Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

These are not a tithe of the objects in regard to which we are proud to have comparisons instituted; and in some of the less ponderous articles, such as Foley's gold pens and White's dental tools and dentures, we have the same reason for national gratulation. Such being the case, we feel reconciled to the comparative smallness of our space, which has precluded as much repetition in most lines of manufacture as we find in the exhibits of other nations.

Our agricultural machinery is well though not fully represented. Reapers and mowers, horse-rakes, grain-drills and ploughs are abundantly or sufficiently shown--harrows and rollers not at all; and if they had been, they would have added nothing to the English and French knowledge on the subject. Owing to the exigences of space, weighing-scales and pumps are included in the agricultural building, and the exhibition of Fairbanks & Co. deserves and receives cordial approval.

The problem of the day in agricultural machinery is the automatic binder, and eight efforts in that line are shown at the Exposition--six from America and two from England. The subject of machinery, however, is deferred for the present, but in speaking of general exhibits one cannot avoid a slight reference to that feature which is so prominent in the United States section.

Where there is so much that is beautiful and admirably arranged it seems ungenerous to cite failures, but the pavilion in the eastern corner of the Palais and the Salle de l'École Militaire connecting it with the pavilion of the Netherlands colonies are very disappointing. The French exhibit of sheet-metal work in the eastern corner is quite remarkable, but its merit in an industrial point of view scarcely authorizes the prominence that is given to it in one of the four grand positions for display which the building affords. Even the Galéries d'Iéna and de l'École Militaire across the ends of the building, although their ceilings are high and gorgeous with color, and their sides one mass of windows in blue and white panes, do not afford such striking positions as the four corner pavilions. One expected, very naturally, that so admirable a position would be made the most of by a people of fine artistic sense; and this has been done in two of the other similar situations by the Netherlands colonies' trophy and the Canadian pagoda. The Charlemagne statue, which occupies the fourth pavilion, has so much sheet-metal work around it that it is not worthy to be classed with these. In the sheet-metal pavilion we see admirable exploitation of sheet brass, copper and iron in the shape of telescope-tubes, worms for stills, bodies and coils for boilers, vacuum-pans, wort-refrigerators and various bent and contorted forms which evince the excellence of the material and of the methods. This is hardly enough, however, to justify the occupation of the position of vantage, and the trumpery collection of ropes, lines, nets, rods and hooks which is intended for a fishing exhibit only emphasizes the decision, acquiesced in by the public, which pays it no attention.

The same is true--in not quite so great a degree, however--of the Galérie de l'École Militaire, which is principally devoted to, and very inefficiently occupied by, a number of stands at which cheap jewelry, meerschaum pipes, glass-blown ships, ivory boxes and paper-knives, artificial flowers and stamped cards are made and sold as souvenirs of the Exposition. In addition to these, and several grades better, are a couple of Lahore shawlmakers, dusky Asiatics, engaged with native loom and needle in making the shawls for which India is celebrated. Then we have a jacquard loom worked by manual power, and the large embroidering-machine of Lemaire of Naude, and the diamond-workers of Amsterdam working in a glazed room which affords an excellent opportunity of seeing them without subjecting them to the annoyance of meddlesome visitors.

As if for contrast, the Galérie d'Iéna at the other end of the building is replete with the most gorgeous productions of India and France. One half of it is occupied by the Indian collection of the prince of Wales and the exhibits of the East and West Indian colonies of Great Britain, just described--the other half by a pavilion, the recesses of which show the Gobelin tapestries, while the richest productions of Sèvres are placed in profusion around it and occupy pedestals and niches wherever they could be properly placed. The combined effect of the individual richness of the things themselves and their lavish profusion constitutes this gallery the gem of the Exhibition. As if the thousands of gems on the gold and silver vessels and richly-mounted weapons and shields of the prince of Wales's collection were not rich enough, a kiosque has been erected in which the state jewels of France are displayed on velvet cushions, conspicuous among them being the "Pitt Diamond," the history of which is too well known to need repetition here.

