Following the Equator, Complete

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> Following the Equator, Complete


Here is an application for the post of instructor in English to some
children:

"My Dear Sir or Gentleman, that your Petitioner has much
qualification in the Language of English to instruct the young boys;
I was given to understand that your of suitable children has to
acquire the knowledge of English language."

As a sample of the flowery Eastern style, I will take a sentence or two
from along letter written by a young native to the Lieutenant-Governor of
Bengal--an application for employment:

"HONORED AND MUCH RESPECTED SIR,

"I hope your honor will condescend to hear the tale of this poor
creature. I shall overflow with gratitude at this mark of your
royal condescension. The bird-like happiness has flown away from my
nest-like heart and has not hitherto returned from the period whence
the rose of my father's life suffered the autumnal breath of death,
in plain English he passed through the gates of Grave, and from that
hour the phantom of delight has never danced before me."

It is all school-English, book-English, you see; and good enough, too,
all things considered. If the native boy had but that one study he would
shine, he would dazzle, no doubt. But that is not the case. He is
situated as are our public-school children--loaded down with an
over-freightage of other studies; and frequently they are as far beyond
the actual point of progress reached by him and suited to the stage of
development attained, as could be imagined by the insanest fancy.
Apparently--like our public-school boy--he must work, work, work, in
school and out, and play but little. Apparently--like our public-school
boy--his "education" consists in learning things, not the meaning of
them; he is fed upon the husks, not the corn. From several essays
written by native schoolboys in answer to the question of how they spend
their day, I select one--the one which goes most into detail:

"66. At the break of day I rises from my own bed and finish my
daily duty, then I employ myself till 8 o'clock, after which I
employ myself to bathe, then take for my body some sweet meat, and
just at 9 1/2 I came to school to attend my class duty, then at
2 1/2 P. M. I return from school and engage myself to do my natural
duty, then, I engage for a quarter to take my tithn, then I study
till 5 P. M., after which I began to play anything which comes in
my head. After 8 1/2, half pass to eight we are began to sleep,
before sleeping I told a constable just 11 o' he came and rose us
from half pass eleven we began to read still morning."

It is not perfectly clear, now that I come to cipher upon it. He gets up
at about 5 in the morning, or along there somewhere, and goes to bed
about fifteen or sixteen hours afterward--that much of it seems straight;
but why he should rise again three hours later and resume his studies
till morning is puzzling.

I think it is because he is studying history. History requires a world
of time and bitter hard work when your "education" is no further advanced
than the cat's; when you are merely stuffing yourself with a mixed-up
mess of empty names and random incidents and elusive dates, which no one
teaches you how to interpret, and which, uninterpreted, pay you not a
farthing's value for your waste of time. Yes, I think he had to get up
at halfpast 11 P.M. in order to be sure to be perfect with his history
lesson by noon. With results as follows--from a Calcutta school
examination:

"Q. Who was Cardinal Wolsey?

"Cardinal Wolsey was an Editor of a paper named North Briton. No. 45 of
his publication he charged the King of uttering a lie from the throne.
He was arrested and cast into prison; and after releasing went to France.

"3. As Bishop of York but died in disentry in a church on his way to be
blockheaded.

"8. Cardinal Wolsey was the son of Edward IV, after his father's death
he himself ascended the throne at the age of (10) ten only, but when he
surpassed or when he was fallen in his twenty years of age at that time
he wished to make a journey in his countries under him, but he was
opposed by his mother to do journey, and according to his mother's
example he remained in the home, and then became King. After many times
obstacles and many confusion he become King and afterwards his brother."

There is probably not a word of truth in that.

"Q. What is the meaning of 'Ich Dien'?

"10. An honor conferred on the first or eldest sons of English
Sovereigns. It is nothing more than some feathers.

"11. Ich Dien was the word which was written on the feathers of the
blind King who came to fight, being interlaced with the bridles of the
horse.

"13. Ich Dien is a title given to Henry VII by the Pope of Rome, when he
forwarded the Reformation of Cardinal Wolsy to Rome, and for this reason
he was called Commander of the faith."

