Riding a Carabao.
There we got out and walked down the steep bank on to the sandy bed, where we strolled about for a long time, watching strings of carabaos coming up from being watered, each herd led by a small boy, riding on one of the big old grey cows with a calf running alongside. They looked very picturesque, with the shallow river all the colours of the sunset, and the tall palms on the opposite bank standing in black silhouette against an orange-crimson sky.
The carabaos are big grey or reddish-grey water-buffaloes, with immense horns curving backwards, and a long, narrow, flat muzzle. They are used for every sort of purpose, the natives even riding and driving the great unwieldy creatures like horses, and guiding them by means of a single string passed through between the nostrils. If they want the carabao to go to the right they pull the string steadily, if to the left, they give a sharp jerk. Sometimes when the master is angry he will pull the poor carabao’s nose, so that he tears the piece of flesh out altogether; not at all an uncommon occurrence, and nothing distressing to a Filipino.[3] In the days of the rebellion against Spain, a few years ago, when the Filipinos caught the hated Spanish friars, they ran a rope through the priests’ noses, tied their hands, and led them about like the carabaos, so that people might spit upon the hated tyrants, and insult them at their own pleasure.
The carabaos are as gentle and amenable as horses with the natives; quite tiny children ride and bully the huge beasts, looking so comically small on the big backs, with their tiny brown legs hardly reaching to each side of the broad ribs, and driving whole herds with the most perfect independence and self-possession. The carabaos are not at all safe as regards white people, however, for they can smell and detect them at an immense distance; and they will occasionally charge them ferociously, so that they are very dangerous in the open country. I have heard some horrible stories of carabaos killing and trampling on white men in out-of-the-way places. They don’t gore, I suppose because their horns are so flat, but they trample to death, which does just as well.
These great grey, lumbering animals are very picturesque, and redeem many a Philippine scene from utter dulness as they go shambling along, drawing the native two-wheeled cart, with its big hood of brown matting filled with bundles of emerald-green sacate grass. They can shamble at an amazing pace, and that is their usual gait; but they can gallop, too, as quickly as a horse.
Besides the herds of carabaos, we saw several natives down in the bed of the river, going out to certain spots where the shelve of the sand was more abrupt for their supply of water. These were women, of course, for women do all the household tasks, even the most burdensome, their lords being busy standing about the roads or Plazas, or attending a cock-fight.
These women had long bamboo poles, with the divisions knocked out and the end closed up, which they laid in the running stream to fill with water, when they hoisted the long poles to their shoulders and carried them off like giants’ lances. The slender little figures looked quaint and pretty as they came up over the yellow, sandy, shallows in their bright red sarongs and white camisas, walking lightly and gracefully, with their thin brown feet well turned out, the fading light of the sky behind them, and the outline of dark, fretted palms.
We walked through a little palm grove back to the place where we had left the carriage, driving back along the main road as the stars were coming out and the flaring naphtha lights appearing in the little mat-shed shops. There were a great many people about, and swarms of little children in fluttering muslin shirts, all enjoying the cool evening air, which was, as a matter of fact, the same temperature as an August mid-day at home. A lot of carriages and traps flew past, the little ponies tearing like the wind, amongst them the general’s wife in her victoria, drawn by ordinary Waler horses, looking like prehistoric monsters amongst the little Filipino ponies; and we met our pet aversion, three young Mestizo “mashers,” driving at a furious pace in a spidery buggy with huge acetylene lamps, and ringing a bicycle bell.
Iloilo, January 22, 1905.
Mail-day has come round again, but I don’t feel as though I had much energy for writing, or anything else, as we are in the midst of a heat-wave, which means, in this part of the world, that the Monsoon has dropped unaccountably, and the heat is suffocating and appalling. Everyone is saying that such a temperature is quite unusual at this season, and some even go so far as to say they never felt it so hot here before; but this does not surprise me, as I have never yet come in for normal weather anywhere.
This heat comes in the middle of a drought, too, as we have not had rain for about four weeks—another phenomenon. Our rain-tank is empty, so we now depend on the supply of brackish water from the wells, and even that is reported to be limited, which is alarming, as one would commit almost any crime to get enough water for a bath. Even at times of plenty, however, one does not rejoice in the European style of bath, but an arrangement of a tub, the acquaintance of which I first made at Singapore, and I can’t say I was much struck with it when I did see it.
The tub, of wood or china, is placed in a small room with a sloping floor of concrete or tiles, and the bather stands on a wooden rack; first using what soap he sees fit, and then pouring water over himself as best he can with a tin dipper. It is an economical method in countries where water is scarce and valuable; but it was a terrible disillusion to me, after the grand ideas I had always formed, when I read how every one in the Far East has his or her own bathroom. Don’t you know how jolly it sounds in Anglo-Indian novels, or in descriptions of the world beyond Port Saïd? A dreadful disenchantment!
More than ever, in this heat, do we miss the dog-cart of our dreams, for we long to get out of the town on these hot evenings. Something to drive is a bare necessity of life out here, and even the humblest school-teachers and missionaries keep what the Americans call a “rig,” such a queer word, which is made to signify anything from a four-in-hand to a carabao-cart. The Americans all drive in a very strange fashion, holding a rein in each hand, which looks awkward at any time; but is most comical in the case of the swaggering negro who drives the military waggons, holding in a team about as fiery as a couple of old circus-horses, with a rein twisted round each of his hands, body thrown back, and the gestures of a Greek restraining an untamed pair round a stadium.
The white man who drives the Government ice-cart amuses me too, for he is got up in full cow-boy pageantry—huge boots, loose shirt with broad leather belt, immense sombrero worn well over one eye, long moustaches standing out, and great gauntlets up to his elbows. All this to hawk ice about a dowdy little town.
When a soldier rides one of these quiet old animals, he sits in an enormous Mexican saddle, with a very high peak back and front, and his feet, clad in big boots with huge spurs, thrust into roomy leather shoe-stirrups. To the casual observer these horsemen would certainly convey the impression that they were venturing great deeds in a wild country, and one can’t be anything but thankful to them for throwing a little picturesque relief into the humdrum life of the grey streets.
