100 Years Ago: October 1924

[George Thomas Wilson]

100 Years Ago: October 1924

 

This is the one-hundred-seventeenth entry in my series of abridgements of National Geographic Magazines as the reach the centennial of their publication.

 

 

The first article in this month’s issue is entitled “In the Diamond Mountains of Korea” and was written by the Marquess Curon of Kedleston.  It has the internal subtitle: “Adventures Among the Buddhist Monasteries of Eastern Korea.”  The article contains twenty-one black-and-white photographs; six of which are full-page in size.  The article also contains a sketch map of Korea on page 355.

Sketch Map courtesy of Philip Riviere

During his travels, the author had come across a good many monks and monkish communities, and spent nights in monastic guest chambers or cells.  He had walked in pilgrimage round the pyramidal spires of Monserrat [See: “Romantic Spain,” March 1910, National Geographic Magazine.]; had been hauled up in a net to the eyries of Meteora [See: “With the Monks at Meteora,” September 1909, National Geographic Magazine.]; had dined with the abbot of the great monastery or Troitsa, near Moscow; had fraternized with the dwindling Greek fraternities of Athos [See: “The Hoary Monasteries of Mount Athos,” September 1916, National Geographic Magazine.] and with the more prosperous Russians of Tabor; had sojourned in the grim monastery of Mar Saba, near the Dead Sea; was once rescued with difficulty from the menacing approaches of the Lamas in the great Tibetan monastery at Peking; had addressed an audience of 2,000 yellow-robed Burmese monks in Mandalay; and had slept at night on the polished temple floors of the monasteries of Korea (Chosen).  The author refused to generalize about monks because they were so diverse – saints and sinners, bons vivants and ascetics, gentlemen and vagabonds, men of education and illiterate boors.  Of all his monastic adventures, the author thought that the which lingered longest in his memory were the days he spent with his friend, the late Ceci Spring-Rice, afterwards British ambassador at Washington, in wandering among the monasteries of eastern Korea.  His reasons for his preferences were these: First, the scenery, amid which these monastic retreats were hidden, was among the most enchanting in the East.  Secondly, there was not the faintest masquerade of piety among the majority of those rather seedy scamps. And, thirdly, he had the supreme satisfaction of arresting an abbot and carrying him off, captive of the author’s bow and spear.

Doubtless, other European travelers after the author’s day had threaded the picturesque gorges of the Diamond Mountains; and, for all he knew, since the vacuum-cleaner of Japanese rule had sucked out the dust and dirt from the crannies and corners of the dilapidated old Korean tenement, the monasteries might, by 1924, have been expurgated and the monks made respectable, and a road for motor cars driven to the threshold of Keumkang San.  But, as the author was one of the earliest Europeans to visit those exquisite retreats, now 32 years ago (October 1892), it was worth while to set down a few of his memories of the scene as it was in those unregenerate days of mingled rascality and romance.  In his book on Korea, he described the incidents and features of travel as he saw them in that singularly backward and unsophisticated country – the little, sturdy, combative ponies; the garrulous, quarrelsome, lazy pony-men, or mapus; the indolent, strong-limbed people; the picturesque variety of scenery, the perfect climate; the abundance of winged game; the torchlit marshes at night; the total absence of roads; the incredibly disgusting native inns.  It was amid such surroundings that the author’s acquaintance with the Korean cloister was made.  He and his group were marching from Wensan, a port on the eastern coast, to the capital, Seoul, a distance of 170 miles; but they deviated from the familiar track to visit the monasteries to the east of the road.  It was soon after passing Namsan, 15 miles from Wensan, that they left the plain and plunged into the interior of a wooded range.  Their destination was the monastery of Syekwangsa, the chief monastic establishment in Korea, founded about 500 years prior.  The bridle-path followed the windings of a sylvan glen, down which brawled a mountain stream.  On either side were rocks on whose surface centuries of Pilgrims inscribed their names.  In turn, they passed the cemetery of the monks, then came to a hollowed amphitheater, where, on terrace above terrace, stood the monastic buildings.

It was near midnight when they arrived and presented their papers to the abbot.  He showed them to their quarters, and there they cooked and ate their meal, before the whole company of monks, not getting to bed until two in the morning.  Their sleep was on a floor stretched with oiled paper; in the middle stood an altar and a Buddha behind glass.  Daylight had not dawned before they were aroused by the peripatetic tramp of an early monk, tapping a drum, and singing a chant.  They rose and dressed before an appreciative crowd, who took an interest in their equipment, particularly their sponges and binoculars.  Then the abbot appeared to conduct them around.  One temple at the side contained a hideously painted wooden Buddha.  A cluster of buildings to the left of the entrance, terminated in a prayer platform that overhung the torrent, was said to be reserved for the King.  In the side courts of the enclosure were the upper parts of the painted stone figures of Lohans, disciples of Buddha who framed the Sacred Canon with him in India.  Those images had a grotesque leer upon their whitened faces.  As they left, at 8:30 a. m., the good abbot accompanied them to the gateway, and when the author offered him a paltry gratuity of one yen for the night’s hospitality.  He asked for two, and the author could not resist that pathetic appeal.  They struck out eastward for their goal in the Diamond Mountains on the afternoon of the next day.  The night was spent in the native village of Sinhachang, where a rustic bridge of sticks and shrubs spanned a mountain stream.  On the next day they climbed a pass to a small shrine, which contained the offerings of generations of pilgrims and two pictures – the King with two boys, and the Queen with two girls.  But that was not the real interest.  Before them laid a view more beautiful than the Matoppo Hills in South Africa.  Four successive ridges filled the foreground.  Each needed to be climbed and descended before the Diamond Mountains, the fifth in the sequence, was reached.

It could be seen, standing up beyond and higher than its outer barricades, thickly mantled up to its shoulders, above which a battlement of splintered crags cut a fretwork pattern against the sky.  The last valley bottom was crossed, the last river was forded; the main range, in its livery of crimson and gold, was now in front of them.  A lovely walk through a piney glade, past monastic resthouses and under the Red Arrow Gate, that was the precursor of all buildings in Korea under royal patronage, led to a clear space, where, above the rushing torrent, a cluster of buildings stood with their backs to a wooded hill.  Those were the halls of the Chongansa Monastery, or the Temple of Eternal Rest, the oldest and most famous of the monasteries of the Diamond Mountains.  First was an open-terraced gateway, completely hung with tablets recording the names of subscribers and containing a grotesque wooden monster painted red, green, and white, representing one of the semi-deified heroes or warriors, genii or spirits, who had been added in the passage of time to the Buddhist Pantheon.  A big bell hung in a sort of wooden pen adjoining.  Next, they passed through a pillared chamber into the courtyard of the monastery, at the head of which stood the main temple.  The guest houses were at the side.  In the central hall of the temple a gilded Buddha was seated in the middle of a raised wooden platform, painted red.  Above his head was a fantastically carved and painted canopy, and in front of his face was suspended a green gauze veil.  Six great wooden pillars, colored red, supported the roof, which was painted blue and green.  At the side of the hall was a painted scene containing three Buddhas, in front of whom were three colossal images of warriors with diabolical faces.  Below the Buddhas was a low stool or altar with a copy of the scripture and a small brass bell.  On the right of the courtyard stood smaller detached temples.  The second largest of those pavilions contained a fine pagoda canopy over the seated Buddha.

Evensong began soon after their arrival.  A young monk knelt on a circular mat, intoned the conventional phrases, struck a brass bell with a deer horn, and touched his forehead on the ground.  They were accommodated in a guest hall or temple, the floor of which was covered with the famous Korean paper that glistened like worn oilcloth.  They unrolled their bedding at the foot of the altar, whence a miniature Buddha smiled down upon them from a sort of cage.  The monks retired at 7 p. m. and left them to themselves.  In the morning, they saw the pad-marks and droppings of a tiger, which had entered the courtyard during the night and paced around the closed buildings.  The jungles of northern Korea abounded in those animals, which levied an ample toll on animal and human life and were pursued by hunters with primitive weapons or caught in traps or pits.  [See: “Exploring Unknown Corners of the Hermit Kingdom,” July 1919, The Geographic.]  It was in the early centuries of the Christian Era that Buddhism made its way, it was alleged, from India, but much more probably from China, into the Korean peninsula.  In time, it became not only the cult of the ruling class, but also the popular creed of the people.  For more than a thousand years pilgrims from China and surrounding countries traveled great distances to its altars.  Then, more than three centuries prior [to 1924], came the period in which Buddhism was rejected and despised, being prosecuted by the court, whose creed was Confucianism.  No monk was allowed to enter the gates of the capital.  The priests were degraded to the lowest class and abandoned by the population.  Some of the monasteries were destroyed by fire; other fell into decay.  The survivors, no longer the haunts of piety and devotion, became pleasure resorts for the upper class, who enjoyed enjoyments, often of the least reputable kind.  The monks became outcasts, addicted to lives of depravity and indolence.  From that cloud the Korean cloister had never recovered.

