YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES

How We Dressed for $2.50.

See page [16].

YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES

BY
JOSEPH EARLE STEVENS
AN EX-RESIDENT OF MANILA

ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1898

Copyright, 1898, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK

IN MEMORY OF
MY MOTHER

CONTENTS

[INTRODUCTION] Page xiii

[I]

Leaving “God’s Country”—Hong Kong—Crossing to Luzon—Manila Bay—First View of the City—Earthquake Precautions—Balconies and Window-gratings—The River Pasig—Promenade of the Malecon—The Old City—The Puente de España—Population—A Philippine Bed—The English Club—The Luneta—A Christmas Dinner at the Club, Page 1

[II]

Shopping at the “Botica Inglesa”—The Chit System—Celebrating New Year’s Eve—Manila Cooking Arrangements—Floors and Windows—Peculiarities of the Tram-car Service—Roosters Everywhere—Italian Opera—Philippine Music—The Mercury at 74° and an Epidemic of “Grippe”—Fight Between a Bull and a Tiger—A Sorry Fiasco—Carnival Sunday, Page 22

[III]

A Philippine Valet—The Three Days Chinese New Year—Marionettes and Minstrels at Manila—Yankee Skippers—Furnishing a Bungalow—Rats, Lizards, and Mosquitoes—A New Arrival—Pony-races in Santa Mesa—Cigars and Cheroots—Servants—Cool Mountain Breezes—House-snakes—Cost of Living—Holy Week, Page 43

[IV]

An Up-country Excursion—Steaming up the River to the Lake—Legend of the Chinaman and the Crocodile—Santa Cruz and Pagsanjan—Dress of the Women—Mountain Gorges and River Rapids—Church Processions—Cocoanut Rafts—A “Carromata” Ride to Paquil—An Earthquake Lasting Forty-five Seconds—Small-pox and other Diseases in the Philippines—The Manila Fire Department—How Thatch Dealers Boom the Market—Cost of Living, Page 60

[V]

Visit of the Sagamore—Another Mountain Excursion—The Caves of Montalvan—A Hundred-mile View—A Village School—A “Fiesta” at Obando—The Manila Fire-tree—A Move to the Seashore—A Waterspout—Captain Tayler’s Dilemma—A Trip Southward—The Lake of Taal and its Volcano—Seven Hours of Poling—A Night’s Sleep in a Hen-coop, Page 87

[VI]

First Storm of the Rainy Season—Fourth of July—Chinese “Chow” Dogs—Crullers and Pie and a Chinese Cook—A Red-letter Day—The China-Japan War—Manila Newspapers—General Blanco and the Archbishop—An American Fire-engine and its Lively Trial—The Coming of the Typhoon—Violence of the Wind—The Floods Next—Manila Monotony, Page 112

[VII]

A Series of Typhoons—A Chinese Feast-day—A Bank-holiday Excursion—Lost in the Mist—Los Baños—The “Enchanted Lake”—Six Dollars for a Human Life—A Religious Procession—Celebration of the Expulsion of the Chinese—Bicycle Races and Fireworks, Page 137

[VIII]

A Trip to the South—Contents of the “Puchero”—Romblon—Cebu, the Southern Hemp-centre—Places Touched At—A Rich Indian at Camiguin—Tall Trees—Primitive Hemp-cleaners—A New Volcano—Mindanao Island—Moro Trophies—Iligan—Iloilo—Back Again at Manila, Page 149

[IX]

Club-house Chaff—Christmas Customs and Ceremonies—New Year’s Calls—A Dance at the English Club—The Royal Exposition of the Philippines—Fireworks on the King’s Fête Day—Electric Lights and the Natives—The Manila Observatory—A Hospitable Governor—The Convent at Antipolo, Page 173

[X]

Exacting Harbor Regulations—The Eleanor takes French Leave—Loss of the Gravina—Something about the Native Ladies—Ways of Native Servants—A Sculptor who was a Dentist—Across the Bay to Orani—Children in Plenty—A Public Execution by the Garrote, Page 195

[XI]

Lottery Chances and Mischances—An American Cigarette-making Machine and its Fate—Closing up Business—How the Foreigner Feels Toward Life in Manila—Why the English and Germans Return—Restlessness among the Natives—Their Persecution—Departure and Farewell, Page 213

[CONCLUSION] Page 230

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

INTRODUCTION

By the victory of our fleet at Manila Bay, one more of the world’s side-tracked capitals has been pulled from obscurity into main lines of prominence and the average citizen is no longer left, as in days gone by, to suppose that Manila is spelt with two l’s and is floating around in the South Sea somewhere between Fiji and Patagonia. The Philippines have been discovered, and the daily journals with their cheap maps have at last located Spain’s Havana in the Far East. It is indeed curious that a city of a third of a million people—capital of a group of islands as large as New England, New York, Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey, which have long furnished the whole world with its entire supply of Manila hemp, which have exported some 160,000 tons of sugar in a single year and which to-day produce as excellent tobacco as that coming from the West Indies—it is curious, I say, that a city of this size should have gone so long unnoticed and misspelt. But such has been the case, and until Admiral Dewey fired the shots that made Manila heard round the world, the people of these United States—with but few exceptions—lived and died without knowing where the stuff in their clothes-lines came from.

Now that the Philippines are ours, do we want them? Can we run them? Are they the long-looked-for El Dorado which those who have never been there suppose? To all of which questions—even at the risk of being called unpatriotic—I am inclined to answer, No.

Do we want them? Do we want a group of 1,400 islands, nearly 8,000 miles from our Western shores, sweltering in the tropics, swept with typhoons and shaken with earthquakes? Do we want to undertake the responsibility of protecting those islands from the powers in Europe or the East, and of standing sponsor for the nearly 8,000,000 native inhabitants that speak a score of different tongues and live on anything from rice to stewed grasshoppers? Do we want the task of civilizing this race, of opening up the jungle, of setting up officials in frontier, out-of-the-way towns who won’t have been there a month before they will wish to return?

Do we want them? No. Why? Because we have got enough to look after at home. Because—unlike the Englishman or the German who, early realizing that his country is too small to support him, grows up with the feeling that he must relieve the burden by going to the uttermost parts of the sea—our young men have room enough at home in which to exert their best energies without going eight or eleven thousand miles across land and water to tropic islands in the Far East.

Can we run them? The Philippines are hard material with which to make our first colonial experiment, and seem to demand a different sort of treatment from that which our national policy favors or has had experience in giving. Besides the peaceable natives occupying the accessible towns, the interiors of many of the islands are filled with aboriginal savages who have never even recognized the rule of Spain—who have never even heard of Spain, and who still think they are possessors of the soil. Even on the coast itself are tribes of savages who are almost as ignorant as their brethren in the interior, and only thirty miles from Manila are races of dwarfs that go without clothes, wear knee-bracelets of horsehair, and respect nothing save the jungle in which they live. To the north are the Igorrotes, to the south the Moros, and in between, scores of wild tribes that are ready to dispute possession. And is the United States prepared to maintain the forces and carry on the military operations in the fever-stricken jungles necessary in the march of progress to exterminate or civilize such races? Have we, like England for instance, the class of troops who could undertake that sort of work, and do we feel called upon to do it, when the same expenditure at home would go so much further? The Philippines must be run under a despotic though kindly form of government, supported by arms and armor-clads, and to deal with the perplexing questions and perplexing difficulties that arise, needs knowledge gained by experience, by having dealt with other such problems before.

Are the Philippines an El Dorado? Like Borneo, like Java and the Spice Islands, the Philippines are rich in natural resources, but their capacity to yield more than the ordinary remuneration to labor I much question. Leaving aside the question of gold and coal, in the working of which, so far, more money has been put into the ground than has ever been taken out, the great crops in these islands are sugar, hemp, and tobacco. The sugar crop, to be sure, has the possibilities that it has anywhere, where the soil is rich and conditions favorable. The tobacco industry has perhaps more possibilities, and might be made a close rival to that in Cuba. But the hemp crop is limited by the world’s needs, and as those needs are just so much each year, there is no object in increasing a supply which up to date has been adequate. There are foreigners in the Philippines, who have been there for years, who have controlled the exports of sugar or hemp or tobacco, who have made their living, and who from having been longer on the ground should be the first to improve the opportunities that may come with the downfall of Spanish rule. There are some things which the United States can send to the Philippines cheaper than the Continental manufacturers, but not many. She can send flour and some kinds of machinery, she can put in electric plants, she can build railways, but at present she can’t produce the cheap implements, and the necessaries required by the great bulk of poor natives at the low price which England and Germany can.

The Philippines are not an El Dorado simply because for the first time they have been brought to our notice. They should not yield more than the ordinary return to labor, and the question is, does the average American want to live in a distant land, cut off from friends and a civilized climate, only to get the ordinary return for his efforts? To which, even though of course there is much to be said on the other side, I would answer, No. We have gone to war, remembering the Maine, to free Cuba, and at the first blow have taken another group of islands—a Cuba in the East—to deal with. I have not the space here to discuss the solution of the problem, but, for my part, I should like to see England interested in buying back an archipelago which she formerly held for ransom, leaving us perhaps a coaling port, and opening up the country to such as chose to go there. Then, with someone else to shoulder the burden of government and protection, we should still have all the opportunities for proving whether or not the islands were the El Dorado dreamed of in our clubs or counting-rooms.

At the close of 1893, I went to Manila for Messrs. Henry W. Peabody & Co., of Boston and New York, in the interest of their hemp business, and, associated with Mr. A. H. Rand, remained there for two years. We two were the representatives of the only American house doing business in the Philippines, and made up practically fifty per cent. of the American business colony in Manila. The years from 1894 to 1896 were peculiarly peaceful with the quiet coming before the storm, and we were fortunate enough to be able to make many excursions and go into many parts of the island that later would have been dangerous. But as the short term of our service drew to a close, rumors of trouble began to circulate. The natives had long suffered from the demands made by the Church and the tax-gatherer, and there was a feeling that they might again attempt to throw off the Spanish yoke, as they attempted, without success, some years before. It was at this period that Messrs. Peabody & Co. decided it would be to their unquestionable advantage to retire from the islands and to place their business in the hands of an English firm, long established on the ground, and well equipped with men who, unlike ourselves, looked forward to passing the rest of their days in the Philippines. And the move was a good one, for no sooner had we left Manila than revolution broke out. The Spanish troops were at the south, and that mysterious native brotherhood of the Katipunan called its members to attack the capital. A massacre was planned, but the right leaders were lacking and the attempt failed. The troops were recalled, guards doubled, drawbridges into old Manila pulled up nightly, arrests and executions made. As is well known, one hundred suspects were crowded into that old dungeon on the river, just at the corner of the city wall, and because it came on to rain, at night-fall, an officer shut down the trap-door leading to the prisoners’ cells to keep out the water. But it also kept out the air, and next morning sixty out of the one hundred persons were suffocated. Then Manila had her Black Hole. Later, other suspects were stood on the curbing that surrounds the Luneta and were shot down while the big artillery band discoursed patriotic music to the crowds that thronged the promenade. And from then until Admiral Dewey silenced the guns at Cavité and sunk the Spanish ships that used to swing peacefully at anchor off the breakwater, the Spaniards had their hands full with a revolution brought on by their own rotten system of government.

If in place of the more systematic narratives of description, the more serious presentations of statistics, or the more exciting accounts of the bloody months of the revolution and the wonderful victory of our gallant fleet, which are to be looked for from other sources, the reader cares to get some idea of casual life in Manila, by accepting the rather colloquial chronicle of an ex-resident that follows, I shall have made some little return to islands that robbed me of little else than two years of a more hurried existence in State Street or Broadway.

YESTERDAYS IN THE PHILIPPINES

I

Leaving “God’s Country”—Hong Kong—Crossing to Luzon—Manila Bay—First View of the City—Earthquake Precautions—Balconies and Window-Gratings—The River Pasig—Promenade of the Malecon—The Old City—The Puente de España—Population—A Philippine Bed—The English Club—The Luneta—A Christmas Dinner at the Club.

“I wouldn’t give much for your chances of coming back unboxed,” said the Captain to me, as the China steamed out from the Golden Gate on the twenty-five day voyage to Hong Kong via Honolulu and Yokohama.

“That’s God’s country we’re leaving behind, sure enough,” said he, “and you’ll find it out after a week or two in the Philippines. There’s Howe came back with us last trip from there; almost shuffled off on the way. Spent half a year in Manila with small-pox, fever, snakes, typhoons, and earthquakes, and had to be carried aboard ship at Hong Kong and off at ’Frisco. Guess he’s about done for all right.”

And as Howe happened to be the unfortunate whose place in Manila I was going to take, you know, I heeded the skipper’s advice and looked with more fervor on God’s country than I had for some days. For it was a dusty trip across country from Boston on the Pacific express; and because babies are my pet aversion every mother’s son of them aboard the train was quartered in my car—three families moving West to grow up with the country, and all of them occupying the three sections nearest mine. I got so weary of the five cooing, coughing, crying “clouds-of-glory-trailers,” that it seemed a relief at San Francisco to wash off the dust of the Middle West and get aboard the P. M. S. Company’s steamer China bound for the far East.

But the Captain, like the whistle, was somewhat of a blower, and liked to make me and the missionaries aboard feel we were leaving behind all that was desirable. And how he bothered the twoscore or more of them bound for the up-river ports of Middle China! When, after leaving the Sandwich Islands, the voyage had proceeded far enough for everybody on the passenger-list to get fairly well acquainted with his neighbors, these spreaders of the gospel followed the custom established by their predecessors and made plans for a Sunday missionary service. Without so much as asking leave of the skipper, they posted in the companion-way the following notice:

Service in the Saloon,

Sunday, 10 A.M.

Rev. X. Y. Z. Smith, of Wang-kiang, China, will speak on mission work on the Upper Yangtse.

All are invited.

