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I have seen the mysterious shores, the still waters, the lands
of brown natives . . . but for me all the East is contained in
the vision of . . . my youth. And this is all there is left of it!
Only a moment ; a moment of strength, and romance, and glamour !
... A flick of sunshine on a strange shore, the time to remember,
the time for a sigh goodby!
From Batavia we started for Djogjakarta at 4 A. M. Difficult
it is to get the eyes open at that hour, but the Oriental bath
in the spring-house, twenty gourdfuls poured down the spine, helps
some and strong black coffee does the rest. Never was a place, a
time, a condition, more poetic than the green court of the Hotel der
Nederlanden at that hour, all fresh and sweet from rain. In the
southwest blazed the Southern Cross, with the faithful Centaurii,
while across the way from red Antares, high in the heavens, was
red Mars. The strange, still hour; the scent of wet flowers and
foliage, led by the insistent perfume of the frangipani;
orchids staring from the trees with their thousand eyes ;
the white
the noiseless
natives in attendance, the crunch of carriage wheels upon the
gravel, the landlord waiting patiently in trousers and bare feet to
bid a kind good-bye this was Java!
When half a dozen years later the Equator was crossed a second
time, to the Strait of Magellan, another dream came true. Beside
fifty-five degrees south, Java's nine looked small. Yet the tropic
glory of Batavia, at this desolate land's end, was remembered almost
painfully. The sole compensation lay in the attainment of those
Antarctic worlds guarding the virgin South Pole, and to see the resplendent
Southern Cross almost overhead! One clear, dark
night on the voyage to Valparaiso I was able to round up everything
: the Coal Sack, that black deep in the Milky close to the
Way,
Cross, which even hardened astronomers regard with awe; the
minor Magellanic Clouds, mostly in Hydrus, not only smaller but
duller than the major in Dorado contrary to the opinion of
astronomic authorities. Every South Polar star hitherto dimmed
by the moonlight stood out and sang its own eloquent song, while
the Milky Way was a sight to make the heart stand still. Without
effort I identified the constellations Crater ; Musca ; Norma
; Lupus ;
Triangulum; the Crow; Eridanus, famous for Achenar, clean,
cold, electric, imperious; all the second-magnitude stars in Carina,
keel of Argo the Ship, home of godlike Canopus, my first tropical
luminary, adored long before I knew he was the biggest thing of his
kind in the Universe !
At Santiago de Chili, within the shadow of that Rock of Ages,
beautiful Santa Lucia, Scorpio with his bloody eye and wicked sting-
ing tail followed me right into the open
court of the hotel around
which were grouped the dormitories. So not before Los Andes,
midst its lush vegetation at the foot of the Cordilleras, where you
pause for breath before climbing those mighty flanks, did I seem
really to bid the southern stellar worlds good-bye; for at Buenos
Ayres I noticed only that the sunny side of the Avenue de Mayo
faced north and that Orion in the zenith was upside down!
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