Following the Equator, Complete

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


Fifty Indians and Chinamen asleep in a big tent in the waist of the ship
forward; they lie side by side with no space between; the former wrapped
up, head and all, as in the Indian streets, the Chinamen uncovered; the
lamp and things for opium smoking in the center.

A passenger said it was ten 2-ton truck loads of dynamite that lately
exploded at Johannesburg. Hundreds killed; he doesn't know how many;
limbs picked up for miles around. Glass shattered, and roofs swept away
or collapsed 200 yards off; fragment of iron flung three and a half
miles.

It occurred at 3 p.m.; at 6, L65,000 had been subscribed. When this
passenger left, L35,000 had been voted by city and state governments and
L100,000 by citizens and business corporations. When news of the
disaster was telephoned to the Exchange L35,000 were subscribed in the
first five minutes. Subscribing was still going on when he left; the
papers had ceased the names, only the amounts--too many names; not enough
room. L100,000 subscribed by companies and citizens; if this is true, it
must be what they call in Australia "a record"--the biggest instance of a
spontaneous outpour for charity in history, considering the size of the
population it was drawn from, $8 or $10 for each white resident, babies
at the breast included.

Monday, May 4. Steaming slowly in the stupendous Delagoa Bay, its dim
arms stretching far away and disappearing on both sides. It could
furnish plenty of room for all the ships in the world, but it is shoal.
The lead has given us 3 1/2 fathoms several times and we are drawing
that, lacking 6 inches.

A bold headland--precipitous wall, 150 feet high, very strong, red color,
stretching a mile or so. A man said it was Portuguese blood--battle
fought here with the natives last year. I think this doubtful. Pretty
cluster of houses on the tableland above the red-and rolling stretches of
grass and groups of trees, like England.

The Portuguese have the railroad (one passenger train a day) to the
border--70 miles--then the Netherlands Company have it. Thousands of
tons of freight on the shore--no cover. This is Portuguese allover
--indolence, piousness, poverty, impotence.

Crews of small boats and tugs, all jet black woolly heads and very
muscular.

Winter. The South African winter is just beginning now, but nobody but
an expert can tell it from summer. However, I am tired of summer; we
have had it unbroken for eleven months. We spent the afternoon on shore,
Delagoa Bay. A small town--no sights. No carriages. Three 'rickshas,
but we couldn't get them--apparently private. These Portuguese are a
rich brown, like some of the Indians. Some of the blacks have the long
horse beads and very long chins of the negroes of the picture books; but
most of them are exactly like the negroes of our Southern States round
faces, flat noses, good-natured, and easy laughers.

Flocks of black women passed along, carrying outrageously heavy bags of
freight on their heads. The quiver of their leg as the foot was planted
and the strain exhibited by their bodies showed what a tax upon their
strength the load was. They were stevedores and doing full stevedores
work. They were very erect when unladden--from carrying heavy loads on
their heads--just like the Indian women. It gives them a proud fine
carriage.

Sometimes one saw a woman carrying on her head a laden and top-heavy
basket the shape of an inverted pyramid-its top the size of a soup-plate,
its base the diameter of a teacup. It required nice balancing--and got
it.

No bright colors; yet there were a good many Hindoos.

The Second Class Passenger came over as usual at "lights out" (11) and we
lounged along the spacious vague solitudes of the deck and smoked the
peaceful pipe and talked. He told me an incident in Mr. Barnum's life
which was evidently characteristic of that great showman in several ways:

This was Barnum's purchase of Shakespeare's birthplace, a quarter of a
century ago. The Second Class Passenger was in Jamrach's employ at the
time and knew Barnum well. He said the thing began in this way. One
morning Barnum and Jamrach were in Jamrach's little private snuggery back
of the wilderness of caged monkeys and snakes and other commonplaces of
Jamrach's stock in trade, refreshing themselves after an arduous stroke
of business, Jamrach with something orthodox, Barnum with something
heterodox--for Barnum was a teetotaler. The stroke of business was in
the elephant line. Jamrach had contracted to deliver to Barnum in New
York 18 elephants for $360,000 in time for the next season's opening.
Then it occurred to Mr. Barnum that he needed a "card" He suggested
Jumbo. Jamrach said he would have to think of something else--Jumbo
couldn't be had; the Zoo wouldn't part with that elephant. Barnum said
he was willing to pay a fortune for Jumbo if he could get him. Jamrach
said it was no use to think about it; that Jumbo was as popular as the
Prince of Wales and the Zoo wouldn't dare to sell him; all England would
be outraged at the idea; Jumbo was an English institution; he was part of
the national glory; one might as well think of buying the Nelson
monument. Barnum spoke up with vivacity and said:

"It's a first-rate idea. I'll buy the Monument."

