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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Appletons'
Popular Science Monthly, November 1898
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Title: Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, November 1898

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK APPLETONS'

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, NOVEMBER 1898 ***
 Established by Edward L. Youmans

APPLETONS'
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY

EDITED BY
WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS

VOL. LIV
NOVEMBER, 1898, TO APRIL, 1899

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1899
 Copyright, 1899,
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

Vol. LIV. Established by Edward L. Youmans. No. 1.

APPLETONS'
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.
NOVEMBER, 1898.
EDITED BY WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS.
 CONTENTS.
PAGE

I. Was Middle America Peopled from Asia? By Prof. E. S.

Morse. 1
II. The Possible Fiber Industries of the United States. By
Charles Richards Dodge. (Illustrated.) 15
III. What is Social Evolution? By Herbert Spencer. 35
IV. The Torrents of Switzerland. By Edgar R. Dawson, M. E. 46
V. The Evolution of Colonies. V. Political Evolution. By J.
Collier. 52
VI. Architectural Forms in Nature. By F. S. Dellenbaugh. (Illus.) 63
VII. The Herds of the Yellow Ant. By James Weir, Jr., M. D.
(Illus.) 75
VIII. Two Gifts to French Science. By M. Henri de Parville.
(Illus.) 81
IX. The Mongoose in Jamaica. By C. W. Willis. (Illustrated.) 86
X. The Cause of Rain. By J. R. Plumandon. 89
XI. Dream and Reality. By M. Camille Melinand. 96
XII. A Practical Dutch Charity. By Prof. J. Howard Gore. 103
XIII. Sketch of Frank Wigglesworth Clarke. (With Portrait.) 110
XIV. Correspondence: The Moon and the Weather. 118
XV. Editor's Table: The Goal of Education.—A Doubtful
Appendix to Science.—The Cause of Spain's Decadence.—
Dream and Reality. 118
XVI. Scientific Literature. 126
XVII. Fragments of Science. 135
 NEW YORK:
D . A P P L E T O N A N D C O M P A N Y,
72 FIFTH AVENUE.
Single Number, 50 Cents. Yearly Subscription, $5.00.

Copyright, 1898, by D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

Entered at the Post Office at New York, and admitted for transmission through the mails at
second-class rates.

