E-text prepared by Bill Tozier, Barbara Tozier,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
()
AN
EPOCH
IN
HISTORY
TO MY MOTHER,
whose tender love anddevotion for me are everunchanged, I dedicatethis book.
Copyright, 1904, by P. H. ELEY.
CONTENTS.
PREFACE.
It was the good fortune of theauthor to take part in a movementwithout precedent in the history ofthe world, and the incidents concurrentwith, together with thosesubsequent to that movement, havefurnished the material for thisbook. It has been the objectof the writer to weave into the storyof his actual experiences an accountof those things which are as yetan unexplored field in the realm ofletters. The work is submitted tothe reader in the hope that it willprove to be pregnant with interestto those who are in sympathy withgreat movements and to those wholisten with delight to stories of personalexperiences in distant landsand among strange peoples.
5CHAPTER I.
AN EPOCH IN HISTORY.
Few people pause to think thatTuesday, the twenty-third day ofJuly, nineteen hundred and one, notonly placed a mile-stone on the roadof civilization, but also marked anepoch in the history of the world.
That day placed a mile-stone onthe road of civilization because itsaw the culmination of one of thegreatest movements ever attemptedin behalf of common school education.It marked an epoch in thehistory of the world because, for6the first time within the knowledgeof man, a conquering people, insteadof sending battalions of soldiers tohold the conquered in subjection,sent a carefully selected body ofmen and women to carry to themthe benefits of a highly developedsociety.
It was on this day that the UnitedStates Government sent from SanFrancisco four hundred and ninety-ninetrained men and women toestablish throughout the Phi