Jamrach was speechless for a second. Then he said, like one ashamed
"You caught me. I was napping. For a moment I thought you were in
earnest."

Barnum said pleasantly--

"I was in earnest. I know they won't sell it, but no matter, I will not
throw away a good idea for all that. All I want is a big advertisement.
I will keep the thing in mind, and if nothing better turns up I will
offer to buy it. That will answer every purpose. It will furnish me a
couple of columns of gratis advertising in every English and American
paper for a couple of months, and give my show the biggest boom a show
ever had in this world."

Jamrach started to deliver a burst of admiration, but was interrupted by
Barnum, who said:

"Here is a state of things! England ought to blush."

His eye had fallen upon something in the newspaper. He read it through
to himself, then read it aloud. It said that the house that Shakespeare
was born in at Stratford-on-Avon was falling gradually to ruin through
neglect; that the room where the poet first saw the light was now serving
as a butcher's shop; that all appeals to England to contribute money (the
requisite sum stated) to buy and repair the house and place it in the
care of salaried and trustworthy keepers had fallen resultless. Then
Barnum said:

"There's my chance. Let Jumbo and the Monument alone for the present
--they'll keep. I'll buy Shakespeare's house. I'll set it up in my
Museum in New York and put a glass case around it and make a sacred thing
of it; and you'll see all America flock there to worship; yes, and
pilgrims from the whole earth; and I'll make them take their hats off,
too. In America we know how to value anything that Shakespeare's touch
has made holy. You'll see."

In conclusion the S. C. P. said:

"That is the way the thing came about. Barnum did buy Shakespeare's
house. He paid the price asked, and received the properly attested
documents of sale. Then there was an explosion, I can tell you. England
rose! That, the birthplace of the master-genius of all the ages and all
the climes--that priceless possession of Britain--to be carted out of the
country like so much old lumber and set up for sixpenny desecration in a
Yankee show-shop--the idea was not to be tolerated for a moment. England
rose in her indignation; and Barnum was glad to relinquish his prize and
offer apologies. However, he stood out for a compromise; he claimed a
concession--England must let him have Jumbo. And England consented, but
not cheerfully."

It shows how, by help of time, a story can grow--even after Barnum has
had the first innings in the telling of it. Mr. Barnum told me the story
himself, years ago. He said that the permission to buy Jumbo was not a
concession; the purchase was made and the animal delivered before the
public knew anything about it. Also, that the securing of Jumbo was all
the advertisement he needed. It produced many columns of newspaper talk,
free of cost, and he was satisfied. He said that if he had failed to get
Jumbo he would have caused his notion of buying the Nelson Monument to be
treacherously smuggled into print by some trusty friend, and after he had
gotten a few hundred pages of gratuitous advertising out of it, he would
have come out with a blundering, obtuse, but warm-hearted letter of
apology, and in a postscript to it would have naively proposed to let the
Monument go, and take Stonehenge in place of it at the same price.

It was his opinion that such a letter, written with well-simulated
asinine innocence and gush would have gotten his ignorance and stupidity
an amount of newspaper abuse worth six fortunes to him, and not
purchasable for twice the money.

I knew Mr. Barnum well, and I placed every confidence in the account
which he gave me of the Shakespeare birthplace episode. He said he found
the house neglected and going-to decay, and he inquired into the matter
and was told that many times earnest efforts had been made to raise money
for its proper repair and preservation, but without success. He then
proposed to buy it. The proposition was entertained, and a price named
--$50,000, I think; but whatever it was, Barnum paid the money down,
without remark, and the papers were drawn up and executed. He said that
it had been his purpose to set up the house in his Museum, keep it in
repair, protect it from name-scribblers and other desecrators, and leave
it by bequest to the safe and perpetual guardianship of the Smithsonian
Institute at Washington.