APPLETONS'
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

NOVEMBER, 1898.
 WAS MIDDLE AMERICA PEOPLED
FROM ASIA?
By Prof. EDWARD S. MORSE.
The controversies over the question of the origin of Central American
culture are to be again awakened by the exploration organized under
the direction of the American Museum of Natural History through the
liberality of its president, Morris K. Jesup, Esq. The plans embrace an
ethnographic survey of the races between the Columbia and Amoor
Rivers. Many similarities in customs, folklore, etc., will doubtless be
found among these northern races. How far traces of an ancient
avenue will be established through which came the unique cult of
middle America, and for which in a way the surveys have been
instituted, remains to be seen. The question is one of perennial
interest, and all honor to the scientific spirit of Mr. Jesup, whose
munificence has provided the means for this work.
It may be of interest to remind those who have only a vague idea
of the contention that there are many earnest scholars who insist
that the wonderful architectural remains in Mexico, Yucatan, and
other regions of the west coast are due to Asiatic contact in the
past. As proofs of this contact are cited similarities as seen in the
monuments, the facial characteristics of certain tribes, ancient
customs, astronomical ideas, serpent worship, certain games, etc.
Particularly is it believed by the scholars that the "land of Fusang"
mentioned in early Chinese historical records is no other than Mexico
or some contiguous country.
Space will not permit even the briefest mention of the evidences
which have led to these conclusions, and the reader is referred to a
remarkably condensed history of the whole question embodied in a
volume by Mr. Edward P. Vining entitled An Inglorious Columbus.
Under this unfortunate title one may find the most painstaking
collocation of the many memoirs written upon this subject, with the
Chinese account of the land of Fusang in Chinese characters, and
appended thereto the various translations of the document by De
Guines, Williams, Julien, and other eminent sinologues.
To the French Orientalist, M. de Guines, we are indebted for our
first knowledge of certain ancient records of the Chinese, which
briefly record the visit of Chinese Buddhist monks to the land of
Fusang in the year 458 of our era, and the return of a single
Buddhist monk from this land in 499. De Guines's memoir appeared
in 1761, and for forty years but little attention was drawn to it.
Humboldt says that, according to the learned researches of Father
Gaubil, it appears doubtful whether the Chinese ever visited the
western coast of America at the time stated by De Guines. In 1831,
Klaproth, the eminent German Orientalist, combated the idea that
Fusang was Mexico, and insisted that it was Japan. In 1844 the
Chevalier de Paravey argued that Fusang should be looked for in
America. Prof. Karl Friedrich Neumann also defended this idea. In
magazine articles in 1850-1862, and finally in book form in 1875, Mr.
C. G. Leland supported with great ingenuity the idea of Chinese
contact based on the Fusang account. In 1862 M. José Perez also
defended the idea. In 1865 M. Gustave d'Eichthal published his
memoir on the Buddhistic origin of American civilization, and in the
same year M. Vivien de Saint-Martin combated the theory, and since
that time many others have written upon the subject in favor or in
opposition to the idea of Asiatic contact.
These hasty citations are only a few of the many that I have
drawn from Mr. Vining's encyclopedic compilation.
It is extraordinary what a keen fascination the obscure paths of
regions beyond history and usually beyond verification have to many
minds, and the fascination is as justifiable as the desire to explore
unknown regions of the earth. In the one case, however, we have a
tangled mass of legendary tales coming down from a time when
dragons were supposed to exist, when trees were miles in height,
when people lived to a thousand years, when every unit of
measurement was distorted and every physical truth, as we know it
to-day, had no recognition, while in the other case we have at least
a continuity of the same land and sea extending to the unexplored
beyond. This impulse of the human mind finds an attractive problem
in the question as to the origin of the American races. Dr. Brinton
has insisted on the unreasonable nature of the inquiry by asking an
analogous one: "Whence came the African negroes? All will reply,
'From Africa, of course.' 'Originally?' 'Yes, originally; they constitute
the African or negro subspecies of man.'" By bringing together
isolated features which have resemblances in common, the American
Indian has been traced to nearly every known stock. Mr. Henry W.
Henshaw, in an admirable address entitled Who are the American
Indians? says: "If you have special bias or predilection you have only
to choose for yourself. If there be any among you who decline to
find the ancestors of our Indians among the Jews, Phœnicians,
Scandinavians, Irish, Welsh, Egyptians, or Tartars, then you still have
a choice among the Hindu, Malay, Polynesian, Chinese, or Japanese,
or indeed among almost any other of the children of men." Had this
address been written a few years later he might have added Hittite!
There are two propositions involved in the controversy as to the
Asiatic origin of the American race: the one is that America was
peopled from Asia by invasions or migrations in pre-savage or pre-
glacial times; the other is that the peculiar civilization of Central
America was induced by Buddhist monks, who traveled from Asia to
Mexico and Central America in the fifth century of our era. Those
who sustain the first thesis are without exception men trained in the
science of anthropology; those who sustain the second thesis are
with a few conspicuous exceptions travelers, geographers,
sinologues, missionaries, and the like.
If Asia should ever prove to be the cradle of the human race, or of
any portion of it which had advanced well beyond the creature
known as Pithecanthropus erectus, then unquestionably an Asian
people may be accounted the progenitors of the American Indians.
Any effort, however, to establish an identity at this stage would
probably take us far beyond the origin of speech or the ability to
fabricate an implement.
The controversy has not raged on this ground, however; the
numerous volumes and memoirs on the subject have dealt almost
exclusively with culture contacts or direct invasions from Asia in our
era, and more particularly with the supposed visits of Chinese
Buddhist monks to Mexico and Central America already alluded to.
Believing in the unity of the human race, the dispersion of the
species seems more naturally to have occurred along the northern
borders of the great continents rather than across the wide ocean.
From the naturalist's standpoint the avenues have been quite as
open for the circumpolar distribution of man as they have been for
the circumpolar distribution of other animals and plants down to the
minutest land snail and low fungus. The ethnic resemblances
supposed to exist between the peoples of the two sides of the Pacific
may be the result of an ancient distribution around the northern
regions of the globe. Even to-day social relations are said to exist
between the peoples of the Mackenzie and the Lena delta, and it is
not improbable that the carrying band of the Ainu in Yeso and a
similar device depicted on ancient codices and stone monuments in
Mexico may have had a common origin. Advancing to a time when
man acquired the art of recording his thoughts, the question of any
contact between the peoples of the eastern and western shores of
the Pacific, south of latitude 40°, compels us to examine the
avenues which have been so potent in the distribution of life in the
past—namely, the oceanic currents. We are at once led to the great
Japan current, the Kuro Shiwo, which sweeps up by the coast of
Japan and spends its force on the northwest coast of America.
Records show a number of instances of Japanese junks cast ashore
on the Oregon coast and shores to the north.[1]
It must be evidences of Japanese and not Chinese contact that we
are to look for—tangible evidences, for example, in the form of
relics, methods of burial, etc. That the Japanese bear resemblances
to certain northern people there can be no doubt. Dr. Torell brought
before the Swedish Anthropological Society, some years ago, the
results of a comparative study of Eskimo and Japanese. The
anatomical and ethnographical resemblances appeared so striking to
him as to give additional strength to the theory of the settlement of
America from Asia by way of Bering Strait. That there are certain
resemblances among individuals of different races we have abundant
evidences. At a reception in Philadelphia I introduced a Japanese
