The Pacific Triangle - free ebook by Sydney Greenbie

THE PACIFIC TRIANGLE BY SYDNEY GREENBIE AUTHOR OF "JAPAN: REAL AND IMAGINARY"

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1921 Copyright, 1921, by The Century Co. Printed in U. S. A. TO BARRIE WHO DID HIS BEST TO PREVENT THE WRITING OF THIS BOOK, IN THE HOPE THAT HE MAY SOME DAY READ IT AND REPENT OF HIS SINS....

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PREFACE

This book is an attempt to bring within focus the most outstanding factors in the Pacific. With the exception of Chapter II, which deals with the origin of the Polynesian people, there is hardly an incident in the whole book that has not come within the scope of my own personal experience. Hence this is essentially a travel narrative. I have confined myself to the task of interpreting the problems of the Pacific in the light of the episodes of everyday life. Wherever possible, I have tried to le

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CHAPTER I THE HEART OF THE PACIFIC The First Side of The Triangle

. . . stared at the Pacific—and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak in Darien. Exactly four centuries after the event immortalized by Keats, I outstripped Balboa's most fantastic dreams by setting out upon the Pacific and traversing the length and breadth of it. "It is a sight," we are told, "in beholding which for the first time any man would wish to be alone." I was. But whereas Balboa's desires were accomplished in having obtained sight of the Pacific,

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CHAPTER II THE MYSTERY OF MYSTERIES

Not even the speed of the fastest steamer afloat can transport the white man from his sky-scraper and subway civilization over the hump of the earth and down into the South Seas without his undergoing a psychological metamorphosis that is enchanting. He cannot take his hard-and-fast materialistic illusions along with him. Were he a passenger on the magic carpet itself, and both time and space eliminated, the instant he found himself among the tawny ones he would forget enough of square streets a

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CHAPTER III OUR FRONTIER IN THE PACIFIC

Honolulu marks our frontier in the Pacific. Honolulu has been conquered. If the conquest is that of love, then the offspring will be lovely; if of mere force, or intrigue, then Heaven help Honolulu! As far as outward signs go, we are in a city American in most details. The numerous trolleys, the modern buildings, the motor-cars, the undaunted Western efficiency which no people is able to withstand has gripped Hawaii in an iron grip. True that the foreign (that is, Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, Po

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CHAPTER IV THE SUBLIMATED, SAVAGE FIJIANS

Fiji is to the Pacific what the eye is to the needle. Swift as are the vessels which thread the largest ocean on earth, travelers who do more than pass through Fiji on their way between America and the Antipodes are few. Yet the years have woven more than a mere patchwork of romance round these islands. In climate they are considered the most healthful of the South Sea groups, though socially and from the point of view of our civilization they do not occupy the same place in our sentiments as do

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CHAPTER V THE SENTIMENTAL SAMOANS

On the Niagara was a troupe of Samoan men and women who had been to San Francisco demonstrating their arts at the Panama-Pacific Exhibition. This, our meeting on the wide, syrup-like tropical sea seemed to me almost a welcome, a coming out to greet me and to lead me to the portals of their home. They were en route to Suva, Fiji, where they were to await an inter-island vessel to take them to Samoa. They were traveling third class, and the way I discovered them is not to their discredit. We were

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CHAPTER VI THE APHELION OF BRITAIN

There are no holy places in New Zealand, none of the worn and curious trappings of forgotten civilizations to search out and to revere. There are no signposts which lead the wanderer along, despite himself, in search of sacred spots; no names which make life worth while. Whom shall he try to see? Is there a Romain Rolland or a Shaw, or an Emerson to whom he could bow in that reverence which invites the soul rather than bends the knee? There are only boiling fountains and snow-packed ranges and w

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CHAPTER VII ASTRIDE THE EQUATOR The Second Side of The Triangle

Dark is the way of the Eternal as mirrored in this world of Time: God's way is in the sea, and His path in the great deep.—Carlyle. More than a year went by before I began drawing in the radial thread that held me suspended from the North Star under the Southern Cross,—a year replete with lone wanderings and searching reflections. During all those months not a single day had passed without my surveying in my mind's eye the reaches of the Pacific that lay between me and the Orient. Roundabout New

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CHAPTER VIII THE AUSTRALIAN OUTLANDS

In the normal course of human variation, there should have been virtually no change of experience for me in going from New Zealand to Australia, notwithstanding the twelve hundred miles of sea that separate them. And though the sea is hardly responsible, there was a difference between these two offshoots of the "same" race for which distance offers little explanation. To me it seemed that regardless of the pride of race which encourages people to vaunt their homogeneity, the way these two counte