We have tried hiring carriages, but besides the terrible discomfort of all hired vehicles, their prices are more uncomfortable still. Fancy, in a place like this, having to pay as much for a little carriage for two hours in the evening as one would for a brougham in London for the day! Yet such is the case, and it is only an indication of the cost of living here, which is really alarming; as you may imagine it must be when I tell you that all the Americans I have met complain bitterly, declaring that it is more expensive to exist in the Philippines than to “have a good time” in New York or San Francisco! The only comfort is that we are not in Manila, which is a shade worse, I am told.
So, except for an occasional carriage lent us, we continue to walk about after sunset, but I find I can’t get very far, for though exercise may not be very tiring at the time it is being taken, it makes you realise how the climate is taking it out of you.
There is no meeting-place like the club of an English garrison town, for the Americans seem to have no idea of anything of the sort; and I think this may, perhaps, be owing to their democratic principles, for, of course, it would be impossible to exclude the private soldiers from such a place, as in theory they are as good as the officers. I notice that in practice the officers don’t think so at all, though most of them have risen from the ranks themselves. The U.S.A. have a sort of Sandhurst, called West Point, but I have been told, by highly-placed officers themselves, that the only way to get on in their army is to obtain a commission from the ranks through “pull” (political influence), and that “pull” is even more a factor in the army than in any other profession in America. This can easily be verified by reading the extraordinary cases that occur from time to time, when an officer with a “pull” gets the decision of a Court-Martial reversed without any further controversy, and, after an undoubted misdemeanour, is simply re-instated somewhere else, and often in a higher grade, by order of the Government at Washington.
This independence of military authority, together with the principles of extreme democracy which America professes, accounts, I think, for the curious behaviour of the private soldiers, who are really quite different from any others I have seen anywhere else in the world, for they lounge about when addressing an officer, and speak to him as an equal; which looks more than odd to anyone not accustomed to such ways. Men who were here during the American War have told me most amusing stories of the discussions that used to go on between officers and privates on active service; all straggling about anyhow, and men, with no notion of saluting, just giving their opinion with a drawling “waal” by way of preface. All the same, they fight well, and perhaps, in modern warfare, individual intelligence may be a very good thing, and it is only in peace time that a lack of smartness and discipline jars upon the faddy European eye. Perhaps.
But the oddest thing of all, to my mind, is to see officers in uniform salute ladies by taking their caps off. That I can’t get accustomed to!
I call this a garrison town, though, as a matter of fact, the garrison is situated in the Island of Guimaras, at a place called Camp Josman, in the interior. This Camp, which is about 200 feet above sea-level, and possesses springs of good water, is supposed to be much healthier than Iloilo, where they only have the Hospital, Headquarters, and the Cavalry Barracks. It seems a strange and uncomfortable arrangement in a half-pacified country—the garrison half a day’s journey away; though the real object is, of course, to keep the American soldiers out of the towns, where they are no end of trouble.
The town is well and even elaborately policed by the Constabulary, a Filipino corps of sturdy little “brown brothers” in dark blue linen suits. Each of these defenders supports an immense revolver in a leather case strapped to the back of his broad leather belt, and carries a short truncheon as well. I suppose they would fight all right, in reason, if there were a disturbance, and if the occasion were not of a patriotic nature. But that is not much consolation, as the occasion would not be likely to be of any character other than patriotic.
The Americans give out and write in their papers that the Philippine Islands are completely pacified, and that the Filipinos love Americans and their rule. This, doubtless with good motives, is complete and utter humbug, for the country is honeycombed with insurrection and plots; the fighting has never ceased; and the natives loathe the Americans and their theories, saying so openly in their native press, and showing their dislike in every possible fashion. Their one idea is to be rid of the U.S.A. to have their government in their own hands, for good or evil, and to be free of a burden of taxation which may be just, but is heavier than any the Spaniards laid upon them. The present burden is more obvious to the Filipino mind than the ultimate blessings.
They have no real say in their own affairs, you see, as the government of the Philippines is in the hands of a Commission consisting of five Americans, nominated by the President of the U.S.A. and three Filipinos, chosen by the Governor-General of the Philippines.[4] This body, however, does not govern the Islands according to what experience teaches, but is responsible to the Senate at Washington, whose members having their own interests to push or preserve, hamper the Philippine Commission at every turn.
It does seem extraordinary to think that there is no Colonial Office, or Civil Service examinations, and that anyone in America who has a “pull” can get sent out here to fill any sort of post anyhow, anywhere. Tremendous salaries come out of the miserable Island Revenues to make these posts acceptable. So it is hardly surprising that, without the faintest glimmering of the language, customs, climate, or anything beyond their own State, these eager, well-meaning, bustling Americans tumble into pitfalls, and rub the Oriental the wrong way, and that the dislike and mistrust on both sides are about equal.
I did not mean to let you in for this political dissertation, but now I am on the subject I am reminded of a new tax, which has lately been levied, and is causing much vexation. It will give you a good idea of the methods in vogue. This is an order requiring every owner of a horse to take his beast to the Philippine Government, or rather its local and selected representatives, who will brand the animal on one flank with certain marks by which it may at once be known. Then the owner is to brand it twice on the other flank, and to find two sureties of 250 dollars gold (about £50) each, that the horse has not been stolen, and should the animal prove to have been dishonestly acquired, the sureties are to be held criminally liable!
This in a country where the crime of horse-stealing is entirely unknown! But it is believed that the Senators in far-off Washington have an idea that the Philippines are a sort of California, so they insist on applying exactly the same law here as obtains in that wide, wild State. It is hardly necessary to add that the examination, branding, papers to be signed, stamps upon same, and so on, cost the wretched owner a pretty sum before he is safe from the police with his poor, disfigured horse.
I have wandered away from a walk through the town, which I meant to describe to you—only I never seem to get ahead at all with descriptions here, as there are such endless mazes of side-issues to lure one from the track.
At the end of this street one comes on the Plaza, a very wide square bordered by odds and ends of houses, which include the Police Court, the Y.M.C.A., the Prison, and the Cathedral, the three former buildings being large, ordinary, two-storied houses, the latter a big, plain, grey stone front, with a belfry on each side, not unlike a miniature of the cathedral at Las Palmas, and, as far as I remember, in much the same style.