commissioner (who had been a Cambridge wrangler) to a full-
blooded Omaha Indian dressed in our costume, and the
commissioner began a conversation with him in Japanese; nor could
he believe me when I assured him that it was an Indian that he was
addressing, and not one of his own countrymen. I was told by an
attaché of the Japanese legation at Washington that after carefully
scrutinizing the features of a gentleman with whom he was traveling
he ventured to introduce himself as a fellow-countryman, and found
to his astonishment that the man was a native of the Malay
Peninsula. That the Malays bear a strong resemblance to the
Chinese is quite true. Dr. Baelz, of the Medical College of Japan, can
find no differences between the crania and pelves of the Chinese
and Malays. Wallace assures us that even the Malay of Java, when
dressed as a Chinese, is not to be distinguished from them, and
Peschel classifies the Malays with the Mongoloid people. In these
approximate regions one might expect close intermixtures. If
resemblances are established between the Japanese and the
Eskimo, they would probably have arisen from a circumpolar race
which has left its traces on northern peoples the world around. We
turn naturally to Japan as the region from which a migration might
reasonably have been supposed to take place. Its position on the
Asiatic coast with a series of larger and smaller stepping-stones—the
Kuriles—to Kamchatka, and thence across the strait to America and
seaward, the broad and powerful Japanese current sweeping by its
coast and across the Pacific, arrested only by the northwestern coast
of America. With these various avenues of approach one might
certainly expect evidences of contact in past times. A somewhat
extended study in Japan of its prehistoric and early historic remains
in the way of shell-heap pottery from the north to the south, much
of it of an exceedingly curious character; the later stone implements,
many of them of the most extraordinary types; the bronze mirrors,
swords, spear points, and the so-called bronze bells; the wide
distribution of a curious comma-shaped ornament of stone known as
the magatama, with a number of varieties, and many other kinds of
objects, leads me to say that no counterpart or even remote
parallelism has been found in the western hemisphere. Certain rude
forms of decoration of the northern shell-heap pottery of Japan,
such as the cord-mark and crenulated fillet, are world-wide in their
distribution, and a similar wide dispersal is seen of the rude stone
implements and notched and barbed bone and horn. Here, however,
the similarity ends. The lathe-turned unglazed mortuary vessels so
common in ancient graves in Japan and Korea have equally no
counterpart on our western coast. If now we examine the early
records of Japan in her two famous works—the Kojiki and Nihonji,
which contain rituals, ceremonies, and historical data going back
with considerable accuracy to the third and fourth centuries of our
era—we shall find many curious details of customs and arts and
references to objects which have since been exhumed from burial
mounds, yet we look in vain for a similar cult in Mexico or Central
America. Turning aside from Japan as an impossible ground in which
to trace resemblances, we glance at the unique character of the
ancient pottery of Central America, with its representations of
natural forms, such as fishes, turtles, frogs, shells, etc., its peculiar
motives of decoration in color, and find no counterpart in Asia. The
pyramidal rock structure and rounded burial mounds are supposed
to have their counterparts in the East, but the pyramidal form is
common in various parts of the world, simply because it is the most
economical and most enduring type of architecture, and facilitates
by its form the erection of the highest stone structures. The
rounding dome of an earth mound and the angular side of a rock
pyramid are the result of material only.
If we now turn to China as a possible region from which
migrations may have come in the past, we have only to study the
historical records of that ancient people to realize how hopeless it is
to establish any relationship. Let one study the Ceremonial Usages
of the Chinese (1121 B.C.—translated by Gingell), and he will then
appreciate the wonderful advancement of the Chinese at that early
date—the organized government, the arts, customs, manufactures,
and the minute observances and regulations concerning every detail
of life. With these records before him he may search in vain for the
direct introduction of any art or device described in this old Chinese
work. A few similarities are certainly found between the East and the
West, but these arise from the identity in man's mental and physical
structure. With two legs only, for example, it is found difficult to sit
on a seat comfortably in more than a few ways. One may sit with
both legs down, with one leg under, with legs crossed à la Turk, or
the unconventional way throughout the world with one leg over the
other at various angles. It would seem with this limited number of
adjustments that any similarities in the attitude of certain stone
statues in America and Asia could have but little weight. Prof. F. W.
Putnam believes that he has established an Asiatic origin of certain
jade ornaments found in Central America. If this conclusion could be
sustained, we should then have evidences of contact with an Asiatic
people in the stone age, which in itself was one of great antiquity for
the Chinese, and one long antedating the origin of Buddhism. In the
Chinese work above alluded to the whetstone is mentioned for
sharpening swords, and the craft employed in polishing the musical
stone. Confucius also refers to the musical stone in his Analects. This
is as near as we get to the use of stone eleven hundred years before
Christ. It is to the merit of Putnam to have first called attention to
the fact that many of the jade ornaments, amulets, etc., of Central
America had originally been portions of jade celts. The discovery is
one of importance, whatever explanation may be reached as to the
origin of the stone. In Costa Rica these celt-derived ornaments have
been cut from celts composed of the native rock, and it would seem
that these old implements handed down in the family led to their
being preserved in the form of beads, amulets, etc., much in the
same spirit that animates us to-day in making paper-cutters,
penholders, and the like from wood of the Charter Oak, frigate
Constitution, and other venerated relics. Among other evidences of
contact the existence of the Chinese calendar in Mexico is cited. Dr.
Brinton shows, however, that the Mexican calendar is an indigenous
production, and has no relation to the calendar of the Chinese. In a
similar way the Mexican game of patolli is correlated with the East
Indian game of parchesi by Dr. E. B. Tylor. Dr. Stewart Culin, who has
made a profound study of the games of the world, and Mr. Frank
Hamilton Cushing, the distinguished student of the ethnology of
southern North America, are both convinced that this game had an
independent origin in various parts of the world. Mexican divisions of
time marked by five colors are recognized as being allied to a similar
device in China. The application of colors to the meaning of certain
ideographs is common in other parts of the world as well. It is
important to remark that the colors named include nearly the whole
category as selected by barbarous people, and in the use of colors in
this way it would be difficult to avoid similarities.
The evidences of contact in early times must be settled by the
comparison of early relics of the two shores of the Pacific.
Resemblances there are, and none will dispute them, but that they
are fortuitous and have no value in the discussion is unquestionable.
As illustrations of these fortuitous resemblances may be cited a tazza
from the United States of Colombia having a high support with
triangular perforations identical in form with that of a similar object
found among the mortuary vessels of Korea, and Greece as well. A
curious, three-lobed knob of a pot rim, so common in the shell
mounds of Omori, Japan, has its exact counterpart in the shell
mounds of the upper Amazon. In the Omori pottery a peculiar
curtain-shaped decoration on a special form of jar has its exact
parallel in the ancient pottery of Porto Rico. These instances might
be multiplied, but such coincidences as are often seen in the identity
of certain words are familiar to all students. The account of the land
of Fusang appears in the records of the Liang dynasty contained in
the Nanshi, or History of the South, written by Li Yen-Shau, who
lived in the beginning of the seventh century. It purports to have
been told by a monk who returned from the land of Fusang in 499 of
our era. This hypothetical region has been believed to be Japan,