But they counted without their host. The Captain had never schooled himself to look on missionaries with favor, and he accordingly made arrangements to cross the meridian where the circle of time changes and a day is dropped early on Sunday morning. He calculated to a nicety, and as the passengers came down to Sabbath breakfast they saw posted below the other notice, in big letters, the significant words:

Sunday, Nov. 29th.

Ship crosses 180th meridian

9.30 A.M.,

After which it will be Monday.

In Yokohama and Hong Kong the wiseacres were free in saying they wouldn’t be found dead in Manila or the Philippines for anything. They had never been there, but knew all about it, and seemed ready to wave any one bound thither a sort of never’ll-see-you-again farewell that was most affecting. It is these very people that have made Manila the side-tracked capital that it is and have scared off globe-trotters from making it a visit on their way to the Straits of Malacca and India.

Hong Kong, the end of the China’s outward run, bursts into view after a narrow gateway, between inhospitable cliffs, lets the steamer into a great bay which is the centre of admiration for bleak mountain-ranges. The city, with its epidemic of arcaded balconies, lies along the water to the left and goes stepping up the steep slopes to the peak behind, on whose summit the signal-flags announce our arrival. The China has scarcely a chance to come to anchor in peace before a storm of sampans bite her sides like mosquitoes, and hundreds of Chinawomen come hustling up to secure your trade, while their lazy husbands stay below and smoke.

Hong Kong rather feels as if it were the “central exchange” for the Far East, and from the looks of things I judge it is. The great bay is full of deep-water ships, the quays teem with life, and the streets are full of quiet bustle. It is quite enough to give one heart disease to shin up the hills to the residence part of the town, and it took me some time to find breath enough to tell the Spanish Consul I wanted him to visé my passport to Manila.

This interesting stronghold of Old England in the East is fertile in descriptive matter by the wholesale, but I can’t rob my friends in the Philippines of more space than enough to chronicle the doings of a Chinese tailor who made me up my first suit of thin tweeds. Ripping off the broad margin to the Hong Kong Daily Press, he stood me on a box, took my measure with his strip of paper, making sundry little tears along its length, according as it represented length of sleeve or breadth of chest, and sent me off with a placid “Me makee allee same plopper tree day; no fittee no takee.” And I’m bound to say that the thin suits Tak Cheong built for $6 apiece, from nothing but the piece of paper full of tears, fit to far greater perfection than the system of measurement would seem to have warranted.

The voyage from Hong Kong to Manila, 700 miles to the southeast, is one of the worst short ocean-crossings in existence, and the Esmeralda, Captain Tayler, as she went aslant the seas rolling down from Japan, in front of the northeast monsoon, developed such a corkscrew motion that I fear it will take a return trip against the other monsoon to untwist the feelings of her passengers. On the morning of the second day, however, the yawing ceased; the skipper said we were under the lee of Luzon, the largest and most northern island of the Philippines, and not long after the high mountains of the shore-range loomed up off the port bow. From then on our chunky craft of 1,000 tons steamed closer to the coast and turned headland after headland as she poked south through schools of flying-fish and porpoises.

By afternoon the light-house on Corregidor appeared, and with a big sweep to the left the Esmeralda entered the Boca Chica, or narrow mouth to Manila Bay. On the left, the coast mountains sloped steeply up for some 5,000 feet, while on the right the island of Corregidor, with its more moderate altitude, stood planted in the twelve-mile opening to worry the tides that swept in and out from the China Sea. Beyond lay the Boca Grande, or wide mouth used by ships coming from the south or going thither, and still beyond again rose the lower mountains of the south coast. In front the Bay opened with a grand sweep right and left, till the shore was lost in waves of warm air, and only the dim blue of distant mountains showed where the opposite perimeter of the great circle might be located.

It was twenty-seven miles across the bay, and the sun had set with a wealth of color in the opening behind us before we came to anchor amid a fleet of ships and steamers off a low-lying shore that showed many lights in long rows. Next morning Manila lay visibly before us, but failed to convey much idea of its size, from the fact that it stretched far back on the low land, thus permitting the eye to see only the front line of buildings and a few taller and more distant church-steeples. Not far in the background rose a high range of velvet-like looking mountains whose tops aspired to show themselves above the clouds, and on the right and left stretched flanking ranges of lower altitude.

In due season my colleague came off to the anchorage in a small launch, and we were soon steaming back up a narrow river thickly fringed with small ships, steamers, houses, quays, and people. It was piping hot at the low custom-house on the quay. Panting carabao—the oxen of the East—tried to find shade under a parcel of bamboos, shaggy goats nosed about for stray bits of crude sugar dropped from bags being discharged by coolies, piles of machinery were lying around promiscuously dumped into the deep mud of the outyards, natives with bared backs gleaming in the sun were lugging hemp or prying open boxes, and under-officials with sharp rods were probing flour-sacks in the search for contraband. Spanish officials in full uniform, smoking cigarettes, playing chess, and fanning themselves in their comfortable seats in bent-wood rocking-chairs, were interrupted by our arrival, and made one boil within as they upset the baggage and searched for smuggled dollars.

Our Office and the Punkah under which the Old Salts Sat for Free Sea Breezes.

See page [8].

Here, then, was the anti-climax to the long journey of forty days from Boston, and those were the moments in which to realize the meaning of the expression made by the Captain of the China as she left the Golden Gate: “Take a last look, for you’re leaving behind God’s country.”

Before arrival, while yet the Esmeralda was steaming down the coast, I was resolved to refrain from judging Manila by first impressions. I felt primed for anything, and was bound to be neither surprised nor disappointed. At first, I may admit, my chin and collar drooped, but on meeting with my new associate I gave them a mental starching and stepped with courage into the rickety barouche that, drawn by two small and bony ponies, took us to the office of Henry W. Peabody & Co., the only American house in the Philippines.

And having entered the two upstair rooms, that looked out over the little Plaza de Cervantes, I was introduced to bamboo chairs, a quartette of desks, and half a dozen office-boys, who were rudely awakened from their morning’s slumber by the scuffle of my heavy boots on the broad, black planks of the shining floors. Across the larger room, suspended from the ceiling, hung the big “punka,” which seems to form a most important article of furniture in every tropical establishment. On my arrival the boy who pulled the string got down to work, and amid the sea-breezes that blew the morning’s mail about, business of the day began.

The first thing I noticed was that cloth instead of plaster formed the walls and ceilings, and seemed far less likely than the mixture of lime and water to fall into baby’s crib or onto the dinner-table during those terrestrial or celestial exhibitions for which Manila is famous. For the Philippines are said to be the cradle of earthquake and typhoon, and in buildings, everywhere, construction seems to conform to the requirements of these much-respected “movers.” Tiles on roofs, they say, are now forbidden, since the passers-by below are not willing to wear brass helmets or carry steel umbrellas to ward off a shower of those missiles started by a heavy shake. Galvanized iron is used instead, and, while detracting from the picturesque, has added to the security of households who once used to be rudely awakened from their slumbers by the extra weight of tile bedspreads.

And Manila houses. Down in the town, outside the city walls, the regular, or rather irregular, Spanish type prevails, and nature, in her nervousness, seems to have done much in dispensing with lines horizontal and perpendicular. The buildings all have an appearance of feebleness and senility, and look as if a good blow or a heavy shake would lay them flat. But in the old city, behind the fortifications, are heavy buttressed buildings of by-gone days, built when it was thought that earthquakes respected thick walls rather than thin, and the sturdy buttresses so occupy the narrow sidewalks that pedestrians must travel single file. The Spanish—so it seems—rejoice to huddle together in these gloomy houses of Manila proper, but the rich natives, half-castes, and foreigners all prefer the newer villas outside the narrow streets and musty walls; and just as much as the Anglo-Saxon likes to place a grass-plot or a garden between him and the thoroughfare in front of his residence, so does the Spaniard seek to hug close to the street, and even builds his house to overhang the sidewalk. Save for carriages and dogs, the lower floors of city houses are generally deserted, and, on account of fevers that hang about in the mists of the low-ground, everyone takes to living on the upper story. Balconies, which are so elaborate that they carry the whole upper part of the house out over the sidewalk, are a conspicuous feature in all the buildings of older construction, and with their engaging overhang afford opportunities for leaning out to talk with passers-by below, or a convenient vantage-ground from which to throw the waste water from wash-basins. Huge window-gratings thrust themselves forward from the walls of the lower story, and are often big enough to permit dogs and servants to sit in them and watch the pedestrians, who almost have to leave the sidewalk to get around these great cages.

It may be just as well, before going farther, to say something about this town that is sarcastically labelled “Pearl of the Orient” and “Venice of the Far East” by poets who have only seen the oyster-shell windows or back doors on the Pasig on the cover-labels of cigar-boxes. It seems big enough to supply me with the pianos and provisions which kind friends suggested I bring out with me in case of need, and the main street, Escolta, is as busy with life and as well fringed with shops as a Washington street or a Broadway.

Spanish, of course, is the court and commercial language and, except among the uneducated natives who have a lingo of their own or among the few members of the Anglo-Saxon colony—it has a monopoly everywhere. No one can really get on without it, and even the Chinese come in with their peculiar pidgin variety.

The city squats around its old friend the river Pasig, and shakes hands with itself in the several bridges that bind one side to the other. On the right bank of the river, coming in from the bay and passing up by the breakwater, lies the old walled town of Manila proper, whose weedy moats, ponderous drawbridges, and heavy gates suggest a troubled past. Old Manila may be figured as a triangle, a mile on a side, and the dingy walls seem, as it were, to herd in a drove of church-steeples, schools, houses, and streets. The river is the boundary on the north, and the wall at that side but takes up the quay which runs in from the breakwater and carries it up to the Puente de España, the first bridge that has courage enough to span the yellow stream.

The front wall runs a mile to the south along the bay front, starting at the river in the old fort and battery that look down on the berth where the Esmeralda lies, and is separated from the beach only by an old moat and the promenade of the Malecon, which, also beginning at the river, runs to an open plaza called the Luneta, a mile up the beach. The east wall takes up the business at that point, and wobbles off at an angle again till it brings up at the river fortifications, just near where the Puente de España, already spoken of, carries all the traffic across the Pasig. Thus the old city is cooped up like pool-balls, in a triangle three miles around, and the walls do as much in keeping out the wind as they do in keeping in the various unsavory odors that come from people who like garlic and don’t take baths. Here is the cathedral—a fine old church that cost a million of money and was widowed of its steeple in the earthquakes of the ’80s—and besides a lot of smaller churches are convent schools, the city hall, army barracks, and a raft of private residences.

Opposite Old Manila, on the other bank, lies the business section, with the big quays lined with steamers and alive with movement. The custom-house and the foreign business community are close by the river-side, while in back are hundreds of narrow streets, store-houses, and shops that go to make up the stamping ground of the Chinese who control so large a part of the provincial trade.

Everything centres at the foot of the Puente de España, which pours its perspiring flood into the narrow lane of the Escolta, and people, carriages, tram-cars, and dust all sail in here from north, east, south, and west. As on the other side, the busy part of the section runs a mile up and down the river and a mile back from it, while out or up beyond come the earlier residential suburbs. In Old Manila, the Church seems to rule, but on this side the Pasig the State makes itself felt, from the custom-house to the governor’s palace—a couple of miles up stream.

As to population, Manila, in the larger sense, may hold 350,000 souls, besides a few dogs. Of the lot, call 50,000 Chinese, 5,000 Spaniards, 150 Germans, 90 English, and 4 Americans. The rest are natives or half-castes of the Malay type, whose blood runs in all mixtures of Chinese, Spanish, and what-not proportions, and whose Chinese eyes, flat noses, and high cheek-bones are queer accompaniments to their Spanish accents. Thus the majority of the souls in Manila,—like the dogs—are mongrels, or mestizos, as the word is, and the saying goes that happy is the man who knows his own father.

Plaza de Cervantes, Foreign Business Quarter.

See page [8].

I spent my first night in Manila at the Spanish Hotel El Oriente, and it was here that I became acquainted with that peculiar institution, the Philippine bed. And to the newly arrived traveller its peculiar rig and construction make it command a good deal of interest, if not respect. It is a four-poster, with the posts extending high enough to support a light roof, from whose eaves hang copious folds of deep lace. The bed-frame is strung tightly across with regular chair-bottom cane, and the only other fittings are a piece of straw matting spread over the cane, a pillow, and a surrounding wall of mosquito-netting that drops down from the roof and is tucked in under the matting. How to get into one of these cages was the first question that presented itself, and what to do with myself after I got in was the second. It took at least half an hour to make up my mind as to the proper mode of entrance, when I was for the first time alone with this Philippine curiosity, and I couldn’t make out whether it was proper to get in through the roof or the bottom or the side. After finally pulling away the netting, I found the hard cane bottom about as soft as the teak floor, and looked in vain for blankets, sheets, and mattresses. In fact, it seems as if I had gotten into an unfurnished house, and the more I thought about it the longer I stayed awake. At last I cut my way out of the peculiar arrangement, dressed, and spent the decidedly cool night in a long cane chair, preferring not to experiment further with the sleeping-machine until I found out how it worked.

Next morning my breakfast was brought up by a native boy, and consisted of a cup of thick chocolate, a clammy roll, and a sort of seed-cake without any hole in it. How to drink the chocolate, which was as thick as molasses, seemed the chief question, but I rightly concluded that the seed-cake was put there to sop it out of the cup, after the fashion of blotting-paper. Fortified with this peculiar combination, I started on my second business day by trying to remember in what direction the office lay, and wandered cityward through busy streets, often bordered with arcaded sidewalks, which were further shaded from the sun by canvas curtains.