A dozen or so of this kind of insane answers are quoted in the book from
that examination. Each answer is sweeping proof, all by itself, that the
person uttering it was pushed ahead of where he belonged when he was put
into history; proof that he had been put to the task of acquiring history
before he had had a single lesson in the art of acquiring it, which is
the equivalent of dumping a pupil into geometry before he has learned the
progressive steps which lead up to it and make its acquirement possible.
Those Calcutta novices had no business with history. There was no excuse
for examining them in it, no excuse for exposing them and their teachers.
They were totally empty; there was nothing to "examine."

Helen Keller has been dumb, stone deaf, and stone blind, ever since she
was a little baby a year-and-a-half old; and now at sixteen years of age
this miraculous creature, this wonder of all the ages, passes the Harvard
University examination in Latin, German, French history, belles lettres,
and such things, and does it brilliantly, too, not in a commonplace
fashion. She doesn't know merely things, she is splendidly familiar with
the meanings of them. When she writes an essay on a Shakespearean
character, her English is fine and strong, her grasp of the subject is
the grasp of one who knows, and her page is electric with light. Has
Miss Sullivan taught her by the methods of India and the American public
school? No, oh, no; for then she would be deafer and dumber and blinder
than she was before. It is a pity that we can't educate all the children
in the asylums.

To continue the Calcutta exposure:

"What is the meaning of a Sheriff?"

"25. Sheriff is a post opened in the time of John. The duty of Sheriff
here in Calcutta, to look out and catch those carriages which is rashly
driven out by the coachman; but it is a high post in England.

"26. Sheriff was the English bill of common prayer.

"27. The man with whom the accusative persons are placed is called
Sheriff.

"28. Sheriff--Latin term for 'shrub,' we called broom, worn by the first
earl of Enjue, as an emblem of humility when they went to the pilgrimage,
and from this their hairs took their crest and surname.

"29. Sheriff is a kind of titlous sect of people, as Barons, Nobles,
etc.

"30. Sheriff; a tittle given on those persons who were respective and
pious in England."

The students were examined in the following bulky matters: Geometry, the
Solar Spectrum, the Habeas Corpus Act, the British Parliament, and in
Metaphysics they were asked to trace the progress of skepticism from
Descartes to Hume. It is within bounds to say that some of the results
were astonishing. Without doubt, there were students present who
justified their teacher's wisdom in introducing them to these studies;
but the fact is also evident that others had been pushed into these
studies to waste their time over them when they could have been
profitably employed in hunting smaller game. Under the head of Geometry,
one of the answers is this:

"49. The whole BD = the whole CA, and so-so-so-so-so-so-so."

To me this is cloudy, but I was never well up in geometry. That was the
only effort made among the five students who appeared for examination in
geometry; the other four wailed and surrendered without a fight. They
are piteous wails, too, wails of despair; and one of them is an eloquent
reproach; it comes from a poor fellow who has been laden beyond his
strength by a stupid teacher, and is eloquent in spite of the poverty of
its English. The poor chap finds himself required to explain riddles
which even Sir Isaac Newton was not able to understand:

"50. Oh my dear father examiner you my father and you kindly give a
number of pass you my great father.

"51. I am a poor boy and have no means to support my mother and two
brothers who are suffering much for want of food. I get four rupees
monthly from charity fund of this place, from which I send two rupees for
their support, and keep two for my own support. Father, if I relate the
unlucky circumstance under which we are placed, then, I think, you will
not be able to suppress the tender tear.

"52. Sir which Sir Isaac Newton and other experienced mathematicians
cannot understand I being third of Entrance Class can understand these
which is too impossible to imagine. And my examiner also has put very
tiresome and very heavy propositions to prove."

We must remember that these pupils had to do their thinking in one
language, and express themselves in another and alien one. It was a
heavy handicap. I have by me "English as She is Taught"--a collection of
American examinations made in the public schools of Brooklyn by one of
the teachers, Miss Caroline B. Le Row. An extract or two from its pages
will show that when the American pupil is using but one language, and
that one his own, his performance is no whit better than his Indian
brother's:

"ON HISTORY.

"Christopher Columbus was called the father of his Country. Queen
Isabella of Spain sold her watch and chain and other millinery so that
Columbus could discover America.

"The Indian wars were very desecrating to the country.

"The Indians pursued their warfare by hiding in the bushes and then
scalping them.