The town must have been quite handsome in the Spanish days, but during the Insurrection the Americans stood off and bombarded it from the open sea, while on shore the natives set it on fire. You see, when the Americans had conquered the Spaniards, and the Philippines had been handed over to the United States, the Spanish garrisons cleared out, leaving the Filipinos in charge to wait for their saviours. But the Filipinos beginning to realise that they had only sailed from Scylla to Charybdis, fought tooth and nail to prevent the American troops garrisoning their towns. So it came about that when the Americans had officially conquered the Spaniards, and fêtes and rejoicings were in full blast in the U.S.A., the trouble here was really only just beginning, for though they had managed to dislodge an alien race like the Spaniards with the full help and concurrence of the natives of the country, it was a very different task to conquer the disaffected people of the soil, even when it was being done “for their own good.” When the American fleet came to take Iloilo, the Filipinos showed fight, and the American Admiral said they must give up the place or he would bombard it, allowing them so many hours to decide in—which hours, by-the-bye, were not unconnected with some complication regarding the Christmas dinners of the sailors, who insisted on eating plum-puddings they had brought with them, or had had sent from America. Well, the Filipinos replied that the Americans might come ashore and fight if they liked, but if the Admiral bombarded the town, they would set it on fire, and make Iloilo not worth the taking.
The end of this exchange of courtesies was that the Admiral chose the alternative of bombardment, whereupon the Filipinos promptly fired the town, and Iloilo was pretty well destroyed, and eventually taken for the Stars and Stripes. The loss of life was one mule and one old woman, neither of whom probably cared two straws who the Philippines belonged to, poor things.
One or two people were wounded, but this was only another instance of the extraordinarily small amount of damage done by a bombardment. I have heard many curious “yarns” about the bombardment and the fire, which took place on Christmas Day, 1899, but I have not time or space to tell you these legends now, even if I could remember them. I wish I could remember all the things I hear—though, I daresay, I remember quite enough for you as it is!
The chief feature of the bombardment stories is the terrible drunkenness and looting that went on; but even if those anecdotes interested you, they are all connected with personal adventures of people you have never met, and would not entertain you. I am glad I was not here though, for the anarchy and misery seem to have been terrible.
Many results of these stirring times still remain in the streets, for the top stories of the houses were knocked off and the stone foundations gutted, and when the people settled down peaceably again, there was no money to restore the buildings to their former state, so they just put rough rooms over the charred ruins, makeshift upper stories of Oregon pine with corrugated iron roofs, which arrangement makes the town look very shoddy and unfinished. In Jaro and Molo are to be seen many of the handsome old Spanish houses still standing, with carved wooden balconies and ornamented doorways, some of them still beautified by deep roofs of charming old red-brown hand-made tiles.
There is a café in the Plaza Libertad, in what was once a big, fine house, but now the thick concrete walls of the lower storey, with huge doorways and window-openings crossed by heavy bars, all blackened with smoke, end abruptly in a narrow-eaved corrugated roof, making a house like a misshapen little dwarf.
There are many buildings like that, and in the streets the jumble of different sorts of odds and ends is most curious, but not the least picturesque, for it is all grey and mean and squalid.
All the middle of the square, which, as I told you, is called the Plaza Libertad, is laid out as a pretty Alameda, with a low wall round it, and steps leading up on each side, the centre thickly planted with palms, bamboos, and various other trees of dark and light greens, intersected by four wide paths and a lot of little tracks, all bristling with seats. Some of the seats are of wood, broken and dilapidated, and others of iron painted to look like marble, which are quite warm to the touch hours after sunset. The first evening we were there, when I put my hand on one of the iron seats, thinking to touch cold stone, I got quite a shock on finding the surface warm.
This flowerless garden is a very pretty place, especially at night, when the big arc-lights shine on the very green trees, and throw lovely shadows of palm branches on the white paths, making quite a theatrical effect; but it is all overgrown, untidy, neglected, the steps broken, paths untrimmed—always reminding me of some place in a deserted city, or the garden of a house long uninhabited.
The Plaza Libertad has one resemblance to a real town park, however, in its rows of idle men; brown-faced, white-clad Filipinos in this case, who sit on the seats and low walls like rows of sea-birds, only, instead of making nests or catching food as birds would, they simply doze, and gamble, and talk, or, more often, sit about in the profound abstraction of the Oriental.
The “unemployed” has no grievance against society, however, in this country, if he ever tries to attempt one, for work is abundant and labour not to be had, even at the present scale of wages, which enables a man to work for one day and then keep himself and his family to the remotest scions, in idleness and cock-fighting for a week. You see in the Spanish days the Philipino labourers got from 10 to 20 cents a day wages but now the American Government, which sets the scale, gives a peso a day for unskilled labour, and that, of course, has altered the social conditions here, and, I believe, all over the Islands as well, for the same conditions prevail everywhere. A peso a day they get for loading and unloading vessels—just wharf-coolies; and as for carpenters and people like that who used to get 70 cents from the Spaniards and live well on it, they are now with difficulty to be caught for 2½ to 3 pesos a day. Of course this has enormously increased the cost of living without bringing any extra benefits, but that particular increase chiefly affects the white man, for I have asked servants and natives, who tell me the cost of their food, the eternal rice, fish, and bananas for them has very little altered, if at all.
The high rate of wages, far from bringing plenty, has caused great demoralisation and consequent poverty; and it does seem a pity that some one who understood Orientals and their ways could not have come and pointed out to the Americans how dark races differ from white men in body and mind. As it is, I should think that even if the well-meaning reformers do find out their mistakes, which is very doubtful, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for the Americans to go back now.
On one side of the Plaza there stand a few specimens of the funny native trap called a quilez, which I have mentioned to you. It is very like the tartana of Spain, a sort of tiny wagonette on two wheels, and covered so that it is really a sort of miniature two-wheeled omnibus.