After beginning the morning by ordering a dozen suits of white sheeting from a native tailor—price $2.50 apiece—I was introduced to the members of the English Club, and began to feel more at home stretched out in one of the long chairs in the cool library. It seems that the club affords shelter and refreshment to its fourscore members at two widely separated points of the compass, one just on the banks of the Pasig River, where its waters, slouching down from the big lake at the foot of the mountains, are first introduced to the outlying suburbs of the city, and the other in the heart of the business section. The same set of native servants do for both departments, since no one stays uptown during the middle of the day and no one downtown after business hours. As a result, on week-days, after the light breakfast of the early morning is over at the uptown building, the staff of waiters and assistants hurry downtown in the tram-cars and make ready for the noon meal at the other structure, returning home to the suburbs in time to officiate at dinner.

At the downtown club is the 6,000-volume library, and after the noonday tiffin it is always customary to stretch out in one of the long bamboo chairs and read one’s self to sleep. This is indeed a land where laziness becomes second nature. If you want a book or paper on the table, and they lie more than a yard or two from where you are located, it is not policy to reach for them. O, no! You ring a bell twice as far off, take a nap while the boy comes from a distance, and wake up to find him handing you them with a graceful “Aquí, Señor!” In fact, I have even just now met an English fellow who, they tell me, took a barber with him on a recent trip to the southern provinces, to look after his scanty beard that was composed of no more than three or four dozen hairs, each of which grew one-eighth of an inch quarterly.

On the day before Christmas one of the guest-rooms at the uptown club was vacated, and I moved in. The building is about two and a half miles out of the city, and its broad balcony, shaded by luxuriant palms and other tropical trees, almost overhangs the main river that splits Manila in two. The view from this tropical piazza is most peaceful. Opposite lie the rice-fields, with a cluster of native huts surrounding an old church, while, blue in the distance, sleeps a range of low mountains. To the left the river winds back up-country and soon loses itself in many turns among the foothills that later grow into the more adult uplifts on the Pacific Coast, while to the right it turns a sharp corner and slides down between broken rows of native huts and more elaborate bungalows.

The club-house is long, low, and rambling. The reading, writing, and music rooms front on the river, and the glossy hard-wood floors, hand-hewn out of solid trees, seem to suggest music and coolness. It is possible to reach the city by jumping into a native boat at the portico on the river bank, or to go by one of the two-wheel gigs, called carromatas, waiting at the front gate, or to walk a block and take the tram-car which jogs down through the busy highroad.

It is very difficult to absorb the points of so large a place at one’s first introduction, so I won’t go further now than to speak of that far-famed seaside promenade called the Luneta, where society takes its airing after the heat of the day is over.

Imagine an elliptical plaza, about a thousand feet long, situated just above the low beach which borders the Bay, and looking over toward the China Sea. Running around its edge is a broad roadway, bounded on one side by the sea-wall, and on the other by the green fields and bamboo-trees of the parade-grounds. In the centre of the raised ellipse is the band-stand, and on every afternoon, from six to eight, all Manila come here to feel the breeze, hear the music, and see their neighbors. Hundreds of carriages line the roadways, and mounted police keep them in proper file. The movement is from right to left, and only the Archbishop and the Governor-General are allowed to drive in the opposite direction.

The gentler element, in order not to encourage a flow of perspiration that may melt off their complexions, take to carriages, but the sterner sex prefer to walk up and down, crowd around the band-stand, or sit along the edge of the curbing in chairs rented for a couple of coppers. Directly in front lies the great Bay, with the sun going down in the Boca Chica, between the hardly visible island of Corregidor and the main land, thirty miles away. To the rear stretches the parade-ground, backed up by clumps of bamboos and the distant mountains beyond. To the right lie the corner batteries and walls of Old Manila, and to the left the attractive suburb of Ermita, with the stretch of shore running along toward the naval station of Cavité, eleven miles away. To take a chair, watch the people walking to and fro, and see the endless stream of smart turn-outs passing in slow procession; to hear a band of fifty pieces render popular and classic music with the spirit of a Sousa or a Reeves, is to doubt that you are in a capital 8,000 miles from Paris and 11,000 miles from New York. Footmen with tall hats, in spotless white uniforms, grace the box-seats of the low-built victorias, while tastefully dressed Spanish women or wealthy half-castes recline against the soft cushions and take for granted the admiration of those walking up and down the mall.

Puente de España. Manila’s Main Highway Across the Pasig.

See page [12].

The splendidly trained artillery-band, composed entirely of natives, but conducted by a Spaniard, plays half a dozen selections each evening, and here is a treat that one can have every afternoon of the year, free of charge. There are no snow-drifts or cold winds to mar the performance, and, except during the showers and winds of the rainy season, it goes on without interruption.

After the music is over the carriages rush off in every direction, behind smart-stepping little ponies that get over the ground at a tremendous pace, and the dinner-hour is late enough not to rob one of those pleasant hours at just about sunset. There are no horses in Manila—all ponies, and some of them are so small as to be actually insignificant. They are tremendously tough little beasts, however, and stand more heat, work, and beating than most horses of twice their size.

Our Christmas dinner at the club has just ended, and from the bill of fare one would never suspect he was not at the Waldorf or the Parker House. Long punkas swung to and fro over the big tables, small serving boys in bare feet rushed hither and thither with meat and drink, corks popped, the smart breeze blew jokes about, and everyone unbent. Soups, fish, joints, entrées, rémoves, hors-d’œuvres, mince-pies, plum-puddings, and all the delicacies to be found in cooler climes had their turn, as did a variety of liquid courses. Singing, speeches, and music followed the more material things, and everyone was requested to take some part in the performance. By the time the show was over the piano was dead-beat and everybody hoarse from singing by the wrong method.

II

Shopping at the “Botica Inglesa”—The Chit System—Celebrating New Year’s Eve—Manila Cooking Arrangements—Floors and Windows—Peculiarities of the Tram-car Service—Roosters Everywhere—Italian Opera—Philippine Music—The Mercury at 74° and an Epidemic of “Grippe”—Fight Between a Bull and a Tiger—A Sorry Fiasco—Carnival Sunday.

January 7th.

My third Sunday in Manila is a cool breezy day, with fresh winds blowing down from the mountains. The weather has lately been as temperate as one could wish, and has corresponded to some of our soft spring conditions. From noon until three o’clock has usually seemed warm, but the mornings have made walking pleasant, the afternoons have given opportunities for tennis, and the evenings have hinted that an overcoat would not be amiss. One could hardly ask for any more comfortable place to live in than Manila as it stands to-day, and although sanitary appliances are most primitive, the city seems to be healthy and without noisome pestilence.

During the holiday season, just over, foreign business has been suspended and everyone socially inclined. Shopping has been in vogue, and on one of my expeditions for photographic materials I was introduced to the “Botica Inglesa,” or English chemist’s shop, which seems to be the largest variety-store in town. Here it is possible to buy anything from a glass of soda to a full-fledged lawn-mower, including all the intermediates that reach from tooth-brushes to photographic cameras.

And speaking of shopping brings mo to the “chit” system, which has been such a curse to the Far East. In making purchases, no one pays cash for anything, since the heavy Mexican dollars—which are the only currency of the islands—are too heavy to lug around in the thin suits made of white sheeting. One simply signs an “I.O.U.” for the amount of the bill in any shop that he may choose to patronize, and thinks no more about it till at the end of the month all the “chits” which bear his name are sent around for collection.

Result: one never feels as if he were spending anything until the first day of the incoming month ushers in a host of these big or little reminders. If your chits at one single shop run into large amounts, the collector generally brings along with him a coolie or a wheelbarrow with which to lug away the weight of dollars that you pour into his hands, and when two or three collectors come in together the office reminds one of a “money-’changer’s. Counterfeit money is so prevalent that one after the other of your callers bites the silver or drops it on the floor to detect lead, and to listen to the resulting sound is not to feel complimented by their opinion of your integrity. So it goes, many of the shop-keepers being swindled out of their dues by debtors who choose to skip off rather than to pay, and waking up at the end of the month to find their supposed profits existing only in the chits whose signers have skedaddled to Hong Kong or Singapore.

New Year’s Eve was celebrated with due hilarity and elaborate provisions. The club bill of fare was remarkable, and when it is realized there are no stoves in Manila, the wonder is that the cooking is so complex. A Manila stove is no more nor less than a good-sized earthen jar, shaped something like an old shoe. The vamp of the shoe represents the hearth; the opening in front, the place for putting in the small sticks of wood; and the enclosing upper, the rim on which rests the single big pot or kettle. In a well-regulated kitchen, there may be a dozen of these stoves, one for each course, and their cost being only a peseta, it is a simple matter to keep a few extra ones on hand in the bread-closet. And so, as one goes through the streets where native huts predominate, he sees a family meal being cooked in sections, and is forced to admire the complexity of the greasy dishes that are evolved from so simple a contrivance.

As the Manila cooking arrangements are rude, so I suspect are the pantry’s dish-washing opportunities. I really should hesitate to enter even our club-kitchen, for certain dim suggestions which are conveyed to the senses from spoons and forks, and certain plate surfaces that would calm troubled waters if hung from a ship’s side, all hint at unappetizing sights. All in all, the less one sees of native cooking, in transitu, the greater will one’s appetite be.

I had expected an early introduction to earthquakes, but none have occurred so far, and I am almost tempted to get reckless. Soon after my arrival I was inclined to put my chemical bottles in a box of sawdust, empty part of the water out of my pitcher, and pack my watch in cotton-wool in anticipation of some nocturnal disturbance. For the old stagers who saw the city fall to pieces back in the ’80’s deem it their duty to alarm the new arrival, and almost turn pale when a heavy dray rolls by over the cobblestones in the street near the club, or make ready to fly out-of-doors at the first suspicion of vibration.

A word or two more about the floors in Manila houses. I don’t suppose there is a soft-wood tree in the islands, and as a result one sees some very interesting hard-wood productions. The floors come under this category. Rough-hewn as they are—out of huge hand-sawed hard-wood planks—they are models. By certain processes of polishing with banana leaves and greasy rags, they are made to shine like genius itself, and give such a clean, cool air to the houses that one is compelled to regard them with admiration. In fact, there is a certain charm in Manila about many specimens of hand-work that one encounters everywhere. The stilted regularities—as our good professor used to say—of machine-made articles are frequently conspicuous by their absence, and instead one sees the inequalities, the lack of exact repetition, the informality of lines that are not just perpendicular or horizontal, all of which make up the charm of work that is handmade, that reflects the movements of a living arm and mind rather than those of a wheel or a lever.

The Busy Pasig, from the Puente de España. Old Manila on the Left. Business Quarter to the Right.

See page [13].

The curious windows that are everywhere are likewise instructive. Like the blinds, they slide in grooves on the railings of the balconies, and serve to shut out the weather from the interior. They consist of frames containing a multitude of small lattice-work squares, into which are placed thin, flat, translucent sea-shells which admit light, but are not look-throughable. We have all heard of shell-roads, but never of shell-windows, and one misses the presence of glass until he has got accustomed to a Manila house, whose sliding sides are one vast window that is rarely closed.

Manila streets, outside of the city proper, are smooth, hard, and well shaded by the arching bamboos. They are already proving attractive to the bicycle, which, though very expensive out here at the antipodes, is growing in favor, especially among the wealthier half-castes, or mestizos.

Tram-car service is slow, but pretty generally good. The car is a thing by itself, as is the one lean pony that pulls it. It takes one man to drive and one to work the whip, and if the wind blows too hard, service is generally suspended. The conductor carries a small valise suspended from his neck, and whistles through his lips “up-hill” to stop, and “down-hill” as the starting-sign. The usual notice, “Smoking allowed on the three rear seats only,” is absent, for everyone smokes, even to the conductor, who generally drops the ash off a 15-for-a-cent cigarette into your lap as he hands you a receipt for your dos centavos. The chief rule of the road says:

“This car has seats for twelve persons, and places for eight on each platform. Passengers are requested to stand in equal numbers only on both platforms, to prevent derailment.”

And so if there are four “fares” on the front and six on the back platform, somebody has to stumble forward to equalize the weight. No one is allowed to stand inside, and if the car contains its quota of passengers, the driver hangs out the sign, “Lleno” (full), and doesn’t stop even for the Archbishop. It is just as well, perhaps, to sit at the front end of the car if you are afraid of small-pox, for the other morning a Philippine mamma brushed into a seat holding a scantily clothed babe well covered with evidences of that disease. One sympathizes with the single pony that does the pulling as he sees thirty people besides the car in his load, and it is no uncommon thing on a slight rise or sharp turn for all hands to get off and help the vehicle over the difficulty. The driver holds the whip by the wrong end and lets the heavy one come down with double force on the terribly tough hide of the motive power. Aside from tram-cars some of these little beasts, however, are possessed of great speed, and with a reckless cochero in charge, it is no uncommon sight to see three or four turnouts come tearing down the street abreast, full tilt, clearing the road, killing dogs and roosters, and making one’s hair stand on end.

Speaking of roosters, they are the native dog in the Philippines. The inhabitants pet and coddle them, smooth down their plumage, clean their combs, or pull out their tail-feathers to make them fight, to their heart’s content, and it is a fact that these cackling glass-eaters really seem to show affection for their proprietors, in as great measure as they exhibit hatred for their brothers. Every native has his fighting-cock, which is reared with the greatest care until he has shown sufficient prowess to entitle him to an entrance into the cock-pit. In case of fire, the rooster is the first thing rescued and removed to a place of safety, for babies—common luxuries in the Philippines—are a secondary consideration and more easily duplicated than the feathered biped. It is almost impossible to walk along any street in the suburban part of the town without seeing dozens of natives trudging along with roosters under their arms, which are being talked to and petted to distraction. At every other little roadside hut, an impromptu battle will be going on between two birds of equal or unequal merit, the two proprietors holding their respective roosters by the tails in order that they may not come into too close quarters. The cock-pits, where gatherings are held on Thursdays and Sundays, are large enclosures covered with a roof of thatch sewed onto a framework of bamboo; they are open on all sides, and banked up with tiers of rude seats that surround a sawdust ring in the centre. Outside the gates to the flimsy structure sit a motley crowd of women, young and old, selling eatables whose dark, greasy texture beggars description, while here and there in the open spaces a couple of natives will be giving their respective roosters a sort of preliminary trial with each other. As the show goes on inside, shouts and applause resound at every opportunity, and at the close of the performance a multitude of two-wheeled gigs carry off the victors with their spoils, while the losers trudge home through the dust on foot.

