Cortland Evening Standard, Friday, June 1, 1900.
ANXIETY OVER CHINA.
German Naval Authorities to Send Large Forces.
VIEWING SITUATION SERIOUSLY.
Powers Determined on Armed Intervention—Landing of German Marines at Taku to Proceed to Pekin Ordered—American and Other Forces.
BERLIN, June 1.—The latest news from China has given rise to much anxiety here. An official of the German foreign office has made the following statement regarding the matter:
"The German naval commander at Tsin-Tau has orders to act in conjunction with the naval authorities of the other powers as circumstances may require. The landing of marines at Taku to go to Pekin was ordered. The report from the United States that 20,000 Russians are advancing to help the Chinese is baseless. No power is sustaining China. We know that Russia will not separate herself from the others."
A cable arrived from Tquing-Tau saying that the German cruiser Kaiserin Augusta, having taken on board an additional officer and 50 marines, sailed for Taku, the German gunboat Itis following.
The German naval authorities, it is understood, consider it important to land large forces in China as, despite the recent disapproval of the Boxers by the Pekin government, the present small contingents are insufficient to awe the insurgents. In this matter, however, the foreign office does not agree with the naval department.
The German government takes a serious view of the situation in China. The powers are resolved on armed intervention.
FORCES IN CHINA.
List of Those on the Way to Pekin—Opposition Expected.
TIEN-TSIN, June 1.—A special train started for Pekin with the following forces:
Americans—Seven officers and 56 men.
British—Three officers and 72 men.
Italians—Three officers and 39 men.
French—Three officers and 72 men.
Russians—Four officers and 71 men.
Japanese—Two officers and 24 men.
The foreign contingent also took with them five quick firing guns.
It is rumored here that the foreign troops will be opposed at the first gate of the Chinese capital, outside the wall.
AMERICAN CAPTURES.
Rifles Surrendered and Fugitive Governor Taken in Philippines.
MANILA, June 1.—A number of rifles have been surrendered at Cuyapo and more are expected.
The fugitive governor of Benguet province, a rich, influential and devoted friend of Aguinaldo, was captured at Allit.
Generals Grant and Funston have sent detachments in pursuit of the insurgents who rushed the town of San Miguel de Mayomo, near here, Tuesday, killed five Americans, wounded seven and captured Captain Roberts of the Twenty-third Infantry and two enlisted men.
PAGE TWO—EDITORIALS.
Who the Boxers Are.
According to the Rev. E. E. Aiken, who has been working under the American Missionary board in Tien-Tsin but is now in New York City, the proper name of the boxers, a society that is now figuring conspicuously in the dispatches from China, is ''I Ho Chuan." Literally, this phrase means "just, harmony, fist." Translated more freely, it means "the Society for the Promotion of Justice and Harmony by Means of the Fist." But, as the dispatches show, the members of the society do not confine themselves to the use of their fists; they use guns, swords and other weapons. Because of their use of the sword, they are known also as the Big Sword society.
The society is of recent origin. Its existence is due to the troubles that occurred three years ago with the French Roman Catholics in western Shantung. Because the Catholics had built a chapel on the site of a Chinese temple, the natives who had organized themselves into the I Ho Chuan society, destroyed it. At first the efforts of the society were directed against the Christians, particularly the Chinese Christiana, but as it grew in numbers and strength they became directed against all foreigners.
It is said that tens of thousands of Chinese belong to the society, which has spread as far north as Tien-Tsin, where a day was set recently for the murder of all foreigners. It is said also that although the society is secret, it has the official support of the government. When England, France, Germany and the United States demanded that the governor of Shantung be removed for protecting the Boxers, the dowager empress complied nominally with their request. But the official was appointed to a better position as governor of another province. The colonel that commanded the troops that killed about forty members of the society in Shantung was disgraced for his efforts to maintain order.
