Russell H. Conwell

The Himalaya Mountains.—Returning Southward.—Lucknow and Calcutta.—Foretells the Great Rebellion.—Embarks for China.—Visit to the Mountains of Penang.—The Chinese at Singapore.—Arrival at Hong-Kong.—Joins the Staff of the U. S. Commissioner.—Scenes about Shanghai.—The Nanking Rebellion.—Life in Shanghai.—Enlists in the Navy.—Commodore Perry’s Expedition.

From Delhi Mr. Taylor travelled northward through a country well subjugated, which, under English direction, was made fertile and safe for travellers. His way lay toward the sunnier resort of the invalids and wealthy Europeans, which lay far up in the Himalaya Mountains, where the snow never melted and where the hot, miasmatic winds of the plains cannot follow the fugitive. At Roorkee, while lying in his palanquin, he caught his first glimpse of the Himalayas, and felt that crushing sense of awful sublimity which fills the soul of every new spectator. Towers that the arch of heaven seems to rest upon, white and gleaming as the purest pearl, rise one behind the other, until the farthest are lost in the haze of intervening space. Titanic pillars of snow, so grand, so mighty, so expressive of the most gigantic forces known or imagined by man, how can language convey their immensity? It is useless to attempt it. For you may talk, and talk, of mountains and the glorious sunsets that enamel them in roseate tints, yet no one will shed tears or feel a tremor of awe. But he who beholds them for the first time lets the tears unnoticed fall, and trembles as if thrust suddenly into the personal presence of the Almighty. Such a sense of humility, of abject unworthiness, takes possession of the beholder, that the soul labors heavily under the oppressive load, and the body shrinks from a nearer approach. There is nothing so powerful for driving atheism or egotism out of a man as the near view of the Himalayas or Andes or Rocky Mountains. The noblest races of the world have been reared in the wild regions of lofty mountains, and none so tenaciously revere their Maker, or so willingly sacrifice themselves for their friends or their God as the natives of the mountain passes.

Mr. Taylor approached the highest range as near as the heights of Landowr, which is about sixty miles from the snowy peaks of the loftiest range, and is itself so high as to hold the snow the greater part of the year. There he saw the gorgeous illumination of those heavenly snow-fields, when the sun was setting and when it seems as if a universe was in a blaze, while its lurid glare shone full upon those stupendous monuments of the earthquake’s titanic power. Mr. Taylor gazed upon those masses of the purest white, as twilight began to hide their outlines, and thought that, as he said in one of his lectures, “within three hundred miles of me are mightier mountains than these!”

Having seen the mountains and checked his old desire to stand on top of the highest one, he turned about and started southward for Calcutta, taking the first day’s journey on an elephant kindly loaned him by a new-found friend. He journeyed thence in the horse-carts of that time, via Meerut and Cawnpore, to Lucknow, where he was entertained in a most royal manner by the English officials. After examining that great metropolis of the interior, he hurried on to Benares and thence by quick relays to the great city of Calcutta.

With a peculiar faculty for foreseeing the effect of certain influences on human nature, Mr. Taylor foretold the approaching mutiny. He saw that the English treated the natives with habitual indignity. He saw that three-quarters of the earnings of the people was taken by the government. He saw that the English were in a great minority. He saw that the Sepoy regiments were good soldiers. He saw that influential positions were held by dangerously powerful natives. And he declared that a rebellion was not only possible, but probable.

Four years later began that great rebellion among the natives, which became one of the bloodiest and cruelest contests known in the annals of history. Chiefs and princes who received Mr. Taylor cordially during his visit, were afterwards executed for treason. Fortresses, temples, and cities, which he visited were shattered and torn by the shots of contending armies. Oppression and aristocratic pride resulted, as it naturally would, in horrid carnage and an impoverished treasury. Mr. Taylor’s words of warning as they appeared in America, were probably never read in England, or if they were read, were scouted as the fears of one who did not understand the “permanency of a despotism.”

Although his stay was short in Calcutta, his description of the people, the dwellings, the shipping, and social customs was one of the most clear and complete to be found in print. One who reads it sees the city, the river, the verdant plains, and the sea spread out before him, and becomes acquainted with the shop-keepers, police, Parsees, Arabs, Hindoos, Chinese, and Europeans, that made up the motley throngs. True to his patriotic purpose, he gave the commerce of the port such attention as the interests of our merchants required.

From Calcutta he proceeded by an English steamer to Penang on the coast of the Malay Peninsula. It is a delightful locality, and is as beautiful in situation and vegetation as its clove and nutmeg trees are fragrant. There again he gratified his taste for climbing a mountain, and spent nearly his whole time ascending to the signal station on the highest peak of the peninsula. It was the only place he visited in which he left unseen the attractive nooks, grottos, waterfalls, and jungles, and chose instead the less interesting experience. It was a source of regret to him afterward, that he did not spend the few hours he had, in the lowlands and on the mountain-sides rather than at their tops. Every traveller who has visited Penang could detect the error. Yet, Mr. Taylor set down in his account of his visit more valuable information and a more graphic outline of the landscape than any traveller appears to have done, notwithstanding the beautiful falls of Penang are visited by thousands yearly.