Other familiar street-scenes consist of Chinese barbers, who carry around a chair, a pair of scissors, and a razor wherever they go, and stop to give you a shave or hair-cut at any part of the block; or Chinese ear-cleaners, who scoop out of those organs some of the unprintable epithets hurled by one native at another. Cascades of slops not uncommonly descend into the street as one walks along beneath a slightly overhanging second story of some of the houses, and one is impressed, if not wet, by this favorite method of laying the street-dust.

Besides the daily afternoon music on the Luneta, a full-fledged Italian opera troupe has come to town and has begun to give performances in the Teatro Zorilla. “Carmen” and “The Cavalleria Rusticana” are on the bill for this week, and many other of the old standbys are going to have their turn later.

In respect to music, side-tracked though it is, Manila seems to be more favored than her sister capitals in the Far East, and everyone appears to be able to play on something. Such of the native houses as are too frail to support pianos shelter harps, violins, and other stringed instruments, while some of the more expensive structures contain the whole selection. Of an evening—in the suburbs—it is no uncommon thing to hear the strains of a well-played Spanish march issuing from under the thatch of a rickety hut, or to find an impromptu concert going on in the little tram-car which is bringing home a handful of native youth with their guitars or mandolins. Every district has its band, some of the instruments in which are often made out of empty kerosene-cans, and the nights resound with tunes from all quarters. In fact, the Philippine band is one of the chief articles of export from Manila, and groups of natives with their cheap instruments are shipped off to Japan, India, and the Spice Islands, to carry harmony into the midst of communities where music is uncultivated. All in all, it is extremely curious that out of all the peoples of the Far East the Filipinos are the only ones possessing a natural talent for music, and that the islands to-day stand out unique from among all the surrounding territory as being the home of a musical race, who do not make the night as hideous with weird beatings of tom-toms as they do poetic with soft waltzes coaxed from gruff trombones.

January 18th.

Manila is pretty well, thanks. The weather has been cool and comfortable. Showers have come every day or two to lay the dust, and one could not want a more salubrious condition of things. The sunsets from the Luneta have been more than pyrotechnic, and I now believe that nowhere do you see such displays of color as in the Orient, Land of the Sunrise. During these three weeks of my stay, so far there have been five holidays, and we have had ample time to take afternoon walks up the beach, or play tennis at the club, or indulge in moonlight rows on the Pasig.

A Philippine Sleeping-machine.

See page [14].

A week ago on the island just opposite the club, where lies a good-sized village, containing an old church, there was a religious festival, which lasted all the week. This was the Fiesta of Pandacan, and all the natives for miles around came pouring down by our veranda, in bancas and barges, on their way across the river. Every night during the week, bands of music played on one side of the stream and on the other side, and then crossed to their respective opposites, playing in transitu, and then setting up shop on shore again. Then there were fireworks, bombs, and rockets galore, so that the early night was alive with noise and sparks. On the evening of the grand wind-up we crossed over to see the sights, in one of the usual hollowed-out tree-trunk ferryboats. Crowds of gayly dressed natives surged around the plaza, near the old church, while everywhere along the edges squatted old men and women, cooking all sorts of greasy “chow” on those peculiar Philippine stoves described in the last chapter. Everybody smoked, as well as the pots and kettles, and the air was therefore foggy. The little, low-thatched houses were jauntily decorated with lanterns and streamers, and at all the open fronts leaned out rows of grinning natives.

Here and there were small “tiendas,” or little booths, where cheap American toys, collar-buttons, pictures, and little figures of the Saviour were sold, and great was the hubbub. The houses, as well as the people, are very low of stature, and as we walked along the narrow, almost cunning streets, our shoulders level with the eaves of many of the shanties, and above the heads of many of the people, we felt indeed like giants. Many were the pianos in those native huts, and peculiar mixtures of strikingly decent playing fell upon the ear from all sides.

The whole circus wound up with a grand pyrotechnical illumination of the old church from base to tower, and a score of loud explosions, caused by the setting off of many dozen bombs at the same time, made up in noise what the religious celebration lacked in spirituality. Then all the bands came back and played their lungs out as they crossed the river, and all the people rushed for bancas, and came chattering home. Thus did this pretty little religious show consume, in noise and sparks, the contributions of a very long time.

The grand opera company which is here is doing remarkably well, and “Faust” was given the other evening to a crowded house. The theatre Zorilla is round, like a circus, and in the centre of the ring sit the holders of our regular orchestra seats, facing the stage, which chops off the segment of the circle opposite the main entrance. In a rim surrounding the central arena stretches the single row of boxes, a good deal like small open sheep-pens, separated from each other only by insignificant railings. Next comes the surrounding aisle, and in the broad outside section of the circle, rising up in steep tiers, are the seats for the natives and gallery gods, who invariably bring their lunch with them, to pass away the time during the long intermissions. The orchestra is a native one, led by an Italian conductor, and doesn’t tuck its shirt into its trousers. The musicians, who battle with the difficult score, grind out their music quite as successfully as some of our home performers, who would scorn the dark faces and flying shirt-tails of their Philippine brethren.

During the performance the management introduced a ballet, whose members were native Filipinas. It was too laughable. The faces and arms of the women who formed the corps seemed first to have been covered with mucilage, and then besprinkled with flour in order to bring the dark-brown complexion up to the softer half-tints of the Italian performers. The native lady, as a rule, is unacquainted with French shoes or high heels, slippers being the every-day equipment, and when these flowery beings came forward on to the stage, saw the huge audience, and tried to go through the mazes of the dance in European footgear, they felt entirely snarled up, even if they didn’t look more than half so. But this only served to keep the audience in a good humor, and everybody seemed to enjoy both the singing and the deviltry of Mephistopheles, whose part was well taken. The waits between the acts were long, and the drop-curtain was covered with barefaced advertisements of dealers in pills, hats, and carriages. But there were cool little cafés across the roadway running by the theatre, and one forgot the delay in the pleasure of being refreshed by Spanish chocolate and crisp buñuelos.

In front of the main entrance to the theatre stood two firemen, with hose in hand, ready to play on anything as soon as the orchestra stopped or a lamp fell, but otherwise nothing was particularly strange. The whole structure was oil-lighted with rickety chandeliers, which shed a dangerous though brilliant glare down upon a large audience of most exquisitely dressed Spanish people, mestizos and foreigners. Pretty little flower-girls wandered about trying to dispose of their wares to the rather over-dressed dudes of the upper half-caste 400, and their mammas often followed them around to assist in making sales. If it begins to rain in the afternoon, before the performance, everybody understands that the show is to be postponed, provided clearing conditions do not follow, and those who hold tickets are, as a rule, grateful not to be obliged to risk their horses and their starched clothes to the treatment of a possible downpour.

The Luneta is still a close rival to the opera, and each afternoon a dozen of us will generally meet there to refresh ourselves with the music and the passing show. Toward sundown, in the afternoons, of late, the big guns in the batteries up along the walls of Old Manila, hard by, have been used in long-distance sea target-practice, and it has been interesting, on the way from the office to the promenade, to walk along the beach and see the cannon-balls zip over the water and slump into it miles from their destination. The same target serves every afternoon, and seems perfectly safe from being hit. I wish I could say as much for the fleet of American ships that are lying off the breakwater, at the anchorage.

February 8th.

It seems peculiar to see the moon standing directly overhead o’nights, and casting a shadow of one’s self that is without meaning. I never yet realized we had so little shape before, looking from above, as when I saw this new species of shadow the other night, and was really sorry that the angels never had a chance to look at us from a better point of view.

To be politic, and begin with the weather as usual, a cold snap lately has given everyone the “grippe.” The mercury actually stood at 74° all one day, and couldn’t be coaxed to go higher. Think of the suffering that such low temperature would occasion among a people who have no furnaces or open fireplaces. You may think I am facetious, but 74° in the Philippines means a great deal to people who are always accustomed to 95°.

The opera-talk continues, and “Fra Diavolo” was most successfully performed to a crowded house the other evening. “The Barber of Seville” was given Sunday night with equal éclat, and the prima donna was a star of the first water, whose merits were recognized in the presentation of some huge flower-pieces, probably paid for by herself. But the opera has had a rival, and those who are not so musically inclined have spent most of their spare moments in discussing the great bull and tiger fight which took place Sunday afternoon.

It was a queer show, and not altogether edifying. The old bull-ring, squatting out in the rice-fields of Ermita suburb, was to be used for the last time, and the occasion was to be of unusual interest, since the flaming posters announced, in grown-up letters:

STRUGGLE BETWEEN WILD BEASTS.

Grand Fight to the Death between Full-blooded Spanish Bull, and Royal Bengal Tiger, Direct from the Jungles of India.

For days before the show came off, conversation in the cafés along the Escolta invariably turned to the subject of the coming exhibition, and it was evident that the managers fully intended both to reap a large harvest of heavy dollars and to wind up the career of the bull-ring association in a blaze of blood and glory.

The steaming Sunday afternoon found everybody directing his steps toward the wooden structure which consisted of a lot of rickety seats piled up around a circular arena. The reserved sections were covered with a light roof, to keep off the afternoon sun, but the bleaching-boards for those that held only “billetes de sol” were exposed to the blinding glare. The audience, a crowd of three thousand persons, with dark faces showing above suits of white sheeting, found the centre of the ring ornamented with a huge iron cage some two rods square, while off at the sides were smaller cages containing the “fieras,” or wild beasts.

The show opened amid breathless excitement, with an exhibition of panthers, and a man dressed in pink tights ate dinner in the big cage, after setting off a bunch of firecrackers under one of the “fieras,” who didn’t seem inclined to wake up enough to lick his chops and make-believe masticate somebody. The daring performer lived to digest his glass of water, with one cracker thrown in, and a deer was next introduced into the enclosure. The panther, at command of the keeper to get to business, seemed unwilling to attack his gentle foe, and on continued hissing from the big audience, the two animals were at length withdrawn.

Then great shouts of “El toro! El toro!” arose, as off at the small gate, at one side, appeared the bull, calmly walking forward, under the guidance of two natives, who didn’t wear any shoes. And renewed applause arose, as the small heavy cage containing the R. B. tiger was rolled up to a sliding-door of the central structure. The bull was shoved into the iron jail, the gate closed, a dozen or more bunches of firecrackers were set off in the small box holding the tiger, in order to waken him up, the slide connecting the two was withdrawn, and, with a deafening roar, the great Indian cat rushed forth and tried to swallow a man who was standing outside the bars waving a heated pitchfork. The bull stood quietly in one corner wagging his tail, and after blinking his eyes once or twice, proceeded to examine his antagonist, in a most friendly spirit. In fact, there seemed to be no hard feeling at all between the two beasts, and the tiger only wanted to get at the gentleman outside the cage, not at the bull. The audience howled, jeered at the tiger, bet on the bull, and criticised the man with the pitchfork as he gave the tiger several hard pokes in the ribs. This served to anger the beast so that he finally did make a dive at the bull, and promptly found himself tossed into the air. But as he came down, he hung on to the bull’s nose, and dug his claws into the tough hide. Curiously enough, the bull didn’t seem to mind that in the least, and the two stood perfectly still for some five minutes, locked in close quarters.

The English Club on the Banks of the Pasig. A Banca in the Foreground.

See page [16].

To make a long story short, there occurred four or five of these mild attacks, always incited by the man with the pitchfork, during which the bull stepped on the tiger, making him howl with pain, and the latter badly bit the former on the legs and nose. After the fourth round, both beasts seemed to be in want of a siesta. It was growing dark, and the dissatisfied audience cried for another bull and another tiger. The first animal was finally dragged away, after the tiger had retreated to his cage, and a fresh bull with more spirit was introduced. Now, however, the tiger was less game than ever, and no amount of firecrackers or pitchforkings could induce him to stir from the small cage. He seemed far too sensible, and literally appeared to be the possessor of an asbestos skin.

It had now got pretty dark, and the audience joined in the pandemonium of howls coming from the various cages. People began to light matches to see their programmes, and the circus-ring looked as if it were filled with fireflies. Then the programmes themselves were ignited for more light, and cries of “Give us back our money,” “What’s the matter with the tiger?” and others of a less printable order, arose. Men jumped into the ring, but the tiger refused to move for anybody. In the hope of stirring things up, a couple of panthers were again hastily wheeled up and pushed into the cage, where the bull was standing with an expression of wonder on his face. But the bull merely licked one panther on the nose and wagged his tail at the other, while the show was declared off on account of darkness. Then everybody filed out in disgust, and the man with the tiger, panthers, and pitchfork made arrangements to sail for foreign shores by the first steamer. Such was the last performance in the Plaza de Toros de Manila.

It was a pleasant contrast after the fight to adjourn to the Luneta. The day was Carnival Sunday, and all the young children of the community were rigged up in many sorts of inconceivable gowns. Clowns and ballet-dancers, devils and angels, all wandered up and down the smooth walk, and the crowd was immense. Numbers of the older people also took part, and many of the smart traps were occupied with grotesque figures. The artillery-band rendered some of its finest selections. The ships off in the bay were almost completely reflected in the calm water. The mountains rose blue, like velvet, in the distance, and a red glow in the Boca Chica told where the sun had gone down for us, only to rise on the distant snows of New England.

III

A Philippine Valet—The Three Days Chinese New Year—Marionettes and Minstrels at Manila—Yankee Skippers—Furnishing a Bungalow—Rats, Lizards, and Mosquitoes—A New Arrival—Pony-Races in Santa Mesa—Cigars and Cheroots—Servants—Cool Mountain Breezes—House-snakes—Cost of Living—Holy Week.

February 16th.