Such a cabstand! Such fearfully dilapidated old rattle-traps, with mangy ponies lashed in by odds and ends of straps and string, and the drivers dressed in dirty rags (the only dirty Filipinos I’ve ever seen) sprawling half-asleep on the boxes! This collection, as I have said, is by way of being a cab-rank, but there are always plenty of quilezes plying the streets for hire; their number indeed being at first astounding, till one becomes better acquainted with the laziness of the fares, coupled with the high rates of hire, which alone would make one job a day quite a good investment.
The discomfort and jolting of these conveyances is something which I can find no words to express —it is like one’s first ride on a camel—like waltzing with a Sandhurst cadet—like—like nothing in the world! A drive of one mile inside a quilez is more fatiguing than a walk of two.
One thinks regretfully of the delightful luxury of the rickshaws and chairs of the real Far East, and I was very much surprised to see none of these luxurious comforts when we first arrived in the Philippines. It seems that a company was formed some years ago to introduce them, and got the concession to bring rickshaws and coolies from China, but as soon as these useful institutions appeared in the streets of Manila, the Filipinos stoned them, and at last forced the American authorities to banish the innovation altogether: “For,” said the astute and progressive Filipino, “the next thing will be that we shall be made to draw these things about, and we will not be treated as animals.”
Fancy giving in to them! And fancy thinking of a splendid country and people like Japan, “where the rickshaws come from,” and listening to such preposterous nonsense from a Filipino! But these ignorant half-breeds got their way, and the only example they had ever had of energy or the real dignity of labour was promptly withdrawn to please them.
In the middle of the Alameda is a bandstand, bare and empty, with a big spluttering arc-light over it, shedding its cheese-white light on nothingness—for no band ever plays there, and the glories of social Iloilo went with the gay and courteous Spaniards. A few people go and sit about, however, in the evenings, and it is not a bad place to loaf in for anyone who can’t drive out to the country and is tired of the beach.
One evening, as we sat under the trees watching a group of Mestizo children playing about some older people sitting on a seat, a little banda de musica came strolling by, half a dozen young Filipinos in white trousers and camisas, carrying mandolins and guitars. They stopped near to where the children were playing, and struck up a certain beautiful waltz which one hears everywhere here—the work of some native composer, I believe—whereupon the little things all danced about on the white path in the fretted shadows of the trees, making a perfectly charming picture, and all so happy and jolly it did one good to watch them, in spite of the excessive heat.
The banda de musica seemed to enjoy the fun too, for they smiled and showed their white teeth; speaking to the children and playing one tune after the other; and when we had to go home in time for dinner, we left them still dancing and playing under the trees, perfectly happy, even at that age, with anything in the nature of a baile.
Iloilo, February 4, 1905.
To-day is the Chinese New Year, and all last night the Chinamen were letting off crackers down in the town. All to-day they have been going on with them, too, and as the chief rejoicing seems to be to explode the fireworks under a horse, you may imagine—no you can’t—what the streets are like. On an ordinary day there is a good deal of pretty wild driving and no small peril in getting about in a vehicle or on foot, but the frightful risks one runs on every other day of the year are mild adventures compared to this Chinese New Year.
There are a great many Chinamen, you see, for they continue to come into the Philippines in spite of the heavy tax against them; and besides that, so many are left over from the Spanish days that Celestials are still the principal shopkeepers of the Islands. They make large fortunes here, I believe—the fortunes that are ready waiting for anyone who is as clever and industrious as a Chinaman—and so good a speculation do they think this country that they are constantly arriving, whenever they can get permission, paying the heavy tax, and then beginning by working for a year or two with some friend or relation for no pay!
Of course, the Filipinos hate the idea of being cut out by strong, hard-working, clever rivals, who make fortunes under conditions in which they themselves starve, so they have forced the hand of the American Government in abolishing foreign labour, which measure, so the business men say, has been the ruin of the Philippines. They say that such a law is wise enough in a country like America, perhaps, which is teeming with a busy population of its own, but here it is quite different, and “Philippines for the Filipinos” would be all very well if these people wanted their country, which does not seem to be the case. Moreover, if they did want it, it is too large for them, for there are 75,000,000 acres of cultivable soil in the Philippines, and the population all told is barely 7,000,000. Suppose one calculated one in ten of the natives of all ages as a capable tiller of the earth—a most unlikely average—and if three Filipinos could do the work of one Chinaman or white man (which they can’t), even then one would think there would be room for competition and other labour.
The magnificent forests of priceless woods simply fall into decay; the gold and all the metals with which the country is filled, lie untouched; the marbles are unquarried; the rich soil is uncultivated; and so these riches must remain as long as it pays no one to work them. Men often come to the Philippines to “prospect,” but when they find out the conditions of labour and the rate of Export and other Duties, they go away and are no more heard of; for, though you may run a sort of Government with philanthropical ideas, you won’t get business to flow in on the same system; and business men don’t care two straws if a labourer can read Latin or understand mathematics, so long as he will work well for low wages; but this latter ideal is the very last one the American Government appear to encourage or aim at.
Well, we went last night to a cinématograph show, which has established itself in a big empty basement in the Calle Real, with a large sign outside, made of glass letters lighted behind with electricity, all in the most approved European style. The “show” lasts for half an hour, going on from six in the evening to about ten o’clock at night, and the proprietor makes about 300 pesos a week out of it, for he has very few expenses, and it is the sort of thing these people love. They come out when the show is over, stand about and expectorate for a few minutes, and then pay their cents and go in again and enjoy the same thing about five times running, probably without the faintest idea what it is all about from start to finish. You remember the dreadful extent of the habit of expectoration in Spain? You have heard about this failing in America? The Filipino is the epitome and concentration of the two.
Everything in the hall was boarded up to prevent any stray, non-paying enthusiast from getting a free peep; but all the same I saw several little brown forms in fluttering muslin shirts, outside, where the wall formed a side street, with eyes glued to the chinks of a door in rapt attention; though I don’t suppose the little chaps could really see anything but the extreme edge of the back row of benches.
In the hall we were saved from suffocation by two electric fans, and kept awake by a Filipino playing a cracked old piano with astonishing dexterity, rattling out the sort of tunes you hear in a circus and nowhere else on earth. I could not help wondering where he had picked them up, till it suddenly dawned on me that one, at least, gave me a faint hint that perhaps the performer might once have heard “Hiawatha” on a penny flute; so I concluded that he was playing “variations.” Pianos never sound very well out here, and I am told it is difficult to keep them bearable at all, for the chords have an unmusical way of going rusty in the damp season, or else snapping with a loud ping.
