Then great black clouds began to roll down over that crimson background as if they were huge curtains, rolled down from above, to change the setting of the western stage for another act.
But as they rolled they formed strange and beautiful Doric columns against the crimson skies and before I knew it, I was looking at the ruins of an old Greek temple in the sky. Then the black clouds formed a perfect hour-gla.s.s reaching from the sea to the sky, with its background of crimson glory, and the little lighthouse seemed to be flashing off the minutes in the arteries of that hour-gla.s.s.
And then it was night a deep, dense, tropical night; heavy with darkness; rich with perfume; weird with mystery. But the sunset of crimson; the Doric temple in ruins; the hour-gla.s.s; and the flashing lighthouse still remained.
And who shall ever forget the sunsets of gold across Manila Bay night after night; with great warships and majestic steamers, sleek and slender cutters, white sails, long reaching docks, and graceful Filipino women, silhouetted against the gold? And who shall forget the domes, towers, and pinnacles of the Cathedrals; and the old fort within the city walls as they too were silhouetted against the gold of the evening?
Mt. Taishan, the oldest worshiping place on earth, not far from the birthplace of Confucius; in Shantung; is one of the most sacred shrines of the Orient. There, countless millions, for hundreds of centuries, have climbed over six thousand granite steps, up its mile high slope to pay their vows; to catch a view of the blue sea from its imminence; to feel the sweep, wonder and glory of its sublime height, knowing that Confucius himself gloried in this climb. The exaltation of that glorious view; shall live, side by side, with the view from the top of the Black Diamond range in Korea one winter"s night as we caught the full sweep of the j.a.pan Sea by sunset. In fact these all shall live as great mountain top Physical Flash-Lights etched with the acid of a burning wonder into one"s soul!
Nor shall one ever forget a month"s communion with Fujiyama, that solitary, great and worshiped mountain of j.a.pan; sacred as a shrine; beautiful with snow; graceful as a j.a.panese woman"s curving cheek; bronzed by summer; belted with crimson clouds by sunset like a j.a.panese woman"s Obie. It, too, presented its unforgettable Physical Flash-Lights.
The first glimpse was one of untold spun-gold glory. There it stood.
"There it is! There it is! Look!" a fellow traveler cried.
"There is what?" I called. We were on top of a great American College building in Tokyo.
"It"s Fuji!"
I had given up hope. We had been there two weeks and Fujiyama was not to be seen. The mists, fogs, and clouds of winter had kept it hidden from our wistful, wondering, waiting eyes.
But there it stood, like a naked man, unashamed; proud of its white form; without a single cloud; burning in the white sunlight. Its huge shoulders were thrown back as with suppressed strength. Its white chest, a Walt Whitman hairy with age; gray-breasted with snow; bulged out like some mighty wrestler, challenging the world. No wonder they worship it!
I had gloried in Fujiyama from many a varied viewpoint. I had caught this great shrine of j.a.panese devotion in many of its numberless moods.
I had seen it outlined against a clear-cut morning sunlight, bathed in the glory of a broadside of light fired from the open muzzle of the sun.
I had seen it shrouded in white clouds; and also with black clouds breeding a storm, at even-time. I had seen it with a crown of white upon its brow, and I had seen it with a necklace of white cloud pearls about its neck.
Once I saw this great mountain looking like some ominous volcano through a misty gray winter evening. And one mid-afternoon I saw it almost circled by a misty rainbow, a sight never to be forgotten on earth or in heaven by one whose soul considers a banquet of beauty more worth shouting over than an invitation to feast with a King.
But the last sight I caught of Fuji was the last night that I was in Tokyo, as I rode up from the Ginza on New Year"s eve out toward Aoyama Gakuin, straight into a sunset, unsung, unseen by mortal eye.
Before me loomed the great mountain like a monstrous ma.s.s of mighty ebony carved by some delicate and yet gigantic artist"s hand.
I soon discovered where the artist got the ebony from which to carve this pointed mountain of ebony with its flat top; for far above this black silhouetted mountain was a ma.s.s of ebony clouds that seemed to spread from the western horizon clear to the rim of the eastern horizon and beyond into the unseen Sea of j.a.pan in the back yard of the island.
It was from this ma.s.s of coal-black midnight-black clouds that the giant artist carved his ebony Fuji that night.
But not all was black. Perhaps the giant forged that mountain rather than carved it, for there was a blazing furnace behind Fuji. And this furnace was belching fire. It was not crimson. It was not gold. It was not red. It was fire.
It was furnace fire. It was a Pittsburgh blast-furnace ten thousand times as big as all of Pittsburgh itself, belching fire and flames of sparks. These sparks were flung against the evening skies. Some folks, I fancy, on that memorable night called them stars; but I know better.
They were giant sparks flung from that blast-furnace which was booming and roaring behind Fuji. I could not hear it roar; that is true; but I could feel it roar. I could not hear it because even so great a sound as that furnace must have been making will not travel sixty miles, even though it was as still up there in the old theological tower as a country cemetery by winter down in Rhode Island when the snow covers the graves.
Then suddenly a flare of fire shot up directly behind the cone of Fuji, flaming into the coal-bank of clouds above the mountain, as if the old s.h.a.ggy seer had forgotten his age and was dreaming of youth again when the earth was young and he was a volcano.