Mr. Aiken says that many of the members of the society, the young members particularly, have joined it, not because of their hostility to foreigners but because of their love of adventure and plunder. It is great fun for them to meet in secret places, drill and plan raids on unfortunate victims. Because of the odium attached to the conversion of a native to Christianity, which deprives him of the respect of the community, they rob him with impunity. They pillage his house, and put up at auction whatever he may possess. Sometimes they demand money, and if it is not forthcoming, they seize the threatened person and hold him until it is paid. They proceed in a similar manner against foreigners.
When foreigners began to seize the territory of China, it was expected that some such society would spring up and spread from one end of the country to the other. Although the Chinese appear to be very docile and ready to submit to any indignity, they have ways of retaliating upon enemies that are difficult to meet. One of the most effective is the organization of secret societies, which carry on a relentless war in the dark. They assassinate without scruple and strike in force where they are least expected. If the Chinese have decided to resist their aggressors by means of such societies, we venture to predict that it will not be an easy matter to put them down.
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| E. J. Pennington. |
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| Pennington Motor Cycle prototype manufactured in Cortland, N. Y. |
PENNINGTON SETTLED.
Didn't Think it Worth While to Come to Cortland for a Trifle.
E. J. Pennington, the automobile inventor, was due in Cortland to-day to show cause why he should not settle for his board at the Cortland House, for his clothing at Daehler's and for several other little bills about town. But he didn't come. A trifle of a few hundred dollars was nothing to him. Perhaps his time in New York was worth more to him than that. And so instead of obeying the legal invitation which Sheriff Brainard left with him while in the metropolis a couple of weeks ago he came down with the cash and settled up all his indebtedness. Attorney Franklin Perce of New York had all the accounts in charge and has communicated the fact to Dougherty & Miler of Cortland, who represented some of the local creditors. That firm states that Mr. Pierce writes that the amount covered by the settlement include the Second National bank note $155, Arnott note $125.76, Delos Bauder $126.32, Ollie Ingraham $28, F. Daehler $169.31, Cortland Standard $145.67, making a total of $750.06. This sum, however, does not include the sheriff's fees or other legal charges which were included in the settlement. Perhaps Mr. Pennington does not now think that the Cortland people are quite such hayseeds as he took them to be.
Will Go to Brockport.
Miss Helen E. Kirby has been appointed by Superintendent of Public Instruction Charles R. Skinner clerk in the office of the principal of the Brockport Normal school at a fine salary. Many friends in Cortland will be glad for Miss Kirby for the appointment, though all will be very sorry to lose her from Cortland. The Brockport faculty will be largely made up of Cortland people with Dr. David Euge Smith as principal, Miss Sara A. Sanders as teacher of methods, L. L. Jackson, Cortland Normal '91 as teacher of mathematics, and Miss Kirby as clerk of the school and secretary of the faculty.
Cortland Praying Band.
The Cortland Praying band will conduct another of their open air gospel meetings (weather permitting) on the corner of Elm and Pomeroy-sts., at 4 o'clock Sunday, June 3. A fair attendance met us last Sunday and some good was done in the name of the Master.
GOOD FOR JOY.
KNOCKED OUT A PRIZE FIGHTER ON BOARD SHIP.
Fellow was Insulting and Mr. Joy Resented It—The Passengers on Board and His Impressions of Them—Arrives in South America—Experience with Hotels—A Feline Concert and a Feline Dream.
We are permitted to publish parts of another personal letter from Mr. H. G. Joy who is on a summer trip to South America to his son in Cortland. It is as follows:
TUESDAY MORNING, April 24, 1900.
DEAR GRAY—We left St. Lucia harbor at 4:30 P. M. yesterday and were off the Pitons just at 6. They are two mountains standing guard at the entrance to the harbor of Souffriere. They really have more the appearance of obelisks than mountains; they are so slender and so steep. We ran quite close to them, as they rise straight out of the sea where it is 1,000 feet deep, and run up into the air 1,700 feet.