The moving pictures were not at all bad, rather jumpy at times, but the subjects really quite entertaining, and all the slides, from the appearance of the figures on them, made in Germany, I imagine. The series wound up with an interminable fairy tale in coloured pictures, really a sort of short play, and in this one could see the German element still more apparent, in the castles, the ancient costumes, and the whole composition of the thing. I don’t suppose the natives in the audience had the wildest idea what it was all about, or what the king and queen, the good fairy, and the wicked godmother, were meant to be, probably taking the whole story for some episode in the life of a Saint.
The audience were really more amusing to me than the pictures, and I was quite pleased each time the light went up so that I could have a good look at them. In the front rows, which were cheap, as they were so close to the screen, sat the poorer people in little family groups, with clean camisas and large cigars, the women’s hair looking like black spun glass. Our places were raised a little above them, and were patronised by the swells who had paid 40 cents—a shilling. Amongst the elect were one or two English and other foreigners; some fat Chinamen, with their pigtails done up in chignons, and wearing open-work German straw hats, accompanied by their native wives and little slant-eyed children; a few missionaries and schoolma’ams in coloured blouses and untidy coiffures à la Gibson Girl; and one or two U.S.A. soldiers, with thick hair parted in the middle, standing treat to their Filipina girls—these last in pretty camisas, and very shy and happy. A funny little Filipino boy near us, rigged up in a knickerbocker suit and an immense yellow oil-skin motor-cap, was rather frightened at old Tuyay, who had insisted on coming to the show and sitting at our feet. When she sniffed the bare legs of this very small brown brother, he lost all his dignity and importance, and clung blubbing to his little flat-faced mother. Poor old Tuyay was dreadfully offended; she came and crawled right under C——’s chair, where she lay immovable till the performance was over.
To watch the people here is an endless source of amusement to me, and I only wish my words could be more photographic, or our photographs more pictorial, so that I could convey to you a real impression of this queer end of the world. That is what it is—I feel as if I had arrived at the end of the world, where nobody cares or knows or hears or thinks of anything, and where the inertia that is in the very air of things will at last wear down even the vitality, pluck, and good intentions of the Americans themselves.
I have arranged to go to Manila on the 28th, to-morrow three weeks, by the Butuan, the weekly mail. We heard fearful reports of these steamers, as I told you, when we were leaving Manila, but unfortunately there is no other means of getting to Manila from here. I am very glad it is arranged that I am to go, and I am looking forward very much to the change of air and scene. C—— is very anxious for me to take a servant to wait on me, for ladies generally take a native retainer with them when they travel about; but I won’t hear of such extravagance, and think I shall have far less trouble with only myself to look after, and without the extra burden of a bewildered Filipino. A friend of ours came from Manila the other day on a visit, with one of these appanages of state in her wake, and he seemed to me to be more trouble than the whole journey was worth.
À propos of servants, we had an amusing and very characteristic adventure with the cook a day or two ago, when it occurred to us that for some time past we had not seen what we thought was the worth of a peso and a half of food appearing on the table, and nearly all the dishes seemed to be concocted from ingredients out of the dispensa; and eggs which, tiny though they are, cost the same as fresh-laid ones of ordinary size at home. What is more, they go bad so quickly that the price is really more, because so many have to be thrown away. Well, C—— said to the cook quite amiably that that functionary must revert to his original plan of giving us a daily list of his expenses, and the cook replied, very sulkily, “Si señor.”
Next morning, when I was giving out stores, the cook said:
“I should like to leave the señora’s service to-morrow. I can’t read or write, as the señora knows, and the cook downstairs, who used to do my list for me, has gone away.”
Of course I knew every word of this to be an utter lie, and that my wily friend was only “trying it on,” as they say, because he knew it would be very inconvenient for us to dismiss him before I went to Manila. But I did not flatter him or “play up” to him by looking the least surprised or put out; I merely answered, very gravely and politely: “Certainly, cocinero, that will suit us perfectly. I will see about your wages.”
Such a look of utter disgust and surprise came over his monkey-face—exactly like Brookes’ monkey with the frying-pan—but I said nothing, and went on serving out potatoes and tinned fruit, and giving orders as to how I wished to have the things cooked.
When C—— came home and heard this domestic history, he wanted to go and find the cook, and call him and his ancestry every name under the sun; but I implored him not to pander to the creature’s vanity by such a compliment as letting him think for one instant that we wished him to stay. So no words were said; but we observed that the menu was immensely improved.
Next morning, when Domingo came for the cook’s marketing money, instead of sending it out, I went out myself and said: “Well, do you want the gastos money or your wages?”
“Oh,” said the cook, with a regular sort of rogue’s way he has of looking you straight in the eye, “I will take the gastos. I will remain with the señora to-day, as I see she has not been able to get another cook.”
Inwardly I gasped; but I thought it better not to take any notice of such impudence, so I pretended I had not understood what he had said, and replied that I was very sorry he had not been able to find another situation, and that the señor would permit him to stay on. He opened his mouth as if he were going to answer, but evidently changed his mind, for he said nothing, but just held out his hand for the money.
Since which skirmish he has given us better food, and better cooked than we have ever had from him, and a daily list of expenses is handed to me without comment.
I hope I don’t bore you with my simple domestic stories? But this one I felt I must really tell you, as it is so absolutely characteristic of the half “cute” Filipino.
Talking of native characters, there is a strange but very typical hairdresser along our street, with one poor-looking little room opening on to the road as his whole shop. All the barbers here do their business in the evenings, when their saloons may be seen brightly lighted, with men inside being operated on, while others loaf and gossip, but we have never seen a sign of a customer in our neighbour’s little shop. Perhaps he does business in the day time, and though we doubt it, we always hope this is the case. In the evenings his door stands wide open, and inside, the barber is to be seen lying back in an old armchair, with his bare feet on the basin, playing an old fiddle in absolute peace and contentment, while he watches his reflection in a big looking-glass.
