Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore

“ There are such clubs in every town on the island, the government subsidizing the opera and supporting military bands of the first order; and they furnish society its center and common meeting-place. One sees fine gowns and magnificent jewels; ladies wear the heavy silks and velvets of an Amsterdam winter in these tropical gardens, and men dance in black coats and broadcloth uniforms. Society is brilliant, formal, and by lamplight impressive; but when by daylight one meets the same fair beauties and bejeweled matrons sockless, in sarongs and flapping slippers, the disillusionment is complete. ”

“ The city is new, architecturally, and its two long, straight streets, crossing at right angles by the palace walls, cause all picturesqueness to converge there. The crowds were so brilliant and fantastic that one remembers Jeypore as some pageant in grand opera, the bazaars more spectacular than even those of Lahore. At noon, we saw the broad main street crowded from curb to curb with men in white clothes, with gay turbans and shawls,—a crowd that swayed and surged and moved until the long expanse of turbans was like a tulip-bed in the wind. ”

“ From the bridges the lounger used to overlook acres of pink and white blossoms rising above the solid floors of bluish-green leaves; but the Philistines could not uproot the moats, which remain the one perfect feudal relic of Japanese Yeddo. The many-angled gate-ways, the massive stone walls, and escarpments, all moss and lichen-grown, and sloping from the water with an inward curve, are noble monuments of the past. Every wall and embankment is crowned with crooked, twisted, creeping, century-old pines, that fling their gaunt arms wildly out, or seem to grope along the stones. ”

“ Nothing could be finer than the outlines of this grand old mountain that rises from the jutting corner of an island across the bay, and in the sleepy, summer sun, Edgecumbe’s slopes are bluer than lapis lazuli or sapphire, and the softest, filmiest gray clouds trail across the ragged walls of the crater. It is more than a century since it poured forth its smoke and lava, but jets of steam occasionally rise from it now, and if an exploration of its unknown slopes is ever made, some signs of active life will doubtless be found. ”

“ We found all the countless common fragrant flowers that are so necessary to these esthetic, perfume-loving people heaped for sale in the flower-market of the passer, along with the oils and the gums and spices that give out, and burn with, such delicious odors. Short-stemmed roses and heaps of loose rose-petals were laid on beds of green moss or in bits of palm-leaf in a way to delight one’s color-sense, and, with the mounds of pale-green petals of the kananga, or ylang-ylang-tree’s blossoms, filled the whole air with fragrance. ”

“ Outside, inside, over all the walls and ceilings spreads the revel of ornament, and the windows hold perforated stone and marble screens as fine as woven reed-work. This was the real India of the imagination, the setting for "The Naulahka," every part of the carved labyrinth a scene for melodrama. There was one great five-story pavilion, strangely like Akbar's tomb in design, each pillared and open hall of fairy lightness, with a row of fantastic bell-cupolas on top. ”

“ Up mossy stair-ways, between massive embankments, and through a shady grove, the priest’s clogs scrape noisily to the hexagonal temple, where the ashes of Hidetada, the Ni Dai Shogun, Iyeyasu’s son, lie in a great gold lacquer cylinder, the finest existing specimen of the lacquer of that great art age. The quiet of Shiba, the solemn background of giant trees, the deep shadows and green twilight of the groves, the hundreds of stone lanterns, the ponds of sacred lotus, the succession of dragon-guarded gate-ways, and carved and gorgeously-colored walls, crowd the memory with lovely pictures. ”

“ The sun shone so warmly on deck that we laid aside wraps, and sat under the grateful shade of an umbrella. There was a sparkle and freshness to the air, and under an ecstatic blue sky fleecy white clouds drifted about the mountain summits and mingled their vapory outlines with the fields of snow. We revelled in the beauties of the scenes, and appreciated at the moment that this passage leading to the Chilkat country is perhaps the finest fiord of the coast. Lynn Canal slumbered as a sapphire sea between its high mountain walls, with scarcely a ripple on its surface. ”