Above that streak of fire and mingled with it, black smoke seemed to pour until it formed a flat cloud of black smoke directly above the cone, and spread out like a fan across the sky to give the giant artist further ebony to shape his mountain monument.
Then Fuji suddenly belched its volcano of color and lava; of rose and gold, amber, salmon, primrose, sapphire, marigold; and in a stream these poured over Fuji"s sides and down along the ridge-line of the lesser hills until they too were covered with a layer of molten glory a mile thick.
The clouds above Fuji forgot to be black. In fact, their mood of sullenness departed as by magic, and a smile swept over their ma.s.sive mood of moroseness, and glory swept the skies. It was as if that furnace behind Fuji had suddenly burst, throwing its molten fire over the hills, the mountains, the sky, the world.
And "mine eyes" had "seen the glory of the coming of the Lord." And that was enough for any man for one lifetime.
Then there is beautiful Boroboedoer down in Java. It is a Physical Flash-Light that looms with its huge and mysterious historical architectural beauty like some remnant of the age when the G.o.ds of Greece roamed the earth. A sunrise from its pinnacled height I have already described, but the temple itself is unforgettable. There is nothing like it on the earth.
Boroboedoer is one of the wonders of the world, although little known.
It is in the general shape of the pyramid of Egypt, but more beautiful.
One writer says, "Boroboedoer represents more human labor and artistic skill than the great pyramids." Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace says: "The human labor and skill expended on Boroboedoer is so great that the labor expended on the great pyramid sinks into significance beside it."
Boroboedoer was built in the seventh century A.D., by the Javanese under Hindu culture. Then came the Mohammedan invasion, destroying all such works of art in its pathway.
It is said that the priests so loved this beautiful Buddha temple that they covered it over with earth and then planted trees and tropical vegetation on it. In six months it was so overgrown that it looked like a hill. This is one explanation of why it lay for a thousand years unknown.
The volcanic ashes undoubtedly helped in this secretion, for old Merapi even now belches its ashes, rocks and dust out over the beautiful valley down upon which Merapi looks.
From Djodjakarta you go to the temples.
This great temple has, instead of the plain surfaces of the great pyramid, one mile of beautifully carved decorations, with 2141 separate panels depicting the life of Buddha from the time he descended from the skies until he arrived at Nirvana, or perfect isolation from the world.
A history of more than a thousand years is told in its stone tablets by the sculptor"s chisel, told beautifully, told enduringly, told magnificently.
One writer says: "This temple is the work of a master-builder whose illuminated brain conceived the idea of this temple wherein he writes in sculpture the history of a religion."
And again one says architecturally speaking of it:
"It is a polygonous pyramid of dark trachyte, with gray cupulas on jutting walls and projecting cornices, a forest of pinnacles."
There are four ledges to this hill temple and above each ledge or stone path are rows of Buddhas hidden in great 5-foot stone bells, and at the top crowning the temple a great 50-foot bell in which Buddha is completely hidden from the world, symbol of the desired Nirvana that all Buddhists seek.
Mysterious with weird echoes of a past age it stands, silhouetted against a flaming sky to-night as I see it for the first time. It is late evening and all day long we have been climbing the ancient ruins of that magnificent age of Hindu culture on the island of Java. This temple of Boroboedoer was to be the climax of the day, and surely it is all of that.
The fire dies out of the sky. The seven terraces of the stone temple begin to blur into one great and beautiful pyramid. Only the innumerable stone bells stand out against the starlit night; stone bells with the little peepholes in them, through which the stolid countenances and the stone eyes of many Buddhas, in calm repose, look out upon the four points of the compa.s.s.
Night has fallen. We have seen the great Temple by crimson sunset and now we shall see it by night.
The shadows seem to wrap its two thousand exquisite carvings, and its Bells of Buddha in loving and warm tropical embrace. But no warmer, is the embrace of the shadows about the Temple than the naked embrace of a score of Javanese boys who hold to their hearts naked Javanese beauties who sit along the terraces looking into the skies of night utterly oblivious to the pa.s.sing of time or of the presence of curious American strangers.
Love is such a natural thing to these Javanese equatorial brown brawn and beauties that unabashed they lie, on Buddha"s silent bells, breast to breast, cheek to cheek, and limb to limb; as if they have swooned away in the warmth of the tropical night.
The Southern Cross looks down upon lover and tourist as we all foregather on the topmost terrace of that gigantic shadow-pyramid of granite.
The sound of the innumerable naked footsteps of all past ages seems to patter along the stone terraces. Now and then the tw.a.n.g of the Javanese angklong and the beautiful notes of a flute sweep sweetly into the shadowed air.
Then comes the dancing of a half dozen Javanese dancing girls, naked to the waist, their crimson and yellow sarongs flying in the winds of night, as, in slow, graceful movements, facing one of the Bells of Buddha they pay their vows and offer their bodies and their souls to Buddha; and evidently, also to the Javanese youths who accompany them in their dances.
The sound of the voices of these Javanese girls--who in the shadows look for all the world like figures that Rodin might have dreamed--mingling their laughter with the weird music; shall linger long in one"s memory of beautiful things.