Saghalin, and Mexico. The record is filled with fabulous statements
of impossible animals, trees of impossible dimensions, and is so
utterly beyond credence in many ways that it should have no weight
as evidence. If it had any foundation in fact, then one might infer
that some traveler had entered Saghalin from the north, had crossed
to Yeso and Japan, and found his way back to China. His own
recollections, supplemented by stories told him by others, would
form the substance of his account. The record is brief, but any one
familiar with Japan as Klaproth was is persuaded with him that the
account refers to Japan and adjacent regions. The twenty thousand
li the monk is said to have traveled may parallel his mulberry trees
several thousand feet high and his silkworms seven feet long. In a
more remote Chinese record, as mentioned by Dr. Gustave Schlegel,
the statement is made that the inhabitants had to dig down ten
thousand feet to obtain blue tenacious clay for roofing tiles! A
number of ardent writers convinced that signs of Chinese contact are
seen in the relics of middle America have seized upon this account of
Fusang in support of this belief. These convictions have arisen by
finding it difficult to believe that the ancient civilizations of Mexico
and Peru could have been indigenous. In seeking for an exterior
origin in the Fusang account overweight has been credited to every
possible resemblance, and all discrepancies have been ignored.
The fabulous account of the land of Fusang evidently supplied
documentary evidence, and Mexico was conceived to be the mythical
Fusang. Mr. Vining goes so far as to declare that "some time in the
past the nations of Mexico, Yucatan, and Central America were
powerfully affected by the introduction of Asiatic arts, customs, and
religious belief." To establish the details in the Chinese account the
entire western hemisphere is laid under contribution: now it is the
buffalo of North America, then the llama of Peru, the reindeer of the
arctic, or some native word. These writers do not hesitate to bring to
life animals that became extinct in the upper Tertiaries, and to
account for the absence of others by supposing them to have
become extinct. Literal statements of horses dragging wheeled
vehicles are interpreted as an allusion in Buddhist cult which refers
by metaphor to attributes and not to actual objects. As an illustration
of the wild way in which some of these resemblances are
established, Mr. Vining quotes the account of M. José Perez (Revue
Orientale et Américaine, vol. viii). Perez reminds us that the
inhabitants of the New World gave Old World names to places in the
new continent, citing New York, New Orleans, and New Brunswick as
examples, and then says that at some remote epoch the Asiatics had
given to the cities of the New World the same names as the cities of
their mother country; so the name of the famous Japanese city
Ohosaka (Osaka), to the west of the Pacific, became Oaxaca in
Mexico on the eastern side. Now it is well known that the ancient
name of Osaka was Namihawa; this became corrupted into Naniwa,
and not till 1492 does the name Osaka appear. Rev. J. Summers
gives a full account of these successive names with their meanings
(Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. vii, part iv). The
real question to be answered is not what might have been
accomplished by ancient explorers from Asia, but what was
accomplished. It is shown that Chinese Buddhist priests went to
India in the years 388, 399, 629, and so on, and the question is
asked, Why may they not have reached Mexico on the east?
Migration on parallels of latitude with no intervening ocean is one
matter; to go from latitude 30° on one side of the Pacific almost to
the Arctic Ocean, and down on the other side nearly to the equator,
is quite another exploit. It is assumed that five priests had gone to
Mexico in 468 A.D., and there ingrafted Buddhistic cult on the races
with whom they came in contact. It is simply beyond reason to
believe that the introduction of Buddhism into Mexico antedated by
half a century its introduction into Japan. Communication between
Korea and Japan has been from the earliest times one without effort
or peril: in the one case a trip of a day or more, in the other case a
journey of unnumbered thousands of miles through perilous seas,
across stormy fiords and raging waters, including arctic and tropical
climates and contact with multitudinous savage hordes. Those who
hold that Mexico and Central America were powerfully affected by
Asiatic contact must be called upon to explain the absence of certain
Asiatic arts and customs which would have been introduced by any
contact of sufficient magnitude to leave its impress so strongly in
other directions. A savage people takes but little from a civilized
people save its diseases, gunpowder, and rum. The contact of
barbarous with civilized people results in an interchange of many
useful objects and ideas, but these introductions must be through
repeated invasions and by considerable numbers. Peschel, while
believing in the Asiatic origin of the American race, would place the
time far back in the savage state. He repudiates the Fusang idea,
and expresses his belief that "a high state of civilization can not be
transmitted by a few individuals, and that the progress in culture
takes place in dense populations and by means of a division of labor
which fits each individual into a highly complex but most effective
organization," and then insists that "the phenomena of American
civilization originated independently and spontaneously"; and Keane
shows how interesting the social, religious, and political institutions
of America become when "once severed from the fictitious Asiatic
connection and influences." That the savage derives little or derives
slowly from contact with a superior race is seen in the fact that he
still remains savage. Thus the Ainu, a low, savage people, though
they have been in contact with the Japanese for nearly two
thousand years, have never acquired the more powerful Mongolian
arrow release, while the Persians, though Aryan, yet early acquired
this release from their Mongolian neighbors. The Scandinavians, who
in prehistoric times practiced the primary release, yet later acquired
the more efficient Mediterranean method. Let us for a moment
consider what would have occurred as a result of an Asiatic contact
with a people advanced enough to have been powerfully affected in
their "arts, customs, and religious belief." It seems reasonable to
believe that traces of a Mongolian release would be found in Central
America, the more so as a warlike people would eagerly seize upon a
more powerful method of pulling the bow, yet no trace of a stone or
metal thumb ring has ever been found in the western hemisphere.
Ancient Mexican codices, while depicting the archer, reveal no trace
of the Mongolian method. In the Old World this release crept
westward as a result of the migration of, or contact with, Asiatic
tribes, and metal thumb rings are dug up on the Mediterranean
littoral. While the arrow release of China might not have effected a
lodgment in America, the terra-cotta roofing tile certainly would. This
important device, according to Schlegel, was probably known in
China 2200 B.C., in Korea 500 B.C., and in Japan in the early years
of our era. In the ancient records of Japan reference is made to
"breaking a hole in the roof tiles of the hall," etc., and green-glazed
tiles are dug up on the sites of ancient temples in Japan. The
fragments are not only unmistakable but indestructible. I have
shown elsewhere[2] that the primitive roofing tile crept into Europe
from the East, distributing itself along both shores of the
Mediterranean, and extending north to latitude 44°. Graeber finds its
earliest use in the temple of Hira in Olympia, 1000 B.C. The ancient
Greeks had no knowledge of the roofing tile. Among the thousands
of fragments and multitudinous articles of pottery found by
Schliemann in the ruins of Ilios, not a trace of the roofing tile was
discovered. One is forced to believe that so useful an object, and
one so easily made, would have been immediately adopted by a
people so skillful in the making of pottery as the ancient Mexicans.
Certainly these people and those of contiguous countries were equal
to the ancient Greeks in the variety of their fictile products. Huge
jars, whistles, masks, men in armor, curious pots of an infinite
variety attest to their skill as potters, yet the western hemisphere
has not revealed a single fragment of a pre-Columbian roofing tile.
Vining, in his work, cites an observation of the Rev. W. Lobscheid,
the author of a Chinese grammar. In crossing the Isthmus of
Panama this writer was much struck with the similarities to China;
"the principal edifices on elevated ground and the roofing tiles
identical to those of China." The roofing tile is indeed identical with
