Frank G. Carpenter

“ Stand on deck beside me and take a look at a storm off the coast of New Zealand. The green water of the shallow sea rolls toward us in vast waves. It is a seething, boiling mass. Our steamer mounts sea-green hills spotted with foam, and plunges down into valleys blanketed with white. Great billows chase one another like racehorses over the roads of the sea. They roar as they run with a noise like the thunder of a thousand Niagaras. ”

“ This narrow strip and fan form the arable land of Egypt. The soil is nowhere more than thirty-five feet deep. It rests on a bed of sand. On each side of it are vast wastes of sand and rock, with not a spot of green to relieve the ceaseless glare of the sun. The green goes close to the edge of the desert, where it stops as abruptly as though it were cut off by a gardener. Nearly everywhere up the Nile from Cairo the strip is so narrow that you can stand at one side of the valley and see clear across it. ”

“ As we start, the great white blazing sun is climbing the blue above Mount Nebo, and the faint streak of the Dead Sea, with the haze that hangs always over it, can be seen down the valley. Our soldier gallops in front to scare off the Bedouins and we wind our way lazily in and out through the wheat fields. Leaving these we enter a desert on the edge of which stands Gilgal, where the Israelites first encamped after crossing the Jordan, and then go on through thorny scrub among gullies and hills until we approach the long fringes of thicket which border the river. ”

“ THE LUMBER YARD OF AN EMPIRE I am in the heart of one of the great timber producing districts of Canada. Every year millions of feet of logs are floated down the Ottawa River. This stream is eight hundred miles long, and, with its tributaries, taps a vast area of forests that feed the maws of the paper and the saw mills of the city of Ottawa. I have watched the latter at their greedy work, which they carry on at such a pace that the cry is being raised that the woodlands of the Dominion are being denuded, and that conservation measures must be adopted. ”

“ We are away up over the river Nile, and far above the minarets of the mosques that rise out of the vast plain of houses below. We are at a height as great as the tops of the Pyramids, which stand out upon the yellow desert off to the left. The sun is blazing and there is a smoky haze over the Nile valley, but it is not dense enough to hide Cairo. The city lying beneath us is the largest on the African continent and one of the mightiest of the world. ”

“ The morning was clear when we sailed into Wellington harbour and cast anchor before the capital city of the island dominion. On going ashore I found Wellington rather like an American than a British town. It has more than one hundred thousand people and is growing like a green bay tree. The city lies in a nest in the hills, with its business streets round the harbour, some of them built upon land reclaimed from the sea. The houses are mostly of wood, and one of the government buildings is said to be the biggest wooden structure in the world. ”

“ It is a rushing river of pure, clear green water which spreads life over all that it touches. Together with the Barber it makes green the great plain which lies below us and builds up the orchards of almonds, apricots, apples, and the rich crops which cover it, as well as the white city of Damascus rising in its centre. ”

“ The south windows of the house would have a good view of the Pyramids of Sakkarah, which stand out in geometrical figures of blue upon the site of old Memphis, while on the front porch you could have as an ornament in your great yard below, the old stony-eyed Sphinx who sat with her paws stretched out before her in this same position when these mighty monuments were built, and who is one of the few females in the world who grows old without losing her beauty.
The Pyramids themselves are by no means young. ”

“ A DREDGE KING OF THE KLONDIKE Since I have come to western Canada I have acquired a contempt for Aladdin. At every step here I am meeting common, everyday men who are enslaving genii a million times mightier than those of the Arabian Nights. They rub their magic lamps and mechanical wonders spring up almost in a night. They give an order and change the course of a river. They lift a hand and valleys are turned upside down. Of all these conquerors of Nature in the Klondike none has come up to Joseph W. Boyle, the famous dredge king, who was once the most striking figure in this land of gold. ”

“ No other country is so thoroughly unionized, and nowhere else does organized labour go so far toward running both the government and business. There are unions of sheep shearers and factory workers; unions of rabbit trappers and harness makers; there are unions for occupations I hardly knew existed. Six hundred thousand people, or one out of every nine of the population, belong to labour unions of one kind or another.
This continent is also the home of the eight-hour day. It was established in Australia and New Zealand long before workers in other countries even began to demand it. ”

“ All of the water for the Holy City comes down in rain, and the trees and gardens of the town can be numbered on your fingers. The surrounding hills are almost as barren as some of the rocky slopes of New England, and the only foliage visible is the dark silvery green of the orchards on the Mount of Olives and along the hills between Jaffa and Bethlehem. The only grass to be seen is an acre or so of common inside the walls of the temple plateau, and here and there a house top, which by age has gathered a coating of dirt from the dust of the city, and on which the green grass has sprouted. ”

“ Here every night the military bands play European and American airs, and veiled Mohammedan women walk about with white-faced French or Italian babies, of which they are the nurses. People from every part of the world listen to the music. The American jostles the Englishman while the German and the Frenchman scowl at each other; the Greek and the Italian move along side by side, as they did in the days when this country was ruled by Rome, and now and then you see an old Turk in his turban and gown, or a Bedouin Arab, or a white-robed, fair-faced heathen from Tunis. ”

