to London, and this is their first trip. There are three girls in the party, all of them in love with one sweet young man, and they hold his hand on deck. The other passengers look at them in astonishment, if not disgust. Americans are said to be “loud.” I don’t believe they are half as bad as they are reported to be. A German ship captain once said to me: “The Americans are, as a rule, our best behaved passengers, followed by the Germans. The worst behaved are the English.”... In the traveling I have done, I have seen few “loud” Americans, but I have seen many “loud” English. And it is the English who criticise us most.

[Illustration: A case of middle-age spread in Africa

Native Workmen, Kimberley Diamond Mine

Traveling by Machillas on the Zambesi

Native Village in German East Africa

Khami Ancient Ruins]

TUESDAY, APRIL 29.—We have seen no land since leaving Port Said, except that we passed the island of Crete. Some say we passed it last evening, and some say we passed it this morning: it has been pointed out to me twice, and both sights of it were very hazy.... Ships are not seen as frequently in the Mediterranean as in the Red Sea; we have seen but one steamship in two days—a big P. & O. liner en route to India. On the Red Sea, a half-dozen were frequently in sight at one time. The explanation is that the Mediterranean is wide, and ships keep a considerable distance from each other, whereas the Red Sea is often almost as narrow as a river.... There are two women on board from Johannesburg, but they did not know each other there; indeed, they had never heard of each other before coming on board. Each says of the other: “I cannot imagine who she can be.”... When a German leaves the ship’s table, he bows very politely to those passengers remaining. I believe this very pretty custom is confined entirely to the Germans.... The barkeeper has been humiliated, and relieved from duty; I don’t know what his offense was, but I hear he is charged with becoming impatient while on duty. The Germans say that when a man is employed to serve the public, impatience is a gross offense, and I agree with them. For a day or two, the barkeeper did nothing, and was the most contrite and penitent human being I have ever seen, but this morning he appeared as a waiter in the dining-room, and is trying hard to regain the favor of the chief steward.... There are many foolish things for men to do, but probably the most foolish is to buy champagne. Every day at dinner I see dozens of men pay three or four dollars for a bottle of champagne, simply to “act smart.” Boys are not the only ones who “act smart” in company, and force their parents to whip them.... The passenger who has his wife and three daughters with him attracts a great deal of attention from the men. His women-folks have four pieces of fancy work under way all the time; think of that man’s dry-goods bills! And I cannot sleep at night from thinking what his laundry bill must be. There is a laundry on board, operated by Chinese, who do excellent work, but their prices are something to talk about. I sent out a little dab of washing the other day, and the bill was $6. I pay for waists for only one woman, whereas that other man must pay for waists for four. It should be against the law for any man to take care of four women.... The New York banker who is returning from a hunting trip in Africa, is a director in the Texas company, which is trying to become as great a robber as the Standard Oil Co. He told me today that a few months ago his company let a contract to an American firm for an additional tank steamer, at $590,000. A foreign builder offered to build exactly the same ship for $380,000. The Texas company was compelled to pay forty per cent additional because of our policy of protection. What becomes of that additional $210,000? Does it go to American labor?... Most of it, probably. When you pay high prices for meat, the farmer is being benefited; when the Texas company pays a high price for a ship, the workmen who fashion the ship, and mine the steel that goes into it, are benefited. Taxes, however collected, mean a burden to the consumer. When you pay twenty cents for an article which formerly cost ten cents, three cents of the excess goes to the workman, and seven cents of the excess is charged by the American politician for cost of collection. It is the workers who pay taxes and the tremendous cost of collection.... I have frequently spoken in these notes of hearing the English everywhere compliment America. The notion that foreigners sneer at us, is a mistaken one. In the London _Telegraph_, a copy of which I picked up today, I read a page reference to the death of J. Pierpont Morgan.

“The field of the American financier,” the article said, “is a country sixty times the area of England, the most richly endowed territory in the world, inhabited by ninety millions of the most energetic wealth-producers on the face of the globe.”