In a sort of wild and whimsical way he makes me think of The Lady of Shalott, and I fancy that some day a real customer will come riding by, when the mirror will “crack from side to side,” and the hairdresser will look out and see the world as it really is, and just die of misery.
But I am sure that as long as he sits and plays like that, it would be a thousand pities if anyone came in with foolish and mundane ideas about shaving chins or cutting hair.
The burst of heat I told you of, is over, and the days are cool again, by comparison. Also, last night rain fell, and we got some water in our tank, after the preliminary excitement of diverting the pipe to let the dirt wash off the roof. This is a most important consideration, and as the servants are very apt to leave the pipe over the cistern, instead of moving it, so that when rain comes the first dirt will run away, one has to turn out at any hour of the day or night, when rain begins to rattle on the roofs. And how these tropical showers do rattle and roar, so that one cannot hear the other speak without “hailing the main top,” as papa would call it.
Iloilo, February 18, 1905.
You must excuse my writing still being rather bad, as my illness has left me so weak that I shall not be out of bed for some days longer, in fact I am beginning to be fearfully afraid that I may not be well enough to go to Manila on the 28th after all. However, I have ten days to get well in, which gives me hope, and my progress so far has been simply wonderful, which is due to the extraordinary luck I have had in finding such good doctors and such a charming and clever nurse.
I am much disappointed in having missed the visit of a U.S.A. man-of-war, the Rainbow, which is on a cruise through the Islands, and has come here for a couple of days. She is the flagship of the squadron the Americans keep in the China seas, and a very fine ship, I believe.
Last night her crew gave a sing-song in the theatre, to which I persuaded C—— to go, and was very glad I had done so, as he enjoyed it immensely, and says it was a very good sort of Christy Minstrel “show.” It ended with a small play, done by real “American Negroes,” as they are called. The Rainbow gave the same entertainment in Hong Kong, just before we arrived, and I heard then how good it was. This afternoon we have been invited to a reception to be held on board, but, of course, that also is out of the question for me, and C—— will be busy at the office till very late.
There is a great deal of work at the office now, as the chief business in this island is sugar, and this is the height of the “season,” when great loads of thousands of sacks go out every day to be put into steamers and sailing vessels off the estuary. They have a rough factory here where the cane is crushed, and the stuff exported is a thick, brown sort of sand (don’t make a joke about sand and sugar!), a great deal of which goes to Europe and America, but most to Hong Kong, where it is refined in great factories. The refined sugar that comes back from Hong Kong is what we buy here; and, though an English company has started a sugar refinery in Manila, they find that the conditions of trade in the Philippines are such that they can only just compete with the stuff refined elsewhere and imported subject to the export tax and the enormous duties.
I think I am very lucky in having such a nice room to be ill in. It is very large and shady, with three windows and two doors, and I look out on a bright garden belonging to the house opposite, and a green field and trees, which is charming. Through the trees are glimpses of the grey backs of the houses in the street parallel to this, and then a thick, high belt of palms, which hides the open sea.
This is the S.-W. side of the house. The back, to the N.-E., looks out across a rough garden of fresh, thick grass to half a mile or so of shallows, where the tide fluctuates, and beyond is the strip of blue river, which looks so narrow seen from here that the big steamers which go by seem to be sailing on dry land. Beyond, again, comes a fringe of bright green palms, and then the open sea—a stretch of darkest blue—and a bit of hilly, verdant Guimaras.
I think one of the great beauties of the views here is that the sky is never quite cloudless—there are always very white clouds somewhere in the dome of intense blue, which give relief and value to all the colours below.
On days when the Monsoon is not too high, we open the shutters looking towards the river, but these open wooden slats keep the houses quite cool, even when the shutters are closed. I wish there were something like the tatties of India; but no one out here has ever heard of such a thing. The open shutters are very nice though, and the view framed in the dark opening which faces us at table is like looking at a large, bright picture. Sometimes the tide is right up to the garden wall, the sky cloudy, and the water like slate. At other times, when it is far out, the shallows turn into mud-flats, with groups of native women wading about in their bright red clothes, looking for mysterious fish which Filipinos alone dare eat and live.
Some friends from Manila were looking out of the hall window a little time ago, and said, “What a lovely view. I should never tire of that.” I said we never did, which was quite true.
When I am well again, and if C—— can get away, I hope to be able to go beyond the roads to Jaro and Molo, though they are beautiful and inexhaustible. With all the beauty, however, I begin to have the same sort of feeling about this country that that old friend of ours, General R——, had about the girl at the Aldershot ball. You remember the story he told us of how he saw her exquisite face across the ball-room, and insisted on a common friend introducing him to her? And when he and the friend had got half way across the ball-room, the old general said: “Stop! Take me away. Get me out of it. Her face has never changed and never can change. It isn’t a face. It’s a mask, sir, a mask! It is not a human being. Come away!”
Well, I feel like that about Philippine scenery, which can be dark or light according to the reflections thrown on it, but it has never changed, and even if there is a slight change, when that has passed it will always and for ever be the same greens and the same blue. No alternation to red and yellow autumn, no brown and purple winter, no delicate spring—nothing but perpetual, chromo-lithograph mid-summer, which has always seemed to me the least beautiful season of the year.
When the wet Monsoon blows, I believe that season is counted as a sort of spring, for various trees then come into bloom, but, for the great part, everything just goes on growing and dying, and growing and dying in dull routine, like the natives. In fact I often think the much-abused Filipino is only a prototype, as it were, a sort of reflection, of his country. It seems as if this were so, too, for those who go away to Hong Kong or Japan to be educated, and come back full of civilisation and enthusiasms, soon cast off their energy like a slough and return to the shiftless, slouching habits of the land where it is “always afternoon.” For them such habits are natural, and perhaps necessary, but a worse effect is that white men get like that too, in time, and though they may work well enough at the business by which they live, they become indifferent, shiftless, careless about dress and the niceties of our civilisation; everything is too much trouble, and they just jog along in a half-animal routine. The young ones still fret for the world they have left, which remains fresh in their memories; but this life takes hold on men, and they become so rooted in its ways that they deteriorate and can never live happily anywhere else again—in the same way that a mind deteriorates on the slip-shod mental fare of magazine-reading, and cannot be happy with anything that requires more effort to assimilate. This, then, I find is the secret of that “nameless” fascination of the Far East that one hears and reads so much about—it is the secret of deterioration which is so easy, and elevation which is so hard, so useless, so unnecessary—let us lie in a long chair and drink one whisky peg after the other—who cares what the home papers say—what rot it is to bother about anything but poker and shooting, or why old Wing Chang bought Brown’s pony.