The models, plans and raised maps of the hydraulic works of Holland are ever wonderful. They are principally the same that were exhibited in the Main Building at the Centennial, but there are some additional ones. All other drainage enterprises sink into insignificance beside those of Holland. Since 1440 they have gradually extended until they include an area of 223,062 acres drained by mechanical means. The drainage of the Haarlem Meer (45,230 acres), which was the last large work completed, is abundantly illustrated here, both as to the canalization and the engines, the latter of which are among the largest in the world. The engines are three in number, and the cylinders of the annular kind, the outer ones twelve feet in diameter, and each engine lifting 66 tons of water at a stroke: in emergencies each is capable of lifting 109 tons of water at a stroke to a height of 10 feet at a cost of 2-1/4 pounds of coal per horse-power per hour--much cheaper than oats: 75,000,000 pounds are raised 1 foot high by a bushel of coal. The next great work is the drainage of the southern lobe of the Zuyder Zee, the plans for which have been made and the work commenced. It is estimated that the mean depth is 13 feet, and that by a multitude of engines the water may be removed at the rate of 1 foot of depth per annum. Some 800,000,000 tons were pumped out of the Haarlem Meer, but that work will be dwarfed by the new enterprise.

The Dutch system of mattresses, gabions, revetting and sea-walls have furnished models for all the continents, the mouths of the Danube and the Mississippi being prominent instances. The railway bridge over the Leek, an arm of the Rhine, at Kuilinburg in Holland, is an iron truss, and the principal span has the same length as the middle arch of the St. Louis bridge--515 feet. It is shown here by models and plans.

The largest and most instructive ethnological exhibit from any country at the Exposition is that from the Netherlands colonies in the East and West Indies. The Oriental forms by far the larger portion of it, and has an imposing trophy in one of the four most advantageous positions in the building. The base of the apartment is about one hundred and forty feet square, and the domed ceiling at a height of one hundred and fifty feet rises from a square tower whose sides are round-topped windows of blue and white glass in chequerwork. These give full illumination and a gay appearance to the spacious hall, in which the trophy rises to a height of eighty feet. The pyramidal structure has an octagonal base of forty feet diameter with inclined faces, from which rises a second octagonal portion of smaller size. A series of steps above this is crowned with a conical sheaf of palm-stems, whose fronds make an umbrella of twenty feet diameter. The peak is a pinnacle of bamboos, with a Dutch flag pendent in the still atmosphere of the hall. From each angle and side of the octagon radiates a table, and these are lavishly covered with specimens of the arts and manufactures of Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes and other of the Dutch colonial possessions in the Malay seas. Here are models of the junks, proas and fishing-craft, each structure pegged together and destitute of nails. The large mat sails depend from yards of bamboo; the rudders are large oars, one over each counter; the decks are roofed with bamboo, ratan and the inevitable nipa-palm leaves. The smaller craft, made of hollow tree-trunks, have the double outrigger, and the finer ones have shelters of bamboo and palm-leaf. The fishing-craft have large dip-nets suspended from bamboo poles by cords, which allow them to be drawn up when a passing school of fish is observed by a man perched above.

On another table are models of the fishing-weirs and traps made of poles which must be forty feet long in the originals, and are driven closely alongside each other so as to enclose and detain the fish, which may enter at the funnel-shaped mouth, whose divergent sides are presented up stream. On the bamboo piles are the floors supporting the palm-leaf shelters of the fishing family, and upon the various parts of the structure lie the spears, rods and nets by which the fish are withdrawn from the inner pond, which it is so easy to enter and so hard to escape from. Various forms of weirs are shown, and a multitude of fish-baskets, whose conical entrances obligingly expand to the curious fish, but only present points to him when he seeks to return. Bamboo and ratan, whole or split, afford the materials for all these baskets and cages.

Other tables have the land-structures, from the elaborately-carved wooden bungalow with tiled roof of the residency of Japara in Java to the bamboo hut with palm-leaf sides and roofs of the maritime Dyaks of Borneo. Here we have a bazaar of Banda, and there a hut of the indigenes of Buitzenzorg in the interior of the fertile island of Java. Among the rudest houses shown are those of Celebes, that curious island, larger than Britain, which seems to rival the sea-monster, with its arms sprawling upon the map. One house on stilts is fitted up with a complete equipment of musical instruments, the wooden and brass harmonicons with bars or inverted pans resting upon strings and beaten with mallets. Here also is a weighing-machine for sugar products, the floor resting upon the shorter beam of a lever, while the long arm extends far out of doors. Rice-granaries elevated on posts above the predatory vermin are shown in various forms, and are set in water-holes to guard against the still more obnoxious ants, which are not content with the grain, but eat house and all.

