Asia Books

CHAPTER I Some time ago I wrote a book about a voyage in a whaler to the far south, to a white, silent land where the sun shines all day and night and it is quiet as the grave and beautiful as heaven—when it is not blowing and black as—the other place! A number of people said they liked it, and asked me to write again; therefore these notes and sketches on a Journey to India and Burmah. They may... more...

BANDORA, BY THE SEA, October 1885. The unsheltered sea heaves and heaves and blanches into foam. It sets me thinking of some tied-up monster straining at its bonds, in front of whose gaping jaws we build our homes on the shore and watch it lashing its tail. What immense strength, with waves swelling like the muscles of a giant! From the beginning of creation there has been this feud between land and... more...

FOREWORD It is a curious thing, when you stop to think about it, that, though of late the public has been deluged with books on the South Seas, though the shelves of the public libraries sag beneath the volumes devoted to China, Japan, Korea, next to nothing has been written, save by a handful of scientifically-minded explorers, about those far-flung, gorgeous lands, stretching from the southern... more...

INTRODUCTORY The scheme. Why I am walking across Interior China. Leaving Singapore. Ignorance of life and travel in China. The "China for the Chinese" cry. The New China and the determination of the Government. The voice of the people. The province of Yün-nan and the forward movement. A prophecy. Impressions of Saigon. Comparison of French and English methods. At Hong-Kong. Cold sail up the... more...

I. LIFE IN A PHILIPPINE VILLAGE. The little village or barrio of Mariveles is situated just inside the narrow cape that forms the northern border of the entrance to Manila Bay. The city of Manila lies out of sight, thirty miles to the southeast, but the island of Corregidor lies only seven miles to the south, and the great searchlights at night are quite dazzling when turned directly upon the village.... more...

PREFACE During 1916-1917 the First Asiatic Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History carried on zoölogical explorations along the frontiers of Tibet and Burma in the little known province of Yün-nan, China. The narrative of that expedition has already been given to the public in the first book of this series "Camps and Trails in China." It was always the intention of the American... more...

ASIA. Of the four quarters of the world—Asia is the most glorious.There the first man lived.There the Son of God lived.There the apostles lived.There the Bible was written.Yet now there are very few Christians in Asia: though there are more peoplethere than in any other quarter of the globe. Of all the countries in the world which would you rather see? Would it not be the land where Jesus lived? He... more...

From the Bay of Bengal and the Gulf of Siam the Malay Peninsula, once known as the Golden Chersonese, jets out into the Indian Ocean like an arm stretched forth to unite once more within its embrace the innumerable isles that belt its coasts and that have probably been severed from the mainland by the combined force of Time and Sea. In these surrounding islands, some as large as continents, others as... more...

INTRODUCTION The hope with which these pages are written is that their readers may be enabled to see a little deeper into that problem of the relation of the West with Asia which the historian of the future will unquestionably regard as the greatest of our time. I lived for four and a half years in Japan. This book is a record of many of the things I saw and experienced and some of the things I was... more...

THE LAND How many boys or girls, I wonder, ever turn to their school atlas for amusement, or try to picture to themselves what manner of countries those might be whose strange and unfamiliar place-names so often make their geography lesson a difficulty? Yet there are few subjects, I think, which might be made more interesting than geography, and a map may often serve to suggest delightful fancies to a... more...