And when you think of the real meaning of “Ship me somewhere east of Suez”—well, you can’t think of it till you live there yourself for a month or two. My refrain is, “Ship me somewhere west of Suez,” where there is health for body and soul—the west of the exquisite thrush and the lilac bush, instead of the empty, gaudy parrot and the flaming, scentless canna.
Heavens! What a tirade!
One woman have I met who likes the Philippines; though many, as I know, love India, and the Straits, and Ceylon. But then those are generally people who go away to “hills” and so on, or take trips home. Here there are no “hills,” and a trip home is a serious life-problem. Just so, this one woman who has been found to like the Philippines happens to be the wife of a missionary, so, of course, she goes every hot season for a “nice long holiday” to Japan.
It occurs to me that you may imagine we have savages here when I speak of missionaries, but that is not the case, in this island at any rate, for these good people are here—oh such a lot of them!—to convert the Filipinos from Roman Catholicism. This is really a work of supererogation, for, though the Spanish priests did ill-treat the Filipinos, the natives are free now from that terror, and this religion, with its mysteries and pomp, appeals to them, and suits their dispositions perfectly.
I am afraid the unbiassed observer would find the missionaries far more convincing in their enthusiasm, if it led them to give up the beautiful houses and comfortable carriages they enjoy here, their tea-parties, lectures, and so on, and go and rough it in some of the other islands, where there are plenty of savages, Mahommedans, devil-worshippers, cannibals, and all sorts of unreclaimed sheep.
Before I left home, I remember a very enthusiastic but woefully ignorant old lady being filled with excitement when she heard I was going to the Philippine Islands, and showing me missionary journals with a great deal written in them about “the good work” being done out here. At first I very naturally thought it was the savages who were being tackled, but—“Oh dear no!” she cried, quite shocked. “The poor Filipinos are being saved from the dreadful influence of the Roman Catholics.”
I said: “But surely they are also the followers of Christ? Only they do not interpret His sayings quite as we do ourselves.”
“No, no, they are wicked people! The Filipinos must be saved! Do, do, when you are out there, interest yourself in this noble work. I will send you little books——”
Strange, isn’t it? And of course about the people, the laws, the climate, she knew less than nothing, though I am sure the poor old soul gave many a shilling out of her miserable income towards the fund that gives the missionary’s well-dressed wife a “nice little holiday in Japan.”
In these civilised (?) parts of the Philippines there is a good deal of religious trouble and dissension already, without missionary enterprise to stir it up, as a very determined patriot of the name of Aglipay has cut himself adrift from the authority of Rome and started a church called La Iglesia Filipina Independiente, which title, I am sure, needs no translating. His followers are numerous, in fact it is generally believed that they now out-number the orthodox; and the whole movement is known to be the outward and visible sign of inward and hidden fires of Insurrection and Independence. The Aglipayanos, as these independent thinkers are usually styled, have churches of their own, and processions and ceremonies almost indistinguishable from those of the Papists. Do you remember a procession I described to you when we were in Manila? The bringing down of the Virgin of Antipolo? I now learn that that was all to do with this quarrel amongst the followers of the gentle Christ, though to which side the Virgin of Antipolo belonged, and who was to be galvanised into loyalty by the contemplation of her journey, I am not quite clear, and do not much care, for the fate of the little old wooden doll is uninteresting—it is only the people who are ready to fly at each other’s throats about it who are remarkable. What poor “worms that bite and sting in the dust!”
S.S. “Butuan,” March 1, 1905.
I am launched, you see, and on my journey to Manila after all, though I do not feel at all well again yet; but that is not surprising, as it takes such a long time to pull round in this climate. It is not that the climate is so much worse than any other, as long as you keep well, but as soon as you get ill you go all to pieces, and the first thing to be done is to ship you off to Hong Kong or Japan as soon as possible. The climate of the Philippines is very much abused, more than it really deserves, I think, for the chief causes of all illness are anæmia or liver, both arising more from the dreadful food and the lack of fresh vegetables, fruit, milk, and good meat than from the actual climate; though, of course, the illnesses arising from each bad diet are aggravated by the heat. The amount of tinned things the people eat would be trying in any climate, but out here they must be simply deadly. I have just been reading a book by a traveller, who announces that there is nothing the matter with the Philippine climate at all, because he tore round the Archipelago in record time, crossing the islands on foot at astounding speed, and living on native food—and he was not ill. Naturally, he was not ill; but then his experience is of little value to men who have to work for their living, sitting in offices for eight hours a day on six days of the week, whose food is the sort of provisions one can get in the towns, and their houses rooted on ill-drained mud-flats.
Everyone would like to rush about and live a free, wild life, and, no doubt, if they did, there would be fewer illnesses and less human wrecks; but the trouble is that no one would pay them for doing it; and men must work out here just the same as in other climates—in fact they seem to me to work longer hours and harder than anywhere I ever saw; and the wonder to me is, not that they are ill, but that so many of them survive at all. Undoubtedly the only billets worth having in the tropics are those of a tea-planter, a British officer, or a professional traveller.
I am in the regular mail steamer, you see, as I told you I should be, and we were certainly not given to understand more than the truth anent her shortcomings, for she is about the same size and class as those pestiferous little nightmares which run between Gibraltar and Ceuta. There is no deck but a plank or two outside the saloon, the latter a sort of excrescence on the ship, leaving just room to squeeze a chair between its sides and the scuppers. The space in the bows is thickly occupied by marine wonders covered with tarpaulins. What these may be, as they are not deck cargo, I can’t think, but they are evidently important enough to want all the fresh air in the ship.