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CHAPTER IX OUR PEG IN ASIA

Venturing round the Pacific is like reincarnation. One lives as an Hawaiian for a spell, enters a state of non-existence and turns up as a Fijian; then another period of selflessness, and so on from one isle to another. From such a period of transmigration I woke one morning to the sight of Zamboanga, and knew myself for a moment as a dual personality,—a Filipino and an American in one. All day long we hugged the coast of the islands of the group—Mindanao, Negros, Panay, Mindoro, Luzon—the cool

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CHAPTER X BRITAIN'S ROCK IN ASIA

To one who had received his most vivid impressions of China from her noblest philosopher, Lao-tsze, it was somewhat disconcerting to peep through the porthole just after dawn and find oneself the center of a confusion indescribable. The sleepy, heaving sea was more in tune with the mystic "Way" of the great sage. I had not anticipated being thrust so suddenly among the masses and the babel on which Lao-tsze, that gray-beard child, had tried to pour some intellectual oil. Yet, I had been living o

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CHAPTER XI CHINA'S EUROPEAN CAPITAL

Under the benign influence of a Salvation Army captain, my feet were guided safely through some of the lesser evils of Shanghai. The greater could not be fathomed in the short time allotted to me in the European capital of China. Miss Smythe, who resented being called Smith, in a manner that revealed she had long since ceased to be shy of mere man, belonged to New Zealand by birth and heaven by adoption. She chose Hong-Kong, Shanghai, and Tokyo as temporary resting-places. It was her task, every

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CHAPTER XII WORLD CONSCIOUSNESS The Third Side of the Triangle

... For surely once, they feel, we were Parts of a single continent. Now round us spreads the watery plain— Oh, might our marges meet again! I had gone out to the Katori-maru to inspect my quarters. I always loved to get away from shore, even if only in a launch or sampan; it was so much cleaner and fresher on the bay. That afternoon it was altogether too attractive out there, and the city of Kobe lay so snugly below the hills that I decided to remain on board till late in the evening, and misse

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CHAPTER XIII EXIT THE NOBLE SAVAGE

To the primitive or simple races of the world marriage, divorce, and supply of only the elemental wants are the most intense problems. Nourishment and reproduction make up the rounds of life. While the highly developed nations around the Pacific are concerned with the exploitation of the resources of the islands, and with political problems growing out of their reciprocal interests, the natives are struggling with matters that lie nearer the real foundations of life. For them the question of sur

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CHAPTER XIV GIVE US OUR VU GODS AGAIN!

Some of the gravest mistakes the white man has made in his efforts to regenerate the Pacific peoples have been indirect rather than direct. This fact is best illustrated by the method Australia and New Zealand resorted to in order to exterminate certain pests. To eliminate the rabbit they introduced the ferret. The ferret then began to reproduce so rapidly that it, too, soon became a pest. So the cat was let loose upon the ferret. Forthwith the cat ran wild and is now one of the most serious pro

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CHAPTER XV HIS TATTOOED WIFE

Something there is in the very bearing of the people in the Pacific which, despite the obvious differences between us, strikes a note of kinship in the mind of the white man least conscious of his true relationship to these brown folk. A certain chemical affinity, as it were, makes the problem of intermarriage with the Polynesians an altogether different matter from that among Eurasians. For in the marriage of an Occidental and a true Oriental there is the clashing of two antagonistic cultures e

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CHAPTER XVI GIVING HEARTS A NEW CHANCE

Casual, impermanent, or broken as these unions hitherto have been, their cyclonic process of attraction and repulsion has created a suction drawing in both good and evil. The white sailor and vagabond who ravished the brown maiden never intended to father the consequences. But gradually, as communication increased and mutual interests developed, greater stability entered into the relations of the races. Marital contracts became necessary and, from the point of view of property and other acquisit

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CHAPTER XVII "THIS LITTLE PIG WENT TO MARKET"

The basket was growing heavier and heavier, and his stomach weaker and weaker. How to convert his burden into a meal was a problem, written as large upon his face as the delight in the bargains he was making shone in the face of the marketer beside him. He was a young chap just emerging from boyhood. He had been employed by this restaurant-keeper because he said he needed a meal. It was not to be a real job. He was to get his meal all right, but not till he earned it by going with the boss to ma

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CHAPTER XVIII AUSTRALASIA

New Zealand and Australia are to-day the only spots in the world wherein the white race may expand without encroaching upon already existing and developed races. The extent to which they are taking advantage of their opportunities, the extent to which they are enlarging the scope and the quality of progressive civilization is the measure of their right to the maintenance of their exclusive "White-Australasia" policy. I confess at the outset that I am at a loss for an adequate argument against th

