Part 1

OUTPOSTS _of_ ASIA

_By_

MORILLA MARIA NORTON

_Author of_

Songs of the Pacific A Kingdom of the Sea Verses from the Orient Gloria Victis

THE MAGNET PUBLISHING CO. MANILA, PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

COPYRIGHT, 1909 MORILLA MARIA NORTON MANILA, PHILIPPINES

To M. B. N.

Great Mother, dead but living, Living but dead, The snow falls fast, In this death month of all the year. White flakes like messengers Sent upon the blast, From Heaven to light upon thy bier.

Like this death month of Nature Such thou wert and art; Cold with unsullied purity of will, White with the soul’s austerity of charity, Yet holding all the flames Of summer’s glory in thy heart.

Yokohama January 7, 1909

_FOREWORD_

In writing this book of a journey through Manchuria, Korea and Japan, it is partly a tribute to the hospitality of the Imperial Railway through whose kindness I made the picturesque tour on the track of the fighting line across countries on which so much attention has been focused in these last years, partly to fulfill a pledge made to the Manila Merchants Association, to write in a book of travel through Russia a chapter on Manila, which chapter is the last in the volume.

Among the few treasures which the traveler feels he must carry away from that land of art--Japan--the writer chose a kakemono representing the grim old fighter Ieyasu dressed in his stiff brocade of choice pattern which the elegance of his life demanded.

He sits not on horse, nor in palanquin, but at ease and in reflective mood in his home, his queer head-dress arching out from his falcon-like head, holding in one hand a sword even in this hour of leisure, ready to spring upon his country’s foes, in the other hand a roll of paper, for he was like the great Charlemagne, a man of letters, as well as of battles.

Sensitive, fine and piercing as a blade, is his glance, delicate as a woman in the finish of his attitude, yet commanding, imperious, indomitable and over all and through all, a scholar, not in the infinitesimal detail of the school, but in the magnificent sense of life, one who learns from all experience and progresses through everything and acquires in every phase of fortune and misfortune, leaving to the world the priceless inheritance of such scholarship, hope, faith--nay, charity! What Ieyasu was, so to me seems his race, imbued with the large serenity which grasps ages, not minutes; it can conquer, or be conquered, with equal grace, without self-elation, or self-abasement, but with the majestic nature of the true theist and the true altruist advances to its destiny reaching as does all greatness its maturity slowly, until it becomes the master of itself and of others.

The ethical beauty of the home life of Japan, the charming routine of the schools, the fraternal relations in the army and navy, the courtesy between master and servant, in the factory and the shop, and in the home is all delightful to see, and the welcome to the stranger, that finest flower of civilization, as of character, to feel!

The soft grey coloring, the subdued green, the reserve of forest and field, unlike our own exuberant Philippines, at first seem shy, demure, not a little austere, but as you pass the days and nights there the subtle influence of the Northern Italy works its miracle and you yield as every one has before you, captivated by an influence too complex to define. Japan has the “charme intime,” as the French say, the charm which penetrates but holds forever.

Massive, Greek-like Korea and colossal Manchuria, bold, daring as the fastnesses of Asia are, overwhelm the imagination and leave you stirred to their heroic level!

But a glimpse, a panorama of these graphic countries is all these pages can bring.

Each has a magnetism one must experience, and as one New Englander said of his native town, it needs no pennies in their fountains to call you back to retread their sublime and lofty pinnacles, or their exquisite by-paths.

These pages were for the most part published in the daily press of Japan, and were written “en voyage” or within the hospitable doors of the Astor House, Seoul and the Bluff Hotel in Yokohama. They form notes of travel rather than a conventional book.

_CONTENTS_

PORT ARTHUR 9

MOUKDEN 17

MANCHURIA 23

SEOUL 29

JAPANESE IN KOREA 37

TOKYO AND ITS MAYOR 43

JAPANESE RAILWAYS 49

MADAME SHIMODA 55

PEERESS’ SCHOOL 61

KANEKO 67

EXPOSITION NOTES 75

BARON TAKAHASHI 81

TOKYO OBSERVATORY 85

GOVERNMENT STEEL FOUNDRY 91

JAPAN IN NOVEMBER 95

MANILA AND THE PHILIPPINES 101

PORT ARTHUR

Port Arthur is the most dramatic spot away from Europe: nothing that Nature can do, or history suggest of grandeur is lacking in this stupendous panorama!

Hills which have been swept bare by shot and shell are still bare and will be as the palm of the hand, to denote what has passed over them!

A huge fortress-like eminence suggesting Gibraltar, stands out like the champion of the army before the series of forts which lie behind it.