At St. Kitts our passenger list was increased by the arrival on board of a Central American prize-fighter, going the rounds on sporting events intent. The Spaniards, Portuguese and their South and Central American descendants are mighty handy with the knife, but I never before heard of prize-fighters among them. He has red hair and his name is Short, two very curious things in a Central American; but no one seemed disposed to question them as he is six feet high and large and square-cornered in proportion. His hands look strong enough to make the devil himself shriek for mercy if once he got a good grip on "Old Nick." He dresses in fine, white linen suits and wears white canvas shoes with patent leather trimmings, and seems to be as proud of his legs as the colored women of St. Lucia are of theirs; in fact he thinks himself a "dandy gentleman." His countenance and manners support the negative proposition. He has a red, ragged scar over one eye that causes the eyelid to droop shamefacedly; his nose has been broken in some cataclysm of the past and one ear partially chewed off in some stress of famine; he is an extensive consumer of tobacco, the juice of which frequently overflows at the corners of his month; he is a persistent gambler, an industrious borrower of money, and ugly when refused a loan; he also ogles all the women in sight, handsome or homely, lady or lady's maid, with beautiful impartiality.
Perhaps I paint him blacker than he is, for I dislike him intensely. I will tell you why: As I sat on deck yesterday afternoon he came up and asked for the loan of a dollar. As politely as possible I regretted my inability to favor him with one. You know I keep my shoes well polished, and am rather "touchy" about them. Well, Mr. Short deliberately spat a mass of tobacco and tobacco juice over my shoes. I looked up at the great, hulking brute, and felt that any attempt on my part to resent the insult would be absolute folly. Something in his eyes, however, as he leered down at me, stirred the virulent blood in my veins, inherited from half savage Welch ancestors—who never saw pen nor primer, but who wrote their autographs with pike and spear—and caused me to do a most reckless thing. I got up quietly and quickly wiped my shoes on the legs of his spotlessly white trousers, and slapped him in the month as hard as I could with my left hand. I fully expected to be tossed into the sea or struck dead with an upward blow under the chin, but wasn't. The fellow clenched his fists fiercely, stared at me a moment with glittering eyes, and ran across the deck and disappeared down the stairway. Some sentiment of shame or superstition must have found sudden lodgment in his brain, for such fellows are as emotional as women and as superstitious as sailors. Perhaps he feared to linger longer lest he could not restrain himself from wringing my head off as a cook would that of a chicken.
You remember that for the first time in ten years, I had the "nose bleed" the morning I left Cortland; that is why everything comes my way this trip.
We were anchored in the roadstead at Barbados when I awoke this morning. As this was the destination of seven of our passengers, we had heard a good deal of it. The island is of coral formation, while all the others were volcanic. All the others are composed of hilly and broken land, while Barbados is nearly flat, but rising little by little in long rolling slopes behind Bridgetown, the town in front of which we lay. Being flat, the tree's looked thicker, and there were a couple of miles of beach in sight from our position, "where the long, creamy waves put cool, caressing hands upon the fevered temples of the shore, and with their eager lips were telling o'er their strange unspoken secrets to the sands along the shining rim of cape and cove." Barbados lies out in the ocean the farthest east of any of the islands and is at present the most thriving as well as the most populous. It is said to be more densely peopled to the square mile than any country outside of China—negroes and their partially bleached out descendants. They are about the "sassiest" in the world, too. An English man-of-war and twenty sailing vessels, some of them big fellows, were lying about the roadstead.