Another table has implements of agriculture--ploughs, harrows, rakes, carts, sleds, all as innocent of metal as the oxen which draw the various instruments; wheels for irrigation made of bamboo, both frame and buckets; various cutting, weeding and grubbing implements, made by a sort of rude Catalan process from the native iron ore. The plough is a little better than that of Egypt of three thousand years ago, and the sickle is inferior. When Sir Stamford Raffles, who was governor during the short control of Java by the British, asked why they used the little primitive bent knife (_ana-ana_) which severs from the stalk but a few heads of rice at a time, they answered that if they presumed to do otherwise their next crop would be blasted.

One of the tables, however, furnishes a grave disappointment. It is an innocent-looking suspension bridge, the middle third of which is supported by a series of piles and the floor roofed in with canes and palm-leaves. It is a model of a bridge over the Boitang Toro, and one expects to find it of the ratan which is of general use and grows two hundred and fifty feet long; but no: it is of telegraph wire! So much for the intrusion of modern devices when one is revelling in one of the most interesting ethnological exhibits ever gathered. We have, however, but to turn round to be consoled. Here is the roller cotton-gin, which was doubtless used in India before the conquests of Alexander. Then we have the spinning-wheel, which differs in no important respect from that of England in the thirteenth century, and is similar to, but ruder than, that used by our great-grandmothers, when "spinster" meant something, and a girl brought to the home of her choice a goodly array of linen. This was before cotton was king, and before factories were known either for cotton, flax or wool. Was it a better day than the present, or no? Things work round, and the roller-gin is now the better machine, having in the most perfected processes supplanted the saw-gin. This may be news to some, but will be admitted by those who have examined what the present Exposition has to show. Here also is the bow for bowing the cotton, the original cotton-opener and cleaner. We cannot, either, omit the reeling mechanism for the thread nor the looms of simple construction, which can by no means cost over a couple of dollars and yet make fine check stuffs, good cotton ginghams. Perhaps we might allow another dollar for the reed with its six hundred dents of split ratan.

Curious and bizarre chintzes are shown in connection with the machinery, and some doubtless made by the processes described by Pliny eighteen hundred years ago. Other calicoes are made by at least two processes which are comparatively modern in England, but certainly two thousand years old in Asia. One is the direct application of a dye-charged stamp upon the goods. Another is known by us as the _resist_ process, and consists in printing with a material which will exclude the dye; then putting the goods in the dye-tub; subsequently washing out the resist-paste, when the stamped pattern shows white on a colored ground. Some of the pieces of calico make me suspect the _discharge_ process also, in which a piece of goods, having been dyed, is stamped in patterns with a material which has the faculty of making the dye fugitive, when washing causes the pattern to appear white on a colored ground.

We have not quite done with these tables. There are two great resources of a people besides work--love and war. "If music be the food of Love, play on." But will playing on the instruments of Java and other islands of those warm seas conduce to the object? The _gamelan_, or set of native band instruments, has one stringed instrument, several flageolets, a number of wood and metal harmonicons and inverted bronze bowls, all played with mallets: there are also gongs of various sizes, bells and a drum. The metal harmonicon is known in Javanese language as the _gambang_, and I have no better name to propose. The leader's instrument is the two-stringed fiddle (_rebab_), almost exactly the same as the Siamese _sie-saw_, which is also admirably named. Among the _gambangs_ at the Exposition is a wooden harmonicon with twenty bars, and seven bronze harmonicons with bars varying greatly in size and shape, and consequently in tone, and in number from eight to twenty-one in an instrument. The mallets also vary in weight. The _bonang_ is an instrument with inverted bronze bowls resting on ratans and struck with mallets. They are of various sizes and thickness, and corresponding tone and quality, and are arranged in sets of fourteen, two rows of seven each, on a low bench like a settee. They vary in one from twenty to twenty-four centimètres in diameter, and in the other from twenty-seven to thirty-two. They are intended, doubtless, to agree with the chromatic scale of the island, but are faulty on the fourth and seventh, as it seems to me, and yet, contrary to Raffles, Lay and other writers, are not pentatonic, in which the fourth and seventh are rejected altogether and no semi-tones are used. There is no doubt that the pentatonic is the musical scale of all Malaysia, and probably of all China; and none also that the diatonic, almost universal in Europe, is the musical scale of portions of India. What conclusions of ethnologic import may be drawn from this cannot here be more than suggested, but the latter fact seems to bear upon the association of the Hindoos with ourselves in the great Aryan family, Our _do, ré, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do_ correspond with the Hindoo _sa, ri, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni, sa_, and the intervals are the same--two semi-tones, of which the Malaysian is destitute. The Hindoos have also terms in their language for the tonic, mediant and dominant, so that they know something of harmony, of which the Malays seem quite ignorant.