News to begin with. I have engaged a Philippine valet, price $4.50 per month; a man with a wife, two children, and a fighting-cock, who buys all his better half’s pink calico gowns and all the food for the party on this large salary. It is a wonder what revolutions have taken place in my wardrobe. My heavy clothes, already grown musty from disuse, have been taken out, sun-dried, and laid carefully away. I no longer have to decide what to wear each morning, for it is settled for me beforehand. Everything that my “boy” wishes me to don is laid out on a chair during my early pilgrimage to the bath, and all that is necessary to do on my return is to get into them. It is quite a luxury, and I shall certainly be inclined to bring this cheap gentleman back with me when I return to Boston. My neckties, which have hitherto snarled themselves up in the corner of a drawer, now are hanging from a neat clothes-line, side by side. My books and papers on the centre table are arranged with unnatural formality, and the smaller articles, such as lead-pencils, buttons, pin-cushions, are all adjusted in definite geometrical formation. At breakfast and dinner in the club-house I no longer have to whistle to be waited on, for my slave is always behind the chair, ready to spill the soup on my coat or pass the plum-pudding. These serving-boys all belong to the Tagalog race, which seems to include in its numbers most of the native inhabitants in Manila and the adjacent towns. They all have straight, thick black hair, speak their peculiar Tagalog language, and only pick up enough Spanish to carry them through the performance of their simple duties.

And still the holidays, more or less, continue. About this time of year there is one a week, and just now the Chinese New Year occupies about three days. The business part of the town is quiet. All the Chinese merchants have driven off on a picnic, and it is impossible to hire carriages of any sort.

Manila, on the whole, is waking up, and besides the opera we now have the marionette troupe, something entirely new to the average citizen. It seems there are four sisters travelling around the world with their little collection of string-pulled puppets, giving exhibitions in all the larger centres. Their fame had preceded them, and so the other night when the doors of the Teatro Filipino were thrown open, a huge crowd assembled to see the performance. The stage was a fairly large one, but so arranged optically that it made the figures appear larger than they really were. The actors (puppets) were remarkable for their lifelikeness, and if one had not seen the strings stretching upward he would have taken them to be animate beings. Their costumes were complete and elaborate in every particular. First came a tight-rope walker, then an acrobat balancing a pair of chairs, and then Old Mother Hubbard, out of whose voluminous petticoats jumped half a dozen little men and women, all of whom danced and cut up as if they were really reasoning bipeds instead of material, loose jointed, wax-faced dolls. Old Mamma was especially good, and as she stirred up her little children with a long staff, looked at first this one and then that, shook her head, pointed her finger, and danced with the others, she brought down the house with applause.

Later on came a minstrel troupe, with two end-men, a leader who waved a baton, a harpist, and two other musicians. They all played, and the end-men cracked jokes. Next came a clog-dance between two darkies, and it was difficult to believe that they were not alive. Further on came a bulldog, which grabbed a policeman by the nether breeches and pulled a huge piece out of them; a bull, who chased a farmer and threw him over a rail fence (this took wonderfully well, for the Spaniards go crazy over anything with a bull in it); then a boarding-house scene, with a folding-bed that shut up its occupants inside; next, a balloon ascension, in which a man on the ground was suddenly caught up into the air by an anchor thrown out from the balloon; then the death of the two aëronauts, who fall from a dizzy height; next, a ride in a donkey-cart by two lovers, who find themselves run away with and get snarled up on the wagon, to be kicked black and blue by the donkey. Finally came a very complete little play of “Bluebeard,” with complete scenery, costumes, and ballet. All of the scenery was of the lightning-change sort, and the Spaniards, mestizos, and natives in the audience sat and looked on with open-mouthed wonder, too astonished to laugh, too senseless to cry, and able but to clothe their faces with expressions of wonder.

The Bull and Tiger Fight—Opening Exercises.

See page [38].

To change the subject rather abruptly, the captain of the Esmeralda, the little steamer on which I came from Hong Kong, has been good enough to ask me on board his vessel to tiffin as often as she comes into port. As Captain Tayler’s table is noted both for its excellence and profusion, the very few of us who comprise the American colony, as well as all the Englishmen in town, always covet an invitation to spend Sunday in his company and enjoy various dishes that are not to be procured in Manila markets.

Besides the several steamers that ply between ports on the neighboring coast, there is now a large fleet of American ships at anchor in the bay, and our office, which shelters the only American firm in the Philippines, is a great centre for the various Yankee, nasal-twanged skippers, who, dressed in hot-looking, ready-made tweeds, come ashore without their collars to ask questions about home topics and read newspapers six weeks old. They delight to enjoy the sea-breezes generated by our big punka, and only leave the office on matters of urgent necessity. Several of the captains have their whole families with them, and one, who is especially well-to-do, owns his own ship, carries along a bright tutor, who is preparing some of the skipper’s sons for college, and has transformed the vessel into a veritable institution of learning. On nearly every evening the whole fleet in a body go to some one ship, sing songs and have refreshments, and the other night Governor Robie was the host. Being invited to partake of the festivities, we two Yankees went off into the bay at about sunset, ate a regulation New England dinner, with rather too much weight to it for hot climates, and met all the belles of the fleet. The moon overhead was full, and with a good piano, violin, hand-organ, and a couple of ocarinas, giving vent to sweet sounds, we had an impromptu dance on the quarter-deck. We stayed out on the ship of our host and hostess all night. They apologized because the bunks in the state-rooms assigned to us were so hard, little realizing that we couldn’t sleep worth a continental on account of their being so ridiculously soft after our Philippine cane arrangements.

Everybody is talking horse now, and business will be at a standstill during the first few days of the coming month, when the pony races take place at the suburban course in Santa Mesa. As a result, every afternoon that some of us do not go rowing or play tennis, we adjourn to the race-track, and, in company with groups of Spaniards and wealthy mestizos, watch the smart ponies circle around the track.

And, speaking of the race-course, I have just made arrangements with one of my new friends to take a bungalow situated on a low rise that backgrounds the track at the quarter-mile post. It stands, prettily shaded by bamboo-trees, on practically the first bit of upland that later grows into the lofty mountains of the interior, and the view off over the race-course and low-lying paddy-fields, squared off into sections, toward the city, is most picturesque. On another side we look off over the winding river toward the mountains, which hardly appear five miles away, and still another view is a bamboo grove, against which is backed up our little stable with various outbuildings, including the kitchen. A broad veranda runs entirely around the main building, where the living-rooms are located, and Venetian roll-blinds let down from the piazza-roof keep off the afternoon sun.

Yesterday I had my first experience in making extensive purchases of furniture, and was interested to see about twelve coolies start off from the city toward our country residence, three miles away, loaded down with beds, tables, chairs, and other articles. Four of them started off later on with the upright piano balanced on a couple of cross-sticks resting on their shoulders, and trotted the whole distance without sitting down to play the “Li Hung Chang March” more than twice. These living carriers rather take the place of express wagons in the East, and a long caravan of furniture-laden Celestials, solemnly going along through the highway at a jog-trot, is no uncommon sight. We shall need dishes, knives, pots and kettles, and a whole World’s Fair of trumpery, before we get started, and I shall have to be busy with a Spanish dictionary, in order to get familiar with the right names for the right things.

You have asked me how the mosquitoes fare upon the newly arrived foreigner. To tell the truth, I have not seen more than half a dozen since coming to Manila, and those all sang in tune. Everybody sleeps under nettings, of course, but so far I have not seen as many biters flying around at night as there are in the United States of America. To be sure, one sees a good many lizards hanging by the eye-teeth to the walls, or walking about unconcernedly up-side-down on the ceilings, but they do good missionary work by devouring the host of smaller bugs, and it is one of our highest intellectual pursuits here in Manila to stretch out in a long chair and go to sleep gazing upward at these enterprising bug-catchers pursuing their vocation. And, now and then, from some piazza-roof or ceiling will drop on your face a so-called hairy caterpillar whose promenade on one’s epidermis will cause it to swell up in great welts that close one’s eyes and ruffle the temper.

Rats are more numerous than mosquitoes, and the other day, on my opening a drawer in some of our office furniture, three jumped out. The office was transformed into an impromptu race-course, and all hands were called to take part in the slaughter. But Manila doors are loose-jointed, and the rodents escaped somewhere into the next room. Since then I have had the legs sawed off of my desk, so that these literary beggars, who delight to eat up one’s valuable papers, should not climb in and make a meal off of my private cable code—a thing which they started to do some time ago. They have already several times run off with the candle which was used for heating sealing-wax, and possess such prowess that they even took it out of the candlestick.

We had a new arrival at the club lately in the person of a young Englishman who came fresh from Britain. Someone had stuffed him with tales of indolent life in the Far East, for he came in to his first dinner at the club clad only in pajamas and green carpet-bag slippers. He also thought that the Spanish language consisted in adding final a’s to words in the English tongue and shouted all over the club next morning for sopa, sopa, with which to cleanse himself. But the servant brought him a plate of soup, and he is now trying to remember that soap in Spanish is translated by jabon, not sopa. Jamon, the word for ham, however, is close enough to give him trouble and he will no doubt ask for soap instead of ham at our next repast.

March 16th.

The pony races came off with great éclat on the first four days of this month, and were decidedly interesting. All Manila turned out, and such a collection of carriages I have never seen. All the Spanish ladies put an extra coat of paint on their complexions, and, dressed in their best bibs and tuckers, made somewhat of a ghastly show in the searching light of early afternoon. The high, thatched-roofed grand stand presented a duly gay appearance as the bell rang for the first event, and the dried-up paddy-fields, far and near, crackled with natives directing their steps toward the centre of attraction.

In front of the grand stand groups of Spaniards, Englishmen, and sea-captains formed centres for betting, and off at the sides were refreshment-booths to which everyone made pilgrimage as often as the articulatory muscles were in need of lubrication.

Some of the ponies were splendid-looking little “critters” and made almost as fast time as their larger brethren, the horses. During race-afternoons, business in the city was entirely suspended, and everyone who had a dollar took it to the race-course to gain other dollars. As the currency system is all metal, bets were paid in hard coin, and if you happened to buy a lucky ticket in that gambling machine, the “totalizator,” you would perhaps have a whole hatful of heavy silver cart-wheels shoved at you on presenting the winning pasteboard. And it was no uncommon sight at the close of the races to see some of the thinly clad natives whom fortune had favored go trudging home across the rice-fields, carrying a load of dollars in a straw hat or a bright bandana.

One by one the vessels are dropping away from their anchorage in the bay, and by Saturday our Vigilant will heave up anchor and start on her twenty-thousand-mile journey to Boston via the Cape, with her big cargo of hemp. Thanks to our attentions to the captains, they have seemed willing to take home for us any amount of souvenirs and curios, and I have sent along quite an assortment of stuffed bats, lizards, and snake-skin canes, which I feel sure will cause somebody to creep on their arrival.

Manila’s best cigar, made of a special, selected tobacco, wrapped in the neatest of silverfoil and packed in rosewood boxes tied with Spanish ribbon, costs about five cents and is considered a rare delicacy. One scarcely ever sees these cigars, the “Incomparables,” outside of the city itself, and the brand is so choice that but few smokers are acquainted with it. The foreigner in Manila thinks he is paying dear for his weed at $20 per thousand, and some of our professional smokers limit themselves to those favorite “Bouquets” which correspond to our “two-for-a-quarter” variety but sell here for $1.80 a hundred. Below these upper grades come a various assortment of cheaper varieties, including the cheroots, big at one end and small at the other, and the $3-a-thousand cigars which are made of the first thing that comes handy, to be sold to the crews of deep-water merchantmen. A native of the Philippines wants his cigarette, and gets it. Packages of thirty are sold on almost every corner for a couple of coppers, and to my mind the Manila cigarette is far superior to the variety found in Cuba. Smoking is, of course, encouraged by prices such as these, and one finds it perfectly good form to borrow a cigarette, as well as a light, from his neighbor in the tram-car or on the plaza. Even on the toll-bridge which spans the Pasig you pay your copper for crossing, and get in change a box of matches; and if you are queer enough not to want the matches, the man will give you instead a ticket that avails for the return trip.

Suburb of Santa Mesa. From the Veranda of our Bungalow We Looked down on the Rice-fields and Race-Course.

See page [48].

Sunday I left my room at the club and moved into our new house out in the suburb of Santa Mesa. It is just a week now since the Chinese cook came and began to christen the pots and saucepans, whose Spanish names I shall never get to remember. He began by rendering me a small account of the “extras” provided for our table, and I was floored the first thing on an item of five cents put down as “Hongos.” I asked him what that was. He spluttered around in Spanish and looked about the room to see if he couldn’t find a few growing in one of our pictures of still life on the walls. At length, being struck with an inspiration, he seized a small fan, excitedly stuck it into one of our flower-pots, balanced on top of it an inverted ash-tray, and danced around, pointing first to the item on the bill and then to the peculiar growth in the flower-pot. I confess I didn’t follow his reasoning, till suddenly it struck me that for our first dinner in the new house we had partaken of mushrooms. Not far off from an ash-tray balanced on a Japanese fan growing out of a flower-pot—are they? The style of decoration in our house is especially Japanese, and, needless to say, artistic, since there are large Japanese and Indian shops in Manila, where one can get all sorts of gimcracks at low prices. Our servants number seven, a small quota for two of us. Although their wages are small, amounting, as a rule, to $4 apiece per month, yet it is necessary to have plenty of them, in order that a certain few shall be awake when wanted.

The fresh breeze, which in the evenings and early mornings blows down direct from the lofty mountains, is so cool that often several blankets have been necessary in the sleeping contrivance. Mosquitoes are still conspicuous by their absence, but the rats up in the roof sound tremendously numerous. All night they seem to be pulling boxes to and fro, taking up boards and nailing them down, and having a general all-hands-round sort of a dance.