After breakfast we were rowed into the town by four black boatmen. The streets were full of blacks, many so crowded that it was difficult to get through. Here we saw many women with shoes and some with shoes and stockings. Again the prevailing color of their dresses was white varied with yellow, pink and blue. White and pink shoes also. As hundreds of them wear these white dresses and underskirts until they go to pieces, without washing or changing them, you can imagine how they look. A grown up young nigger took possession of us here as guide, and proved to be a quiet and good one. We were going in to look at an English church, but ran on to three family parties preparing to baptize colored babies. We left as the third one appeared lest the mothers should pass the hat. There are some large stores here with big stocks but no efforts are made to render the windows attractive. Bridgetown has many fine residences, none of course built as we build them. There are fewer angles, less money and space wasted in fancy roofs, and they are arranged with the desire of getting protection from the sun and the greatest possible circulation of air. There are fine roads throughout the island, and attractive churches and dwellings in the country. There is a large military reserve, upon which there are many barrack buildings that look cool and comfortable. They are built of red brick, with wide two-story verandas running entirely around them. There is one building devoted to theatricals, and as there is a full regiment of redcoats here with "officers, that are nice and privates that are smart," they produce droll and meritorious entertainments. The Barbadans are very proud of their island. They claim it is the sanitarium of the West Indies; and, as it contains few swales and is flat enough to be windswept, perhaps they are right.
We were warned in the morning that anchors would be shipped at 4 P. M., but darkness drew down over land and sea before we got away. We sat on deck watching the lights of the town grow fainter until they melted into one rosy glow over the dark water, and then died like a conflagration that has burned itself out, or as a crimson sorrow at last fades from the mind. For some time longer we could see the friendly eye of a revolving light on a point that ran far out into the water.
Men laughed at and caustically criticize the idiosyncrasies and fears and frights of women, but if all womankind was swept from the face of the earth and man had the privilege of inventing one to suit himself, I am sure his woman would be very much the same as the one for whom he has labored since the creation and ransacked all lands and seas to gratify and beautify and warred over and worshipped since the world began. This was illustrated last night as we sat on deck. Growing confidential in the darkness one young man suddenly said to another, "Bob, how is it you have got so far from the sphere of influence of that Boston girl to whom you are engaged?" "I am not engaged to her," said Bob; "I did like her pretty well, but on calling one evening found her with a shovel chasing a mouse about the room. That was enough for me." "She had sand, at any rate," rejoined the friend. "Yes, she was all sand, and a girl all sand might prove too gritty and rasping as a wife." If this young man had found the Boston girl with her lips puckered with fear, and her skirts gathered in hand ready to spring on to a chair, doubtless he would have made fun of her; nevertheless, she would still be his ideal woman.
THURSDAY AFTERNOON, April 24.—We had an uneventful day yesterday. Although the engines throbbed away, and the ship threw foam from her prow, there were no landmarks by which we could gauge progress, and we seemed to be always in the same place—the center of an ocean. The talk was that we would make the port of Georgetown by 9 o'clock this morning but the fact was we were not alongside the wharf until 4 this afternoon. The shores of South America, for some hundreds of miles here, are low and we sighted land about two hours steaming from the mouth of the Demarara river. The river is three-quarters of a mile wide in front of the city. The land is flat for two hundred miles back, so that the tides run up the Demarara, Essequibo, Berbice and Orinoco rivers a long distance, probably eighty miles, and in some cases 100. As the land is soft and rich the rivers are muddy, and the sea is turbid and muddy looking for thirty or forty miles out. Bars are formed at the mouths of the rivers. The one here can only be crossed at high tide by large vessels, but there is ample depth when once inside.
One of our passengers is a cheerful, sweet faced old English lady whose son runs a little store over on the Berbice river. He sent her money to come out to New York where she has a daughter and from there on here. She has been quite "chummy" with me, for the reason, I suppose, that I have listened more patiently to her stories about that wonderful boy John. South America is an immense country, wonderfully rich in soil, valuable woods and minerals, but from the old lady's point of view John and his country store are about all there is to it. [Even] as a baby John lay on his back and sucked industriously at one fist in a manner that indicated his great superiority over the common herd of babies, while with the other he assiduously labored to get one foot into his mouth also—lifting up his voice at intervals in angry protest at the futility of his efforts. The only "ink spot" on John's record was that he had married some foreign girl in British Guiana, instead of making a long voyage overseas to transplant one of the cherry-cheeked lasses that hovered around his mother. As the vessel worked slowly up to the wharf John's mother pointed him out. By him stood a fair-haired, German-looking woman, and a comely looking daughter of 18 and a stout-legged boy of 16 with a conquering nose. John himself was a big 6-footer, broad shouldered and full bearded, with a bald spot on the top of his head, and the somewhat slow, heavy looking face that some Englishmen carry about with them. "His heart was in the right place," however. When he got on board John gave his mother a few hugs that made her shoe strings snap and her mouth fly open for air, then fairly lifting her off her feet gave her three resounding kisses. As he put her down the fair haired women, the comely daughter and the boy with the conquering nose pounced upon her, and there was a little whirlwind of sobs, hugs and kisses that must have made John's mother forget all about his sin of taking a wife in an alien land. I think the old lady was happy because by the time she had settled her collar, felt the back of her head for hair-pins and shook out her skirts, she bad cried her nose red.
