Flash-lights from the Seven Seas. William L. Stidger

had a chance to develop the films of thought, he finds that he has brought back home pictures that one ought not to keep to one's self; especially in this day, when, what happens to Asia is so largely to determine what happens to America.

      So, out of the dark room, where they have been developing for a year, and out of the dim shadows of that mysterious land whence they came, they are printed and at the bottom of each picture shall be written the humble words:

      "Flash-Lights from the Seven Seas"

      William L. Stidger.

      Detroit, Michigan.

ILLUSTRATIONS

       Table of Contents

Mt. Taishan, the Oldest Worshipping Place on Earth	Frontispiece
	PAGE
The Walled City of Manila	48
Beautiful Filipino Girls	48
Korean Girls with American Ideals and Training	49
Stepping Aside in Korea	49
Confucius Tomb at Chufu, China	64
Ruin of the Ming Tombs	64
Grinding Rice in China	65
A Camel Train Entering Peking	65
The Temple of Heaven, Peking	112
A Beautiful Thirteen-Story Pagoda Near Peking	112
A Wayside Temple and Shrine	113
A Sunrise Silhouette, Java	113
Old Bromo Volcano, Java	128
A Side View of Beautiful Boroboedoer, Java	128
Naked and Otherwise	129
A Dog Market	129

FLASH-LIGHTS

       FROM THE SEVEN SEAS

       Table of Contents

CHAPTER I

       FLASH-LIGHTS OF FLAME

       Table of Contents

      Fire! Fire! Fire everywhere!

      Fire in the sky, fire on the sea, fire on the ships, fire in the flowers, fire in the trees of the forest; fire in the Poinsetta bushes which flash their red flames from every yard and jungle.

      In the tropical lands flowers do not burst into blossom; they burst into flame. Great bushes of flaming Poinsetta, as large as American lilac bushes, burst into flame over night in Manila.

      That great tree, as large as an Oak, which they call "The Flame of the Forest," looks like a tree on fire with flowers. One will roam the world over and see nothing more beautiful than this great tree which looks like a massive umbrella of solid flame.

      Every flower in the Orient seems to be a crimson flower. The tropical heat of the Philippines, Java, Borneo, Sumatra, the Malay States and India's far reaches; with beautiful Ceylon, and Burma; seems to give birth to crimson child-flowers.

      The sunsets burst into bloom, as well as the flowers. There is no region on earth where sunsets flare into birth and die in a flash-light of glory and beauty like they do in the regions of the South China Sea. For months at a stretch, every night, without a break, the most wildly gorgeous, flaming, flaring, flashing crimson sunsets crown the glory of the days.

      I have been interested in catching pictures of sunsets all over the world. I have caught hundreds of sunsets with the Graflex; and other hundreds have I captured with a Corona, just as they occurred; and I have never seen a spot on earth where the sunsets were such glorious outbursts of crimson and golden beauty as across the circling shores of Manila Bay.

      Night after night I have sat in that ancient city and watched these tumultuous, tumbling, Turner-like flashes of color.

      One night the sky was flame from sea to zenith across Manila Bay. It was like a great Flame of the Forest tree in full bloom. Against this sky of flaming sunset-clouds, hundreds of ships, anchored in the bay, lit their lesser crimson lights; while, now and then, a battleship which was signaling to another ship, flashed its message of light against the fading glow of glory in the crimson sunset.

      "It is light talking unto light; flash unto flash; crimson unto crimson!" said a friend who sat with me looking out across that beautiful bay.

      The picture of that flaming sunset, with the great vessels silhouetted against it; with the little lights on the ships, running in parallel rows; and the flashing lights of signals from the masts of the battleship will never die in one's memory.

      It was a quiet, peaceful scene.

      But suddenly, like a mighty volcano a burst of flame swept into the air at the mouth of the Pasig River. It leapt into the sky and lighted up the entire harbor in a great conflagration. The little ships stood out, silhouetted against that great flaming oil tanker.

      "It's a ship on fire!" Otto exclaimed.

      "Let's go and see it!" I added.

      Then we were off for the mouth of the Pasig which was not far away.

      There we saw the most spectacular fire I have ever seen. A great oil tanker full of Cocoanut-oil had burst into flame, trapping thirty men in its awful furnace. Its gaunt masts stood out like toppling tree skeletons from a forest fire against the now deepening might; made vivid and livid by the bursting flames that leapt higher and higher with each successive explosion from a tank of gasoline or oil.

      I got out my Graflex and caught several pictures of this flash-light of flame, but none that will be as vivid, as lurid, or as lasting as the flash-light that was etched into the film of my memory.

      The next flash-light of flame came bursting out of midnight darkness on the island of Java.

      We were bound for old Bromo, that giant volcano of Java. We had started at midnight and it would take