The seclusion and beauty of those mountain fastnesses at once attracted immigrants and afforded them protection.  No other people on earth were so passionately addicted to sightseeing and pleasure-seeking or so sensitive to the charm of landscape as the Koreans.  They would travel miles on foot to climb a pass or see a view, celebrating their arrival on the crest by a mild jollification and by depositing a stone or hanging a rag in the little wayside shrine.  To a people with such tastes, the Diamond Mountains had always appealed with an irresistible fascination.  There, in an area only 30 miles long and 20 miles broad, shut off from the rest of the world and accessible only by a few mountain passes, were still [in 1924] to be found more than 40 monasteries, which, at the time of the author’s visit, contained 300 to 400 monks, as well as a small number of nuns, and a thousand lay servitors.  In 1914, after the Japanese annexation, the numbers were: monks, 443; nuns, 85.  They subsisted on mendicancy, wandering about the country, alms-bowl in hand, and extracting liberal supplies either for the endowment of their idleness or the rebuilding and redecoration of their dilapidated shrines.  They devoted the day after our arrival at Chongansa to a march on foot to the neighboring monasteries of Pakhuam, Pyounsa, Potakam, Makayum, Panyang, and Yuchonsa.  The march was on the valley bottom, in or along side of the torrent bed.  Pakhuam was a tiny monastery, with only three inmates.  Pyounsa, with ten, was larger, and it had an abbot.  There, was a newly painted temple with a portentous drum resting on the back of a monster.  As they proceeded upstream, the surface was scarred with pilgrims’ names carved deeply in the rock.  Behind Pyounsa, at the top of the hill (2,750 feet), was seen the great view of the “Twelve Thousand Peaks,” said to be the grandest in Korea.  Potakam was not a place of residence, but an altar to Kwanyin (the Goddess of Mercy), built up high on a ledge to a right of the valley.

Near Makayum was a colossal image of Buddha, known as the Myokil Sang, 40 to 50 feet high, sculpted in relief on the face of the rock, with a small stone altar in front.  Near Makayum was some of the loveliest scenery in those mountains.  There, in a very beautiful ravine, called Manpoktong, or the Grotto of Myriad Cascades, was the Pearl Pool, Chinjutam.  A neighboring peak, with a wonderful outline, was Sajapong, the Lion Peak, and a little farther to the northeast were two Manmulsangs, New and Old, which meant “Aspects of Myriad Things,” the idea being that the rocks resembled all existing shapes in the world.  From there, they crossed the watershed by a very steep climb over the Naimuzairyung Pass, 4,300 feet above the sea, which was visible from it in clear weather, and descended upon the small monastery of Panyang, and the much larger and recently restored establishment of Yuchonsa.  A great deal of money had been spent there; and the abbot and his following, of whom 13 monks and 8 lads were home (there was said to be 100 monks in all), were of a different plane, both of cleanliness and manners, from their neighbors.  In 1924, Yuchonsa was the largest monastery in the Diamond Mountains and comprises of no fewer than 22 buildings.  The main temple contained an iconostasis with 53 little images of Buddha, each perched on a little stand and framed in a grotesquely colored background.  On either side of that monstrosity were two great fan-shaped bouquets of scarlet and white flowers.  A nine-storied stone pagoda stood in the court, on the right hand of which were three small temples with seated figures all around and fresh paintings on the ceiling.  The guest chambers of that monastery were the best that they had seen, and they ate their lunch in a small room with papered floor, warmed by a flue beneath.  The day’s march covered between 25 and 30 miles.  It was as glorious as any that had preceded it, though it was fatiguing; in parts it was a nasty climb.  The torrents were crossed and recrossed many times by slender bridges.

The return journey from Yuchonsa to Chongansa was made by a different route, and they did not get back until 7:30 p. m., after a hike of 13 hours.  After another night at the foot of the altar whence the smiling Buddha looked down, they packed up before 6 in the morning to resume their journey to Seoul.  Then, the authors watch and chain, his knife, and his money were found to have disappeared overnight.  A prolonged altercation ensued. Over an hour was spent on that futile fusillade when it became necessary to act.  They announced their intention to take the abbot with them to Seoul, and they placed him in the custody of the two, official yamen, who had been deputed to accompany their party.  At 7:15 a. m. they were on the road, the arrested abbot walking sulkily between his two guards in the rear.  They had not proceeded for more than a quarter mile when a shout was heard from behind and a monk came running up with the watch and chain and knife.  The cash had, of course, disappeared.  The abbot was released, and returned to his peccant flock, without his customary tip, since his followers had anticipated its voluntary presentation.  Had they taken him to Seoul, the author trembled to think what might have been his fate.  From the valley they presently climbed to the top of the Tanpa Ryong, or Crop-hair Ridge.  There was a magnificent double view – on the one side the Keumkang San range, 20 miles in length; on the other side a valley equally as noble as the one they had just left, and beyond that, the mountains billow rolling upon billow for 60 or 70 miles, till lost in the blue haze of the horizon.  Next day they rejoined the main road to Seoul at Changdo; and that ended the author’s visit to the monasteries of the Diamond Mountains.  Since the Japanese annexation of Korea, the monasteries had been subjected to strict regulations.  There was an examination for the priesthood.  The author feared that he would not recognize the monasteries if he visited in 1924.

 

 

The second article in this month’s issue is entitled “Goldfish and Their Cultivation in America” and was written by Hugh M. Smith.  The article itself is part of a larger field guide which also contains a set of eight color plates containing “Twenty Goldfish Portraits in Full Color,” “Paintings from Life by Hashime Murayama.”  The rest of the field guide is a of thirteen descriptions with headings and links to the plate containing the fish described.  The field guide contains “22 Illustrations,” of which eight are the color plates and the remaining fourteen are black-and-white photographs interspersed through the article and descriptions.  None of the black-and-white photos are full-page in size.  The plates, numbered I through VIII in Roman numerals, represent pages 385 to 392 of this issue.

The fascinating, instructive, and profitable pastime of keeping and cultivating goldfish had many devotees in the U. S. and recent years [in 1924] had witnessed a widespread increase in interest in the subject.  That interest was part of a larger “get close to Nature” movement.  The popularity of the goldfish depended on the attractive form and color of the different varieties, on the readiness with which they submitted to the limitations of amateur knowledge and facilities, and on the low cost and ease of obtaining desirable fish for ponds, fountains, and aquaria.  Nevertheless, only a small number of people had come under the goldfish spell.  A genuine treat awaited the men, women, and children who for the first time venture into that seductive field.  The goldfish was the most extensively cultivated and most widely used of all purely decorative creatures.  In the number and distinctiveness of varieties that had been produced by cultivation, it held front rank among animals.  In the exquisite beauty and astonishing combinations of form and color that had been achieved by the fanciers of Asia, Europe, and America through long generations of patient effort, it occupied an absolutely unique position.  Although it was one of the best-known fishes in America, the cultivated goldfish was an Asiatic immigrant.  Welcomed to our shores nearly fifty years prior [to 1924], it not only had adapted itself to our environment, but had undergone substantial improvement and acquired features that had a distinctive American stamp.  The goldfish belonged to the Carp, or Minnow, family (Cyprinidae), which had several thousand members.  Those fishes were most numerous in Asia and North America, and were one of the most important fish families to the human race.  The wild fish from which the numerous cultivated varieties of goldfish had been derived was a plain, inconspicuous species without any suggestion of the possibilities of development in form and color to which it had proved susceptible.