This is the turning back place, the end of our 2,300 mile run. We have had no very bad weather, but a good deal that was charming. I observed only one lovely sunrise and sunset, each. Usually the west became hazy and thick by 5 o'clock, but there was one clear evening when, as the sun dropped to the waterline and sent horizontal tongues of flame athwart the sea, the foam crests on the waves looked like showers of glistening gold as they broke and spread in the shining pathway; while far off to the south, where the sky and sea melted into each other, a three-masted ship seemed climbing into the heavens. With half the sun's disk below the horizon it looked like an arched and golden doorway into some new and lovely Garden of Eden. That is the best description I can give of the sunset. The dawn was heralded first by faint pink tints in the sky, followed by long tremulous lances of orange and gold, changing to red as they shot higher and higher and stood in serried rows against the azure sky. Then the sun came swiftly up from out the eastern sea, clean, bright and golden. No clear sunrise or sunset can be one-half so lovely as those with cloud effects.
Women complain that they cannot keep their hair in order on ship board, but they appreciate the fact that the same wind that tousles their hair flutters their skirts and ribbons prettily. This is not an important bit of news, but little things interest us deeply on the ocean. We cannot easily get away from each other, so each observes and studies his fellow voyagers with a keenness and intensity that might be resented on shore. We watch and speculate on a faint dot on the horizon until it slowly grows into a steamer, whose black hull and masts outline against the sky like a sketch done in ink. We had a white haired old man whom I thought was remarkable, in that he has so long survived the cares and burdens of such a name as "Schmeckembecker." Isn't that a load for a man to carry to the grave? We also had a Brazilian beauty said to be a real, true, "sure pop" descendant of Portuguese kings. Soft voiced, dark skinned, dark eyed, perfumed and silken-sheathed, red blooded and glowing, she is a woman to make the blood of the male Brazilian swirl through his veins all crinkly like curled maple. Opposite me at table sat a rather fine looking woman, with such tawny looking eyes that I was some times half afraid of her. I am sure she is the kind from which woman righters are made. Her glance was like a man's, she strode around like a man and her voice was loud. She went about the deck leading a bull terrier. Her stomach despised the antics of the deep. No matter whose stomach was upside-down, inside-out or to the-end-to, she was at all meals. It required a good deal to assuage her irresistible and undying appetite. I was pleased to note that after a few days the steward viewed her with a malignant eye.
Georgetown' claims a population of 70,000. The city limits are 1 mile square. Streets are thickly built up beyond the limits. The population is a mixture of Negroes, Creoles, Hindoos, Chinese, Portuguese, with a sprinkling of English and Scotch for ruling classes.
DEMARARA, BRITISH GUIANA, April 27.—Being a stranger I of course on arrival here blundered into one of the most expensive hotels. My room was about sixteen feet square and sixteen from floor to ceiling. Windows seven feet long, doors nine feet high. The floors of bedrooms, halls and stairs were bare; such is the custom throughout the West Indies, experience having taught residents that in warm climates, where insects and stinging things are everywhere, it is safer and healthier. Very few hotels or residences are lathed and plastered. There is only the weatherboards for side walls; one thickness of flooring underfoot and the same overhead. The woodwork in the hotels is of the cheapest. This condition makes noisy houses. The negro women are numerous in them, darting in and out of halls and doorways like rats. They are all barefooted and their feet make very little sound upon the floor. For two weeks I had slept in a room 7 feet square, upon a bunk so narrow that when I lay upon my back with hands together on my chest, each elbow pressed against a side of it.