Accompanying the steamer in its usual route, Mr. Taylor stopped at Singapore, at the extreme southern end of the peninsula. It was a new port at that time, and was not so important as it afterwards became; yet he found ten or fifteen thousand people there, mostly dirty and repulsive Chinese. Mr. Taylor was not pleased with the Chinese as a race, for two reasons. First, he heard such reports of their barbarity, beastliness, and dishonesty; second, they were an awkward, unsymmetrical people, devoid of that physical beauty which the artist admires and copies. He dwelt upon the latter fact in his letters, and mentioned it in his book. Neither Phidias, Polycrates, Raphael, or Angelo would have selected a model from among these creatures, and naturally enough the artistic taste of Mr. Taylor was shocked by such natural deformities as the Chinese were, when looked upon with reference to the graceful and beautiful in the human form. It is but just to the Chinese as a nation to say that, according to the writer’s experience among them, the Coolies who emigrate to Singapore, Sydney, and California are by no means a fair sample of the educated and wealthy classes who remain at home and drive out the least useful and least intelligent portion. If one were to judge of the acquirements, ability, or physical beauty of the Chinese nation exclusively by the poor emigrants who cannot successfully compete with their neighbors, and hence are compelled to go away from home for success, he would be nearly as sadly misled as one would be should he form his opinion of the American people by the inmates of their jails and poor-houses. There are many noble men and beautiful women in the interior of China, whether regarded mentally, morally, or physically. Mr. Taylor did not see them, and like a faithful scribe he wrote down only those things he saw, and knew to be true. The Chinese whom he saw in the ports engaged in unloading vessels, or doing like menial services, were not beautiful, and he said so.

When Mr. Taylor arrived in Hong-Kong he was received with the same kind hospitality which his very countenance secured for him in every land. The United States Commissioner, the Hon. Humphrey Marshall, who happened to be at Macao, and whom Mr. Taylor met there on crossing the bay from Hong-Kong, offered to attach Mr. Taylor to his staff, for a trip to the seat of war. The great rebellion in the Kiangsu province, lying north-westerly from Shanghai, had assumed such threatening proportions that the emperor at Peking trembled on his throne. Exaggerated accounts of the fiendish atrocities of the rebels, and rumors of great battles and successful sieges had reached the seaports, and even the peaceful American merchants at Shanghai feared capture and death. In view of all this, Mr. Taylor anticipated an exciting experience. Together with the whole ship’s company, he felt, when the United States steamer left Hong-Kong for Shanghai, as if there was a measure of uncertainty if he ever returned. But the reports had been so much enlarged in their transmission to Hong-Kong, that when they arrived at the port of Shanghai they were delighted to find the place in no immediate danger of attack from the Chinese. In order to show the rebels that the Americans were neutral in all the Chinese quarrels, the Commissioner undertook the hazardous task of ascending the Yang-tse-kiang River to the beleaguered town of Nanking. It seems to have been a foolish undertaking, and viewed from any diplomatic stand-point, to have been indirectly an encouragement of the rebellion. It was not so intended, however, and Mr. Taylor did not give his opinion of the “good faith” which prompted the sending of envoys to a local rebellion in the interior of a “great and friendly nation.” But what good sense could not do, the shoals and incompetency of the native pilots did accomplish; and the Commissioner who was going up the river to pat the rebels on the back and ask them not to hurt their friends, the Americans, was compelled to return to Shanghai. It would have been better for the United States if the second undertaking had been equally unsuccessful; but as Mr. Taylor had no share in it, it is of no further importance here.

While at Shanghai he experienced the sensation of being besieged without seeing an enemy. The frightened people organized themselves into military companies and drilled with the sailors. Breastworks were thrown up and cannon placed ready for action. The streets were patrolled and a guard kept over the provisions and ammunition. Tales of approaching hosts were freely circulated, and once the terrified populace were informed by an intelligent refugee that the enemy were within sight. Yet the days passed on; the Chinese government began to show vitality, and the great rebellion, with all its fearful butchery and refinement of cruelty, was extinguished without the molestation of the foreigners at Shanghai, and was overcome, notwithstanding the encouraging assurance given the rebels by the United States Commissioner that our government was not disposed to interfere with their outrages.

While in Shanghai Mr. Taylor wrote some admirable articles upon the tea culture of China, and upon the possible commerce with the Pacific coast of America, which were published in New York and London. He felt the throes of an earthquake while there, and had some pleasant interviews with the educated classes of China. He saw the parade of the native soldiers, and witnessed their grotesque religious ceremonies. His observation was so close, and his generalization usually so just, that until within a few years there has been no book printed in America which gave so much of the information desired by popular readers in so little space as Taylor’s account of that visit.

Early in May Commodore Perry arrived at Shanghai, prepared for the expedition which the United States had ordered him to make to Japan, and Mr. Taylor’s long-felt desire to embark on that enterprise was gratified. He was compelled to enlist in the navy as master’s mate, and subject himself and all that he should write, to the orders of the navy department and officers of the fleet. It seemed at first to be rather humiliating terms, but after he had made the acquaintance of the officers and learned the ways of a ship he found it a very pleasant position. Thus, from one calling to another, he turned with a readiness and a success which were astonishing.