She was continually puzzled over our money values. "Why do they want these so much?" she demanded. "Why are they will- ing to pay so much for them?"
Money she understood well enough. They had their circulat- ing medium in Herland in earlier years; but it was used more as a simple method of keeping accounts than anything else—like tickets, and finally discontinued. They had so soon centralized their industries, that the delay and inconvenience of measuring off every item of exchange in this everlasting sys- tem of tokens became useless, to their practical minds. As an "incentiveto industry" it was not necessary; motherhood was their incentive. When they had plenty of everything it was free to all in such amounts as were desired; in scarcity they divided. Their interest in life was in what they were doing—and what they were going to do, not in what they were to get. Our point of view puzzled her.
I remember this matter coming up between Ellador and a sol- emn college professor, an economist, as we were creeping through the dangerous Mediterranean. She questioned and listened, saying nothing about her country—this we had long since found was the only safe way; for the instant demand: "Where is it ?" was what we did not propose to answer.
But having learned what she could from those she talked with, and sped searchingly through the books they offered her, she used to relieve her mind in two ways; by talking with me, and by writing.
"I've simply got to," she told me. "I'm writing a book—:in fact, I'm writing two books. One is notes, quotations, facts, and pictures—pictures—pictures. This photography is a wonderful art !"
She had become quite a devotee of said art, and was gather- ing material right and left, to show her people.
"We'll have to go back and tell them, you know," she ex- plained, "and they'll be so interested, I shall have to go about lecturing, as you men did." "
I wish you'd go about lecturing to us," I told her. "We have more to learn than you have—of the really important matters in living."
"But I couldn't, you see, without quoting always from home—and then they'd want to know—they'd have a right to know. Or else they wouldn't believe me. No, all I can do is to ask questions; to make suggestions, perhaps, here and there; even to criticise a little—when I've learned a lot more, and if I'm very sure of my hearers. Meanwhile I've got to talk it off to you, you poor boy—and just write. You shall read it, if you want to, of course."
Her notes were a study in themselves.
Ships and shipping interested her at once, as something totally new, and her first access to encyclopedias had supplied background to what she learned from people. She had set down, in the briefest possible manner, not mere loose data as to vessels and navigation, but an outlined history of the matter, arranged like a genealogical tree.
There were the rude beginnings—log, raft, skin-boat, basket- boat, canoe; and the line of paddled or oared boats went on to the great carved war-canoes with outriggers, the galleys of Ro- mans and Norsemen, the delicate birchbarks of our American Aborigines, and the neat manufactured ones on the market. A bare sentence covered it, and another the evolution of the sail- ing craft; then steam.
"Navigation is an exclusively masculine process," she noted. "Always men, only men. Oared vessels of large size required slave labor; status of sailors still akin to slavery; rigid discip- line, miserable accommodations, abusive language and person- al violence." To this she added in parenthesis: "Same holds true of armies. Always men, only men. Similar status, but somewhat better provision for men, and more chance of pro- motion, owing to greater danger to officers."
Continuing with ships, she noted: "Psychology: a high degree of comradeship, the habit of obedience—enforced; this doubt- less accounts for large bodies of such indispensable men put- ting up with such wretched treatment. Obedience appears to dull and weaken the mind; same with soldiers—study further. Among officers great personal gallantry, a most exalted sense of duty, as well as brutal and unjust treatment of inferiors. The captain in especial is so devoted to his concept of duty as sometimes to prefer to 'go down with his ship' to being saved without her. Why ? What social service is there in being drowned? I learn this high devotion is found also in engineers and in pilots. Seems to be a product of extreme responsibility. Might be developed more widely by extending opportunity."
She came to me with this, asking for more information on our political system of "rotation in office."
"Is that why you do it?" she asked eagerly. "Not so much as to get the work done better, as to make all the people—or at least most of them—feel greater responsibility, a deeper sense of duty?"
I had never put it that way to myself, but I now agreed that that was the idea —that it must be. She was warmly inter- ested ; said she knew she should love America. I felt sure she would.
There was an able Egyptologist on board, a man well ac- quainted with ancient peoples, and he, with the outline she had so well laid down during her English studies, soon filled her mind with a particularly clear and full acquaintance with our first civilizations.
"Egypt, with its One River; Asia Minor, with the Valley of the Two Rivers and China with its great rivers—" she poured over her maps and asked careful eager questions. The big black bearded professor was delighted with her interest, and dis- coursed most instructively.
"I see," she said. "I see! They came to places where the soil was rich, and where there was plenty of water. It made agricul- ture possible, profitable— and then the surplus—and then the wonderful growth—of course!"
That German officer, who had made so strong and disagree- able an impression while we were on the Swedish ship, had been insistent, rudely insistent, on the advantages of difficulty and what he called "disclipine." He had maintained that the great races, the dominant races, came always from the north. This she had borne in mind, and now questioned her obliging preceptor, with map outspread and dates at hand.
"For all those thousands of years these Mediterranean and Oriental peoples held the world—were the world?"
"Yes, absolutely."
"And what was up here?" she pointed to the wide vacant spaces on the northern coasts.
"Savages — barbarians — wild, skinclad ferocious men, madam."
Ellador made a little diagram, a vertical line, with many ages marked across it.
"This is The Year One—as far back as you can go," she ex- plained, pointing to the mark at the bottom. "And here we are, near the top—this is Now. And these Eastern peoples held the stage and did the work all the way up to—here, did they?"
"They certainly did, madam."
"And were these people in these northern lands there all the time? Or did they happen afterward?"
"They were there—we have their bones to prove it."