Nearly all of the older bungalows in Manila possess what are called house-snakes; huge reptiles generally about twelve or fourteen feet long and as thick as a fire-engine hose, that permanently reside up in the roof and live on the rats. These big creatures are harmless, and rarely, if ever, leave their abodes. Judging from the noise over my cloth ceiling, a pair of these pets find pasturage up above, and I can hear them whacking around about once a week in their chase after rats. They are good though noisy rat-catchers, but since they must needs eat all they catch, their efficiency appears to be limited to their length of stomach, and one night of energetic campaign is generally followed by several days of rest, during which the snake sees if he has bitten off more than he can chew. If the Philippine cats were more noble specimens of the quadruped, I should try to place half a dozen up in this midnight concert-hall, but they are so feeble that I fear their lives would be in danger. It is hardly to be wondered at that these native cats are modestly retiring, when you wake at night to hear your shoes being dragged off across the floor by some huge rice-fed rodent, and I don’t blame them at all for having right angles at the end of their tails.

The only way to get rid of the rats seems to be to buy more snakes, and this is simple enough, for you often see the natives hawking them around in town, the boas curled up around bamboo poles, to which their heads are tied.

Some of our other domestic pets are lizards, supposed to be about four feet long, who sing every evening at 8.30 P.M., from somewhere off down in the shrubbery; several roving turkeys and pigs that belong to the boys that serve us, a cluster of fighting-cocks, and a family of puppies. It is easy to be seen that our establishment is thus somewhat of a tropical menagerie, and a performance is almost always going on in some quarter or other.

I have just completed the purchase of a horse and carriage complete, including the coachman, for $100, and on the first trial we passed everything on the road. The pony is a high-stepper, and rattled along over the ground at a terrific speed, as a good Philippine animal should. The coachman seems to know how to drive, which is a rare attainment among the natives, and so far, though he has run over two boys, he has not taken off any wheels in the car-tracks.

They say it costs a good deal to live well out this way, but that is a mistake, and if one lived at home in the same style the bills would be at least ten times as large. To be sure, it would be possible to come to Manila, board with a Spanish family in the old city, avoid joining the club, and live almost for nothing. However, this is a custom not much encouraged in the Orient, and one cannot properly take his place among the colony of English and other Europeans without spending a certain reasonable amount.

Business is done more on a social scale than at home, and the lowest English clerk in the large houses feels that he must enter into the free and easy expenditure of his better-paid chief. After office hours are over everyone stands on the same social plane, and all business talk is tabooed. The office-boy often calls his lord and master “Bill,” and frequently has a better-looking horse and carriage.

The U.S.S. Concord has just come into the bay and been saluted by the fort. Some of her officers will probably come ashore to breakfast at the club, and it will probably devolve on the four Americans in the city to do what is needful in the way of courtesy to our fellow-countrymen.

To-day is the beginning of Easter Week, nearly all of whose days are holidays or holy days. This is one of the closest-observed seasons of the year, and on next Thursday and Friday, if you will believe it, no carriages are allowed to appear in the streets either of Manila or of the other cities. The tram-cars, to be sure, have of late years been allowed to run, and the doctor’s carriage and the ice-carts can obtain permits. Beyond them, however, everybody has to stay at home or walk; and in former times tram-cars were forbidden and no one was allowed to carry an open umbrella. It seems the proper thing to do to make arrangements with some of the English colony to take a trip off into the mountains, and my chum and I expect to start off by launch on Wednesday afternoon. Our party will consist of five, not including half a dozen servants, who are to make arrangements for bringing the provisions and bedding.

On my return I hope to have some fodder for my pen and relate some of our experiences in the up-country districts.

IV

An Up-country Excursion—Steaming up the River to the Lake—Legend of the Chinaman and the Crocodile—Santa Cruz and Pagsanjan—Dress of the Women—Mountain Gorges and River Rapids—Church Processions—Cocoanut Rafts—A “Carromata” Ride to Paquil—An Earthquake Lasting Forty-five Seconds—Small-pox and other Diseases in the Philippines—The Manila Fire Department—How Thatch Dealers Boom the Market—Cost of Living.

March 27, 1894.

The Easter holidays have come and gone, and one of the favorite vacation trips from Manila has been brought to a close. Five of us have seen lake, mountain, and river scenery; have been taking interesting walks, drives, swims; have camped out in a good house and enjoyed the hospitality of our native Indian friends. Whistling for the punka-boy to go ahead, I will now set down the record of our trip.

Our Destination was a Town Called Pagsanjan at the Foot of a Range of Mountains.

See page [63].

The week from the 18th of March to the 25th was practically one long holiday, but it was Wednesday, the 21st, in the afternoon, that we left Manila for the interior. Rand and I got up the trip by procuring a large and commodious steam-launch for five days—gratis. Having done our share, we left our three companions to look after the “chow” and other kindred topics. To my “boy” I merely said, “Wednesday we are going up to the laguna; prepare what is necessary for four days.” That was all, and on Wednesday afternoon I found him at the launch with my clothes and bedding all ready to start. Here also were assembled hams, boxes of ice, and other provisions, big bundles of personal effects, and the four “boys” (a “boy” may be seventy years old if he likes) whom we were going to take along.

The whistle blew, the special artist with his camera ambled aboard, amidst a pile of sun-hats, oranges, and excitement, and soon the Vigilante was steaming up the river on her sixty-mile trip. Familiar objects were first passed, but soon after leaving the uptown club new scenes presented themselves. The launch stirred up large waves astern that washed both banks of the river with great energy, and the first incident was the swamping of three banca-loads of grass that were on their way down to Manila under charge of Indian pedlers. Turn after turn opened up new scenes; our house on the hill began to fade away, and soon we skimmed through native villages where white blood was “not in it.” The hills increased in size, the river lessened, and great bamboo-trees hung over toward the central channel. At one point, high up on the bluffs, perched a Chinese pagoda-like chapel, said to have been constructed by a wealthy Celestial as a thanks-offering for his escape from a crocodile. He was bathing in the river, so the story goes, when suddenly he saw the monster making for him. He threw up his hands and vowed to build a monument to his patron saint if escape was vouchsafed him. And no sooner had he spoken than the crocodile turned to stone and lies there to-day, a long, low black mass, fretting the current that ripples over it. As we passed the rock it looked as if it had never been anything else, but the afternoon was too pleasant to doubt the veracity of the legend. On we went. The mountains ahead grew more to look like masses of rock and trees and less like soft blue velvet. Pasig, an important town, was left behind, the lowlands came again, a multitude of fish-weirs stuck up ahead, and before we knew it the great lake was holding us on its rather muddy waters just where it slobbered into the mouth of the river, its only outlet.

On all sides save the one by which we had entered rose the mountains right out of the water, and I was reminded of Norway or Scotland. It was like a sea, and the farther shore was below the horizon. The sun had set and the full moon rose just ahead as we kept along the coast to the north. At half after eight o’clock we anchored off a little town called Santa Cruz that seemed to be backed up by two very lofty mountain-peaks, and we were soon surrounded by two bancas filled with natives who began to transfer our many effects. And so we left the launch, were slowly poled ashore, and next found ourselves on a sandy beach surrounded by much people and baggage. Dispatching two of our retinue up into the town to fetch enough of the two-wheeled covered gigs called carromatas for our assembly, in about three-quarters of an hour we had the felicity of seeing seven come racing down the road to the lake shore. Our destination, by the way, was a town called Pagsanjan, about three-quarters of an hour from Santa Cruz, and situated just at the foot of a range of mountains. The chattels were soon loaded, there was a cracking of whips, a creaking of harness, and the long procession started off at a rattling gait through the town and out into the rich cocoanut groves beyond.

At Manila, outside of bamboo and banana trees, there is no sign of really equatorial vegetation, but up in the mountains there was no deception, and Nature did her best to let us know that the temperate zone was far away. We bounced along at a terrific pace and presently saw the lights of our little village. Rattling through an old stone archway, we drew up before the house of a certain Captain Feliz, to whom we had been recommended. The genial old man, whose face and corporosity were charmingly circular in their rotundity, welcomed us with open-armed hospitality, and saying he knew of just the house that would accommodate our party, started to lead us to it. After a few steps he suddenly stopped, apologized smilingly, said he had forgotten his set of false teeth, and must return for them. And coming back shortly after, he took out his teeth, commented on their grace and usefulness, and said he could speak much better Spanish with than without them.

In due season we drew up at a very thick-walled stone house on the high bank just above the river, and were invited to take possession. Our “boys” got out the provisions in short order, for a late supper; our pieces of straw matting were spread out around the edges of the shining floor of the large “sala” which had been placed at our disposal for a dormitory; pillows and light coverings were duly regulated, and after eating a bit, we said good-night to our new friends and turned in on the floor to rest. I found the hardwood planks so soft after my bed at Manila that before long I arose, arranged eight chairs in facing pairs, spread out my sleeping-arrangements, and soon fell asleep in a very good improvised bed which was high enough from the floor to keep cockroaches from using me as a promenade. Thursday morning we arose early, washed ourselves on the balcony that overlooked the fashionable avenue of the village, and, as is the true Philippine custom, sprinkled the street with solutions of soapsuds.

Now, as I have said before, the Thursday and Friday before Easter are tremendously sacred days in the Philippines, and no carriages of any description are permitted to move about. The little town was still as death, and the early-morning hush was only broken now and then by the weird caterwaulings of the peculiar Passion songs which the natives in these parts sing off and on during Lent. Later on, as we finished breakfast, groups of women began coming out of the various houses and directed their steps church-ward. Most of them were gorgeously dressed in all colors of the solar spectrum—with a little cloth added on—and it was instructive to see an expensively gowned Indian woman emerge from a shabby little nipa hut that didn’t look as if it could incubate such starched freshness. For the dresses that some of these people wear are costly; and even their piña neckerchiefs often cost $100.

After breakfast we went down to the river and got into five hollowed-out tree-trunks, preparatory to the start up into the mountain-gorges. It was worse than riding a bicycle, trying to balance one of the crazy affairs, and for a few moments I feared my camera and I would get wet. However, nobody turned turtle, and we were paddled up between the high cocoanut-fringed banks of the wonderfully clear river before the early morning sun had looked over the mountains into whose cool heart we were going.

Where the Crackers were Wet. The Rapids in the Gorges of Pagsanjan.

See page [67].

Then came the first rapids, with backgrounds of rich slopes showing heavy growths of hemp and cocoa palms. Another short paddle and the second set of rapids was passed on foot. A clear blue lane of water then stretched out in front of us and reached squarely into the mountain fastnesses through a huge rift where almost perpendicular walls were artistically draped with rich foliage that concealed birds of many colors, a few chattering monkeys, and many hanging creepers. Again it seemed like a Norwegian fjord or the Via Mala, but here, instead of bare rocks, were deeply verdured ones. Above, the blue sky showed in a narrow irregular line; below, the absolutely clear water reflected the heavens; the cliffs rose a thousand feet, the water was five hundred feet deep, the birds sang, the creepers hung, the water dripped, and we seemed to float through a sort of El Dorado, a visionary and unreal paradise. At last we glided in through a specially narrow lane not more than fifty feet wide; a holy twilight prevailed; the cliffs seemed to hold up the few fleecy clouds that floated far over our head, and we landed on a little jutting point for bathing and refreshments. It seemed as if we were diving into the river Lethe or being introduced to the boudoir of Nature herself. In an hour we pushed on, passed up by three more rapids, and halted at last at the foot of a bridal-veil waterfall that charmed the eye with its beauty, cooled the air with its mists, and set off the green foliage with its white purity. Here we lunched, and in lieu of warm beer drank in the beauties of the scenery.

The return was a repetition of the advance, except that we shot one or two of the rapids, and that the banca holding the boy and the provisions upset in a critical place, wetting the crackers that were labelled “keep dry.” We got back to our house by early afternoon, and all agreed that an inimitable, unexcelled, wouldn’t-have-missed-it-for-the-world excursion had passed into history.

Good old Captain Feliz took us to call on some of the native villagers in the late afternoon, who exhibited quite a bit of Indian hospitality. At one house was a pretty Indian girl who spoke Spanish very well and entertained our party of six with as much grace as an American belle. Of course the presence of five “Ingleses” in town was quite an event in a place fifty miles from Manila, and as we walked through street after street each house-window presented at least seven curious faces; dogs barked, fighting-cocks crowed, and the occupations of the moment were suspended.

After dinner we sat out on the balcony to watch the procession that wound around through the various streets, starting from the fortress-like church and finally bringing up there. These church parades are a good deal like our torch-light processions, except that here images, not mud-besprinkled men, carry most of the torches. In this affair there were a dozen or more floats, each one bearing a saint, an apostle, or somebody else, and each decorated with very costly drapery, ornaments, and elaborate candelabra illuminators. Scattered all along between the floats straggled natives carrying poles on which were images of a candle, a hand, a spear, a pair of nails, a cock, a set of garments, and other symbolic articles relating to the crucifixion. Then came Peter on a very elaborate moving pedestal, and in his hand he held the traditional bunch of keys. Then a Descent from the Cross, with two apostles standing up on step-ladders. Next came the band of the procession—three men singing to the tune of an old violin—and finally the Virgin Mary with glass tears rolling down her wax cheeks. On each side of the line from start to finish trooped the populace, mostly women dressed in black and carrying candles.

Next day was Good Friday. No traps of any description to be had, as none were allowed to run, and so we spent the day about the town and in walking up into the hills. A look into the great, solid old church in the morning showed us a fragrant and gaudily dressed audience kneeling in various postures on the tiled floors, while numerous dogs of various cross breeds and tempers meandered in through the door and among the worshippers. From the church we strolled across a very primitive bamboo bridge over a branch river, and wandered through a luxurious cocoanut grove beneath whose tall trees were situate a couple of very rudimentary cocoanut-oil mills and the houses of the operators. The machinery was very crude. One might think he was back in the days of stone knives, seeing these simple contrivances, the awkward levers, the foot-power grindstones, and the old pots and kettles. In the river near the mills were thousands of cocoanuts ready to be tied together in rafts for floating down to Manila, and everybody’s business up this way seemed to consist in watching this oily fruit fall from the trees.