that of China. It is the form that I have elsewhere defined as the
normal or Asiatic tile, but it reached America for the first time by
way of the Mediterranean and Spain, and thence with the Spaniards
across the Atlantic, where it immediately gained a footing, and
rapidly spread through South America and along the west coast
north, as may be seen in the old mission buildings in California.
In China, Korea, and Japan the sandal has a bifurcated toe cord,
the base of which, springing from the front of the sandal, passes
between the first and second toes. It belongs to the Old World
through its entire extent. It is the only form represented in ancient
Egyptian, Assyrian, and Greek sculpture. One would have expected
that with any close contact with Asian people this method of holding
the sandal to the foot would have been established in Central
America, yet one may seek in vain for the evidences of even a
sporadic introduction of this method. Where representations are
given in the sculptured stone pottery, or codex, the sandal is
represented with two cords, one passing between the first and
second and the other between the third and fourth toes. Dr. Otis T.
Mason, who has given us an exhaustive monograph of the foot gear
of the world, says that every authority on Mexico and Central
America pictures the sandal with two cords, and he further says, in a
general article on the same subject, "An examination of any
collection of pottery of middle America reveals the fact at once, if
the human foot is portrayed, that the single toe string was not
anciently known."
The Thibetans, Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese have used the
serviceable carrying stick from time immemorial. The nearest
approach to this method in this country is seen in Guadalajara,
where a shoulder piece is used to carry jars. The representation of
this method shows that the pole rests across the back in such a
manner that the load is steadied by both the right and left hand
simultaneously—identical, in fact, with methods in vogue to-day
through western Europe. We find, however, the northern races, as
the Ainu and Kamchadels, use the head band in carrying loads, and
this method has been depicted in ancient American sculpture. The
carrying stick, so peculiarly Asiatic, according to Dr. Mason, is not
met with on this continent.
With the evidences of Asiatic contact supposed to be so strong in
Central America, one might have imagined that so useful a device as
the simple chopsticks would have secured a footing. These two
sticks, held in one hand and known in China as "hasteners or nimble
lads," are certainly the most useful, the most economical, and the
most efficient device for their purposes ever invented by man.
Throughout that vast Asian region, embracing a population of five
hundred million, the chopstick is used as a substitute for fork, tongs,
and certain forms of tweezers. Even fish, omelet, and cake are
separated with the chopsticks, and the cook, the street scavenger,
and the watch repairer use this device in the form of iron, long
bamboo, and delicate ivory. The bamboo chopstick was known in
China 1000 B.C., and shortly after this date the ivory form was
devised. Their use is one of great antiquity in Japan, as attested by
references to it in the ancient records of that country. One may
search in vain for the trace of any object in the nature of a chopstick
in Central or South America. Knitting needles of wood are found in
the work baskets associated with ancient Peruvian mummies, but
the chopstick has not been found. Curious pottery rests for the
chopsticks are exhumed in Japan, but even this enduring testimony
of its early use is yet to be revealed in this country.
The plow in all its varieties has existed in China for countless
centuries. Its ideograph is written in a score of ways. It was early
introduced into Korea and Japan, and spread westward through the
Old World to Scandinavia. There it has been found in the peat bogs.
It is figured on ancient Egyptian monuments, yet it made its
appearance in the New World only with the advent of the Spaniards.
This indispensable implement of agriculture when once introduced
was instantly adopted by the races who came in contact with the
Spaniards. Even in Peru, with its wonderful agricultural development
and irrigating canals, no trace of this device is anciently known, and
to-day the tribes of Central and South America still follow the rude
and primitive model first introduced by their conquerors.
If we study the musical instruments of the New World races we
find various forms of whistles, flutes, rattles, split bells, and drums,
but seek in vain for a stringed instrument of any kind. This is all the
more surprising when we find evidences of the ancient use of the
bow. If Dr. Tylor is right, we may well imagine that the lute of
ancient Egypt was evolved from the musical bow with its gourd
resonator (so common in various parts of Africa), and this in turn an
outgrowth of the archer's bow, or, what at the moment seems quite
as probable, the musical bow might have been the primitive form
from which was evolved the archer's bow on the one hand and the
lute on the other. Dr. Mason, in a brief study of the musical bow,
finds it in various forms in Africa and sporadic cases of it in this
country, and expresses the conviction that stringed musical
instruments were not known to any of the aborigines of the western
hemisphere before Columbus. Dr. Brinton is inclined to dispute this
conclusion, though I am led to believe that Dr. Mason is right; for
had this simple musical device been known anciently in this country,
it would have spread so widely that its pre-Columbian use would
have been beyond any contention. In Japan evidences of a stringed
instrument run back to the third or fourth century of our era, and in
China the kin (five strings) and seih (thirteen strings) were known a
thousand years before Christ. These were played in temples of
worship, at religious rites, times of offering, etc. It seems incredible
that any contact sufficient to affect the religious customs of Mexico
or Central America could have occurred without the introduction of a
stringed instrument of some kind.[3]
In the Ceremonial Usages of the Chinese (1100 B.C.), a work
already referred to, one may find allusions to a number of forms of
wheeled carriages, with directions for their construction. Minute
details even are given as to material and dimensions, such as
measuring the spoke holes in the rim with millet seed (reminding
one of the modern method of ascertaining the cubic contents of
crania), all indicating the advanced development of wheeled
vehicles. If from this early date in China up to the fifth century A.D.,
any people had found their way from China to middle America, one
wonders why the wheel was not introduced. Its absence must be
accounted for. It was certainly not for lack of good roads or
constructive skill. Its appearance in this hemisphere was
synchronous with the Spanish invasion, and when once introduced
spread rapidly north and south. Like the plow, it still remains to-day
the clumsy and primitive model of its Spanish prototype.
The potter's wheel is known to have existed in Asia from the
earliest times; the evidence is not only historical, but is attested by
the occurrence of lathe-turned pottery in ancient graves. We look in
vain for a trace of a potter's wheel in America previous to the
sixteenth century. Mr. Henry C. Mercer regards a potter's device used
in Yucatan as a potter's wheel, and believes it to have been pre-
Columbian. This device, known as the kabal, consists of a thick disk
of wood which rests on a slippery board, the potter turning the disk
with his feet. The primitive workman uses his feet to turn, hold, and
move objects in many operations. The primitive potter has always
turned his jar in manipulation rather than move himself about it.
Resting the vessel on a block and revolving it with his feet is
certainly the initial step toward the potter's wheel, but so simple an
expedient must not be regarded as having any relation to the true
potter's wheel, which originated in regions where other kinds of
wheels revolving on pivots were known.
It seems reasonable to believe that had the Chinese, Japanese, or
Koreans visited the Mexican coast in such numbers as is believed
they did, we ought certainly to find some influence, some faint
strain, at least, of the Chinese method of writing in the hitherto
unfathomable inscriptions of Maya and Aztec. Until recently it was
not known whether they were phonetic or ideographic; indeed, Dr.
Brinton has devised a new word to express their character, which he
calls ikonomatic. This distinguished philologist of the American
languages confesses that not even the threshold of investigation in
the solution of these enigmatical puzzles has been passed. Had the
