A Trip Around the World, 1910-1911

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Asalca Asahi. The type comprises 5,000 characters. Two of his pressess were built in his shop after French models. He is Member of Parliment for Osaka, and says there are 25,000 voters out of 1,200,000 population. At 5:00 called on Miss Holland, an English mission-worker in the factories, and at 6:30 had dinner with Dr. and Mrs. A.D. Hail, 33 Kawaguchicho, Presbyterian missionary workers and most charming people, originally from Illinois.

October 6th.

Went early to the Osaka City Office, where Mr. Hiroyama again devoted himself wholly to my welfare. After briefly interviewing the Mayor, we went to call on Mr. T. Nakahashi, President of the Osaka Chosen Kaisha (one of the great steamship lines) and one of the greatest and most far-seeing industrial leaders in Japan. An hour's interview and more was exceedingly interesting. Catching a train at 12:00 I landed at the Tor Hotel, Kobe, where I lunched with Mr. Robert Young, Editor of the Chronicle, and the ablest newspaper man I have found, as his paper shows. Later called on American Consul and on Mr. E. H. Hunter of E. H. Hunter & Co., to whom Dr. S. A. Knapp has given me a letter of introduction. Mr Hunter has been in Kobe since 1867, and employs about 5,000 Japanese laborers in his ship-building and other lines of industry. Met Dr. Moore, of Virginia, (who spoke to me because he recognized my Southern accent) and he urged precautions against cholera: eat no fruit, no raw or poorly-cooked vegetables, eat

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hot toast instead of dry bread, drink only boiled water even brush teeth only in hot water, etc. Dined with Dr. and Mrs. B.T. Galloway, of the United States Department of Agriculture.

October 7th. After breakfast started directly for the American Consulate but got caught on the way by some shops, the upshot being that I bought a pair of grotesquely carved wooden candlesticks, a pair of shoes, and an extra suit case for my accululating possessions. Started an article for The Progressive Farmer, and lunched with Mr. Curtis, Editor of the Kobe Herald, his wife and daughter. Worked on article in afternoon. At 6:30 tried to catch boat for Miyajima, but finding all berths taken, decided to stop at Oriental Hotel over night, catching early train for Miyajima tomorrow.

October 8th. Left Kobe at 7:00. Met on the train Miss Margaret Maxwell, a newspaper correspondent and globe-trotter, special contributor to Scribner's Magazine. Landing at Miyajima Station at 3:40, we proceeded by primitive thatched sampan to the Mikado Hotel. Worked further on my article.

October 9th. After breakfast walked to temple and over town with Miss Maxwell, who talked with considerable freedom about moral conditions in Japan (which she thinks are very bad) and elsewhere in the Orient. She left after tiffin. Finished my dinged

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article and mailed it. At 3:30 set out to climb Mt. Miyajima, which I found sufficiently amusing--1,300 stone steps to the top, and much additional walking between the tiers. But the view of the beautiful Island Sea that one gets from the top is well worth the effort, to say nothing of the splendid exercise. October 10th Spent the day preparing an article on "Does Japanese Industrial Competition Menace the White Man's Trade?" based on my month's investigations. October 11th Ditto October 12th Completed my article this morning. At 3:42 left Miyajima for Shimonoseki; arriving at 9:00 and at 9:30 boarded steamer for Fusan. Notice in paper that a storm warning has gone out. October 13th I don't know whether I got sick on the 12th or 13th but that it wasn't more than two or three hours after sailing there is no doubt. The boat rolled and pitched in a most unprecedented fashion, and my English room-mate thought there was going to be a typhoon. I was having fun enough to keep me interested, however, and didn't concern myself with that subject. Nor was I interested in the breakfast call. About 10:00 we landed in Fusan amid the oddest crowd of people I have yet found anywhere. The Koreans dress in white--or rather in what was once white but never is again--with big bloomer-like skirts. At the station gate

there must have been a hundred with absolutely primitive arrangements for carrying luggage on their backs--twin pieces of sapling with protruding parallel limbs forming a sort of shelf for my suit-case.

I am glad to get to Korea. In Japan proper nearly all the work of breaking, cultivating and harvesting was done by hand, there were almost no horses, oxen or cattle to be seen, and absolutely no sheep or hogs; and it is astonishing to find how much one misses the familiar sights of the farms at home. Rice fields, one-story shops, Shinto Toriis and Buddhist temples are well enough; but before you know it; you are hungry for the sight of fields with horses or oxen doing the work, hungry even for the sight of an old razor-back piney woods rooter, or a field of opening cotton. All these Korea has supplied--even if I do feel on the whole that I have been transported back into the times of Abraham. Certainly there is little in Korean farm life as I have seen it that would not look familiar to the ancient patriarch of Israel if he should make a tour of inspection today. Only oxen are used--no horses. The plows are wooden and are made by hand from ^(nearby) trees cut in the near-by forests, with only a primitive point of iron or steel, and there are not two handles as with us, but only one and that little better than a stick of fo^(i)re-wood. The houses are equally primitive--mere walls of stone and mortar about as high as your head, with straw roofs above them. In nearly every group of these houses are two or three with pumpkin vines clamboring over the roof, and at least one housetop

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gorgeous with a supply of red pepper spread out for drying. About 9:00 Ash and I reached Seoul and found it hardly less primitive and picturesque than the rural districte, though I should not forget the fascinating beauty of the moonlight country seen for a couple of hours before reaching Seoul. I should like to carry the picture in my memory. And then ^we came to^ Seoul itself: the weird, white-robed figures moving in the dimly lighted streets--no electric lights save in a few shops: ^only^ lanterns, lamps and candles, and the light of the moon. Here was the real East, and both Ash and I were too delighted for words. The great South Gate of the city with all its suggestion of the barbaric past was especially impressive.

October 14th. Ash and I started early, going first to the famous North Palace, once the home of Korean Emperors and Empresses and memorable now in its mournful desolation and tragic memories. Here in 1895 in a building that we saw the Empress was murdered, near by we saw the spot where her body was burned, and were I Edgar Allan Poe I might come here under tonight's harvest moon and write another "Fall of the House of Usher". Took a wine-cup from the ruins as a souvenir.

[begin crossed out] From the Palace [end crossed out] Our Korean guide (who hates the Japanese) took us to the Museum and Pagoda Park, and after this to the Temple of Heaven. Met a Japanese bicyclist who came proudly "scorching" down the hill. I turned to my right after ^our^ American fashion and he to his left after Japanese fashion