In the early evening, just before another religious procession started, we heard a great clatter up in the belfry of the old church, and learned that the hubbub was made by “devil-frighteners.” On inquiring as to the nature of this weird clap-trap symphony, it seems that on these especially holy days men are stationed up in the bell-towers with huge wooden rattles, which they so manipulate from time to time that the noise is said to act as a scare-crow to the various devils who are supposed to be hovering about seeking whom they may devour.

After another peaceful night’s rest, some of us took our morning jump into the river, and all prepared for a twelve-mile carromata drive out along the lake shore beneath the mountains, to a little village called Paquil, said to be possessed of a crystal spring bathing-pool. The road for a good bit of the way was of the Napoleon-crossing-the-Alps style, and it got to be so bad I rather thought we were in for a walk. Not a bit of it. The carromatas are built strong as the rocks themselves, the wheels are huge and solid, the ponies tough as prize-fighters, and the driver urges the whole affair along at a tremendous pace. So we bounced along, and most of our time was spent, not on the seat, but midway between it and the roof, which occasionally came down and thumped our heads. On the way we passed through numerous little villages, and in one out-of-the-way place we called on an American, Thomas Collins, who has been practically shut in out here for twenty-five years. It seems that he got cheated out of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of valuable wood a good while ago by the officials of a certain provincial district, and has been trying to get the claim paid ever since. He was a queer chap, and had almost forgotten how to speak American; but at last he managed to remember the word “hell,” and then his ideas began to flow more freely.

When we arrived at Paquil our conductor, the genial Captain Feliz, walked up to the house of an acquaintance and asked him to put it at our disposal. As before, the request was father to the grant, and we dumped our chattels down into a parlor full of wax virgins and crucifixes. The bath, for which the village is quite famous, is a large pool five feet deep, with a pebble bottom. At one end a stream of clear water gushes forth from the hillside, while at the other an overflow brook carries off the surplus and goes bubbling down through the village to the lake. We had our swim after all the native bathers had left, and got back to our house in time for a tiffin that had been brought with us in the baskets. In the early afternoon we took our siesta, in the later hours started for our jogglety return drive, and at Pagsanjan found prepared for us a feast of sucking pigs.

On Sunday morning we were ready for our return to Manila. The seven gigs arrived, we said hearty farewell to our friends, presented Captain Feliz some empty bottles and two teapots, and rattled out through the town toward Santa Cruz, where our launch was in waiting. The trip was cool and pleasant across the lake, but it was hot when in about four and a half hours we got to the low river-country again. The sail down was like the sail up, and by dinner-time we backed water to bump into the portico of the club, where all hands disembarked for dinner. Thus ended what I suppose is the most popular and most delightful excursion which the foreigner can make from the capital of the Philippines in the few days which the church feasts at Easter put at his disposal.

April 6th.

The other night I dreamt I was climbing up a long hill on a bicycle. Once at the top, I started down over the other side at a terrific pace. Somehow or other, by mistake, the wheel ran off into a gutter at the side of the road, and bounced around in such a dangerous manner that it all but upset. However, with tremendous exertion, I managed to jump the mechanism back onto the smooth ground again, and continued safely down to the bottom of the hill at a two-forty gait. Arrived at the bottom, I conveniently woke up, and heard a rat under the bed trying to slide one of my shoes off across the floor.

Cocoanut Rafts on the Pasig, Drifting down to Manila.

See page [69].

Next morning, on coming down to the office, several of my business friends asked me if I had felt the severe earthquake shock during the night. I said “No,” and inquired as to the particulars. It seems that the shock lasted some forty-five seconds, and my chum was awakened by his bed commencing to rock around and by the four walls of his room attempting to move in different directions. Nothing in the city was much injured, I believe, and next day the really excellent observatory, conducted by the Jesuits, gave out a full illustrated description of the affair.

Up at our new bungalow, the only incidents worthy of note have been the attempted stealing of my pony and the consumption of my best shoes by one of our house-rats.

A Philippine burglar, curiously enough, takes off his clothes, smears his dark skin with cocoanut-oil, and prowls around like a greased pig that cannot be caught. One of these slippery thieves got into our stable, unhitched my pony, and took him almost to the front gate before the sleepy coachman found his wits. But prompt action saved the day, and the lubricated robber escaped, leaving his booty pawing the ground.

But with my shoes I was not so fortunate. I woke up suddenly to hear something being dragged across the floor. Thinking it was only a rat making off with a boot-jack with which to line his nest, I refrained from tempting Providence by leaving the protection of the mosquito-netting. Next morning I found that one of these rodents had pulled a pair of my patent-leather shoes off a low shelf beneath the bed, dragged them out into the hallway behind a hat-rack, and eaten up the most savory portions of the bindings. Complimentary to the prowess of the rat or to the lightness of my shoes—which? I keep them now as articles on which the patent has run out—worthless, but curiosities.

Otherwise things have run smoothly, and each evening we lie in the long chairs on the broad veranda, watching the Southern Cross come up over the hills, or the score of brush-fires of dried rice-stalks that illuminate the darkness away off toward the mountains. The music from our piano seems to give much delight to the members of the servants’ hall, now nine in number, besides several puppies and game-cocks. The other night, although in the midst of the hot season, we had a prodigious cold snap again, when the thermometer went down to sixty, after being ninety-five during the day, and two blankets were not at all uncomfortable.

I see by the papers that there are at least two cases of small-pox in Boston, that everybody is alarmed and hundreds are getting vaccinated. Curious state of affairs—isn’t it?—when every day out here you see small children running around in the streets, covered with evidences of this disease. Nobody thinks anything about small-pox in Manila, and one ceases to notice it if a Philippine mamma sits opposite you in the tram-car, holding in her lap a scantily clothed child whose swarthy hide is illuminated with those unmistakable markings. Some weeks ago there were even four hundred deaths a week in Manila from this disease alone; and from the way in which the afflicted mix with the hale and hearty, you can only wonder that there were not four thousand. But small-pox flourishes best in the cool, dry days of our winter months, and is now being stamped out by the warmer weather. An effort is being made to have everybody vaccinated, and the steamers from Japan have brought down whole cargoes of lymph, but the natives do not see any reason why they should undergo this experiment, and would much prefer to have the small-pox than to be vaccinated. And this being the case, it is no wonder that almost seventy-five per cent. of them bear those uncomplimentary marks of the disease’s attention.

Now that I have inoculated my page with a reference to this rather unpleasant subject, it is only a bit of sad truth to tell of the only fatality caused by the malady in our little Anglo-Saxon colony. Recently I went into the Bay with a young Englishman who had always lived in terror of this one disease, and had avoided both contact with the natives and excursions into the infected districts. The launch took me to the vessel which we were loading, and then carried him on to that receiving cargo from his concern. Later she returned with him, picked me up, and together we went ashore to stop a moment at the club before going home for the day. I never saw him again, poor chap, though I did take over his stable, for next morning he was taken with black small-pox and died in a week.

The families of the lightermen in the Bay—crowded as they are into the hen-coops over the stern of the bulky craft—are full of it, and hence the fatal ending to our little afternoon excursion. As a rule, however, the members of the English-speaking colony get so used to this disease that they have no especial fear in suddenly turning a sharp corner of running into some native sufferer.

In days gone by, when cholera decimated Manila’s numbers, when people died faster than they could be buried, when business was at a standstill and the city one great death-house, were the times that tried men’s souls. But now that those big water-mains which run along the ground bring fresh water from far up into the hills, the natives have given up the deadly practice of drinking from the river, and, thanks to the good supply system, no longer give the cholera free admittance.

Besides small-pox, then, fever is about the greatest enemy, and certain types of the malarial variety seem so common that the sufferers from them often walk into the club, drop into a chair, and say, “Got the fever again. Means another lay-off.” If they can keep about, the old stagers never give up; but novices buy thermometers and cracked ice, and either go through a terrific siege, like my friend, whose eight weeks’ struggle shrunk his head so that in convalescence his hat touched his ears, or escape with a week’s initiation. Typhoid seems also common, and there is generally one member of the colony, for whom the rest are anxious, stretched out in ice-baths and wishing he had never seen the Philippines. The old hands—who, by the way, seem to be regular sufferers from the fever—all say the only way to be safe is to drink plenty of whiskey, but so far I have found that the less one takes the better off he is.

Someone in the States has suggested that if things get too hot it would be well to run over to Hong Kong for a change of scene. But if there is any place in the world that is hotter, stickier, more disagreeable than Hong Kong, in the months from May to October, let us hear from it. It is far worse in summer than Manila, for, completely shut in as it is by the mountains, it does not receive the benefit of the southwest monsoon, which blows with great force over the Philippines during the above months. Even Japan itself gets a good roasting for the two or three months of the hot season, and there is not much left to do but to seek cold weather in Australia. Our only very hot months here are said to be April and May; sometimes part of June. The sun now is directly overhead and going fast to the north of us, but so far the temperature has never been unbearable. The mercury stands at about ninety-five from twelve to three each day, but somehow or other one does not feel it so much in the cool white suits, unless he attempts to fall asleep on some of the sheet-iron roofs. The nights are still cool and comfortable, and what with a cold snap now and then, such as I spoke of above, fans are having a poor sale. In the afternoon, walking, rowing, and tennis are still possible, and the bands of the Luneta still have enough wind left to give us the “Funeral March” or “Prize Song.”

The Little Native School under the Big Mango-tree.

See page [92].

April 28th.

Manila fare, like Manila life, is not unwholesome, but it lacks variety, and one rather tires, now and then, of soup, chicken, beefsteak, and toothpicks—four staples. But fortunately for us who like variety, though unhappily for five or six hundred other people, there occurred a vast conflagration yesterday afternoon that sent about five or six hundred houses sailing off through the air in the form of smoke.

As we were getting ready to leave the office for the day, clouds of smoke suddenly began to rise over the iron house-roofs to the eastward, and we knew that one of Manila’s semi-annual holocaustic celebrations was in progress. The church bells began to ring, and all sorts of people and carriages started toward the centre of interest.

The Manila Fire Department consists of about six hand-engines and a few hose-carts, and if a fire gets started it generally burns along until an open field, a river, or a thick mass of banana-trees stops its progress. The English houses, to be sure, have recently gotten out from home one of their small steam “garden-pumps,” and many of the young Britons have had weekly practice in manipulating its various parts. When the alarm for the present fire rang you might have seen several servants, employed in their respective homes by the members of the new Volunteer Fire Department, slowly wandering toward the shed where the engine was kept, with some nicely folded red shirts, coats with brass buttons, helmets with Matterhorn-like summits, and axes that shone from lack of work. These youths did not seem to be in any hurry, and it turned out that when they reached the engine-house, when their masters had togged up sufficiently well to impress the spectators, and when the engine finally got to the fire, the buildings had been translated into their new and rather more ethereal form.

The fire was two miles, more or less, from the centre of the town. The Volunteer Fire Brigade had to haul the engine the entire distance, as they feared that if the usual carabao oxen were hitched on, the speed over the pavements would be too great. After reaching the centre of action, an hour was spent in waiting for the man who brought some spare coal in a wheelbarrow and in choosing a location which would not be uncomfortable for the brigade. Consequently, the “London Garden Pump” was stationed to windward of the fire, on a side where it could not possibly spread any farther, and thus all stray flames and smoke were avoided. A hose was stuck down into the creek, and steam turned on. A stream of water about large enough to be clearly visible with a microscope suddenly jumped forth into the middle of the street, wetting the spectators. Somebody had forgotten to attach the extra pieces of hose that were to lead down to the fire, and steam had to be turned off. After everything was ready to get to business, a tram-car came along, and it wasn’t allowable to stop its progress by putting a hose across the track, even if there was a fire. And so it went from grave to gay, the swell brigade furnishing the humorous part of the otherwise rather sad spectacle.

A Philippine fire is like any other, except that with the many nipa houses it does its work quickly and well, and in this instance the whole affair lasted but a couple of hours. Hundreds of families moved out into the wet rice-fields, with all their chattels, and there were many curious-looking groups. In saving various articles of furniture and other valuables, the fighting-cock, as usual, was considered the most important, and it was interesting to watch the natives trudging along with scared faces, holding a rooster by the legs in one hand and a baby or two in the other. Pigs, chickens, and dogs seemed to come next in value, and after them ice-chests and images of the Virgin Mary. The sun went down on a strange spectacle, and it was hard not to pity all the crowd that were thus rudely thrown out of their habitations. Myriads of spectators there were and myriads of carriages, of all ages and sizes, some loaded with chattels ready to take flight, and others waiting to be. At dusk, however, all danger was over; the mobs departed north, east, south, and west; the brigade carefully brushed the dust off their boots and shirts, and the poor burned-out unfortunates looked with moistened eyes on the ruin of their homes.

The wags go far enough to say that the dealers in thatch are responsible for many of the big fires both in the capital and smaller villages and that, when times are bad or prices for thatch low, they arrange to “bull” the market by means of a conflagration. A lamp is tipped over—a thousand houses go up in smoke, and as go the houses so rise the prices for nipa thatch.

The second series of pony races occurred during the middle days of this month, at the race-track down below our bungalow, and all Manila again came rolling up through the dust to see the performances of the smart ponies. The events were but a repetition of those which took place in March, except that in many respects the running-time was better and the races far more close and interesting.

Some of the old stagers are beginning to complain of the heat. We take afternoon tea now and then, as is customary in all the business houses, with some of our friends, in an office on the other side of our building. Yesterday afternoon a thermometer placed outside of our window registered 125° F., I suspect this was owing to some of the reflected heat coming from the iron roofs. Inside the room the mercury stood at 97° F., but we drank our hot tea and enjoyed the coolness which resulted from consequent perspiration.

