The red dawn of tropical Java was near. The shadows of night were still playing from millions of graceful Palm trees which swung gently in the winds before the dawn.

Three ancient volcanos, still rumbling in blatant activity, loomed like gigantic monsters of the underworld, bulging their black shoulders above the earth. Before us lay a valley of green rice paddies.

We had roved over ancient Boroboedoer all night, exploring its haunted crannies and corners, listening to its weird noises; dreaming through its centuries of age; climbing its seven terraces. But in the approaching dawn, the one outstanding thrill of the night was that of a half-naked Javanese girl, who stood for an hour, poised in her brown beauty on the top of one of the Bells of Buddha, with some weird Javanese musical instrument, singing to the dawn.

Then it came.

"What? Her lover?"No! The dawn! The dawn was her lover! Or, perhaps her lover was old Merapi.

For, there, as we too, climbed to her strategic pinnacle of glory on top of the Buddha Bell to watch the dawn that she had called up with her weird music and her subtle brown beauty; before us, stretched thousands of acres of green rice paddies, spread out like the Emerald lawn of an Emerald Springtime in Heaven. Below us two silver streams of water met and wedded, to go on as one.

As we stood there that morning on the top of Boroboedoer's highest bell, lines of Edna St. Vincent Millay swung into my soul:

Only in this instance all I could see were three volcanos. And the one in the center, old Merapi was belching out a trail of black smoke. These three volcanos, take turns through the centuries. When one is working the other two rest. When one ceases its activity, one of the others takes up the thundering anthem and carries it on for a few years or centuries and then lapses into silence, having done its part. While we were there it was Merapi's turn to thunder and on this particular morning Merapi was busy before day-light.For fifty miles along the horizon, a trail of black smoke swept like the trail of black smoke which a train leaves in its wake on a still day. There was not another cloud in the eastern skies. Nothing but that trail of black smoke as we stood on the top of Boroboedoer at dawn and watched.

Then something happened. It was, as if some magician had waved a magic wand back of the mountain. The rising sun was the magician. We saw its heralds spreading out, like great golden fan-ribs with the cone of the volcano, its direct center of convergence. Then before our astonished, our utterly bewildered, and our fascinated eyes, that old volcanic cone was changed to a cone of gold. Then the golden cone commenced to belch forth golden smoke. And finally the trail of smoke for fifty miles along the horizon became a trail of golden smoke.

This was a Flash-Light that literally burned its way into our memories to remain forever.

There is another Flash-Light Physical which has to do with another volcano which I mentioned in the preceding chapter. Bromo is its name. It is still there, down on the extreme eastern end of Java, unless in the meantime the old rascal has taken it into his demoniacal head to blow himself to pieces as he threatened to do the day we lay on our stomachs, holding on to the earth, with the sides trembling beneath us.Old Bromo was well named. It reminds one of Bromo-Seltzer. I had heard of him long before I reached Java. I had heard of the Sand Plains down into the midst of whose silver whiteness he was set, like a great conical gem of dark purple by day and fire by night.

Travelers said "You must see Bromo! You must see Bromo! If you miss everything else see Bromo! It's the most completely satisfactory volcano in the world."

It was two o'clock in the morning when we started on little rugged Javanese ponies up Bromo's steep slopes.

At daybreak we reached the mile high cliff which looks down into the world-famous Sand Sea. It was a sea of white fog. I have seen the same thing at the Grand Canyon and in Yosemite looking down from the rims. I thought of these great American canyons as I looked down into the Bromo Sand Sea. By noon this was a great ten-mile long valley of silver sand which glittered in the sunlight like a great silver carpeted ballroom floor. Tourists from all over the world have thrilled to its strange beauty. Like the gown of some great and ancient queen this silver cloth lies there; or like some great silver rug of Oriental weaving it carpeted that valley floor at noon.

But at daybreak it was a sea of mist into which it looked as if one might plunge, naked to the skin and wash his soul clean of its tropical sweat and dirt; a fit swimming pool for the gods of Java, of whom there are so many.

Then something happened as we stood looking down into that smooth sea of white fog, rolling in great billows below us. There was a sudden roar as if an entire Hindenburg line had let loose with its "Heavies." There was a sudden and terrific trembling of the earth under our feet which made us jump back from that precipice in terror.

Then slowly, as if it were on a great mechanical stage, the perfect cone of old rumbling Bromo, from which curled a thin wisp of black smoke, bulged its way out of the center of that sea of white fog, rising gradually higher and higher as though the stage of the morning had been set, the play had begun, and unseen stage hands behind the curtain of fog, with some mighty derrick and tremendous power were lifting a huge volcano as a stage piece.

Then came the quick, burning tropical sun, shooting above the eastern horizon as suddenly as the volcanic cone had been lifted above the fog. This hot sun burned away the mists in a few minutes and there, stretching below us, in all its oriental beauty was the sinewy, voluptuous form of the silver sand sea—Bromo's subtle mistress.

******There is another Physical Flash-light that will never die.

Coming out of the Singapore Straits one evening at sunset, bound for the island of Borneo across the South China Sea, I was sitting on the upper deck of a small Dutch ship. The canvas flapped in the winds. A cool, tropical breeze fanned our faces. Back of us in our direct wake a splashing, tumbling, tumultuous tropical sunset flared across the sky. It was crimson glory. In the direct path of the crimson sun a lighthouse flashed its blinking eyes like a musical director with his baton beating time.

I watched this flashing, lesser, light against the crimson sunset and was becoming fascinated by it.

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-glass 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-glass.

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-glass; 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 Japan 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 Japan; sacred as a shrine; beautiful with snow; graceful as a Japanese woman's curving cheek; bronzed by summer; belted with crimson clouds by sunset like a Japanese 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 Japanese 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 mass 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 mass 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 Japan in the back yard of the island. It was from this mass 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 shaggy 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 massive 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 gods 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 compass.

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 passing 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 twang 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.

Their very nakedness seemed to fit in with the spirit of the night; a spirit of complete abandonment to beauty and worship. In their attitudes there seemed to be a mingling of religion and earthly passion; but it was so touched with reverence that we felt no shock to our American sensibilities.

All night long we wandered about the terraces of the old Temple.

We wondered how long the Javanese girls would remain.

At dawn when we arose to see Boroboedoer by daylight they were still there as fresh as the dawn itself in their brown beauty, the dew of night glistening in their black hair and wetting their full breasts.

And across, from Boroboedoer the sun, in its dawning splendor, was transforming belching and rumbling old volcanic Merapi into a cone of gold.

LOOKING OVER THE WALLED CITY OF MANILA, AMERICAN SOLDIERS SCALED THIS WALL A FEW YEARS AGO TO STAY.