The wild goldfish resembled the common domesticated Asiatic Carp; and both were originally placed in the same genus, with the goldfish named Cyprinus auratus.  The goldfish was readily distinguished from Asiatic Carp by the absence of little fleshy appendages, called barbels, at the corners of the mouth.  The goldfish was later assigned to the same genus as the Crucian Carp, of Europe and Western Asia, and in 1924, its scientific name was Carassius auratus.  The ancestral home of the goldfish was China, where it abounded in a wild state.  It existed, and was widely distributed throughout Japan, but there was a possibility that the wild fish were not indigenous in Japan, but had escaped from cultivation and reverted to its original character, just as it had in Europe and America.  Goldfish cultivation was realized at a very early date by the Chinese, who were credited for establishing the colored variety of the wild fish, for initiating a fashion which had not waned, but had grown in popularity, and for developing new features in color and form which became the basis for most or all the remarkable varieties that were known to modern fanciers.  At a very remote time the Chinese began to breed goldfish and to produce new varieties.  Koreans also participated in the early cultivation of goldfish, but in a minor role.  The colors and forms the Chinese apparently favored and eventually established were indications of the artistic instincts of the race.  The expression of Chinese art as manifested in goldfish laid mainly in the production of grotesque, bizarre, or horrifying forms.  This was in strong contrast to the Japanese who had in general sought to produce the graceful, harmonious, and pleasing.  Characteristic features which the Chinese engrafted on the goldfish stock were dragon eyes, finless backs, and calico colors.  In Japan, the colored goldfish was known from the year 1500.  It came from China, either directly or through Korea or the Ryu-Kyu Islands.  The Japanese at an early date began to improve the goldfish from China.

Early European travelers in China took back accounts of the striking goldfish which they found being cultivated in various parts of the Celestial Empire, and finally some living specimens reached Europe.  Only a very hardy fish could have withstood such a voyage.  The first goldfish to reach Europe may have arrived in England as early as 1566, but a more authentic date was 1691.  At a much later time, the fish were received in France.  In the mid-eighteenth century, goldfish were brought as a present to Madame de Pompadour, of the court of Louis XV.  In more recent years, goldfish varieties were extensively imported from Japan, and goldfish rearing began in Great Britain and continental Europe, especially Germany.  The direct importation of Oriental goldfish into the U. S. began at a comparatively recent date.  The first specimen was brought by Rear Admiral Daniel Ammen, U. S. N., in 1878, and presented to the U. S. Fish Commissioner.  They were extensively bred at Government nurseries in Washington.  Subsequently, large numbers of Japanese goldfish were brought into the U. S. by private fanciers and dealers, and other importations were made from Europe.  The different varieties were widely introduced into the U. S. and were grown in such large quantities that further importations were, for the most part, unnecessary, except to introduce new strains.  In the group of fishes to which the goldfish belonged, there was a well-marked tendency toward albinism.  A deficiency of the olivaceous pigment in the skin of the wild goldfish left a whitish, yellowish, or golden color; while irregular distribution or concentration of that pigment resulted in a variegated coloration, with dark green or black spots or areas separated from lighter ones.  By the selection of abnormally colored individuals for breeding purposes, light and variegated races were in time established.  Abnormalities of shape and structure might have been developed and perpetuated in the same way.

It seemed probable that the color variations came first and the abnormalities in form arose later in incipient or already established color varieties.  That might have been the result of unnatural conditions attending efforts of the early fish culturists to perfect the varieties of light-colored or variegated fish.  The goldfish had proved to be a very plastic species, as shown by the profound modifications in form and color that had been brought about in modern times by the experimental efforts of Japanese and American breeders.  Future culturists might be able to develop varieties as extraordinary as any that had heretofore [in 1924] been produces.  It was that possibility that had added to the fascination of goldfish culture, which held the interest of amateurs and professionals for so many centuries.  Other factors included the fish’s hardiness, prolificness, and amenability to complete domestication.  The evolution of the modern goldfish varieties received attention of biologists in Asia, Europe, and America.  What had been achieved had been in accordance with natural laws, of which all the earlier and many of the later culturists were ignorant, their efforts being largely empirical.  Especially remarkable was the development of the caudal and anal fins, both of which had assumed a character that did not occur in Nature.  In the wild those fins were always single, but in several domesticated varieties they were doubled.  Modification of the caudal fin by selective breeding was one of the special aims and achievements of the modern goldfish fanciers.  The extent to which the simple, small tail fin of the wild fish had been gradually developed was one of the wonders of science.  All goldfish had scales, but varieties had been developed whose scales were thin and transparent, almost invisible.  To those fish the inaccurate but convenient term of “scaleless” had been applied by fanciers.  The scaleless fish were less hardy than others of the same variety, being very sensitive to low temperature.

One of the bizarre features produced in goldfish by Chinese breeders was an abnormality of the eyeballs, giving rise to varieties known in China as Dragon-eyes and in Europe and America as Telescopes and Celestials or Celestial Telescopes.  That characteristic probably originated in China at a very remote period.  It was unknown in Japanese fish until the close of the Chino-Japanese War, in 1894-5.  Telescopes had been extensively bred in Japan and America.  The name Telescope had become generally adopted for those fish, but was not very apt.  The eyes were not telescopic, but were extremely myopic, or short-sighted.  Either the Chinese name of Dragon-eye or the Japanese name of Demekin (meaning pop-eyed) seemed preferable.  The fish had very defective sight, and were likely to injure the eye by swimming against hard objects, and then become blind.  The development of the protruding eyes was brought about in a similar manner that other features had been acquired – by selective breeding.  The large and growing demand for goldfish for ornamental purposes and for the delectation of amateurs had led to the establishment in the U. S. of a trade of considerable magnitude.  The raising of the fish for market had attained large proportions, and goldfish farms in various parts of the country supplied wholesale quantities for the retail trade.  Among the large-scale establishments, those in Frederick County, Maryland; Martinsville, Indiana; Thornburg, Iowa; and Langdon, Kansas were noted by the author.  Goldfish farming in Frederick County, Maryland, began about 1889, and in recent years [to 1924], from 35 to 40 establishments were in operation, employing several hundred men and boys during the busiest part of the season.  The annual output, consisting almost entirely of the common variety, amounted to between three and four million fish, which were sent to distributors in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Cincinnati, Toledo, and other cities.

At a goldfish farm in Indiana, many varieties were bred in the 200 ponds covering an area of 100 acres, with facilities for producing five million fish annually.  The ponds were drawn in autumn, the young of the year taken out, counted, sorted, and shipped in cans or tubs for the retail trade.  Despite the large number of young goldfish put on market each season, the demand usually far exceeded the supply.  In various American cities, as in Japan and Europe, particularly in Germany, goldfish breeders and fanciers had formed associations for mutual pleasure, instruction, and profit.  Goldfish and aquarium societies existed in Boston, New York, Brooklyn, Buffalo, Jersey City, Newark, Philadelphia, Lancaster, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, St. Louis, Denver, and San Francisco.  Goldfish societies held public exhibitions, discussions, and competitions, with the awarding of prizes for the best specimens of different classes.  The various societies had adopted fixed rules for judging the quality of the different breeds and scales of value for particular features, just as in dog, poultry, or cattle show.  The varieties of goldfish bred by American fanciers in 1924 comprised of about a score of well-recognized forms with distinctive names, together with a number of minor forms.  Nineteen varieties are represented in the accompanying plates – the Common goldfish, the Comets, the Fringetails and Veiltails, the Nymphs, the Fantails, the Veiltail Telescopes, the Celestial Telescopes, the Chinese or Old Style Telescopes, the Veiltail Moor Telescopes, the Lionheads, the Orandas, and the Shubunkins.

The plants in a goldfish aquarium were ornamental and they were also extremely useful.  They gave off oxygen and their roots absorbed impurities.  The Waterweed was a widely used aquarium plant.  It was moss-like, grew on a fragile stem, and was a good oxygenator.  The submerged Spatterdock was a relatively new aquarium introduction.  It had a spade-shaped leaf.  The Fanwart was a veritable wildflower of the ponds along the Atlantic seaboard from Maryland to North Carolina.  Its leaves were fine-cut, fanlike, and bright green.  One variety, the Rose Fanwort, had a red stem with the red extending to the lower side of the leaves.  The Water Seedbox, from South America, was so named for the peculiar capsules in which its seeds were produced.