“ Imagine a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of furs under one roof! Picture to your minds raw skins in bales, just as they were unloaded from an Indian canoe, and then look again and see wraps and coats made from them that would each bring five thousand dollars when sold on Fifth Avenue. If your imagination is vivid enough you may see the American beauties who will wear them and know how the furs will add to the sparkle of their eyes and at the same time lighten the purses of their sweethearts and husbands. ”

“ I am in the Yellowstone Park of New Zealand, a land of volcanoes, geysers, earthquakes, and lakes of boiling mud, a land in which old Mother Earth seems afflicted with perpetual colic and is ever vomiting forth hot paint, or belching out steam full of alum. ”

“ The faces of both sexes are strong, with honesty and industry showing in every line. They cross themselves as two Greek priests pass them.
Let us push our way through the crowd. That tall soldier in red fez and European uniform breaks the way for us. We pass good-natured Moslems and Jews; we are jostled by Bedouin girls in gypsy dress, and by Bethlehem shepherds clad in sheep-skins. Going by the market women squatting at the turning, we follow the crowd and pass on to the entrance of one of the tunnel-like bazaars. ”

“ I venture you have never felt so much alive. The city stretches out on all sides for miles. Office buildings and stores are going up, new shingle roofs shine brightly under the winter sun, and we can almost smell the paint of the suburban additions. Within fifty years Winnipeg has jumped from a Hudson’s Bay Company trading post of two hundred people to a city of more than two hundred thousand, and it is still growing. The value of the buildings erected last year amounted to more than half that of the new construction in Montreal. ”

“ Fat cattle by the hundreds grazed upon the fields, camels with loads of hay weighing about a ton upon their backs staggered along the black roads. Turbaned Egyptians rode donkeys through the fields, and the veiled women of this Moslem land crowded about the train at the villages. On one side a great waste of dazzling yellow sand came close to the edge of the green fields, and we passed grove after grove of date-palm trees holding their heads proudly in the air, and shaking their fan-like leaves to every passing breeze. ”

“ Of all the big cities south of the Equator, I like Sydney best. Especially do I like the people here. Buenos Aires has a population of more than a million and a half, but it is a succotash of Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish ingredients, with a mixture of Indian, English, German, and French. Rio de Janeiro has a million and a quarter inhabitants, sprinkled with so much African blood that one can hardly tell where the white ends and the black begins. Moreover, as in other cities of South America, most of the people are wretchedly poor. ”

“ If all of Russia’s millions are of the same mould as those who make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, they will some day prove to the world that there is in them as good stuff as ever made history or built up a civilization. The women, with their strong, motherly faces made heroic by toil and privation, were equally as striking as the men. They were better looking than any other peasant women I have ever seen, and the old saying of the Greeks came to me as I looked at them: “If strong be the frame of the mother, her sons shall make laws for the people.” ”

“ In places the Yukon is bordered by low hills, behind which are mountains covered with grass, and, still farther on, peaks clad in their silvery garments of perpetual snow. At one place far back from the river, rising out of a park of the greenest of green, are rocky formations that look like castles, as clean cut and symmetrical as any to be seen on the banks of the Rhine. ”

“ I found a few beggars asking for backsheesh and saw half-a-dozen Mohammedans sitting gossiping by the roadside; but there was nothing else except the green of the fields, with a bleak and bare desert stretching away beyond them and the shadowy ghosts of the Pyramids looming large on the distant horizon. The obelisk is almost the twin of the one in Central Park, New York, save that the hieroglyphics on its sides are more deeply cut and the bees have made their nests in many of the figures. Bees very like our honey bees swarm over the monuments of Egypt. ”

“ In beauty and commercial advantages, Sydney harbour equals the Bay of Naples, the harbour of Rio de Janeiro, or the famous waters about Constantinople on the Bosporus. At its entrance, which is not more than a mile wide, great rocks rising to more than half the height of the Washington Monument form a natural gateway. No matter how stormy the ocean outside, when a steamer passes the Heads, it finds quiet waters. It enters a winding lake or stream, with hundreds of bays, inlets, and creeks studded with islands and walled with wooded hills. ”

“ The coastal plain is typical of the richest part. Its soil is a chocolate brown, the grass is as green as that of Egypt, and there are great orchards of olives and fruits of all kinds. The roads are lined with rich red poppies and there are wild flowers on all sides.
Climbing the hills is like jumping from the Nile Valley into the desert. There is nothing but rocks with a sparse vegetation scattered here and there through them. The limestone crops out everywhere, and in places heaps of stones have been thrown up to make little fields. Such fields are fenced with stone walls. ”

“ My ride over the trail took me as far as the crest of the range beyond Little River, whence I returned to White Horse to go down the Yukon by steamer. The motor trip was a moving picture of the wonders of nature. On each side of the roadway the country is the same as it was when Columbus discovered America; it is the same as when the Scandinavian navigators drifted down our coast about 1000 A. D.—yes, I venture, the same as it was when old Cheops built his great pyramid on the banks of the Nile. ”