Chinese introduced or modified or even influenced in any way the
method of writing as seen on the rock inscriptions of Central
America, one familiar with Chinese might have found some clew, as
was the case in deciphering the ancient writings of Assyria and
Egypt. Grotefend's work on cuneiform inscriptions and Champollion's
interpretation of Egyptian came about by the assumption of certain
inclosures representing historic characters, which were revealed in
one case by an inference and in another by an accompanying Greek
inscription. If we examine the early Chinese characters as shown on
ancient coins of the Hea dynasty (1756 to 2142 B.C.), or the
characters on ancient bronze vases of the Shang dynasty (1113 to
1755 B.C.), we find most of them readily deciphered by sinologists,
and coming down a few centuries later the characters are quite like
those as written to-day. On some of the many inscribed stone
monuments of Central America one might expect to find some traces
of Chinese characters if any intercourse had taken place, whereas
the Maya glypts are remotely unlike either Chinese or Egyptian
writing. Some acute students of this subject are inclined to believe
that these undecipherable characters have been evolved from
pictographs which were primarily derived from the simple picture
writing so common among the races of the New World.
 It seems clearly impossible that any intercourse could have taken
place between Asia and America without an interchange of certain
social commodities. The "divine weed," tobacco, has been the
comfort of the races of the western hemisphere north and south for
unnumbered centuries: stone tobacco pipes are exhumed in various
parts of the continent; cigarettes made of corn husks are found in
ancient graves and caves; the metatarsals of a deer, doubly
perforated, through which to inhale tobacco or its smoke in some
form, are dug up on the shores of Lake Titicaca.
The question naturally arises why tobacco was not carried back to
Asia by some of the returning emigrants, or why tea was not
introduced into this country by those early invaders. A Buddhist
priest without tea or tobacco would be an anomaly. There are many
other herbs, food plants, etc., that should not have waited for the
Spanish invasion on the one hand, or the Dutch and Portuguese
navigator along the Chinese coast on the other.
Finally, if evidences of Asiatic contact exist, they should certainly
be found in those matters most closely connected with man, such as
his weapons, clothing, sandals, methods of conveyance, pottery
making and devices thereon, musical instruments, and above all
house structure and modes of burial. More remote perhaps would be
survivals of language, and if the invaders had a written one, the
characters, whether phonetic or ideographic, would have been left in
the enduring rock inscriptions. If now a study of the aborigines of
the western hemisphere from Hudson Bay to Tierra del Fuego fails to
reveal even a remote suggestion of resemblance to any of these
various matters above enumerated, their absence must in some way
be accounted for by Asiaticists.
[1] Mr. Charles Walcott Brooks presented to the California Academy of Sciences
a report of Japanese vessels wrecked on the North Pacific Ocean in which many
instances are given. He says: "Every junk found stranded on the coast of North
America or on the Hawaiian or adjacent islands has, on examination, proved to be
Japanese, and no single instance of a Chinese vessel has ever been reported, nor
is any believed to have existed.... There also exists an ocean stream of cold water
emerging from the Arctic Ocean which sets close in along the eastern coast of
Asia. This fully accounts for the absence of Chinese junks on the Pacific, as vessels
disabled off their coast would naturally drift southward."
[2] On the Older Forms of Terra-Cotta Roofing Tiles. Essex Institute Bulletin,
1882.
[3] Since the above was written Dr. Brinton and Mr. Saville have called my
attention to such evidences as would warrant the belief in the existence of a pre-
Columbian stringed musical instrument. The devices are, however, of such a
nature as to indicate their independent origin.
 THE POSSIBLE FIBER INDUSTRIES
OF THE UNITED STATES.
By CHARLES RICHARDS DODGE.
The wealth of any community is dependent on the variety and extent
of its industries, the utilization of local natural resources, and the
employment of the labor of all classes of its population. In locations
of successful industrial operations the farmer derives increased
incomes, the value of his products is greater, his lands of higher
value, and the wages of agricultural labor larger. The rural
population contiguous to large towns, therefore, is more prosperous
than the larger farming contingent more remote from manufacturing
or industrial centers. The farmers of the first class are prosperous
because they have a home market for their dairy products, fruits,
vegetables, and other "truck," which they are able to produce, for
the most part, on small areas by high culture, while those of the
second class are forced to expend their energies on commercial
commodities such as cotton, wool, meat, grain, etc., with long hauls
in transportation, and with heavy competition, international as well
as domestic.
In times of depression, or when competition has grown too heavy,
the cultivation of certain staples may cease to be remunerative, and
the unfortunate producer is compelled to diversify his agriculture, or
adopt some other means of livelihood.
Just such a misfortune has overtaken many farmers in the United
States within the past few years. Within two years, in fact, wheat
has been a drug in the market, while corn has been cheaper in some
sections than coal, and cotton is now so low that it hardly pays to
grow it, without considering the necessity, for the Southern farmer,
of competing against the seventy-five thousand bales of Egyptian
cotton which enter our ports in a year. Confronted with these
conditions, there never has been a time when farmers were more
anxious to discover new paying crops. Among the possible new rural
industries that have attracted the attention of the agricultural class is
that of fiber production, though the growth of certain kinds of fibers
in past time has been a source of income to the country. Already
there is a widespread interest in the subject throughout the West
and South, and farmers are only seeking information regarding the
particular practice involved in the cultivation of flax, ramie, and other
fibers, cost of production, market, etc., but many are asking where
the proper seed can be secured with which to make a start.
The importation of unmanufactured flax, hemp, textile grasses,
and other fibers amounts annually to a sum ranging from fifteen
million to twenty million dollars, while the imported manufactures of
these fibers amount to almost double this value, or, in round
numbers, approximately forty-five million dollars. With the
establishment and extension of three or four fiber industries in this
country, and with the new manufacturing enterprises that would
grow out of such establishment and extension, an immense sum
could be readily saved to the country, and the money representing
the growth of these fibers would add just so much to the wealth of
the farming class.
There are two ways in which we may arrive at a solution of this
problem: by direct Government aid, and through the intelligently
directed efforts of private enterprise.
Government experiments for the development or extension of
vegetable fiber industries have been instituted, at different times, in
many countries. In some instances these have been confined to
testing the strength of native fibrous substances for comparison with
similar tests of commercial fibers. Such were the almost exhaustive
experiments of Roxburgh in India early in the present century.
Another direction for Government experimentation has been the
testing of machines to supersede costly hand labor in the
preparation of the raw material for market, or in the development of
chemical processes for the further preparation of the fibers for
manufacture. The broadest field of experiment, however, has been
the growth of the plants under different conditions, either to
introduce their culture, or to economically develop the industries
growing out of their culture, when such industries need to be
fostered. The introduction of ramie culture is an example of the first
instance, the fostering of the almost extinct flax industry of our
grandfathers' days an illustration of the second.
The United States has conducted experiments or instituted
inquiries in the fiber interest at various times in the last fifty years,
but it is only since 1890 that an office of practical experiment and
inquiry has been established by the United States Department of
Agriculture, that has been continuous through a term of years.