But as soon as it was found that Shakespeare's house had passed into
foreign hands and was going to be carried across the ocean, England was
stirred as no appeal from the custodians of the relic had ever stirred
England before, and protests came flowing in--and money, too, to stop the
outrage. Offers of repurchase were made--offers of double the money that
Mr. Barnum had paid for the house. He handed the house back, but took
only the sum which it had cost him--but on the condition that an
endowment sufficient for the future safeguarding and maintenance of the
sacred relic should be raised. This condition was fulfilled.

That was Barnum's account of the episode; and to the end of his days he
claimed with pride and satisfaction that not England, but America
--represented by him--saved the birthplace of Shakespeare from destruction.

At 3 P.M., May 6th, the ship slowed down, off the land, and thoughtfully
and cautiously picked her way into the snug harbor of Durban, South
Africa.




CHAPTER LXV.

In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the
moralities.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

FROM DIARY:

Royal Hotel. Comfortable, good table, good service of natives and
Madrasis. Curious jumble of modern and ancient city and village,
primitiveness and the other thing. Electric bells, but they don't ring.
Asked why they didn't, the watchman in the office said he thought they
must be out of order; he thought so because some of them rang, but most
of them didn't. Wouldn't it be a good idea to put them in order? He
hesitated--like one who isn't quite sure--then conceded the point.

May 7. A bang on the door at 6. Did I want my boots cleaned? Fifteen
minutes later another bang. Did we want coffee? Fifteen later, bang
again, my wife's bath ready; 15 later, my bath ready. Two other bangs;
I forget what they were about. Then lots of shouting back and forth,
among the servants just as in an Indian hotel.

Evening. At 4 P.M. it was unpleasantly warm. Half-hour after sunset
one needed a spring overcoat; by 8 a winter one.

Durban is a neat and clean town. One notices that without having his
attention called to it.

Rickshaws drawn by splendidly built black Zulus, so overflowing with
strength, seemingly, that it is a pleasure, not a pain, to see them
snatch a rickshaw along. They smile and laugh and show their teeth--a
good-natured lot. Not allowed to drink; 2s per hour for one person; 3s
for two; 3d for a course--one person.

The chameleon in the hotel court. He is fat and indolent and
contemplative; but is business-like and capable when a fly comes about
--reaches out a tongue like a teaspoon and takes him in. He gums his
tongue first. He is always pious, in his looks. And pious and thankful
both, when Providence or one of us sends him a fly. He has a froggy
head, and a back like a new grave--for shape; and hands like a bird's
toes that have been frostbitten. But his eyes are his exhibition
feature. A couple of skinny cones project from the sides of his head,
with a wee shiny bead of an eye set in the apex of each; and these cones
turn bodily like pivot-guns and point every-which-way, and they are
independent of each other; each has its own exclusive machinery. When I
am behind him and C. in front of him, he whirls one eye rearwards and the
other forwards--which gives him a most Congressional expression (one eye
on the constituency and one on the swag); and then if something happens
above and below him he shoots out one eye upward like a telescope and the
other downward--and this changes his expression, but does not improve it.

Natives must not be out after the curfew bell without a pass. In Natal
there are ten blacks to one white.

Sturdy plump creatures are the women. They comb their wool up to a peak
and keep it in position by stiffening it with brown-red clay--half of
this tower colored, denotes engagement; the whole of it colored denotes
marriage.

None but heathen Zulus on the police; Christian ones not allowed.

May 9. A drive yesterday with friends over the Berea. Very fine roads
and lofty, overlooking the whole town, the harbor, and the sea-beautiful
views. Residences all along, set in the midst of green lawns with shrubs
and generally one or two intensely red outbursts of poinsettia--the
flaming splotch of blinding red a stunning contrast with the world of
surrounding green. The cactus tree--candelabrum-like; and one twisted
like gray writhing serpents. The "flat-crown" (should be flat-roof)
--half a dozen naked branches full of elbows, slant upward like artificial
supports, and fling a roof of delicate foliage out in a horizontal
platform as flat as a floor; and you look up through this thin floor as
through a green cobweb or veil. The branches are japanesich. All about
you is a bewildering variety of unfamiliar and beautiful trees; one sort
wonderfully dense foliage and very dark green--so dark that you notice it
at once, notwithstanding there are so many orange trees. The
"flamboyant"--not in flower, now, but when in flower lives up to its
name, we are told. Another tree with a lovely upright tassel scattered
among its rich greenery, red and glowing as a firecoal. Here and there a
gum-tree; half a dozen lofty Norfolk Island pines lifting their fronded
arms skyward. Groups of tall bamboo.