"Captain John Smith has been styled the father of his country. His life
was saved by his daughter Pochahantas.

"The Puritans found an insane asylum in the wilds of America.

"The Stamp Act was to make everybody stamp all materials so they should
be null and void.

"Washington died in Spain almost broken-hearted. His remains were taken
to the cathedral in Havana.

"Gorilla warfare was where men rode on gorillas."


In Brooklyn, as in India, they examine a pupil, and when they find out he
doesn't know anything, they put him into literature, or geometry, or
astronomy, or government, or something like that, so that he can properly
display the assification of the whole system--

"ON LITERATURE.

"'Bracebridge Hall' was written by Henry Irving.

"Edgar A. Poe was a very curdling writer.

"Beowulf wrote the Scriptures.

"Ben Johnson survived Shakespeare in some respects.

"In the 'Canterbury Tale' it gives account of King Alfred on his way to
the shrine of Thomas Bucket.

"Chaucer was the father of English pottery.

"Chaucer was succeeded by H. Wads. Longfellow."


We will finish with a couple of samples of "literature," one from
America, the other from India. The first is a Brooklyn public-school
boy's attempt to turn a few verses of the "Lady of the Lake" into prose.
You will have to concede that he did it:

"The man who rode on the horse performed the whip and an instrument made
of steel alone with strong ardor not diminishing, for, being tired from
the time passed with hard labor overworked with anger and ignorant with
weariness, while every breath for labor lie drew with cries full of
sorrow, the young deer made imperfect who worked hard filtered in sight."


The following paragraph is from a little book which is famous in India
--the biography of a distinguished Hindoo judge, Onoocool Chunder
Mookerjee; it was written by his nephew, and is unintentionally funny-in
fact, exceedingly so. I offer here the closing scene. If you would like
to sample the rest of the book, it can be had by applying to the
publishers, Messrs. Thacker, Spink & Co., Calcutta

"And having said these words he hermetically sealed his lips not to
open them again. All the well-known doctors of Calcutta that could
be procured for a man of his position and wealth were brought,
--Doctors Payne, Fayrer, and Nilmadhub Mookerjee and others; they did
what they could do, with their puissance and knack of medical
knowledge, but it proved after all as if to milk the ram! His wife
and children had not the mournful consolation to hear his last
words; he remained sotto voce for a few hours, and then was taken
from us at 6.12 P.m. according to the caprice of God which passeth
understanding."




CHAPTER LXII.

There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined ones.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

We sailed from Calcutta toward the end of March; stopped a day at Madras;
two or three days in Ceylon; then sailed westward on a long flight for
Mauritius. From my diary:

April 7. We are far abroad upon the smooth waters of the Indian Ocean,
now; it is shady and pleasant and peaceful under the vast spread of the
awnings, and life is perfect again--ideal.

The difference between a river and the sea is, that the river looks
fluid, the sea solid--usually looks as if you could step out and walk on
it.

The captain has this peculiarity--he cannot tell the truth in a plausible
way. In this he is the very opposite of the austere Scot who sits midway
of the table; he cannot tell a lie in an unplausible way. When the
captain finishes a statement the passengers glance at each other
privately, as who should say, "Do you believe that?" When the Scot
finishes one, the look says, "How strange and interesting." The whole
secret is in the manner and method of the two men. The captain is a
little shy and diffident, and he states the simplest fact as if he were a
little afraid of it, while the Scot delivers himself of the most
abandoned lie with such an air of stern veracity that one is forced to
believe it although one knows it isn't so. For instance, the Scot told
about a pet flying-fish he once owned, that lived in a little fountain in
his conservatory, and supported itself by catching birds and frogs and
rats in the neighboring fields. It was plain that no one at the table
doubted this statement.

By and by, in the course of some talk about custom-house annoyances, the
captain brought out the following simple everyday incident, but through
his infirmity of style managed to tell it in such a way that it got no
credence. He said:

"I went ashore at Naples one voyage when I was in that trade, and
stood around helping my passengers, for I could speak a little
Italian. Two or three times, at intervals, the officer asked me if
I had anything dutiable about me, and seemed more and more put out
and disappointed every time I told him no. Finally a passenger whom
I had helped through asked me to come out and take something. I
thanked him, but excused myself, saying I had taken a whisky just
before I came ashore.