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CHAPTER XIX JAPAN AND ASIA

When I completed the final section of my book "Japan: Real and Imaginary," last year, and sent it to the publisher, I was not a little worried lest the movement of events in the Far East proceed so rapidly that the cart upon which I was riding slip from under me and leave me to rejoin the earth as best I could. So fast did things run that I thought surely there would be a revolution in Japan, or at least universal manhood suffrage, and that without doubt Japan would withdraw from Shantung. I am

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CHAPTER XX AMERICA

Johnny Appleseed, whose real name was John Chapman, ended his career at Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1847. Step by step he made his way over the wilderness, winning the good-will of the pioneers and the devotion of the Indians, and planting apple-seeds which time nourished into orchards. Johnnie Appleseed has been glorified by Vachel Lindsay,—and with him, not a little of the richness of life that went into the make-up of America. Unfortunately, Johnny Appleseed died in Indiana, at the early age of s

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CHAPTER XXI WHERE THE PROBLEM DOVETAILS

I have come now to the most delicate and most difficult task in the whole problem, that of the dovetailing of nations. Twice has this phase of the subject come before us: once when we met it in that welter of racial experiments, Hawaii and the South Seas in general; and again in that great outpost of the white race, Australasia. But in the one it is too localized, and the other too much in anticipation. In Hawaii it is hard to say which race has justly a prior right to possession; in Australia t

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CHAPTER XXII AUSTRALIA AND THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE

The tempest in the European teapot has become a tornado in the Pacific. Small as the Balkans are, they were the stumbling-block in the way of the downward expansion of the European powers. The tragedy in Europe has left Europe in the background. Civilization is rapidly veering round in the direction of the Pacific. There are little nations to-day whose possession is as fraught with unhappy consequences as anything in southern Europe ever was. Yet we hear innocent dispensers of information assure

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CHAPTER XXIII THE CONSORTIUM FOR FINANCING CHINA

If all goes well, the open shop in international finance is a thing of the past; at least so far as China goes. On May 11, 1920, exactly eighteen months after the signing of the armistice, Japan formally declared her willingness to enter the new consortium for lending money to China, and on October 15, following, representatives of the British, French, Japanese, and American banking-groups met in New York and there signed the provisions by which they are for the next five years going to finance

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CHAPTER XXIV UNCHARTED SEAS

We have taken a long journey together. The main routes along the Pacific which are the highways of our past and future intercourse have been inspected. But the great Pacific basin is not yet everywhere safe for navigation. There is, I understand, a scientific expedition now at work thoroughly charting every inch of that wonderful watery waste. There is, I know, a scientific body under the directorship of Professor Gregory of Yale for the thorough research of ethnological materials among the race

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A

Mr. Sydney Greenbie, New York, U.S.A. Dear Sir : Your letter of 26th March has been forwarded to me from Samoa. I relinquished the Administration when Civil Government was established there. The Chief whose funeral you saw was TAMASESE, a son of the late King Tamasese.... MATAAFA, the son of King Mataafa, died in the influenza epidemic in 1918 and I dug his grave with my own hands, everyone working hard to avoid a pestilence. The Chief TAMASESE was made much of by the Germans when they wer

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B

Dear Mr. Greenbie : Your letter of Feb. 20th was forwarded on to me here, and reached me yesterday. I regret that I cannot tell you definitely as to the celebration held in Samoa in 1915, in honor of the late "King"; I returned to Samoa in 1917 after an absence of some years, and heard nothing of it. I think, however, that the celebration must have been for Mataafa, as the natives told you that the deceased Chief had been the favorite of Mataafa. Stevenson rather despised Laupepa who although an

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C

Apia, Samoa, October 5th, 1904. A. M. Sutherland, Esq., San Francisco, U.S.A. Dear Sir : The kind invitation extended to me by the members of the "Stevenson Fellowship" through your welcome letter or the 17th August, 1904, has been received by me with great delight. I thank you and the Committee from the bottom of my heart for remembering me, and for including my name in the long list of friends whom Tusitala has left behind to mourn his irreparable loss. I would have very much l

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D

April 24, 1921 Dear Madam: Thank you very much for the letter which came some four months ago. I read it over, over and over again to memorise every word of the letter, and it was a glad toil. I thought of you and Mr. ... I thought of Messrs. F.... D.... and R.... and Miss G...., every body to-gether and every body separate that gave me untold happiness, and I heard the throbs of my heart. I told to my wife who is very glad to hear from me. As you know I got married in the year of 1913.

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