Saw one bird. Not many birds here, and they have no music--and the
flowers not much smell, they grow so fast.

Everything neat and trim and clean like the town. The loveliest trees
and the greatest variety I have ever seen anywhere, except approaching
Darjeeling. Have not heard anyone call Natal the garden of South Africa,
but that is what it probably is.

It was when Bishop of Natal that Colenso raised such a storm in the
religious world. The concerns of religion are a vital matter here yet.
A vigilant eye is kept upon Sunday. Museums and other dangerous resorts
are not allowed to be open. You may sail on the Bay, but it is wicked to
play cricket. For a while a Sunday concert was tolerated, upon condition
that it must be admission free and the money taken by collection. But
the collection was alarmingly large and that stopped the matter. They
are particular about babies. A clergyman would not bury a child
according to the sacred rites because it had not been baptized. The
Hindoo is more liberal. He burns no child under three, holding that it
does not need purifying.

The King of the Zulus, a fine fellow of 30, was banished six years ago
for a term of seven years. He is occupying Napoleon's old stand--St.
Helena. The people are a little nervous about having him come back, and
they may well be, for Zulu kings have been terrible people sometimes
--like Tchaka, Dingaan, and Cetewayo.

There is a large Trappist monastery two hours from Durban, over the
country roads, and in company with Mr. Milligan and Mr. Hunter, general
manager of the Natal government railways, who knew the heads of it, we
went out to see it.

There it all was, just as one reads about it in books and cannot believe
that it is so--I mean the rough, hard work, the impossible hours, the
scanty food, the coarse raiment, the Maryborough beds, the tabu of human
speech, of social intercourse, of relaxation, of amusement, of
entertainment, of the presence of woman in the men's establishment.
There it all was. It was not a dream, it was not a lie. And yet with
the fact before one's face it was still incredible. It is such a
sweeping suppression of human instincts, such an extinction of the man as
an individual.

La Trappe must have known the human race well. The scheme which he
invented hunts out everything that a man wants and values--and withholds
it from him. Apparently there is no detail that can help make life worth
living that has not been carefully ascertained and placed out of the
Trappist's reach. La Trappe must have known that there were men who
would enjoy this kind of misery, but how did he find it out?

If he had consulted you or me he would have been told that his scheme
lacked too many attractions; that it was impossible; that it could never
be floated. But there in the monastery was proof that he knew the human
race better than it knew itself. He set his foot upon every desire that
a man has--yet he floated his project, and it has prospered for two
hundred years, and will go on prospering forever, no doubt.

Man likes personal distinction--there in the monastery it is obliterated.
He likes delicious food--there he gets beans and bread and tea, and not
enough of it. He likes to lie softly--there he lies on a sand mattress,
and has a pillow and a blanket, but no sheet. When he is dining, in a
great company of friends, he likes to laugh and chat--there a monk reads
a holy book aloud during meals, and nobody speaks or laughs. When a man
has a hundred friends about him, evenings, he likes to have a good time
and run late--there he and the rest go silently to bed at 8; and in the
dark, too; there is but a loose brown robe to discard, there are no
night-clothes to put on, a light is not needed. Man likes to lie abed
late there he gets up once or twice in the night to perform some
religious office, and gets up finally for the day at two in the morning.
Man likes light work or none at all--there he labors all day in the
field, or in the blacksmith shop or the other shops devoted to the
mechanical trades, such as shoemaking, saddlery, carpentry, and so on.
Man likes the society of girls and women--there he never has it. He
likes to have his children about him, and pet them and play with them
--there he has none. He likes billiards--there is no table there. He
likes outdoor sports and indoor dramatic and musical and social
entertainments--there are none there. He likes to bet on things--I was
told that betting is forbidden there. When a man's temper is up he likes
to pour it out upon somebody there this is not allowed. A man likes
animals--pets; there are none there. He likes to smoke--there he cannot
do it. He likes to read the news--no papers or magazines come there. A
man likes to know how his parents and brothers and sisters are getting
along when he is away, and if they miss him--there he cannot know. A man
likes a pretty house, and pretty furniture, and pretty things, and pretty
colors--there he has nothing but naked aridity and sombre colors. A man
likes--name it yourself: whatever it is, it is absent from that place.