 

The original water-color paintings are about twice the size of the reproductions in this number of The Geographic.  The following list is of headings from the description of the varieties of goldfish in this field guide.  It includes the goldfish variety’s name and the plate(s) it is displayed on:

• “Common Goldfish – Wakin” – Plate IV
• “Comet Goldfish” – Plates I and VI
• “Fringetail Goldfish – Ryukin” – Plates I and VIII
• “Veiltail Goldfish” – Plates VI and VII
• “Nymph Goldfish” – Plates I and V
• “Fantail Goldfish” – Plate VIII
• “Veiltail or Broadtail Telescope Goldfish” – Plates II and III
• “Chinese Telescope Goldfish” – Plates II and VI
• “Celestial Telescope Goldfish” – Plate II
• “Veiltail Moor Telescope Goldfish” – Plate VIII
• “Japanese Lionhead Goldfish” – Plate III
• “Oranda – Dutch Lionhead Goldfish” – Plate V
• “Shubunkin – Calico Goldfish” – Plate VII

 

 

The third article in this month’s issue is entitled “Latvia, Home of the Letts” and was written by Maynard Owen Williams, author of “The Coast of Corsica,” “At the Tomb of Tutankhamen,” “Through the Heart of Hindustan,” “Russia’s Orphan Races,” etc. in the National Geographic Magazine.  The article has an internal subtitle: “One of the Baltic Republics Which Is Successfully Worling Its Way to Stability.”  It contains forty-eight black-and-white photographs, of which thirteen are full-page in size.  The article also contains a sketch map of Latvia on page 405.  Note: this was one of the maps that the late Philip Riviere missed.

Five hundred years prior to 1924, when Riga ranked with Lubeck, Hamburg, and Bremen as one of the chief cities of the Hanseatic League, it had a bachelors’ club, made up of men from out of town, called the Schwarzhaupter Gilde, or Blackheads.  Their patron was St. George, perpetually engaged in almost impaling a dragon.  The sign of their society was a blackamoor’s head.  When they went to church, they sat in stalls on the end of which were carved big blackamoor heads.  After all those years, the guild still existed in 1924; their clubhouse, standing above the tiny stream from which the city took its name, was still one of the showplaces of Riga, and those barbaric carvings, which would look better in a minstrel show than in a church, still decorated the doors of their high pews in the Lutheran Cathedral.  The author imagined the side view of one of those carvings, laid flat, represented the map of Latvia – lying on Lithuania to the south, top of the head against Soviet Russia to the east, and facing up at Estonia to the north.  The Adam’s apple of the slender throat was Riga, once a great industrial city, larger than Stockholm, Christiania, or Copenhagen, and [in 1924] a thriving capital.  As the author left the Alps, late in August, he was asked where he was going and responded, Latvia, the person did not know where Latvia was. Sitting in one of Riga’s cozy cafes five days later, the author realized how wrong his own preconceptions of the country had been.  Beneath shaded lamps, light chatter rose.  New Riga was fortifying itself with dainties before going to the 7 o’clock opera.  Serious dinning would not begin until eleven, when cabarets took up the task of entertaining where café and “Carman” left off.  Riga, but yesterday [in 1924] cluttered with barricades and cratered with shell-fire, now bustled with life.  After the cabarets had ceased to sparkle, at two in the morning, new Latvia went out to Luna Park, to eat, drink, and be merry until the sun rose over the Stintsee.

Latvia suffered worse from the war than did Belgium.  In the Riga district alone, 24,000 buildings were completely destroyed; but Riga was still an unbelievably fine city [in 1924].  In the birthright of achieved freedom, the new capital got something the best of it.  Already a splendid metropolis, with fine streets, excellent buildings, and a wonderful center-of-the-city park system, it had grafted on to it a more or less expensive government, with nine legations abroad and the most perfectly balanced budget in the world.  The wealth of Latvia was in its farms.  Industry was almost dead; trade was reduced to a fraction of its former volume; yet Riga was a city of luxury, and the countryside which furnished the wealth seemed cheerless and poverty-stricken by comparison.  Ten years prior, Latvia’s largest city had four times as many industrial workers as there were in the whole Republic in 1924.  The quaint “Old Town,” bristling with church spires, had become encircled by industrial plants which supplied Russia with a diversity of products.  In 1924, those chimneys gave forth no smoke, hundreds of those windows were broken, and many of those factory walls lied in ruins.  The machinery was evacuated into Russia during the war and, furthermore, there were no markets in which competition with western Europe was possible.  The largest factory in Riga made rubbers.  If there was anyplace in the world last summer in [1924] where there was a need for rubbers or raincoats, that place was Latvia; yet if the Provodnik factory in Riga worked at full capacity for a week, it would produce enough rubber goods to last Latvia and the surrounding countries for a year.  To rehabilitate the factories would not only flood the available markets with goods for which there would be scant sales, but would also flood Riga with communist laborers, whose presence in such numbers would menace the stability of the State.

In Riga there was free import and export of gold and silver, and during the author’s prolonged stay in Latvia the exchange rate did not vary a santime.  In 1924 Europe those two facts stood out like twin lighthouses marking a channel between dark and dangerous coasts.  In 1922, there were many things which one simply could not buy.  An automobile for pleasure purposes was almost a curiosity.  Food was cheap, but of poor quality.  Drink was a memory and a hope.  In 1924, the shops had everything one could ask for.  Once he had discovered the proper places, the traveler could dine better in Riga than in most European capitals.  The wine card was long and with high figures.  Although the cost of a taxi was three times what it was in Paris, the modern Lett thought nothing of running down to the Strand in summer just for the cooling ride along the sand dunes beside the Baltic.  After years of tossing on the stormy sea of war and uncertainty, Jack Lett was spending his money like a sailor ashore.  Riga was a homelike city without an individual home; a fresh green city without a private lawn, and with immaculate streets kept clean by women whitewings; a city of flower girls wrinkled with age and women “newsies,” sitting out in the cold rain selling Latvia’s surprising number of newspapers and journals; of elevators in which only the favored rode; of ultramodern cabarets and lotto clubs that succeeded where dance halls failed; of countless children and parks; Of stylish, trim, silk-stockinged city women and Knobby-ankled, stocky country women; of splendid churches and an equally splendid Opera; and of extraordinary portrait photographers and people who objected to modern portraits and wanted everything perfect.  Strictly speaking, Riga was not a seaport.  It was closed to navigation for a few weeks in winter.  Vessels drawing up to 22 feet went up a narrow river for ten miles and tied up at the quay beside the old castle.

Having already served for 160 years, that ancient schloss was rebuilt when Columbus was trying to get Ferdinand and Isabella to finance his faith.  Above one of the round towers flew, not the flag of Latvia, but that of the President of the Republic. It had two griffins, facing each other.  One represented the Kurzeme and Zemgale, the two southwestern provinces, and the other, Vidzeme and Latgale.  The intricate banner, born November 18, 1918.  Its presence on that ancient castle, dating back nearly 600 years [from 1924], proclaimed it to be the nation’s White House.  The walls of Riga facing the Daugave assumed fairy splendor of silver and gold at sunset.  Under a blue sky from the side, the Opera was barnlike, but by late afternoon, it became a charming casket of silver and gold.  By moonlight, those yellow walls turned marble, and the colonnade in front reminded one of the Parthenon.  Opera was well mounted there, and well sung, although the Letts words sounded strange.  There were too many consonants and they got in one another’s way.  The principals were well cast and the chorus is large and well trained.  The young women, with their naturally fine figures, had a charm which exceeded that of the Chorus of Paris.  Tickets at Riga cost from four to eighty cents.  Latvia modestly claimed to be 5,000 years old.  Undoubtedly, the Letts inhabited their land from a very early date, but because folklore, superstitious rites, and pagan ceremonies were more common than reading, writing, and arithmetic, their remote beginnings were lost in a fog of legend.  By the middle of the 12^th century, exact records came into use, and Christianity introduced.  In 1201, Bishop Albert founded Riga and the next year founded the Order of the Brothers of the Sword, a group of northern Crusaders who paved the way for the Baltic barons and their huge landholdings, which were only [in 1924] being broken up.