“ We were led past flower-beds nodding with strange lilies, past rose-gardens and oleander-hedges, down a paved path that was a steep tunnel through dense shrubbery and overarching trees, to a great white marble tank, or swimming-pool, as large as a ball-room; though few ball-rooms can ever have such lavish decorations of palms, bamboos, and tree-ferns as screen that pool around, with the purple summit of Salak showing just above the highest plumes and fronds—a landscape study just fitted for a theatrical drop-curtain. ”

“ Every valley is a floor of golden rice stubble, every hill-side a tangle of gorgeous foliage. The persimmon-trees hang full of big golden kaké, sea and sky wear their intensest blue, and Fujiyama’s loveliness shines out against the western sky. In among the yellowing stubble move blue-clad farmers with white mushroom hats. Before the farm-houses men and women swing their flails, beating the grain spread out on straw matting. The rice straw, whether bunched in pretty sheaves, tied across poles, like a New-year’s fringe, or stacked in collars around the tree-trunks, is always decorative. ”

“ When one rides through this green avenue in the dewy freshness of the early morning, it seems as though nature and the tropics could do no more, until he has penetrated the tunnels of waringen-trees, the open avenues of royal palms, the great plantation of a thousand palms, the grove of tree-fern, and the frangipani thicket, and has reached the knoll commanding a view of the double summit of Gedeh and Pangerango, vaporous blue volcanic heights, from one peak of which a faint streamer of smoke perpetually floats. ”

“ All around the thatched roof of the old temple stand plum-trees covered with fragant blossoms—snow white, palest yellow, rose, or deep carnation-red. The sheltering hill back of the temple is crowded with gravestones, tombs, tablets, and mossy Buddhas, sitting calm and impassive in tangles of grasses and vines under the shadow of ancient trees. A wide-spreading pine on the crest of the hill is a famous landmark, whence one looks down on the flower-wreathed village, the golden bow of the beach curving from headland to headland, and the blue bay flashing with hundreds of square white sails. ”

“ Boro Boedor is most mysterious and impressive in the gray of dawn, in the unearthly light and stillness [212] of that eerie hour. Sunrise touches the old walls and statues to something of life; and sunset, when all the palms are silhouetted against skies of tenderest rose, and the warm light flushes the hoary gray pile, is the time when the green valley of Eden about the temple adds all of charm and poetic suggestion. ”

“ All about the temple grounds is heard the noise of rushing water, and the music and gurgle of these tiny streams, the rustle of the high branches, and the cawing of huge solitary rooks are the only sounds that break the stillness of the enchanted groves between the soft boomings of the morning and evening bells. The noise of voices is lost in the great leafy spaces, and the sacredness of the place subdues even the unbelieving foreigner, while native tourists and pilgrims move silently, or speak only in undertones, and make no sound, save as their clogs clatter on stones and gravel. ”

“ A little red shrine and a path lined with stone lanterns mark the beginning of the temple enclosure, dense woods rising at one side of the stone lanterns lighting the path to the ancient Shinto sanctuary of Kasuga, and open glades stretching out at the other. A few shops and tea-booths break the line of lanterns on one side; the road is canopied with a great wistaria trellis, and a spring bubbles up in a stone basin in the midst of rock-work almost hidden in shade and moss. Weary pilgrims stop in this grateful shade to drink and to rest themselves at any hour of the day. ”

“ Everybody sends his friend a present—a basket of fruit, or a dumpling of red beans or rice dough, wrapped in ceremonial paper. The streets of Tokio, crowded with merrymakers and lighted at night by thousands of lanterns and torches, hold out-of-door fairs without number, and from palace to hovel run sounds of rejoicing; yet this joyous homage to the spirit of life is paid in mid-winter, when snow-flakes may shroud the blooming camellia-trees, though the clear, bright Indian-summer weather often lasts until after the new year. ”