In the same article I read that Mr. Morgan once called on the German Kaiser. Afterwards the Kaiser said he was surprised to find Mr. Morgan “not well informed regarding the philosophical development of nations.” I often think the philosopher is an unimportant man; he looks into the future, and sees many things that are not there. The philosopher is a recluse; a thinker. He hides away from mankind, and writes books about subjects he does not know much about. J. P. Morgan knew mankind intimately, and benefited it because of his knowledge. He made bets that the people would do certain things at certain times, and became rich because of the accuracy of his knowledge; yet he is accused of knowing nothing about “the philosophical development of nations”! He had a tremendous fund of practical knowledge, and that beats all the philosophy in the world. Morgan believed that in the human family, character was everything; that character was the basis of all credit, and that the simple doctrine of good conduct for its own sake, is the greatest religion in the world. How superior Morgan’s simple religion was to the Hindu’s philosophy! Morgan was an humble citizen, yet he accomplished more than did Kaiser Wilhelm, a philosopher and a king. A nation fought Morgan continuously and bitterly, yet he was undoubtedly a public benefactor. Wilhelm had the love of a great nation, yet he undoubtedly talks too much, and has been repeatedly humiliated for the habit. Wilhelm is great in spite of his indiscretions, being a king; but J. P. Morgan was great in spite of the fact that he lacked the friendship of his own nation, and was compelled to do his good work in the face of bitter and often malicious opposition.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30.—When I went on deck this morning, several of the passengers were ahead of me, gazing at mountains off to the right: Italy. By 9 o’clock we were close to the shore, and with a glass could see many villages still in ruins from the earthquake of five years ago. The sides of the mountains were terraced, and used as vineyards. In one place, in a canyon far up the mountain, we saw a village which seemed to have been built around an old castle. We were approaching the Strait of Messina, and ships were as numerous as they were in the narrowest part of the Red Sea; at one time, seven sailing-ships were in sight, and several steamers. Presently, on the left, Sicily appeared, and we gazed at Sicily awhile, and then went over to the other deck and looked at Italy, unable to decide which was the more interesting. Both are very mountainous, and much alike. Villages are thick, not only along the shore, but the sides of the mountain are spotted with them, and in both Italy and Sicily we saw many curious old castles and monasteries. On both sides, also, we saw many ruins from the earthquake, although they seemed to be rather more numerous in Sicily than in Italy.... Just before entering the Strait at the narrowest part, where it is only two miles wide, we saw the town of Messina, which was almost completely destroyed by the earthquake of 1908. Hundreds of the wrecked houses seem never to have been rebuilt, and they present a scene of desolation, but around them many new houses have been built. This is also true on the Italian coast. Many of these new houses were sent from America, ready to set up. Messina had a population of eighty thousand. Its old citadel was not destroyed, and we saw a good many ships in its harbor. Opposite Messina is the Italian town of Riggio, which is six or seven hundred years older than the Christian era. On both sides of the Strait we could see broad streams (perfectly dry as a result of a recent drouth) coming from the mountains.... The captain said we should be in the most interesting part of the Strait at 1 P. M., the lunch hour, and ordered lunch postponed half an hour. His prediction was exactly verified, and nothing could have driven the passengers from the decks at 1 P. M., there was so much to see.... At 4 P. M. we came to Stromboli, a volcanic island in the sea. Captain Ulrich said he would pass on the south side of the mountain, that we might better see the volcano; the distance was greater, but this change in the ship’s course enabled us to get a very fine sight of Stromboli. From the south side we saw the crater, and the smoke pouring out of it in great volume. There is no lighthouse on Stromboli, as the volcano furnishes a red glare by which mariners steer their course at night. You would think people would keep away from a lonely island in the sea which smokes all the time, and is liable to erupt, and destroy everything for many miles around, but they don’t. We saw two villages on Stromboli: one of them of good size. The larger one is located a considerable distance from the crater, but the other is not a thousand feet from the track of the lava as it descends to the sea. And these smoking volcanoes not only bark; they bite. Only a few miles away is Messina, where eighty thousand people were destroyed only five years ago. In the other direction is Vesuvius, which has taken a greedy toll of human life for many years; the last time in 1906.