When the Order of the Sword was threatened, it joined the Teutonic Order, whose sanction of force as a means of Christianization was like unto theirs.  They found plenty of fighting for several centuries.  The conquest of Riga by Gustavus Adolphus, the year the Mayflower landed, was the biggest boost toward freedom that had been give to the Letts.  The Russian Tsar next laid waste the land, but failed to capture Riga.  Under Peter the Great, Russia assumed control and civil, religious, and linguistic rights were granted.  In 1705, Kurzeme was annexed to Russia, and in the time of Alexander III’s policies the Russian language was forced on the people.  All that time, from 1200 on, the German landlords were “digging in” for a long occupation.  The lands recently [in 1924] taken over by the Republic of Latvia had not been paid to their former exploiters.  All that was rather complex.  The revolution of 1905 gave to the Tsar and the German landlords a good clue to what was coming to them, and for 13 years the Letts stored up hate and patriotism against the day they would win their freedom.  A difficulty in 1924 was that hate, in achieving its purpose, developed a momentum of its own.  Chauvinism did not rule Latvia.  Peace and security were general, but every position held by a Russian or a German was subject to attacks.  Many Letts spoke three languages.  Once freed, the Letts despised Russian and German, both world languages.  Lettish was an Indo-European tongue, perhaps allied to Sanskrit.  It served fewer people than there were in Philadelphia, in an area smaller than Maine.  In the old days, the signs in Riga were trilingual, with Lettish at the bottom.  After seven centuries of cruel exploitation and months of bitter fighting against Germany and Russia, the Letts had new signs printed with Lettish at the top.  That did not satisfy the people, who painted over the German and Russian on most signs, even street names and streetcar stops, which confused foreign tourists.

Perhaps Riga was too splendid a city for the present life of Latvia.  Reduced to one-third of its population and changed from an industrial city to a white-collar capital, it could not put all of itself into repair.  There were sections where bats nested before workers again occupied the buildings.  But, leaving aside those restricted areas, Riga was neat and trim.  From one end of Latvia to the other, bridges were being rebuilt, roads restored, buildings put in order, and signs painted.  The women whitewings did their work well.  An hour after the open-air markets had broken up, the piles of litter were removed.  The parks were maintained in perfect condition.  Riga came as near to being a spotless town as any city in Europe.  During the author’s stay, the Letts were making the change from rubles to latts or gold francs, at 50 rubles or 100 santimes to the latt.  The confusion was indescribable.  The Lett, like Riga, was a strange mixture of the old and new.  He had the qualities of primitive peasant and pushing businessman.  The Letts loved all kinds of amusement, but the one indoor sport that could break up anything, was lotto.  The most sumptuous dancing palace in Riga was given over to that game, which held the people under its spell until the police came to say the party was over for the night.  Every day, Riga renewed its touch with the soil.  Along the quay and in the old Alexander Platz were held open-air markets to which the peasants brought their flowers, vegetables, fruits, and mushrooms.  There were long rows of country wagons full of cabbages and kraut, carrots, potatoes, and onions.  There were many kinds of fruit.  On a single visit, the author found cherries, pears, apples, blueberries, gooseberries, raspberries, plums, currants, and a red berry that had no English name.  The strawberries grown beside the Baltic were said to surpass any other in the world.  Vegetables were plentiful and of excellent quality, but the restaurants overcharged for them.

Less spectacular, but equally typical of Old Russia, was the weekly flea market, which was held in the Moscow suburb on Sundays.  Near at hand were small shops, but the flea market was held in the street.  Those markets were sometimes called thieves markets, but no thief would have stolen such junk.  They were rather the want-ad columns of provincial trade.  Canary birds and religious picture often figured in the exhibits.  There were always books in several languages, and sheet music.  Riga, like Leningrad, had a time schedule all its own.  Either or both the white nights of summer or the long nights of winter instilled late habits.  Nothing but the opera got underway until late.  The Government workers had a one-session day, so they had their lunches after three.  For the author, it was not a question of where to eat, but when.  The 7 o’clock opera thus became a sort of matinee and the after-theater cabaret came into its own.  The nightlife in Riga started late and reached top speed long after midnight.  More than half the trains in Latvia in summer ran between the capital and the Strand.  Motor busses left the city at seven and returned at two in the morning.  From Bulli to Dubulti there ran a big, wooded dune rising between the summer homes, hidden in the pine forest, and the fine sand beach.  There were several modest bath houses, and the fishers dried their nets on stakes driven into the sand.  Latvia was mainly an agricultural country, about equally divided among cultivated fields, forests and pastures, although peatbogs covered 10% of the land.  The great estates of the Baltic barons were being broken up and new rooftrees were rising from one end of the country to the other.  Cooperative societies with their own grain elevators, repair shops, experimental farms, agricultural schools, and printing offices, were assuming the burden of technical education, machine buying, and butter and crop selling.  Until the division of the estates, that was borne by the landed proprietors.

Latvia’s agrarian reforms had not endeared her to all nations, but it had done much to relieve the miseries of a land-hungry peasantry and to prevent communism from becoming paramount in the politics of the State.  With Bolshevism pressing in one side and Baltic barons sitting on the lid, something had to happen.  The lid blew off.  By dividing the estates, the whole problem of agriculture was changed and the day of the tractor delayed.  The administration of an estate of 180,000 acres was one thing; its division among 4,500 new proprietors, each owning 40 acres, introduced new problems, economic and technical, as well as political.  Latvia assumed it could easily become a second Denmark by approximating the human conditions among the Danes.  The old chaussee between Berlin and St. Petersburg, across what was Latvia, was one of the finest roads in the world.  At the time of his visit, several road crews were hard at work, piling stone, crushing it with modern machinery, and resurfacing that highway, which was long subject to shellfire and war traffic and was only then being thoroughly restored.  The region between Riga and Jelgava had not lost its war look.  Trenches still sprawled across the thin soil.  Barbed wire entanglements were hidden in the underbrush.  Several of the stations were dwarfed by piles of barbed wire.  Scores of peasants were living in shelters not much better than those used by the troops during the war.  Cement gun emplacements were boarded up in the back and provided with a single window.  In one, an old woman and her son were living.  Along the roadsides and in fields young girls and boys were watching their herds.  Splendid as was the capital of Latvia, it was in the country that one was most impressed by the fight those people were making.  The country was recovering.  The flocks and herds were increasing, and fields were producing their harvests.  The factories were in ruin, but the fields, forests, pastures, and flocks were assets earning immediate returns.

Much as it dominated the life of Latvia, agriculture beside the Baltic was not spectacular.  The people wore little color and no distinctive costumes, except in remote locations, and neither field nor forest had such majesty as one hoped to find.  Flax and lumber were Latvia’s main exports, and, in Riga, both were impressive.  Flax was a government monopoly and was conditioned and inspected as was silk in Japan.  It was hard for the author to believe that flax was more than a catch-crop filling in odd corners, instead of a mainstay of Lettish commerce, rising to 35,000 tons a year.  The same was true of lumber.  Although one was never out of sight of trees and often in the heart of a forest, it was not until a wharf or a sawmill was approached that the lumber of Latvia became impressive.  At Riga, Liepaja, and Ventspils, lumberyards were the most prominent features of the scene; yet it represented only one-seventh of the total production.  Two-thirds of Latvia’s lumber was used near the place it was grown; yet her export lumber had made an enviable reputation.  Jelgava, the chief inland town of Latvia, was a dull place. For centuries, during which it was known as Mitau, the capital of Courland (the southeastern provinces).  Its main building was a palace, which took a third of a century to build and was completed in 1772.  It always had an aristocratic air, for it not only harbored Louis XVIII of France under Napoleon, but also the residence of the governor of Courland while that province had its own colony in Africa and owned the island of Tobago, off the coast of Venezuela.  During the Lettish fight for independence, the enemy were forced to withdraw from Mitau, but they took time to burn that building.  The palace was completely gutted.  Jelgava itself lacked distinction.  The big cobbled square was surrounded by mediocre buildings, and once the morning market had taken to its wheels and gone home, it was a lonesome place.  All around the town were low fields of coarse hay.