The flageolets from Java are all made on the principle of the boy's elder whistle, but have finger-holes--generally six, but sometimes only four. Two bamboo jewsharps--as I suppose I must call them--about a foot long, and with a string to fasten to the ear, as it seems, are much like two from Fiji in the Smithsonian. There are plenty of drums from Amboyna, Timor and the islands adjacent. The most unpromising and curious of all, however, is the _anklong_ of Sumatra, which is all of bamboo, and has neither finger-holes, keys, strings nor parchment. Three bamboo tubes, closed below, are suspended vertically, so that studs at their lower ends rattle in holes in a horizontal bamboo. This causes them to emit musical sounds of a pitch proportioned to their length, as in an organ-pipe. The respective lengths of the three tubes are as one, two and four, so that the note of two is an octave graver than one, and that of four an octave graver still. Thus, when they are shaken the sounds are in accord. Twelve similar sets of three each are suspended from a single bar, and their lengths are so proportioned that they sound the musical scale--the three in the first frame, we will say, sounding the tenor C, the middle C and the C in the third space in the treble clef; the next set the corresponding D's above, and so on. It really does not sound so badly as one might suppose.

Here is a table, conchological, entomological and ornithological, which might stay us a while if we were making a catalogue. A conch-shell twenty inches long and ten in diameter will do for a sample--not a small gasteropod! They do not excel us so much in butterflies as I had expected, but some of the beetles are fearful things--six inches long, and with veritable arms on their heads each five inches long, with elbow-joint, wrist and two claws on the end of a single finger. Next is a praying mantis, a foot long and with double-jointed arms like the beetles,

That lifts his paws most parson-like, and thence
By simple savages, through mere pretence,
Is reckoned quite a saint amongst the vermin.

Other tables have weapons, shoes, table-furniture and knickknacks.

After this environment we have small space for the trophy itself. It is gorgeous with tiger and leopard skins, and with the weapons of the hill and maritime tribes under the Dutch sway, and a profusion of the ruder implements of the less accessible regions whose inhabitants only occasionally show themselves in the settlements. We see in this most interesting collection spoons and knives made from the leg-bones of native buffaloes and of deer; wooden battleaxes with inserted blades of jade; spears of bamboo and of cocoawood tip-hardened in the fire; arrows of reed with poisoned wooden tips; swords of dark and heavy cocoawood; shields of wood hewed with patient care from the solid log; wooden clubs; water-jars of a single section of bamboo and holding twelve gallons; gourd bottles, grass slippers, bark clothing, plaintain hats, cows'-tail plumes; and a host more which may be omitted. On the various faces of the structure and upon the steps are profusely arranged the various objects, over which the canopy of palm gracefully towers.

All that has been described occupies the central space beneath the dome. Around it and occupying the corners are a thousand specimens of wood, canes, fibres, seeds, gum, wax, resins, teas, hideous theatrical figures, savage weapons, rich fabrics, filigrain jewelry and tea-services. Here also are pigs of tin from regions famous for it twenty centuries ago, blocks of native building stones, minerals, ores and agates. Here are models of mining-works, smelting-sheds, sugar-houses, plans and maps.

On one side, occupying a very modest space, are contributions from Guiana, exemplifications of the habits, methods and productions of the country--manioc-strainers and baskets, river-boats, animals, woods, minerals, fruits and tobacco. Figures of a negro and negress of Paramaibo propped against the counter seem utterly lost at the sights around.

EDWARD H. KNIGHT.

"FOR PERCIVAL."