A Cotton Field in Mississippi.

In the present work the efforts of the Government have been
mainly directed in the line of collecting and disseminating
authoritative information relating to all branches of the industry, in
importing proper seed for experimental cultivation, and in directing
experiments, either on its own account or in co-operation with State
and even private interests. The testing of new labor-saving
machinery has also come within its province.
 The subject in its details will be better understood by considering
the list of the more important commercial fibers known to our
market. The list is not a long one, for it barely reaches a total of
fifteen species. The fibers of the first rank are the spinning fibers—
namely, cotton, flax, hemp, jute; of the second rank, or cordage
fibers, Sisal, Manila, Sunn and Mauritius hemps, and New Zealand
flax; and of the third rank, Tampico, or ixtle, African fiber or
palmetto, coir or cocoanut, piassaba, Mexican whisk, raffia, and
Spanish moss, which are used in brush manufacture, in upholstery,
and for other rough manufactures. Of these fifteen forms, only
cotton, hemp, palmetto, and Spanish moss are produced in the
United States in commercial quantity, though flax line has been
produced to some extent in the past. Of those not produced in
commercial quantity in this country, but which would thrive in
cultivation, may be mentioned jute, New Zealand flax, Sisal hemp,
cocoanut, and possibly Sunn hemp in subtropical Florida, with a few
"substitutes," which will be mentioned hereafter.
I have neglected to mention in this list the sponge cucumber, a
species of Luffa used as a bath sponge, which is imported from
Japan in quantity, and which grows in the United States.
Passing the list of recognized commercial fibers, we come to a
large number of species, forms allied to the above, that are either
employed locally, chiefly by the natives in the countries where
grown, or that would be capable of employment in the world's
manufacture were they not inferior to the standard commercial
forms at present recognized, and with which they would necessarily
compete at a disadvantage. This list is a long one, for in the single
genus Agave, to which belong the plant producing the Sisal hemp of
commerce, there are over one hundred species in Mexico alone,
more than one half of which would produce good fiber. In our own
country it would be possible to enumerate twenty species of plants
that are recognized as American weeds, the fibers of which could be
employed as hemp, flax, or jute substitutes were these materials
unobtainable, besides half as many structural fiber plants similar to
the agave, the products of which could be employed as cordage
fiber substitutes in the same manner. Many of these uncultivated
plants have been known to the aborigines for years, possibly for
centuries, as we find their fiber, produced in varied forms of rude
manufacture, in ancient tombs or other burial places.