Boats were used for getting about.  The rivers there divided into a thousand tiny streams.  Small streams ran down the Lielupe, to Dudulti, on the Riga Strand.  The bright spots in Jelgava, as in every Latvian town, were the schools.  The crop of young folks was most promising.  Liepaja lied between a lake and the sea, which were joined in 1703 by a channel, in 1924 the Harbor Canal and the busiest part of the port.  Along the banks were not only modern elevators and coal hoists, but old warehouses which still served the needs of the city.  With no Russian and Siberian grain, the elevators were quiet.  North of the city was the large Military Harbor, with drydocks, repair shops, and barracks. Liepaja’s prewar hinterland extended to the Dnieper and the Don.  It handled much of central-Russia trade in winter, when Riga and Leningrad were closed to traffic.  All around Liepaja were the ruins of old forts.  After Japan’s war with Russia, Kaiser Wilhelm insisted that those forts were a menace to Germany and succeeded in blowing them up.  Outside the harbor was a Russian cruiser, which was sold by the Petrograd Soviet to some junk dealers in Germany, but was sunk while being towed south.  Legends were clustered like barnacles about that wreck, like smuggling gold out of Russia.  The main concern locally was how to get rid of that hulk, which almost closed the front door.  The Liepaja open-air market showed much activity.  One started at the lower end with barreled fish, moved past enough cabbage heads to provide enough soup for all of Russia, and stopped to see pink little pigs which came to market in a small cart drawn by a woman.  There, some young men in uniform told the author that photography was not allowed.  He found that photos could only be taken in Latvia by special permission.  Several times in Liepaja his right to take pictures was challenged and proved by the letter which the Foreign Office had kindly provided.  A lot of hard-leather moccasins were watched over by a young girl wearing a bandanna.

Milk and cheese products came next.  All those displays were in horse-drawn wagons or in handcarts only slightly smaller.  Across a narrow passage, there were the various forms of bread, ranging in size from pea-shooter to life-preserver.  There were also more orthodox loaves of white bread and round black loaves.  Carrots vied with dahlias and currants purple cherries and rosy apples added their decorative effects.  The egg-sellers sought a corner to themselves, and farther on, there were sellers of notions, and the ubiquitous peddler of glass cutters and crockery cement.  Many a young Lett died in liberating his land from German and Russian; but no one could evaluate the debt that Latvia owed to its old women.  They did not look splendid; but they were.  But for them, the land that was [in 1924] Latvia would not be.  Under pressure of occupation, when the land was stripped of its crops and hunger was the rule, those brave women carried on.  In 1924, they were the backbone of the country.  They toiled summer and winter; rain or shine; snow or sleet, driving to market and selling the produce – cheery, brave, and enduring.  The Latvian horses were not yet accustomed to the automobile.  To watch those Lettish women, handle a pair of frightened horses on a narrow road bordered by deep ditches was a sight to see.  They were as efficient as the men and not half as cruel.  At Ventspils, the author found women driving the wagons, harvesting the flax, piling the grain, tending the cattle, sweeping the streets, pulling the handcarts, running the hotel, waiting on tables, tending the street market, keeping the country stores, shoveling the sawdust, and piling the lumber trimmings at the mill.  The heavy lumber was piled by men.  One rode through that countryside where war had wrecked and woman had saved made manpower and horsepower seemed inadequate terms.  The womanpower of rural Latvia exceeded the manpower and horsepower combined.

Liepaja and Ventspils lived in the past and the future.  Linked to a huge hinterland by rail, they ranked with Riga as future ports for Russia.  Both were ice-free throughout the year, yet, in 1924, they sat idle.  Latvia was working to become a transit county.  Between 1919 and 1922, the number f usable locomotives increased from 111 to 320.  But 320 locomotives and about the same number of passenger coaches were inadequate to maintain service over nearly 2,000 miles of track – broad, standard, and narrow gauge.  Freight cars were jacked up and their axles changed from one gauge to another for passage from European to Russian lines.  But that was not done with passenger cars.  One day, the author took a trip to Sigulda and the Latvian Switzerland.  Everyone in Riga seemed to be going there.  The ticket lines for the train were so long the author got on the train without a ticket.  He paid the find and spent a delightful day looking at old castles and young folk on a holiday.  Before leaving the station, the author tried to buy a ticket back to Riga but the agent would not sell him one.  An hour before the train was due there was a line through the waiting room and the buffet, and out along the tracks in the rain.  By train time there were still a hundred people waiting in line.  Three hours late and tired, those overcrowded excursionists arrived home.  The Latvian Switzerland was no credit to its namesake, but the Letts were not mountaineers.  Although the hills were only 265 feet high, the people had all the climbing they wanted.  At Sigulda, where crumbling walls dated from 1208, the author found a peasant hut draped with ivy.  When he asked if he could photograph it, he was told that he could in prefect English by the occupant.  It was the young Prince Krapotkin, whose family had owned the estate for centuries.  He gave the author a tour of the wooded valley of the Gauja and the three ancient castles. Daugavpils was on the line to Warsaw, beside the Daugava, near the southeast corner of Latvia.

Somewhere on the road from Riga, the author passed the invisible boundary between literate Latvia and provincial Russia.  Russian was not more prominent than Lettish on the signs; instead, pictographs were used as an index of what was for sale.  Russians not only believed in signs but depended on them.  Daugavpils was only 330 miles from Leningrad, but the St. Petersburg station (as it was called in 1924) was much damaged and no trains were running.  In Daugavpils, the Russian frontier made its presence felt, not as bothersome formalities, but as a dead end of commercial life.  Grass grew between the ties of the railway.  The cheeriest place in town was the railway station.  There were fresh flowers in the restaurant.  The barbershop was without one of those ugly wax heads to which Latvian hairdressers were addicted.  The newsstand was well supplied.  The author wondered why the whole population did not go to the station and take a train – any train!  But that was not the nature of the Letts or the Russians.  They stuck it through, the Letts by determination, the Russians by philosophy.  The Lett was friendly, shrewd, conservative, persevering, and without the spirit of Russian fatalism.  Having waited so long for his opportunity, having won his freedom against such odds, he was determined to make the most of it.

 

 

The fourth and final article in this month’s issue is entitled “Crossing Asia Minor, the Country of the New Turkish Republic” and was written by Major Robert Whitney Imbrie.  There is an italicized editorial paragraph mentioning Major Imbrie’s journey made while serving as a special representative of the U. S. State Department, and his tragic death in July at the hands of a mob in Tehran, Persia.  The article contains thirty-one black-and-white photographs, of which eight are full-page in size.  One of those full-page photos serves as the frontispiece for the article.  The article also contains a sketch map of Asia Minor (Anatolia), showing the author’s route, on page 450.  Note: this was one of the maps that the late Philip Riviere missed.

The author’s party gathered their dunnage, saddles, and packs, dropped off the steamer into a small boat, and went ashore at the little port of Mersina, at the southeastern corner of Asia Minor.  It was August, 2 o’clock in the afternoon, and the heat and glare were intense.  It took a good deal to cause excitement in a country whose chief product for the last three thousand years had been war, and whose byproducts had been massacre, rape, and pillage.  However, the author’s party had been noticed, and an old gentleman came to greet them and welcome them to his home.  He was the belederies, or mayor.  Although they were in a sweat, literally, they knew enough of the Near East to realize that coffee and tobacco must precede any business.  The author warned any traveler to the Near East: if one did like strong coffee or cigarette smoke, then do not go to Turkey.  One must be prepared to drink a dozen or two cups of coffee a day, and consume as many cigarettes, if he was to get along on that trip.  Of course, if one could smoke the Turkish water pipe, so much the better.  It left a feeling as if one had been smitten with “a dull, blunt instrument.”  There was a railroad, of sorts, going from Mersina to Adana, about 50 miles to the northeast, and it was their intention to proceed on that.  The boat arrived a half hour after the daily train had departed, so the had to wait a day before the next train.  There, another characteristic of the Turk revealed itself – the attribute of courtesy and kindness toward the stranger.  In that instance it manifested itself in the offer by the owner of the only car in Mersina of the loan of his car for the journey to Adana.  A half hour later they chugged out over the bumpy road toward the northeast.  Fourteen miles out from Mersina they came to a town.  It was an unpretentious town, with narrow streets and mud houses, but its name had come down through the centuries.  This was Tarsus.  There Paul was born and educated; and there he preached.