"Then if they were there—and as long, and of the same stock—you tell me that all these various clans streamed out, westward, from a common source, and became in time, Per- sians, Hindus, Pelasgians, Etruscans, and all the rest—as well as "Celts, Slavs, Teutons?"
"It so held, roughly speaking." He resented a little her sweeping generalizations and condensations; but she had her own ends in view.
"And what did these northern tribes contribute to social pro- gress during all this time?"
"Practically nothing," he answered. "Their arts were natur- ally limited by the rigors of the climate. The difficulties of maintaining existence prevented any higher developments."
"I see, I see." she nodded gravely. "Then why is it, in the face of these facts, that some still persist in attributing progress to difficulties, and cold weather."
This professor, who was himself Italian, was quite willing to question this opinion.
"That theory you will find is quite generally confined to the people who live in the colder climates," he suggested.
When Ellador discussed this with me, she went further. "It seems as if, when people say—'The World' they mean their own people," she commented. "I've been reading history as written by the North European races. Perhaps when we get to Persia, India, China and Japan, it will be different."
It was different. I had spent my own youth in the most isol- ated of modern nations, the one most ignorant of and indiffer- ent to all the others; the one whose popular view of foreigners is based on the immigrant classes, and whose travelling rich consider Europe as a play-ground, a picture gallery, a museum, a place wherein to finish one's education. Being so reared, and associating with similarly minded persons, my early view of history was a great helter-skelter surging background to the clear, strong, glorious incidents of our own brief national ca- reer; while geography consisted of the vivid large scale famili- ar United States, and a globe otherwise covered with more or less nebulous maps; and such political evolution as I had in mind consisted of the irresistible development of our own "instiutions."
All this, of course, was my youthful attitude. In later studies I had added a considerable knowledge of general history, soci- ology and the like, but had never realized until now how re- mote all this was to me from the definite social values already solidly established in my mind.
Now, associating with Ellador, dispassionate and impartial as a visiting angel, bringing to her studies of the world, the triple freshness of view of one of different stock, different social de- velopment, and different sex, I began to get a new perspective. To her the world was one field of general advance. Her own country held the foreground in her mind, of course, but she had left it as definitely as if she came from Mars, and was studying the rest of humanity in the mass. Her alien point of view, her previous complete ignorance, and that powerful well- ordered mind she brought to bear on the new knowledge so rapidly amassed, gave her advantages as an observer far bey- ond our best scientists.
The one special and predominant distinction given to her studies by her supreme femininity, was what gave me the most numerous, and I may say, unpleasant surprises. In my world studies I had always assumed that humanity did thus and so, but she was continually sheering through the tangled facts with her sharp distinction that this and this phenomenon was due to masculinity alone.
"But Ellador," I protested, "why do you say—'the male Scand- inavians continually indulged in piracy,' and 'the male Span- iards practiced terrible cruelties,' and so on? It sounds so—in- vidious—as if you were trying to make out a case against men." "Why, I wouldn't do that for anything!" she protested. "I'm only trying to understand the facts. You don't mind when I say 'the male Phoenicians made great progress in navigation,' or 'the male Greeks developed great intelligence,' do you?" "That's different," I answered. "They did do those things." "Didn't they do the others, too?"
"Well—yes—they did them, of course; but why rub it in that they were exclusively males?"
"But weren't they, dear? Really? Did the Norse women raid the coasts of England and France? Did the Spanish women cross the ocean and torture the poor Aztecs?"
"They would have if they could !" I protested.
"So would the Phoenician women and Grecian women in the other cases— wouldn't they?"
I hesitated.
"Now my Best Beloved," she said, holding my hand in both hers and looking deep into my eyes—"Please, oh please, don't mind. The facts are there, and they are immensely important. Think, dearest. We of Herland have known no men—till now. We, alone, in our tiny land, have worked out a happy, healthy life. Then you came—you' 'Wonderful Three.' Ah! You should realize the stir, the excitement, the Great Hope that it meant to us! We knew there was more world—but nothing about it, and you meant a vast new life to us. Now I come to see—to learn—for the sake of my country.
"Because, you see, some things we gathered from you made us a little afraid. Afraid for our children, you see. Perhaps it was better, after all, to live up there, alone, in ignorance, but in happiness, we thought. Now I've come—to see—to learn—to really understand, if I can, so as to tell my people.
"You mustn't think I'm against men, dear. Why, if it were only for your sake, I would love them. And I'm sure—we are all sure at home (or at least most of us are) that two sexes, working to- gether, must be better than one.
"Then I can see how, being two sexes, and having so much more complex a problem than ours, and having all kinds of countries to live in—how you got into difficulties we never knew.
"I'm making every allowance. I'm firm in my conviction of the superiority of the bisexual method. It must be best or it would not have been evolved in all the higher animals. But—but you can't expect me to ignore facts."
No, I couldn't. What troubled me most was that I, too, began to see facts, quite obvious facts, which I had never noticed before.
Wherever men had been superior to women we had proudly claimed it as a sex-distinction. Wherever men had shown evil traits, not common to women, we had serenely treated them as racecharacteristics.
So, although I did not enjoy it, I did not dispute any further Ellador's growing collection of facts. It was just as well not to. Facts are stubborn things.
We visited a little in Tunis, Algiers, and Cairo, making quite an excursion in Egypt, with our steamship acquaintance, whose knowledge was invaluable to us. He translated inscriptions; showed us the more important discoveries, and gave con- densed accounts of the vanished civilizations.
Ellador was deeply impressed.
"To think that under one single city, here in Abydos, there are the remains of five separate cultures. Five! As different as can be. With a long time between, evidently, so that the ruins were forgotten, and a new people built a new city on the site of the old one. It is wonderful."
Then she turned suddenly on Signor Armini. "What did they die of?" she demanded.