Pulling Flax in Minnesota.

After exhausting the list of plants that may be termed commercial
fiber substitutes, in different countries where they grow, there still
remains a much larger list of species that are chiefly interesting in a
scientific enumeration of those plants which produce in their stalks,
leaves, or seed vessels what may be termed fibrous substance. My
own catalogue of the fibers of the world already foots up over one
thousand species of plants, and the complete catalogue for all
countries might extend the list to a thousand more.
In considering the undeveloped fibers of the United States, it will
be seen we should only recognize the actual commercial forms
which we do not produce, but which may be produced within our
borders, or such native growths as may be economically employed
as their substitutes, and which possibly might be brought into
commercial importance.
The hemp industry is already established, though it should be
extended in order to recover its lost position among American rural
industries. Where in the past we produced forty thousand tons of
hemp in the United States, we now produce less than a fifth of this
quantity. The cultivation of flax in the United States before the days
of the present factory system was so widespread that it was of
national importance. Its manufacture was largely a home industry,
however, conducted by the fireside, and, as in ancient Greece and
Rome, the work was performed by the women of the household.
With the advent of the factory system came competition; the
housewife laid aside her spinning wheel, the clumsy home-made
loom fell into disuse, and the farmer grew no more flax for fiber.
Then the flaxseed industry was extended, and after the close of the
war a large demand sprang up for coarse fiber for the roughest of
uses—for bagging and upholstery, in connection with hemp—and
hundreds of little tow mills came into existence in the Middle and
Western States.
The introduction of jute opened another chapter, and the decline
of this crude attempt at a flax industry is recorded. Meanwhile some
line flax was produced, but the extension of spinning and weaving
establishments made a larger demand for this fiber, which was
chiefly imported. Land in the old flax-growing States became more
valuable for other crops, especially with the low prices brought about
by foreign competition, and gradually the flax culture in the United
States became a thing of the past.
In recent years similar causes have
served to operate against the industry in
foreign flax countries where old and
plodding methods are still in vogue, with
additional factors in impoverished soils and
high rental for land, and the cultural
industry abroad is declining. With the
opening of new and fertile Western lands in
this country, and with the employment of
the finest labor-saving agricultural
implements in the world, the conditions are
again changed, and are now favorable for
American agriculture to re-establish this
industry, and to make good a declining Hackling Flax.
foreign supply. Our farmers are ready for
the work, but they have not only lost their
skill and cunning in producing the straw and preparing the fiber for
the spinner, but new and more economical methods must be
adopted to place the culture on a solid basis.
A million acres of flax are grown for seed annually, but the growth
of flax for seed and flax for fiber are two very different things;
moreover, Old World methods do not coincide with the progressive
ideas of the educated farmers of the United States, for the peasant
class does not exist in this country. A practice essentially American
must be followed in order to make the culture profitable, and to
equalize the difference in wages on the two sides of the Atlantic.
This difference is more apparent than real, for it can be readily
overcome by intelligently directed effort, by difference in soil fertility
and rentals, and especially by the use of certain forms of labor-
saving machines that already have been devised and are being
rapidly improved. The "American practice," then, means, first, an
intelligent practice, with a view to economy of effort and involving
the use of machinery in the place of plodding foreign methods; and,
second, the co-operation of farm labor and capital to the end of
systematizing the work—i.e., the farmers of a community growing
the flax, and capital, represented by a central mill, turning the straw
when grown into a grade of fiber that the spinners can afford to
purchase. Here is the solution of the flax problem in a nutshell. The
scheme has already been tested in practice with favorable results,
but the farmers in any community can do little until capital is more
generally interested.
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