Beneath an arch through which Saint Paul himself must have walked they passed out of town into the fast-falling darkness, and some hours later, arrived at Adana.  Adane, one of the large towns of Asia Minor, with a population of about 60,000, derived its importance from its situation as the gateway to the Cilician plain, that great stretch of fertile land.  In Adana, all the houses were flat-topped and the roofs served as bedrooms for the inhabitants.  There was no late sleeping in Adana, for as soon as the sun rose, the sleeper was happy to leave the roof for the indoors.  There was a stone bridge in Adana, some 300 yards long. One arch of which dated back to Justinian’s time.  But Adana was not an interesting town, and they were glad to get away early one morning on the Bagdad Railway.  Crossin the Cilician plain, the road entered the foothills of the Taurus Mountains.  With every foot of ascent, the grateful coolness increased.  By midday they had reached an altitude of nearly 4,000 feet and the famous Cilician Gates.  The scenery thereabouts rivaled that of Switzerland.  The afternoon saw them on the great central plateau of Asia Minor.  The barren, arid land, the desolation, the feeble streams and salt lakes, the tortured hills, were all strongly reminiscent of central Asia.  They had seen their last trees, and no longer were they to see turf.  They had passed from the land of tilling to the nomadic land of grazing – from cotton to wool.  Though Konia was lees than 200 miles from Adana, it was not until late afternoon of the day after – 36 hours later – that they slowly wheezed into our destination.  Konia was the Inconium of the ancients.  It was conquered and occupied by the Greeks, the Romans, and the Seljuks, and it crumbling walls showed traces of all those civilizations.  There, Paul first met Timothy, and there he spoke in the synagogue.  There was a legend that Inconium was the first town to emerge from the Deluge.  Located on a flat plain, the town lacked distinction, though the minarets lent charm.

In 1924, Konia was chiefly famous as the headquarters of the wealthy order of Mevlevite Dervishes, and within one mosque was the tomb of the revered founder of the order.  Those dervishes were, whirlers.  The author had watched them spin for half an hour at a time, always turning in the same direction, to the low wail of a reed flute, yet apparently never dizzy.  They now left the railroad and, with one pack animal for three people, struck out over the plateau for Angora, 150 miles almost due north.  On such a journey one went armed in case of an encounter with brigands.  Water bottles and colored glasses were essential.  To avoid attracting undue attention, they discarded occidental headgear and adopted the kalpack, which had become the distinctive headgear of nationalist Turkey, having supplanted the fez.  The only redeeming quality of the kalpack was picturesqueness.  In a country of searing sun and torrential rains, it was wholly impractical.  It was a high, flaring, brimless cone, made from the wool of an unborn lamb, hugged the forehead, and was heavy and hot.  It was either gray, black, or brown, and cost from $7 to $160.  As in Mexico, so in Turkey, a man’s position was judged by the quality of his headgear.  In saluting, the Turk did not remove his covering; he bent low, touched the hem of his garment, his heart and his kalpack, the idea being he gave you earth, his heart, and his head.  They wound through Konia’s streets and past the last outlying mud-walled gardens and almost at once entered the desert.  There was no road; merely a trail.  Occasionally, low hills broke the almost dead level, but, for the most part, the horizon was far-flung and they saw into space in every direction.  No tree or shrub, only bunch grass, broke the monotony of the landscape.  All day, save for a glaring noon at a well, they slogged along.  In riding like that, with nothing to disturb the monotonous gait of the horse, and the creaking of the saddle, with heat waves rising from a dreary landscape, one moved along in a kind of dream, it seemed unreal.

The next afternoon they sighted, far in the distance, a snow-white carpet.  It was the salt-encrusted shore of the Tuz Cheullu (the Great Salt Lake), the largest sheet of water in Asia Minor, with a circumference of 90 miles.  Its shores were a solid crust of white salt, and the reflection was blinding.  For nearly three hours they kept the lake in sight and then, their trail leading northward, they dropped it.  Shortly after leaving the lake, skirting some barren hills, they encountered their first caravan of camels.  Tied head to tail and led by a diminutive burro, they grunted along.  The author considered the camel the meanest animal known to Nature.  For several days they rode across the haggard face of the landscape, and at last, late one afternoon, they topped a rise, and there below them laid Angora.  They approached from the west and the last rays of the setting sun painted the city in a rosy glow.  The swing of the pendulum through the arch of centuries had brought little change to Angora.  Few cities could boast of more history.  There was a record of a battle fought there three hundred years before the birth of Christ.  In 1924, in the walls of the citadel, themselves seven centuries old, were seen many blocks, fragments of Roman temples, which were ruins before the construction of those walls began.  From a distance, Angora was most imposing.  Crowning a hill, the old town was crowded within a series of wall-connected towers and the houses sprawled in slipshod fashion down the hill to the swampy plain below.  But, as in most of the towns in the Near East, the beauty of distance was lost in the squalor of proximity.  The debris-cluttered streets wound about between two-story mud houses.  There was no sewage system; there were no sidewalks.  In the winter, the streets were mud, and in the summer, dust.  At night, Angora, like all Turkish towns, was dark, for there was no system of streetlights.  The shops were tiny affairs with the most primitive of stocks.  There was no bazaar worthy of its name.

Five years prior [1919], to the world at large, Angora stood for nothing, save as the name of a breed of goat or cat.  By 1924, its fame had spread round the world.  Once more, as in centuries past, its name was recorded in bold type on history’s page.  As the capital of New Turkey, that ancient little town had been the focus of attention.  Until recently it had been one of the world’s most inaccessible capitals.  It could be reached only by roads long fallen into disrepair or trail such as the one the author had come.  Beside their route from the Mediterranean, closed in winter, there was the road from Ineboli, the little Black Sea port, and the road up from Ismid, on the Sea of Marmora.  Each meant a trek of 200 miles across sparsely-settled and bandit-infested country.  In that isolated, uncomfortable town the affairs of New Turkey were conducted.  In a small building met the Grand National Assembly of Turkey.  There, the farmer sat with the teacher, the dervish with the soldier, and the professional man with the merchant in democratic conclave.  As they clattered up Angora’s main street, the muezzins were calling the faithful to evening prayer.  Darkness was almost upon them and they sought shelter.  There were no hotels; in all Asia Minor there were no hotels.  They had to go to a khan.  A khan was the oriental idea of an inn, and a very poor idea it was.  It took the form of a mud-wall enclosed courtyard, one side of which was formed by a two-story structure.  The lower story was a stable.  The lucky guests slept in the second story; the unlucky ones slept in the courtyard.  In a khan the guest must bring everything – food, bedding, drink.  The management provided nothing but shelter and bugs.  Those latter were always in stock.  Unless one was interested in international politics or in watching the governmental machinery of an infant nation, there was little in Angora to hold the attention.  Our net objective was Sivas, which lied almost due east, more than 200 miles across the Mysian plateau.

The direct road passed through Yozgad, and normally that would have been the route to follow.  But things normally are not normal in Asia Minor, and they were warned of brigands on that road.  They decided to proceed to Sivas by way of Kaisariye, a detour to the southeast, which increased the distance some 80 miles.  Before sunup one morning they swung into the saddle, rode unregretfully out of the khan yard, and headed southward into the misty hills.  They rode for three hours through dry water-courses and rocky gorges and then reached a small salt-lake, around which were clustered the few huts of a poor village.  Toward evening they reached the Kizil Irmak and crossed it by a picturesque, arched bridges.  At the south end of the bridge a disfigured stone lion, dating from Roman times, stood guard.  In the bridge itself were fragments of ancient masonry.  Though the Kizil Irmak was one of the most important rivers of the plateau, at the point of our crossing they could have thrown a stone from one side to the other.  The river there passed through a narrow gorge.  They ascended the north bank and entered a Turkoman village, having ridden 40 miles since dawn.  The country beyond the river was a lonely one.  Vast bowl-like depressions stretched away with nothing to relieve the eyes.  They seldom encountered anyone.  A great stillness prevailed; there was no movement, save when s passing breeze tossed the tumbleweed.  But there was distinct beauty born of the very desolation.  There was a solemn grandeur about the sunsets, and it was wonderful to ride in the morning and see the sun burst forth from behind the hills.  On the afternoon of the third day out from Angora, they rode through the khan gates of Kirshehr.  Kirshehr was the only town of any consequence on the way from Angora to Kaisariye.  It was a town of little tumble-down houses, but the dreariness was somewhat relieved by several fine gardens and some poplar trees.  In the town square, much bartering was going on.

