THE CALL OF THE EAST.

Otago Witness, Issue 2929, 4 May 1910, Page 80

THE CALL OF THE EAST.

WHAT ASIA HAS DONE FOR THE WORLD OF TRAVEL, ART, AND LITERATURE. The Earl of Ronaldshay proves himself a real traveller in a remarkable article in Travel arid Exploration on "The Call of the East." "The Call of the East! There is magic in the phrase. It conjures up all the illusive witchery of Eastern scenes and the glamour of the Orient," he says. "Yet there are many for wham the 'Call of the East' has long since lost its appeal, for whom, indeed, under stress of long and enforced familiarity with the prosaic actualities of daily life in Eastern lands, it has assumed .a note of hollow —even sardonic—mockery.

—Europe in Asia.— "For many the 'Call of the East' has existed, does exist, and will exist, not always seductive perhaps, but always insistent ; and a moment's reflection will surely show that this same 'call of the I East' has been one of the governing facI tors in the making of modern history. ! From the day when the daring and enterprise of the great sea captains of Portugal solved the riddle of the southern seas, 1 ' an unbroken and ever-swelling volume of explorers, soldiers, and traders has poured from Europe into Asia, attracted irresistibly to her vast and mysterious shores. Nations have risen and fallen on the tide of the Asian sea. Portugal, Spain, Hoiland, France, and Great Britain have each been borne in rapid succession to the j loftiest pinnacles of their greatness upon , the crest of an Eastern wave. —Asia's Curtain of Mystery.— "The day of conquest has sped by; the Curtain of Mystery behind which the now familiar outline of Asia loomed darkly to the pioneers of four centuries ago has been rolled aside; Asia stands to-day a world revealed; yet the spell which she laid upon the traders and adventurers of j four centuries ago she oast over an infinitely wider community at the present ; time. "There is, no doubt, still work for the soldier and the explorer; the merchant may still find ample occupation in spreading over the entire continent the warp and woof of a vast commercial web; but with the gradual filling in of the mosaic | of European ascendancy the monopoly of trader and soldier has gradually passed ! away, and the early bands of fighting and j trading pioneers have been swelled by a j vast army of travellers and students who j have been attracted in ever-increasing numbers to the limitless and fascinating fields of Eastern study and research. —The Charm of Asia.— "This shifting of the seat of gravity from West to East, if remarkable, is, nevertheless, neither inexplicable nor unnatural, for the veTy vastness and variety of the countries and peoples of the East have endowed the continent of Asia with a manifold and inexhaustible charm. Philosopher and historian, litterateur and artist, archaeologist, and ' traveller, politician and diplomatist will one and' all find ample scope within her boundaries for the exercise of their activities and the practice of their powers. "The admission of the essaying Emerson that 'Europe has ahv«3 r s owed to Oriental genius .its divine impulses' is a mere generalisation of the great and indisputable truth that the -three great religions which sway the world—Christianity, ! Mohammedanism, Buddhism—have withj out exce'otion been born upon Asian soil. —What Asia Has Done for the World.— "Her contributions to literature and art provide worthy monuments to the varied genius of her peoples; the absorbing chronicles of her empires and her kings constitute some of the most enchanting pages in world history; the names of her conquerors stand emblazoned among the rulers of the world. Who, among these to whom world histoiy is an open book, do not linger in wonder or in admiration at the achievements of a Cyrus, a. Darius, or a Xerxes, of Zengis Khan the Mongol, of Tamerlane the Tartar King, of Mahmud of Gazni, of Baber; of Akbaf, and indeed of many more?'■':'■'• "Again, in the world of Eastern literature the man of letters will find food of many flavours. He may ponder on the wisdom of Confucius, the Chinese sage, he may revel in the outpourings of the Perj sian poets, of Firdusi or of Sadi, or again | in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam; and

if perchance he has himself been fortunate enough to experience the unique sensations produced by toiling from dawn to sunset over a sand-strewn waste of an Eastern desert, he will appreciate as never before the incomparable wordi-painting of the Old Testament writers. —Literature and Art in Asia.— "Was it not Isaiah who wrote of 'rivers of water in a dry place, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land,' and Jeremiah who tells of 'a land of deserts and of pits, a land of droughts and of the shadow of death, a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt'? If we turn to the domain of, art we find in Asia's array of pavilions, tombs, and temples faithful expression of the artistic spirit of her offspring. What could be more brilliant than the Shwey Dagon of Burma or the Temple of Heaven at Peking ; what more ingenious in conception than the Japanes temples at Nikko or Tokio ; what more delicate in workmanship and design than the beautiful Jain temples at the summit of Mount Abu; what more lovely than the Taj Mahal at Agrs ; what more superb than the great bronze image, the Great Buddha at Kamakura; what more amazing than the stupendous structures which still survive and are the glory of Samarakandi? —The Romance of Asia's Dust.— "In the fascinating field of archaeology, the sand-strewn wastes of Assyria and Cha.ldaea, the stately ruins of 'Susa and Persepolis, the jungle-covered cities of Anardjapura and Polanaruwa have yielded a rich store from the treasurehouse of the past, while there still exist wide fields for exploration and research in the buried depths of the forbidding deserts of Taklamakan or in the unsolved riddle of the massive masonry of Angkor Thome. "For myself I confess that when standing amid the debris which marks the sites of Nineveh and' a.ncient Babylon I have been assailed with an overwhelming desire 'to wind the mighty secrets of the past and turn the key of time.' Indeed, as I have wandered among these haunts of bygone empires aind trodden the Courts of Esarhaddon and Nebuchadnezzar, I have seemed to hear in imagination the hum of mighty workings ocme echoing from the remote antiquity down the dim corridors of time. —The Remorseless March of Time.— "Amid such surroundings, too, the remorseless march of Time the Destroyer is thrust naked into view. 'Time,' in the words, of Sir Thomas Brown, 'sadly overcometh all things . . . while his sister Oblivion reclineth semi-somnous on a Pyramid, gloriously triumphing, making puzzles of Titanian erections, and turning old glories into dreams. History sinketh beneath her cloud. The traveller as he paceth through those deserts asketh of her who builded them? And she mumbleth something, but what it is he haareth not.' "And as to the Wanderer —the man stricken with that strange complaint which the Germans call der Wanderlust — what is the prospect which Asia holds out to him? To such an one the varied scenery which she boasts is the source of an infinite and abiding charm."