From what I could learn, all that a man gets for this is merely the
saving of his soul.

It all seems strange, incredible, impossible. But La Trappe knew the
race. He knew the powerful attraction of unattractiveness; he knew that
no life could be imagined, howsoever comfortless and forbidding, but
somebody would want to try it.

This parent establishment of Germans began its work fifteen years ago,
strangers, poor, and unencouraged; it owns 15,000 acres of land now, and
raises grain and fruit, and makes wines, and manufactures all manner of
things, and has native apprentices in its shops, and sends them forth
able to read and write, and also well equipped to earn their living by
their trades. And this young establishment has set up eleven branches in
South Africa, and in them they are christianizing and educating and
teaching wage-yielding mechanical trades to 1,200 boys and girls.
Protestant Missionary work is coldly regarded by the commercial white
colonist all over the heathen world, as a rule, and its product is
nicknamed "rice-Christians" (occupationless incapables who join the
church for revenue only), but I think it would be difficult to pick a
flaw in the work of these Catholic monks, and I believe that the
disposition to attempt it has not shown itself.

Tuesday, May 12. Transvaal politics in a confused condition. First the
sentencing of the Johannesburg Reformers startled England by its
severity; on the top of this came Kruger's exposure of the cipher
correspondence, which showed that the invasion of the Transvaal, with the
design of seizing that country and adding it to the British Empire, was
planned by Cecil Rhodes and Beit--which made a revulsion in English
feeling, and brought out a storm against Rhodes and the Chartered Company
for degrading British honor. For a good while I couldn't seem to get at
a clear comprehension of it, it was so tangled. But at last by patient
study I have managed it, I believe. As I understand it, the Uitlanders
and other Dutchmen were dissatisfied because the English would not allow
them to take any part in the government except to pay taxes. Next, as I
understand it, Dr. Kruger and Dr. Jameson, not having been able to make
the medical business pay, made a raid into Matabeleland with the
intention of capturing the capital, Johannesburg, and holding the women
and children to ransom until the Uitlanders and the other Boers should
grant to them and the Chartered Company the political rights which had
been withheld from them. They would have succeeded in this great scheme,
as I understand it, but for the interference of Cecil Rhodes and Mr.
Beit, and other Chiefs of the Matabele, who persuaded their countrymen to
revolt and throw off their allegiance to Germany. This, in turn, as I
understand it, provoked the King of Abyssinia to destroy the Italian army
and fall back upon Johannesburg; this at the instigation of Rhodes, to
bull the stock market.




CHAPTER LXVI.

Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

When I scribbled in my note-book a year ago the paragraph which ends the
preceding chapter, it was meant to indicate, in an extravagant form, two
things: the conflicting nature of the information conveyed by the citizen
to the stranger concerning South African politics, and the resulting
confusion created in the stranger's mind thereby.

But it does not seem so very extravagant now. Nothing could in that
disturbed and excited time make South African politics clear or quite
rational to the citizen of the country because his personal interest and
his political prejudices were in his way; and nothing could make those
politics clear or rational to the stranger, the sources of his
information being such as they were.

I was in South Africa some little time. When I arrived there the
political pot was boiling fiercely. Four months previously, Jameson had
plunged over the Transvaal border with about 600 armed horsemen at his
back, to go to the "relief of the women and children" of Johannesburg; on
the fourth day of his march the Boers had defeated him in battle, and
carried him and his men to Pretoria, the capital, as prisoners; the Boer
government had turned Jameson and his officers over to the British
government for trial, and shipped them to England; next, it had arrested
64 important citizens of Johannesburg as raid-conspirators, condemned
their four leaders to death, then commuted the sentences, and now the 64
were waiting, in jail, for further results. Before midsummer they were
all out excepting two, who refused to sign the petitions for release; 58
had been fined $10,000 each and enlarged, and the four leaders had gotten
off with fines of $125,000 each with permanent exile added, in one case.