They dropped into a tiny restaurant.  Over individual charcoal fires rested several cooper bowls.  In those simmered mutton, pilaf, and a kind of squash.  On a series of shelves, one above the other, were tiny charcoal fires, and before those, on vertical spit, roasted more mutton.  Turkish cooking was mysteriously complex.  Most of the dishes were morbid, some only quaint.  It was a shock to the western palate.  A Turkish meal stood not on the order of its coming.  A meat followed a sweet; a vegetable followed a pasty; and then another sweet with a soup.  It was at Kirshehr that they first witnessed the national dance of Anatolia.  A Turkish colonel invited them to see the dance.  The gladly accepted and stumble along in the dark with their host.  They came to a wide-open space.  A large bonfire lighted the scene and showed in high relief the faces of 500 soldiers grouped about in a circle.  Seats were brought for them.  A drum began to thump, then the hautboy began to wail.  A dozen men, their arms about one another’s shoulders, advanced into the circle and began the dance.  It reminded the author of the Rain Dance of the Navaho Indians.  The dance continued for an hour.  Finally, the cadence of the music changed; the dozen men dancers were supplanted by two who, facing each other, began the wild steps of the Spoon Dance.  Each of those dancers was supplied with two pairs of wooden spoons.  Those spoons the clashed together with a clicking noise, like castanets, and at the same time the performers twisted and writhed about.  Wrestling followed the dancing.  How long the performance continued the author did not know, but, as the rose to leave, a new group of dancers entered the circle, and as they stumble through the night back to their khan, the throb of the drum and the wail of the hautboy came faintly to their ears.  They left Kirshehr and journeyed southeastward over the same kind of lonely, open country.  The scene was so vast it seemed as if they were looking clear across into Persia.

Again, they made the crossing of the Kizil Irmak, this time over a bridge built by Mohammed II, and that night, when they stopped at a small village, ahead of them laid the plane of Kaisariye (Caesarea of the Bible).  The plain’s gigantic guardian, Mt. Argaeus, in the distance raised its snow-capped head some 13,000 feet in the air.  Argaeus was the highest mountain in Anatolia.  Its ascent was not particularly difficult and could be made in three days.  At the foot of the mountain lied Kaisariye, one of the oldest towns in the world.  At one time it was the seat of the kings of Cappadocia, addressed by Peter in his First Epistle.  Two and a half centuries after Christ its population was 400,000; in 1924, it had scarcely one-sixth that number.  For a Turkish town it was well built.  Many of the houses were solidly constructed of stone, but its narrow, corkscrewed streets doubled about in a most amazing and confusing way.  Once on the great trade route from Ephesus to the Euphrates, even in 1924, Kaisariye was the emporium for eastern Anatolia.  One bright, glaring morning, with Mt. Argaeus at their backs, they rode out of Kaisariye toward the northeast, after passing the town of Talas, which was old in Byzantine times.  The barren country continued and water was scarce.  After the second day the country began to change its aspect.  Occasionally, they crossed a small stream bordered by cottonwood trees.  They began to meet more people – a horseman, or an old lady atop a buffalo cart.  Listening to what in Turkey passed for music, the author wondered if it was based on the screech of the oxcart and its ungreased wheels.  [See: “East of Constantinople,” May 1923, National Geographic Magazine.]  Now and then they were fortunate enough to find a clump of trees by a spring at which to rest at noon.  One evening they rode into the village of Shehr Kishla.  It was a sad little place, with a miserable khan, with little of interest save some curious tombstones.  Shehr Kishla was the geographic center of Asia Minor.

At Shehr Kishla, the khanji brought them some delicious melons and warned them of dangers ahead.  It was better for them to stay at his khan until their party was augmented by other travelers.  They thought that his warnings were more based on his desire for them to stay rather than concern for their safety.  So, they cast off again.  They rode through a land forlorn, between bare hills, and with never a tree in sight.  By nightfall they reached a Turkish village, were assigned the guest house, and were assured that they “brought joy.”  The accommodations were not elaborate, but friendly hospitality made up for much.  At the village they added a new dish to their list of gastronomic horrors which they had already experienced.  It was called “Bulgar,” and was some mysterious preparation of wheat.  They were now less than 30 miles from the town of Sivas, so they got an early start, and left the pack horse to follow with the orderly.  The road climbed steadily, and by 10 o’clock they reached an altitude of 5,600 feet where they traversed a pass.  They crossed another range of sterile hills and from those beheld the town far away in the valley below.  Winding down, they forded a muddy stream and at high noon, under a burning sun, passed below the citadel-crowned hill and made their way through the swarming streets.  Sivas had a lurid history.  Pompey, Diocletian, and Justinian held it.  Under the Seljuks it reached its greatest prosperity and its population was 100,000.  In the eleventh century it was captured by the Turkomans, a century later by the Seljuks.  Rebuilt in 1224, it was besieged in 1400, finally passing into the hands of the Osmanli.  Many reminders of bygone civilizations there were in and about towns.  Among the best preserved and most interesting were the numerous minarets, dating from the eleventh century, but still solid, dignified, and beautiful.  They were, perhaps, the finest examples of Seljuk art remaining in Asia Minor.

The Sivas of 1924, a town of 65,000, was wholly Turkish and Kurdish, and therefore picturesque.  Its streets swarmed with the life of the East.  There was an endless amount of coming and going, though no one seemed to know what was all about.  The curb market was very active.  Formerly, the place was noted for silverwork, but, in 1924, that art, like so many of the arts of Asia Minor, had lapsed.  The bazaars were interesting.  One was never urged to buy; there were no loud salesmen as in Istanbul.  The goods were there; one could see them.  If you wished to buy, the price was thus and so.    If you did not care to buy, so be it.  Through Sivas passed the Great Road of Asia Minor, the road over which for centuries the caravans from Bagdad to Istanbul had passed.  Though it had fallen into complete disrepair, it was still important as a trade route from the Black Sea to the interior.  It was over that road they started one morning heading for the Black Sea and Samsun, 200 miles away.  In two easy stages they made the town of Tokat, having made a descent of some thousand feet.  There, for the first time they saw corn growing.  It was at Tokat that Hajji Baba was last seen.  That fictious character’s prototypes were in the khan at which they stopped.  Probably, they stayed in the same khan where Hajji was afflicted with sore illness and expected to die on the third day, and where he took the calomel with such happy effects.  From Tokat to Amasia was one long or two short stages – about 55 miles – and it was their intention to make the distance in one day.  But a late start, the vicissitudes of the road, and trouble with the pack animal, so delayed them that they had not made half the distance when at 2 in the afternoon they crossed the swift Yeshil Irmak and rode beneath the castle which sentineled the town of Turkal.  Like many other towns of Asia Minor, Turkal was short on conveniences, but long on history.  They admired the Byzantine castle, its walls flame-lit by the dying sun.

From Turkal they penetrated a wild, wooded country, following a narrow cut, and then descended into an open valley.  From there, in the distance they saw a high crag surmounted by a castle.  For some distance their route paralleled an ancient aqueduct, and shortly afterward they rode into Amasia, said to be the most picturesque towns in Asia Minor.  Its reputation was deserved.  Its appearance was that of a stage town, a setting for a medieval drama.  The author almost expected to see a knight in armor riding down from the castle – a castle which was already ancient when it withstood a siege seven centuries prior.  Below the castle, cut from the face of living rock, were five remarkable tombs, the Tomb of the Kings, believed to date from the third century before Christ.  Nearby were many Roman ruins, a Roman sarcophagus, and walls of Roman construction.  The modern town blended well with its setting.  The mosques, the bazaar, the coffee houses, the stone bridge, the gardens, the clocktower, all mosaiced into a picture.  They would have liked to tarry while there, but their mission would not permit, so they passed out of the “Bagdad of Rum” over the old stone bridge on the Great Road, bound northward toward the sea.  For a time, they followed the valley and then entered the mountains again.  They were in the district where some of the finest cigarette tobacco in the world was raised – the famous Samsun leaf.  One more night halt they made at the town of Khavsa, whose hot springs were known to the ancients, and then climbing once more, they crossed a ridge at 2,700 feet and saw below them the Black Sea.  Late in the afternoon they rode wearily into Samsun, their traverse of Asia Minor completed.  In that journey they had endured much discomfort, a little hardship, met the extremes of heat and cold, been mired in mud and smothered in dust, but they had met with courtesy and kindness.

 

 

Tom Wilson

[Melvin L. De Vilbiss]

As always, well done Tom!