There are two bays, “Pigeon Bay” and “Kerr Bay,” which have dimpled waters of sparkling blue and admit ships on both sides of this gigantic promontory.

As you leave the station, you find yourself facing a long stretch of unkempt ground, over which the new town is being erected inland.

Further behind lie the cliffs, rising one within another, with a series of natural fortifications, one of which has begun its immortal fame, “203 Metres Hill.”

Its sides are covered with huge stones, piled in volcanic confusion, partly by nature, partly by the concussion of balls.

This point, as all remember, was surrounded by a barbed wire fence and heaps of sand bags.

On one edge men passed over living flesh and dying flesh, their hands torn from the sockets, as they mounted up a perpendicular side of some three hundred feet.

The hills on the land side are well covered with the rough and tumble of the up-torn rocks, pieces of bone and rusty implements and the torn sand bags are still there. Seventeen thousand men fell on this hill and it took five days to capture it.

Once on top after a climb of some twenty minutes of slow scrambling, like the ascent of the pyramids, you reach the summit. Then you realize why Russia wanted to keep it and Japan to win it at any cost. It is a center of billowy hills on the land side and of the whole sweep of bays and promontories stretching out towards the Yellow Sea and Pechilli Bay.

Port Arthur is the sharp beak of the promontory, which cuts into two waters and can guard the lands of Japan, Korea and China. As you stand then on the top of “203 Metres Hill” you have at your back hills, in the front the towns, the circling mountains about the water, the advanced cliffs of the defensive works and the bays and the sea. Your guns can command any point and your view has every detail before it. You are, as I remember, about one mile and a half from town.

This latter is composed of a small park from which the adorning center has been removed, whether in disgrace as offensive to non-classical taste or not I do not know.

The Civil Office building is new or repaired and not specially attractive as the Japanese do not seem to care to put beauty in their public buildings. A new and very elaborate hotel soon to be opened, is being put up.

This is made out of concrete and stone, quarried, I believe, out of the near-by mountains. The roads leave everything to be desired; they are full of ruts and must be horrible in the rainy months.

The Czar’s mother built the “Red Cross Hospital” whose gigantic outlines of red warm the heart during the frozen months of a Manchurian winter.

Vice Admiral Hashimoto and his lovely family live in a palatial residence, while set in wide gardens at only a few feet away is the steep descent to the gate of the navy yard, where you can stroll about with a guide seeing sunken ships being repaired and the “Amur,” one of Russia’s relics lying on her side, kept there as a reminder of the dreadful days gone.

Shops full of busy workmen are alongside and the little men who are hard at work to the ceaseless blows of the hammer, bob about blithely at their tasks, getting ready for another conflict.

Far up over one’s head, on the terraced gardens, I saw a marquise and asked what it had been used for.

It was the Russian bandstand, where every evening the Russians played their national airs; now only the breeze blows its requiem there, for “dead souls.”

Nearby is the “Army and Navy Club” at whose inviting door I bade good bye to the American Consul who had so gallantly chaperoned me for the day.

The visit to Port Arthur for a lady alone, would not be agreeable. We had the pleasure of meeting the commanding general, Membo Camio, and he told us about his two dogs and they were introduced, one of them his special favorite, “a left over” from Russian occupation!

Dog lovers know no geographical lines and his most interesting face took on that peculiar “love me, love my dog” look seen on the faces of those devoted to canine pets.

It was an easy task for me and while they talked diplomatic compliments, I talked dog.

I told General Camio of a friend in Manila who possessed one from the Russian fleet, a beautiful collie, given her from off the fugitive Russian ships. How also on the Fourth of July the sensitive creature crept away to avoid hearing the firing, which brings to mind that awful day.

We were provided with a guide, by the kindness of the general, to the war museum and to General Stossel’s house.

This residence was and is a very plain one, not very large, set on a single hill commanding a view over the forts and town opposite and is opposite the new palace of the civil governor.

General Nakamura, who was acting governor of Manchuria, a most affable and agreeable personality, did us voluntarily a great service, which he anticipated the moment we came into the room. He gave us our return pass to Fusan, as Baron Goto of the South Manchurian Railway was away from his home in Dalny.

The delicate way the Japanese, in their kindness even think for one, is wonderful.

“’Twas fated I should seek this battle field and here above the multitudinous dead, be the white victim, growing daily whiter. The breath of death has rustled thru my hair! The shudder of death has passed athwart my soul! I am all white, a sacrificial host!”

So felt the Duke of Reichstadt at Wagram, so feels every noble soul at Port Arthur. It is for humanity, an altar of blood and fire!

The fields have been put under the plow, but labor cannot wait.