THURSDAY, MAY 1.—I have seen many prettier sights than the far-famed Bay of Naples. Many people say a look at the bay caused them to forget the frets and worries of life, but I had no such feeling. We arrived early in the morning, when the town was partly hidden in mists, but later I saw the bay in bright sunshine, from several points of advantage, but it did not greatly impress me. The Bay of Naples is so large that it is not a harbor, therefore a breakwater has been constructed, and behind this our ship anchored, in company with a good many others.... I have spoken elsewhere of English becoming the universal language. This morning I heard the Italian pilot telling the captain of the ship a piece of war news. The pilot talked broken English. A Frenchman, a Portuguese, a Belgian and a Hollander gathered to hear the war news, and they all understood English.... After the usual medical inspection, which always seems ineffective and useless in the first-cabin, the passengers were allowed to land. We went to the Hotel Vesuve, where I had been before, and were given two excellent rooms overlooking the bay. In front of the hotel was a street, and then the sea, and from my window I watched the fishermen at work; they were so close that I could have hailed them, and asked what sort of fish they were taking out of the nets. Directly in front of our windows was an old castle and fort, and soldiers were always passing in or out of the gate. The Hotel Vesuve is the best of the dozens at which we have stopped, and the price is only thirty-six francs per day; that is, we have two of the best rooms in one of the best hotels in Italy, and the price is $3.60 per day each, including meals. Living at the hotels in South Africa is pioneering compared with living at the Hotel Vesuve in Naples. Living at hotels is a joke at home, but living at the Hotel Vesuve in Naples makes a man think of breaking up housekeeping.... Adelaide thinks Naples is the most delightful town we have seen; and the list of towns we have visited includes Pompeii, which was destroyed by an eruption from Mount Vesuvius in the year 79. It was so completely covered up by ashes that its site was forgotten, and it lay neglected for seventeen hundred years. Then the work of digging it out began, and is still in progress, and will continue for many years to come. Pompeii existed long before Naples; it was an old city when Christ was born, and was a seaside resort of the Romans. Probably everyone has read the story of Pompeii, and I shall not print it again, except to express my astonishment over the fact that much of the finest art work in the world today was found in the ruins of Pompeii; the moderns have not been able to equal it. Everything of interest found in the ruins may now be seen in the museum at Naples. The people of Pompeii had excellent plumbing at the time of the eruption; probably the ancients thousands of years earlier knew much that we now call modern. In the museum at Naples may be seen jewelry from Pompeii that would pass for an exhibit made in 1913; patterns are the same, and the work equally good. The implements used today by dentists and doctors may also be seen among the relics from Pompeii. There is an ugly instrument known as the speculum, which may be seen in drug stores and doctors’ offices; I have no doubt it was used too much three thousand or more years ago, for I saw one in the museum at Naples. It was found in the ruins of Pompeii, and it is exactly like the instrument used too much today.... I will mention another thing about Pompeii the general reader may not know. The Romans and Greeks who occupied the town were a dissolute, pleasure-loving lot, and they left many relics that are shown to men only. In the big museum at Naples, there is one room probably forty feet long, and half as wide. In it are preserved literally thousands of disreputable things found in Pompeii. They include statuary and pictures in mosaics. I heard a woman say lately that she despised Pompeii so much that she did not enjoy her visit to the place; probably her husband had told her what he saw in the Dirty Room, and she hated the people who formerly occupied the deserted houses and streets. The people are certainly improving in morals all the time; we are not as good as we should be now, but we are better in every respect than the ancients were. I often wonder that the ancients, who believed in so many gods, were not scared into better conduct.... Pompeii is reached by railroad train from Naples. If you take an express train, the twenty miles may be traveled in half an hour. Electric cars also run there, but they make many stops, and are much slower. When you are in Pompeii, you are near Vesuvius, the mountain which has destroyed so many lives. It is particularly peaceful just now, and I saw no smoke issuing from the crater. Seven years ago it went on a rampage, and destroyed several villages and six or seven hundred lives. At that time the mountain lost three hundred feet of its top, and is so insignificant-looking now that a good many visitors to Naples do not make the journey to the summit, which is easily accomplished by electric and cog railway. A mountain near Vesuvius is now higher than Vesuvius itself, but the wicked old pile will grow, and no doubt will erupt at some time in the future, and kill thousands again. Stromboli, which we saw yesterday, is a much more impressive sight at present than Vesuvius.