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Japan

All the Indian cities that I saw seemed to cover an immense acreage, partly because every modern house has its garden and compound. In a country where land is cheap and servants are legion there need be no congestion, and, so far, the Anglo-Indian knows little or nothing of the embarrassments of dwellers in New York or London.

The public manners of the Japanese are not good. In all my solitary walks about Myanoshita I met with no single peasant who passed the time of day, and in the streets of Tokio English people were being jostled and stared at and treated without respect. It was a moment when Americans were unpopular, and the theory was broached that for fear of missing the chance to be rude to an American the Japanese became rude to all outlanders indiscriminately. One indeed gathered the impression that, except in Kyoto, which is a backwater, foreigners are no longer wanted.

After seeing my first ball game or so I was inclined to suggest improvements; but now that I have attended more I am disposed to think that those in authority know more about it than I do, and that such blemishes as it appears to have are probably inevitable. For one thing, I thought that the outfield had too great an advantage. For another, not unassociated with that objection, I thought that the home-run hit was not sufficiently rewarded above the quite ordinary hit - "bunch-hit," is it? - that brings in a man or men.

The Ridge at Delhi is a sufficiently moving reminder of the Indian Mutiny; but it is at Lucknow that the most poignant phases are re-enacted. At Delhi may be seen, preserved for ever, the famous buildings which the British succeeded in keeping - Hindu Rao's house, and the Observatory, and Flagstaff Tower, the holding of which gave them victory; while in the walls of the Kashmir Gate our cannon balls are still visibly imbedded. There is also the statue of John Nicholson in the Kudsia Garden, and in the little Museum of the Fort are countless souvenirs.

At Tokio I was present for an hour or so at a performance in a national theatre. It had been in progress for a long time when I entered and would continue long after I left, for that is the Japanese custom. In London people with too little to do are on occasion prepared to spend the whole day outside theatres waiting for the doors to open. They will then witness a two and a half hours' performance. But in Japan the plays go on from eleven a.m. to eleven p.m. and the audience bring their sustenance and tobacco with them.

Perhaps if I had reached New York from the sea the skyscrapers would have struck me more violently. But I had already seen a few in San Francisco (and wondered at and admired the courage which could build so high after the earthquake of 1906), and more in Chicago, all ugly; so that when I came to New York and found that the latest architects were not only building high, but imposing beauty on these mammoth structures, surprise was mingled with delight.

To have the opportunity of hunting a tiger - on an elephant too - which by a stroke of luck fell to me, is to experience the un-English character of India at its fullest. Almost everything else could be reproduced elsewhere - the palaces, the bazaars, the caravans, the mosques and temples with their worshippers - but not the jungle, the Himalayas, the vast swamps through which our elephants waded up to the Plimsoll, the almost too painful ecstasies of the pursuit of an eater of man.

A whole week of my too short stay was given to Myanoshita, whither I was driven by the impossibility of retaining a room in either Yokohama or Tokio, and where I stayed willingly on, out of delight in the place itself. After being cooped up for so long on ships, and kept inactive under the heat of India, it was like a new existence to take immense walks among these mountains in the keen rarified air, even though there was both rain and snow. Myanoshita stands some four thousand feet high and is situated in a valley in which are many summer cottages and health resorts.

It was a relief to resume my programme by entering that abode of the dumb and detached - the aquarium in Battery Park. For the kerb uproar "the uncommunicating muteness of fishes" was the only panacea. The Bronx Zoo is not, I think, except in the matter of buffalo and deer paddocks, so good as ours in London, but it has this shining advantage - it is free. So also is the Aquarium in Battery Park, and it was pleasing to see how crowded the place can be.

The devout Hindu knows in Benares the height of ecstasy: but, if I am typical, the European experiences there both discomfort and inquietude. Nowhere else in India did I feel so foreign, so alien. To be of cool Christian traditions and an Occidental, an inquisitive sightseer among these fervent pilgrims intent upon their pious duties and rapt in exaltation and unthinking inflexible belief, was in itself disconcerting, almost to the point of shame; while the pilgrims were so remarkably of a different world, a different era, that one felt lost.

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