I have now been settled in Manila long enough to find out what it costs to live, and the general cheapness of existence is more appalling than I first thought. Our house is a good one, with all the comforts of home, and is surrounded by an acre or two of land. We have stables for our horses and outbuildings for the families of our servants. At the end of the month all expenditures for house-rent, food, wages, light, and sundries are posted together and divided by three, and with everything included my monthly share comes to twenty-nine gold dollars—less than one of our American cart-wheels—per diem.

Where in the States could you rent a suburban house and lot, keep half a dozen servants, pay your meat bill, your drink bill, and your rent all for less than a single dollar a day! You can scarcely drive a dozen blocks in a hansom or buy a pound of Maillard’s for that money at home and yet, in Manila, that one coin shelters you from the weather, ministers to the inner man, and keeps the parlor in order.

Our cook, for instance, gets forty cents each morning to supply our table with dinner enough for four people, and for five cents extra he will decorate the cloth with orchids and put peas in the soup. To think of being able to get up a six-course dinner, including usually a whole chicken, besides a roast, with vegetables, salad, dessert, fruit, and coffee, for such a sum seems ridiculous in the extreme.

The methods of marketing are almost as noteworthy as the low prices for “raw materials.” All meat must be eaten on the same day it is killed, since here in the tropics even ice fails to preserve fish, flesh, or fowl. As a result, while the beef and mutton are killed in the early morning—a few hours before the market opens—the smaller fry, such as chickens and game, are sold alive. From six to ten on any morning the native and Chinese cooks from many families may be seen bargaining for the day’s supply among the nest of stalls in the big market. After filling their baskets numbers of them mount the little tram-car for the return trips to their kitchens and proceed to pluck the feathers off the live chickens or birds as they jog along on the front or rear platform. By the time they have arrived home the poor creatures are stripped of foliage, and, keenly suffering, are pegged down to the floor of the kitchen to await their fate. Then, when the creaking of the front gate announces the return of the master, it is time enough to wring the necks of the unfortunates and shove them into the boiling-pot or roasting-pan that seems but to accentuate a certain toughness which fresh-killed meat possesses.

Calzada de San Miguel. Cooled by Fire-trees and Bordered with Residences of Rich Europeans.

See page [96].

The washing-bill, again, is far from commensurate with the fulness of one’s clothes-hamper, and for two gold dollars per month I can turn over to my laundry-man—who comes in from the country once a week—as much or as little as I please. Two full suits of white sheeting clothes a day for thirty days make one item of no mean dimensions, and yet the lavandero turns up each week with his basketful, perfectly satisfied with his remuneration. Then, too, he washes well, and although, when I see him standing knee-deep in the river whanging my trousers from over his head down onto a flat stone, I fear for seams and buttons, nothing appears to suffer. And although he builds a small bonfire in a brass flat-iron that looks like a warming-pan and runs it over my white coats all blazing as it is, the result is excellent, and one’s linen seems better laundered than in the mills that grind away at home.

As servants, these boys of ours could teach much to some of their more civilized brethren from Ireland or Nova Scotia now holding sway in American families. They take bossing well, and actually expect to have their heads punched if things go wrong. They don’t put their arms akimbo and march out of the house if we mildly suggest that the quality of ants in the cake or the water-pitcher is not up to standard, and actually make one feel at liberty to require anything of them.

And speaking of ants, these little creatures are everywhere ready to eat your house or your dinner right from under you. The legs of the dining-table, the ice-chest, and the sideboard must be islanded in cups of kerosene, and even the feet to one’s bed must undergo the same treatment, in order that the occupant may awake in the morning to find something of himself left. Cockroaches are almost equally fierce and, endowed with wings, these creatures, sometimes four inches long, go sailing out the window as you close your eyes and try to step on them. They prowl around at night, with a sort of clicking sound, seeking something to devour, and are apparently just as satisfied to eat the glue out of a book-cover as they are to feed on the rims to one’s cuffs or shirt-collars, moist with perspiration.

What the ants don’t swarm over the cockroaches examine, and what they reject seems to be taken in charge by the heavy green mould that beards one’s shoes, valise, and tweed suits at the slightest suggestion of wet weather.

V

Visit of the Sagamore—Another Mountain Excursion—The Caves of Montalvan—A Hundred-mile View—A Village School—A “Fiesta” at Obando—The Manila Fire-tree—A Move to the Seashore—A Waterspout—Captain Tayler’s Dilemma—A Trip Southward—The Lake of Taal and its Volcano—Seven Hours of Poling—A Night’s Sleep in a Hen-coop.

May 9, 1894.

The other day the yacht Sagamore dropped anchor in the bay, her owner and his guests, all Harvard men, having got thus far on their tour around the world. I was sitting on the Luneta, Sunday evening, when I saw those familiar Harvard hat-ribbons coming, and in behalf of our little American colony welcomed the wearers of them to Manila. In return for a dinner or two at the club and a visit to the huge cigar-factories, where three or four thousand operators pound away all day at the fragrant weed, I spent a noon and afternoon aboard the yacht, glad to enjoy a change of fare. The Sagamore is a worthy boat and seems to be loaded up with gimcracks and curios of all classes and descriptions. A collector would positively be squint-eyed with pleasure to see the old vases, carved wood-work, plaques, knives, sabres, pots and kettles that her passengers have picked up all along the way; and it is indeed the only method by which to scour curios from the Orient. The boys thought the Luneta was the best place in its way they had yet seen, and it was as much as I could do to get them away from listening to the artillery-band and looking at the crowds of people in carriages. Three men in a boat of the Sagamore’s size make a pretty small passenger-list for a pretty long voyage.

We’ve kept up our record as tripsters by having gone again up into the mountains, seen pounds of scenery, breathed fine air, and received great hospitality from the natives. Monday was a bank-holiday, so late on Saturday afternoon four of us started in two-horse carromatas for a mountain village called Montalvan, about twenty miles from Manila. Two boys had been sent along a day ahead, with provisions and bedding, to find a native hut and provide for our arrival. We had a delightful drive out of Manila, passed through numerous native villages, forded three rivers, saw a fine sunset, and at about eight o’clock, after a three hours’ journey, pulled up at a little native house situated in a village at the foot of a lofty mountain-range. The occupants seemed willing and glad to turn out of their little shanty and put it at our disposal, and we were very comfortable. The house was not large, but it had a very neat little parlor—curious name for a room out here—and in the corner, covered with a light bed-quilt, stood a wax figure of the Virgin Mary, with the usual glass tears running down her cheeks. The family of about fourteen slept somewhere out in the rear regions of the building, leaving us to spread out around the floor of the little sala, like unmounted club sandwiches.

One of the party, more sensitive than the rest, woke about one in the morning and disturbed us by finding some four-inch spiders stringing cobwebs from the end of his nose to his ear and down to one finger. He was for the moment embarrassed enough to shout for joy and throw his slippers somewhere. But except for this, and a few rats that now and then tickled our toes, we slept well, and next morning before breakfast we went down to the shallow river for a swim. After a jolly good bath, a hearty breakfast, and a few preparations, our party of four, with the two boys and two guides, started up a steep valley that wound in among lofty mountains to the so-called Caves of Montalvan.

One of our guides was the principal of a village school, who held sway over a group of little Indian girls under a big mango-tree, and he shut up shop to join our expedition.

A Native Village Up Country.

See page [70].

In about two hours and a half our caravan reached the narrower defile that pierced two mountains which came down hobnobbing together like a great gate, grand and picturesque. From a large, quiet pool just beneath the gates, we climbed almost straight up the mouth of the stalactite caves that run no one knows how far into the mountains, starting at a point about two hundred feet above the river. The guides made flare-torches of bamboos, and we entered the damp darkness, bounded by white limestone walls from which hung beautiful stalactites that glistened as the light struck them. In we went for a long way, now crawling on hands and knees and now stumbling into large vaulted chambers. Blind bats flew about and water trickled. It was ghostly, uncanny, but interesting. It seemed as if we were going into the very heart of the mountain, or were reading “King Solomon’s Mines,” and this impression was further carried out when we came to a small subterranean river that coursed down through a dark outlet and disappeared with weird gurglings. Unpleasant but perhaps imaginary rumblings suggested that a sudden earthquake might easily block our exit, and, retracing our steps, we breathed more freely on coming to the first glimmer of light. Once more in the air, we descended, took a good swim in the pool, lunched, and lay around for an hour. After another bath later on, we donned our sun-hats and trudged homeward over the long, rough path. A good walk, a good supper, a little dancing and music by the natives who occupied our house, and we went to sleep upon the floor.

Next morning, after another early bath in the river, our party started to climb the mountain back of the town for a little experience in the bush. The work was hard and warm, but at the top came the reward of a superb view for a hundred miles around. Manila and the great plain, the bay and mountains beyond, were glorious before us, and behind the great mountain wilds that reached to the Pacific stretched off and up in great overlapping slabs of heavy greenness.

The plain was cut up into the regulation checker-board farms of the richest looking description, and the scene was very much like an English one. Far away at the edge of the Bay could be seen the glistening white houses and steeples of Manila. Away to the northwest and southwest were the great fertile stretches of country that produce tons and tons of rice and sugar, reaching to the sky or distant mountains. We had luncheon in a leafy grotto; the guides found water, and brought it in lengths of bamboo which they cut down; deer ran past now and then down below us, and a short siesta on a bed of leaves finished off our morning’s work. The return was so steep that it seemed as if we should go heels over head. However, we hung on to the long grass, and painted our once white suits with dust in the effort to reach level ground again. After a long descent, we came to the big mango-tree where the rural school was in session, and the little Filipinos were immediately given a recess. They rushed about, got benches and water for us, and the old schoolmaster, who had left his wife to do the teaching while he went with us, set two or three of the shavers at work mopping off his ebony skin. Our visit at the school was in the order of an ovation. The children opened their almond eyes almost to the extent of turning them into circles, and when the camera was pointed at them for the first time in their young lives, their mouths so far followed suit that recitations had to be suspended.

After thoroughly disorganizing discipline in the establishment, we accompanied the half naked president of the seminary—who had been our guide—to the river, and there washed off such of the day’s impressions as went easily into solution.

And finally, after returning to our hut for tea, we packed up our baskets, whistled for the carromatas and jolted back to Manila through a flood of dust and sunset.

Although the hot season is trying to do its best to scorch us, it has but dismally succeeded, and we have had scarcely any severe weather at all. The thunder-showers, harbingers of the southwest monsoon and the wet season, began two weeks ago, and it rains now nearly every afternoon. The nights are all delightfully cool, and a coverlet is always comfortable. The sun is going well to the north to make hot June and July days for people in the States, and our season of light is growing shorter. When he gets back overhead again, heavy clouds will protect us from his attentions.

Owing to the outbreak of black plague or something else among the Chinese in Hong Kong, the quarantine regulations here in Manila will cause the steamer by which I was going to send the mail to miss connections. It was at first reported there were three thousand deaths in Hong Kong in six days, but I believe they have now taken off one or two ciphers from that amount. At all events Manila seems to be below the zone of this peculiar epidemic and is much better off at this time of the year than Hong Kong, which swelters away in that great unventilated scoop in the mountains.

The men of the big artillery-band that plays at the Luneta twice a week have all been vaccinated lately, and are too broken up to blow their trumpets. The people are objecting, because the infantry band doesn’t make nearly as good music, and only plays twice a week at most. The third regimental band is still fighting the savage Moros with trombones down at the south, although it is rumored they will soon return, and so at present about all the music and fireworks we have are derived from the thunder-storms that play around the sheet-iron roofs as if they meant business. But in spite of the terrific cannonade of sound and the blinding flashes of lightning nothing seems to get hit, and the iron roofs may act as dispersers of the electric fluid even though attracting it.

June 6th.

Several days ago, a number of us went up the railroad line to see a “fiesta” at a little village called Obando. It was a religious observance lasting three days, and pilgrims from many villages thought it their duty to go there on foot. A great dingy old church with buttressed walls yards thick, a large plaza shaded by big trees, and beyond, on all sides, the native houses. Such a crowd I have rarely seen. Everybody seemed to think it his duty to dance; and men, women, old men and children, mothers with babies and papas with kids, shouted, jumped around, danced, joggled each other, and rumpussed about until they were blue in the face, dripping with heat, and covered with dust. Then they would stop and another crowd take up the play. As the circus proceeded the crowds increased; the old church was packed with worshippers who brought candles, and, receiving a blessing, spent an hour or so on the stone pavements in positions of contrite humility. Around the walls of the church were placed realistic paintings of the chromo order, representing hell and the river Styx, and as the natives looked at portraits of devils driving nails into the heads of the tormented, of sulphurous flames that licked the cheeks of the wicked in this world, or serpents that twined themselves into square knots around the chests of a dozen unfortunates, and of countless horned demons who plucked out the heartstrings of the condemned, they counted their beads with renewed vigor and mumbled long prayers.

Countless little booths stood like mushrooms round about outside, and cheap jewellery, made in Germany, found ready sale. The dancing and shouting increased as the sun sank in the west, until the ground fairly shook and the dust arose in vast clouds. Around the edge of the church, under the porticoes, slept sections of the multitude who were preparing themselves to take part in the proceedings when others were tired out. It was a motley crowd, a motley scene, and an unforgettable collection of perfumes.

We left after a few hours’ stay, and got back to Manila to find water a foot deep in some of the streets, as a result of one of the tropical thunder-storms which have now begun in real earnest. And speaking of rain, everything is looking fresh and green, now that the dusty days of the hot season are a thing of the past. All the bamboo-trees have leafed out anew, flowering shrubs have taken life, and all nature seems to have had a bath.

One of the most showy trees in Manila is the arbol de fuego (fire-tree) and this product of nature resembles a large oak in general and a full-blown Japanese cherry blossom in particular. Many of the streets in the city are bordered with groups of these fire-trees, of large and stately dimensions, and at present they are simply one mass of huge flaming red blossoms growing thickly together and showing a wonderful fire-like carnation color. Scarcely any leaves make their appearance on these trees during the season of blossom, and although now and then bits of green look out from the mass of red, yet the general effect is a vast blaze of burning color.