If the ship was not rolling badly it at least had a wavy, floating motion, and there was always the hungry slat of breakers against the windward side and the gurgle and moan of the spent water under the stern.
Now, thought I, here in this large, cool room, with wide airy bed, what a night's sleep I shall have on the solid land. I turned in at 8:30, and as I grew drowsy I began to note strange, discordant bird calls from a high hedge under my window, and the clamor of dogs at a little distance. I also discovered that a steam railway ran along about half a block distant; the engines were wheezy; the coal cars were the size of a lumber wagon box, and each had four wooden wheels under it with hub and spokes; they have not been greased since Moses was plucked forth from the rushes, and they screeched and wailed and told their sorrowful tales o'er and o'er the long night through.
The next day I transferred myself to another hotel, beyond the reach of the railroad and where there were no birds in the bush. I went to bed at 8. As I dozed off, some household niggers in an adjoining back yard began an evening concert. Their voices were so sweet and plaintive, and they sung so well together that I sat down at the window and listened with delight. When they gave it up I went back to bed, and was again drifting into slumber when a cat opened out on a roof below me. Oh! but these South American tom-cats are star performers! This one called Maria! Maria-h! Mar-i-a-r! M-a-r-i-a-r! until his tail spit f-i-e-r. He went up and down and all around the gamut of unholy and unearthly sounds; from tenderest beseeching to blood-curdling paroxysms of anger, and from that to wild and soul wrenching wails of despair. And when at last the internal ferment of his indignation, towards the faithless gad-about Mariar, rent him into fragments (for nothing less could have eased his pain) and silence reigned. I fell asleep with a crazy brain-twisting problem running through my head, something like this: If a man and a half, kills a cat and a half, with a boot-jack and a half, in a night and a half, how many cats and a half, can a man and a half, kill with a boot-jack and a half, in a night and a half? Sincerely, H. G. JOY.
BORN A SLAVE.
A Resident of Scott for Fifty Years—Died at Alms House.
Elias Van Ever, colored, a resident of Scott for fifty years, died at the Cortland county alms house on Wednesday night, May 30, at the age of 85 years. Deceased was born a slave in New Orleans. As a boy he was in poor health and his master, considering him to be almost worthless, gave him to his brother in Saratoga county, N.Y. In the north he gained rapidly in strength and vigor and was within a few years in such perfect health that the plan of sending him back to slavery in Louisiana was discussed. The boy heard of it and suddenly disappeared. For several years he lived in Montgomery and Herkimer counties. Fifty years ago he came to Scott, and has since lived in a little house near the residence of M. G. Frisbie. Two months ago with his fourth wife, who is now 66 years old, he was taken to the alms house, where he died Tuesday. Funeral service was held in the chapel there this morning at 11 o'clock conducted by Rev. George C. Smith, pastor of the A. M. E. Zion church. Burial at Scott.
Illness of Mr. E. O. Rickard.
The many friends of Mr. E. O. Rickard of Syracuse, formerly of Cortland, will be sorry to learn of his continued serious illness. Mr. Rickard suffered from an attack of pneumonia last winter, which left his lungs in bad condition and his physician recommended a change of climate. Mr. Rickard spent a couple of months in Nevada and returned to Syracuse seemingly much improved in health. The improvement did not prove to be permanent, however, and Mr. Rickard is now making arrangements to spend the summer in the North Woods.
BREVITIES.
—New display advertisements to-day are—Beard & Peck, Parlor furniture, page 8; Warren, Tanner & Co, Tailormade suits, etc., page 4.
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