"It was a fatal admission. The officer at once made me pay sixpence
import-duty on the whisky-just from ship to shore, you see; and he
fined me L5 for not declaring the goods, another L5 for falsely
denying that I had anything dutiable about me, also L5 for
concealing the goods, and L50 for smuggling, which is the maximum
penalty for unlawfully bringing in goods under the value of
sevenpence ha'penny. Altogether, sixty-five pounds sixpence for a
little thing like that."

The Scot is always believed, yet he never tells anything but lies;
whereas the captain is never believed, although he never tells a lie, so
far as I can judge. If he should say his uncle was a male person, he
would probably say it in such a way that nobody would believe it; at the
same time the Scot could claim that he had a female uncle and not stir a
doubt in anybody's mind. My own luck has been curious all my literary
life; I never could tell a lie that anybody would doubt, nor a truth that
anybody would believe.

Lots of pets on board--birds and things. In these far countries the
white people do seem to run remarkably to pets. Our host in Cawnpore had
a fine collection of birds--the finest we saw in a private house in
India. And in Colombo, Dr. Murray's great compound and commodious
bungalow were well populated with domesticated company from the woods:
frisky little squirrels; a Ceylon mina walking sociably about the house;
a small green parrot that whistled a single urgent note of call without
motion of its beak; also chuckled; a monkey in a cage on the back
veranda, and some more out in the trees; also a number of beautiful
macaws in the trees; and various and sundry birds and animals of breeds
not known to me. But no cat. Yet a cat would have liked that place.

April 9. Tea-planting is the great business in Ceylon, now. A passenger
says it often pays 40 per cent. on the investment. Says there is a boom.

April 10. The sea is a Mediterranean blue; and I believe that that is
about the divinest color known to nature.

It is strange and fine--Nature's lavish generosities to her creatures.
At least to all of them except man. For those that fly she has provided
a home that is nobly spacious--a home which is forty miles deep and
envelops the whole globe, and has not an obstruction in it. For those
that swim she has provided a more than imperial domain--a domain which is
miles deep and covers four-fifths of the globe. But as for man, she has
cut him off with the mere odds and ends of the creation. She has given
him the thin skin, the meagre skin which is stretched over the remaining
one-fifth--the naked bones stick up through it in most places. On the
one-half of this domain he can raise snow, ice, sand, rocks, and nothing
else. So the valuable part of his inheritance really consists of but a
single fifth of the family estate; and out of it he has to grub hard to
get enough to keep him alive and provide kings and soldiers and powder to
extend the blessings of civilization with. Yet man, in his simplicity
and complacency and inability to cipher, thinks Nature regards him as the
important member of the family--in fact, her favorite. Surely, it must
occur to even his dull head, sometimes, that she has a curious way of
showing it.

Afternoon. The captain has been telling how, in one of his Arctic
voyages, it was so cold that the mate's shadow froze fast to the deck and
had to be ripped loose by main strength. And even then he got only about
two-thirds of it back. Nobody said anything, and the captain went away.
I think he is becoming disheartened . . . . Also, to be fair, there
is another word of praise due to this ship's library: it contains no copy
of the Vicar of Wakefield, that strange menagerie of complacent
hypocrites and idiots, of theatrical cheap-john heroes and heroines, who
are always showing off, of bad people who are not interesting, and good
people who are fatiguing. A singular book. Not a sincere line in it,
and not a character that invites respect; a book which is one long
waste-pipe discharge of goody-goody puerilities and dreary moralities; a
book which is full of pathos which revolts, and humor which grieves the
heart. There are few things in literature that are more piteous, more
pathetic, than the celebrated "humorous" incident of Moses and the
spectacles. Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just
that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library
that hadn't a book in it.