The necessities of existence have, perhaps fortunately, no sentiment. Parts of our road are blasted thru the solid rock. We move towards the battle field, watching alternately the dismantled homes and the primitive methods of agriculture. Some buildings are left as wrecks. The configuration grows every mile more sinister. In a distant low roofed building we are told that General Stoessel surrendered but it is all a dream; we are seeking something. There on the horizon! Yes, it rises! Calm as at creation’s dawn, when its Maker saw this hour. “203 Metres Hill”! Name forever immortal!

Oh, the sublimity of the view over that billowy plain from its summit! There “Pigeon Bay” and “Kerr Bay.” The monuments of Russia’s generosity and Japan’s gratitude.

We visited the war museum and the Administration buildings. The blue of that day’s sky, so blue, with the glory of the sun on the “Golden Hill” and the “Tiger’s Tail” forts but the hosts were visible to the unseen eye, the cries of agony and victory were in our ears and in the garden of General Stoessel we found growing the flowers so thoughtless, or so healing of it all! The flowers which have no memory!

“Les fleurs nont pas de memoire, Nouvelles dans un monde ancien!”

General Stoessel’s house has still one room, kept as it was with some startling brocade furniture, but the other rooms are being turned into offices, I believe, of the war department.

Our minds were filled with an awful pathos as we wandered about and the light jests of our companions did not seem in place. The garden was much as it was, doubtless a tangle of marigolds and astors, and we were told to carry away as much as our arms would hold, which we did. Ah, nature, how little thou dost care!

The war museum has a fence surrounding it which shows every kind of defense in the way of crossed spikes and barbed wire and other sorts of infernal devices used in sieges.

Inside you can see war accoutrements, garments, implements, dynamos, bombs, machines of every sort to destroy, until the mind sickens.

Plans of now disused forts show how they were taken, where blown up, where tunneled; earthworks and redoubts we passed on our way over and all the ingenious ways are still there of how men can protect themselves from death and deal out death to each other.

I never heard once either in Japan or Manchuria, or Port Arthur, where pride, military pride, if ever, would be admissible, one word of boasting and one little Jap said at Port Arthur, “The Russians need never be ashamed of Port Arthur. To the everlasting disgrace be it of a nation which will punish men for doing as well as they could.”

To view this remarkable place which will be in time one of the great tourist points of the East, one need count no fatigue too great.

No trip in Europe offers more grandeur both in natural setting and historic significance.

Marathon, salute thy peers. The years have taken much, but left us men, Men of thy stature, O, Sophocles, who asked the fairest boon, To die like heroes, even if to taste life were still denied, Thinking with scorn of late, or soon, the now, or then. Empires may lose their monarchs and renown, But never to be forgotten is this hill, dyed in the purple of man’s supreme nobility, For here the Hand which balances each crown, Placed forevermore a diadem of heroes, on brothers death mowed down.

(Written on “203 Metres Hill”)

MOUKDEN

The mountain effects as you near Moukden, are every day finer. The august abysses and the tremendous onward sweep of the track, the seemingly impossible turns and cavernous leaps are all indescribable!

As you near the city of Moukden you see a saddle-shaped height to which the contending armies of the last war climbed and fought.

On one height you also see a shaft commemorative of the Japanese dead. All is prophetic of what is beyond.

Moukden is at the heart of China with Port Arthur and Harbin about equally distant. A strongly fortified place, a strategic point of China life and politics and of a value well known to her friends and her enemies!

Pekin is but two days away and the stone wall of wonderful fame but twenty hours, and what means more than all to this traveler, we are but one night’s ride from Port Arthur, over a good road which is being double tracked and is to be furnished shortly with first class American cars!

Moukden is built on a vast plain and has a horizon line worthy of the plains of Dakota. A wall of truly Chinese dimensions encloses the traffic which goes on with the usual Chinese volubility. A wide and new boulevard is being made by the Japanese, running from the station to the ancient city. This has a modern look, but not so what passes along it! Such a motley array of human clothes and shapes!

It is indeed a Vanity Fair. The huge Manchurians with a “devil may care” air. The Japanese looking anxious and uneasy at so much to be done.

The ox carts with strange passengers inside them! The jinrickshas with their Chinese runners with more “devil may care manners”! The street hucksters, the few Europeans and the rich natives with their coolies, the stir of one of the busiest cities of the East and one of the most original, that all makes Moukden!

The recruits are exercising out in front of the American consulate and raw they are, but quick, and the military steps are fast becoming familiar to them.

An ancient pagoda surely contemporary with David is on this street: this Parisian boulevard of Moukden, and much we wondered at its stone form of concrete and its top of bronze, a crescent and ball!

Around the unique buildings of the consulate extends the plain, by turns dusty or muddy, according to the season.