Customs in tropic seas. At 5 in the morning they pipe to wash down the
decks, and at once the ladies who are sleeping there turn out and they
and their beds go below. Then one after another the men come up from the
bath in their pyjamas, and walk the decks an hour or two with bare legs
and bare feet. Coffee and fruit served. The ship cat and her kitten now
appear and get about their toilets; next the barber comes and flays us on
the breezy deck. Breakfast at 9.30, and the day begins. I do not know
how a day could be more reposeful: no motion; a level blue sea; nothing
in sight from horizon to horizon; the speed of the ship furnishes a
cooling breeze; there is no mail to read and answer; no newspapers to
excite you; no telegrams to fret you or fright you--the world is far, far
away; it has ceased to exist for you--seemed a fading dream, along in the
first days; has dissolved to an unreality now; it is gone from your mind
with all its businesses and ambitions, its prosperities and disasters,
its exultations and despairs, its joys and griefs and cares and worries.
They are no concern of yours any more; they have gone out of your life;
they are a storm which has passed and left a deep calm behind. The
people group themselves about the decks in their snowy white linen, and
read, smoke, sew, play cards, talk, nap, and so on. In other ships the
passengers are always ciphering about when they are going to arrive; out
in these seas it is rare, very rare, to hear that subject broached. In
other ships there is always an eager rush to the bulletin board at noon
to find out what the "run" has been; in these seas the bulletin seems to
attract no interest; I have seen no one visit it; in thirteen days I have
visited it only once. Then I happened to notice the figures of the day's
run. On that day there happened to be talk, at dinner, about the speed
of modern ships. I was the only passenger present who knew this ship's
gait. Necessarily, the Atlantic custom of betting on the ship's run is
not a custom here--nobody ever mentions it.

I myself am wholly indifferent as to when we are going to "get in"; if
any one else feels interested in the matter he has not indicated it in my
hearing. If I had my way we should never get in at all. This sort of
sea life is charged with an indestructible charm. There is no weariness,
no fatigue, no worry, no responsibility, no work, no depression of
spirits. There is nothing like this serenity, this comfort, this peace,
this deep contentment, to be found anywhere on land. If I had my way I
would sail on for ever and never go to live on the solid ground again.

One of Kipling's ballads has delivered the aspect and sentiment of this
bewitching sea correctly:

"The Injian Ocean sets an' smiles
So sof', so bright, so bloomin' blue;
There aren't a wave for miles an' miles
Excep' the jiggle from the screw."

April 14. It turns out that the astronomical apprentice worked off a
section of the Milky Way on me for the Magellan Clouds. A man of more
experience in the business showed one of them to me last night. It was
small and faint and delicate, and looked like the ghost of a bunch of
white smoke left floating in the sky by an exploded bombshell.

Wednesday, April 15. Mauritius. Arrived and anchored off Port Louis
2 A. M. Rugged clusters of crags and peaks, green to their summits; from
their bases to the sea a green plain with just tilt enough to it to make
the water drain off. I believe it is in 56 E. and 22 S.--a hot tropical
country. The green plain has an inviting look; has scattering dwellings
nestling among the greenery. Scene of the sentimental adventure of Paul
and Virginia.

Island under French control--which means a community which depends upon
quarantines, not sanitation, for its health.

Thursday, April 16. Went ashore in the forenoon at Port Louis, a little
town, but with the largest variety of nationalities and complexions we
have encountered yet. French, English, Chinese, Arabs, Africans with
wool, blacks with straight hair, East Indians, half-whites, quadroons
--and great varieties in costumes and colors.

Took the train for Curepipe at 1.30--two hours' run, gradually uphill.
What a contrast, this frantic luxuriance of vegetation, with the arid
plains of India; these architecturally picturesque crags and knobs and
miniature mountains, with the monotony of the Indian dead-levels.

A native pointed out a handsome swarthy man of grave and dignified
bearing, and said in an awed tone, "That is so-and-so; has held office of
one sort or another under this government for 37 years--he is known all
over this whole island and in the other countries of the world perhaps
--who knows? One thing is certain; you can speak his name anywhere in this
whole island, and you will find not one grown person that has not heard
it. It is a wonderful thing to be so celebrated; yet look at him; it
makes no change in him; he does not even seem to know it."

Curepipe (means Pincushion or Pegtown, probably). Sixteen miles (two
hours) by rail from Port Louis. At each end of every roof and on the
apex of every dormer window a wooden peg two feet high stands up; in some
cases its top is blunt, in others the peg is sharp and looks like a
toothpick. The passion for this humble ornament is universal.