Our delight was the moonlight on the consulate! The court so imposing, with its grotesque animals and its Chinese queerness! The rare old Chinese windows and at evening time, the watchman “beating the fish,” sounding a rattle to warn away all intruders!

The especial beauty of a real oriental house and furnishings; this one, set in the heart of China, has as delightful a flavor as one may meet.

The tombs of the Emperors of the Manchu dynasty, the men rather, who founded the reigning house, are of fitting elaborateness. They too, like the palaces of Seoul, are falling to decay.

The one I went to see on a chilly autumn afternoon, was set in a park of considerable dimensions guarded by the ever faithful stone dogs. These faithful animals have kept the palaces intact and the sleepers in their tombs for centuries!

We watched the old stern-faced tho not unkindly woods-men cutting the winter fodder in the over-grown grounds. They work while the emperors sleep and how much more impressive they are!

A huge gate as usual meets us at the entrance to the enclosure; indeed, two gates.

The tomb itself or rather the shrine before the tomb is approached by two stately avenues, where the dogs are relieved of their lonely watch by two horses, two dromedaries and two elephants!

In a pagoda we saw the mammoth sea horse and on his back the memorial tablet written in characters none but a scholar’s spectacles could decipher!

The gate with its marvelous locks, certainly antedating Pharoah, opens and we gaze at its ornaments of dragons’ heads, a sort of mask, as we enter, to the central court, where we look up at the walls and mount them to get the view and see the four corner towers of brilliant workmanship and colors.

Descending, we approach the central shrine by steps of very fine sculpture and artistic form and are told by our retinue of attendants that curiosity can go no farther nor veneration for that matter, as the key is lost!

The grave itself is beyond all this stone and wood arabesque; it is without the wall, a simple heap, or mound of earth!

“Dust to dust,” after all, poor old Manchurian warrior of long ago!

But as it is autumn in the park, we gathered the red berries and the men ornamented the jinrickshas with them and we ride home across the plain in a glory of red that out lasts all. The sun is a perfect disk magnified by the perspective of the plain into a gigantic size, worthy of Manchuria, and there is the Japanese flag! May it bring better days to this land of toil and patience! That is the heart’s wish for this colossal country of Manchuria!

Over the mountains sky high, over the plains of Moukden, over more mountains, and you approach the city of Dalny. There seems a stupendous realization of Nature in it all, the scene is perfect. Dalny, to use a histrionic term again, is the “curtain raiser” of Port Arthur.

The war cloud seems still hovering over it. If you are accustomed to the birthplaces of national significance you feel it in the air. The place has a somber air. Built to be a pillar of Russia’s all conquering power, it was to pass in a few years in an awful avalanche of disaster to another!

Across these streets men fought their way and others fled in terror!

There are places where nothing would astonish you. No miracle but would seem possible, because a miracle has been. Such a place is Dalny. There are spots of our earth sanctified by the sublimest emotions possible to our human nature, above this mortal passing of days: such is Dalny! Such is Port Arthur!

At Waterloo, at the Plains of Marathon, on the battle fields where all our race rose in an hour to another epoch of its stupendous destiny, what can be said! What is not felt!

At the entrance of these streets you feel it is other ground, you tread softly for immortal valor is there before you. You have thoughts of pride; a pride that wells as a gushing stream, to your heart. Yea, here men were conquerors, not over a mortal foe, but over Death and Self. The deadly enemies of men!

When there has been said this word to fate, “you cannot rob me,” then all the hearts of men leap to that height and we are for a moment deified. O glory to the heroes of that hour.

Russians or Japanese! All were in that sublime sense conquerors! All shall be forever victors, enshrined in our memory, where we worship the undying splendor of the soul!

MOONLIGHT OVER MOUKDEN

Moon of harvests and of toil she slowly mounts the aged Chinese Sky, A sky of fairness, alabaster, ivory, like an antique shrine Of ancient lineage and proud, her charm mingled of the mellow mystery of joy and tears; In glory young, though old in years.

Glories indeed have been, an emperor sleeps within a tomb Forgotten with the sigh, men breathed in his domain, Nature and life rebuilt from death to radiant dreams, Who notes the Past, as tolls the silver chime new hours? Night speaks and light still streams;

Around her future like her rays, is mystery, But as days die, new days begin, of history far mightier: Great light appears across Time’s pageant, lighting to grander victory; Victory deathless as moonbeams, and Love builds temples through all glooms.

MANCHURIA

“In the increased enthusiasm of Japan in her ardent effort to strengthen her position in the world, by basing her international conduct upon the fairest and best tried principles of human progress, the effort is not free from occasional errors, but the large issue grows clear in Japan’s mind.”