Aft, the galley treads upon the heels of the saloon, its fragrance extending still further, and the strip of deck outside it is completely blocked by dirty little tables, where frowzy men of the crew seem to carry on a perpetual March Hare’s tea-party.
Beyond that, again, a half-clad native is for ever killing hens, and all in a muddle with a couple of terribly mangy but very kind dogs nosing about for snacks.
She is a Spanish steamer, and the officers all Spaniards, very polite, but unkempt, unshaven, and dressed in soiled white linen suits with no attempt at a uniform.
It is astonishing to think that this is the mail between Manila and the chief town of the Islands, and I can’t understand how it is that in six years no American enterprise has stepped in to do something better. I have asked Americans about this, but they tell me the question does not affect them, for they can always get permits to go in their own transports, and then, besides that, there is nothing to tempt American capital in so slow and jog-trot a fashion of making dollars. As we went out of the river, I tried to see our house in the estuary, but all the blue-grey houses, and corrugated roofs, and green trees and palms look so exactly alike that I found it impossible to distinguish ours from amongst the jumble.
While I was looking over the side, a Filipino passenger, a middle-aged man, came up and said something to me, waving his hand towards the shore. I daresay he took me for his equal and meant no harm, but I thought it very cool of him to speak to me, so I simply drew myself up and said that I did not “habla Castellano,” whereupon he shuffled off and has not been seen again.
Luckily the weather was very calm, and is so still, so I was able to appear at the evening meal, which came off at six! A deadly hour—when you have not had time to get up any interest in food since lunch, and yet if you don’t eat you are starving before bed-time. The dinner consisted of a thick meat-and-drink soup, such as one might imagine Russian convicts yearning for in the depths of a Siberian winter, but for which it was hardly possible to return thanks in a stifling cabin in the tropics. After this nice, comforting brew followed a procession of eight courses of thick and greasy fried lumps or appalling stews, each one more fatal and more full of garlic and spices than the last. I thought that even if I had been feeling fresh and hungry on a winter’s day at home I could hardly have faced the Butuan menu, but, as it was, the mere sight and smell of the dishes made me almost hysterical.
The polite little captain pressed me to eat, and I did not like to hurt his feelings by refusing what he thought was excellent fare; but I escaped alive by waiting till his head was turned, and then dexterously passing lumps down to one of the kind, mangy dogs until the poor beast was detected by a muchacho and kicked, howling, on to the deck. After that I assured the skipper that I had had quite enough; an excellent dinner; I positively could not eat any more. He bowed and offered me coffee. I took a cup, and with that and dry biscuit made a tolerable meal.
About eight o’clock I went below, as I felt very tired, because it was almost my first day out of bed since my illness. Besides that, even if I had been in keen and robust health there would have been nothing to tempt me to remain on the narrow deck, which was pitch dark, or in the stuffy saloon with a couple of guttering candles in tall stands on the table by way of sole illumination.
The accommodation below is of much the same type as the luxury above, below decks being just of the build of one of the old penny steamers that used to go up and down the Thames—you remember the sort of things—a very low roof supported by small iron pillars. Off a narrow passage open seven small cabins, with four berths in each of them, but they are really not so bad when you get one all to yourself, and I have the best one, at the end of the ship. I caught the fat Mayordomo (chief steward), and after endless trouble, managed to get a key for my cabin door, though the choice lay between having it open or dying of asphyxiation; but I preferred the latter risk of the two, as at least I could be certain what to expect if I kept it locked.
One look at the mattresses was enough. I slept, or rather lay awake sweltering, on all the coverlets piled on the least filthy of the upper berths. The cabin smelt horrible, and the only light there, as in the saloon, was a candle in a bracket, the glass of which was so grimed with dirt that it gave hardly any light at all. No water was laid on to the filthy basin, and it did not do to let one’s mind dwell for one instant on cockroaches—like a child who tries not to think of some horrible ghost story in the dark.
About six this morning the muchacho (they have no word for steward apparently) woke me by rattling at the handle of my door, when I climbed down and held parley with him through the crack. He said something in English about “washing,” and I thinking he had brought me water to put in the unspeakable basin, said: “No, not yet,” and tried to shut the door.
However, he was not to be ignored, for he shoved the door open, apologising as he did so, came in and shut and fastened down the scuttle, and then backed out again with many more bows and excuses. Then I understood that it was not I who was to be washed, but the decks! Somehow, it had not occurred to me that the decks of the Butuan ever could be cleaned like those of other ships!
All day long we have been slipping past these Dream Islands, sometimes so close that one can see the waves breaking on the rocks and the blue sea running up into fairy bays, and I should so much like to go ashore in some of them, and see the negritos and savages, and the beautiful jungles where monkeys swing about on great flowering vines. That is always the Tropic Island of one’s dreams, is it not? But now I begin to think that possibly life is not all a transformation scene in the lovely jungles, where there are doubtless deadly snakes; poisonous, scentless plants; swamps, and malaria, to say nothing of the fatigues and difficulties of getting there. On the whole, for beauty of scenery, health and comfort, I think I would rather live in a glen on a Scottish moor.
My luggage is rather on my mind, as I found I had to bring such a quantity, for muslin and cotton frocks take up so much room that I was compelled to abandon my first plan of one moderate trunk, and am now engineering what looks like a family “flitting.” Talking of frocks, you once asked me to tell you if those I had brought out were all right. They are quite right, thanks, at least the muslins are and the very thin cottons, but anything thicker, even print, is too warm, and the very thinnest of stuff skirts or coats are stifling and impossible. I always envy the lucky women in Hong Kong whom I left going about in white serge and grey flannel, and even being compelled to put wraps on in the evening!
Another thing I find about clothes is that every one wears white, and though one gets rather tired of it, still it is the best thing for the fashion of washing clothes by pounding them on boulders, and then drying them in this terrific sun will evaporate the strongest colours in an incredibly short time. Clothes don’t last long here anyhow, colour or no colour, as there is something in the water that rots material, so that it goes into holes and tears if you look at it, and something in the air which rots silk even more disastrously and quickly, and turns all white silk and satin quite deep yellow.
I have been writing this at intervals all day, and now it is six o’clock, and the meal is due. I can see the polite skipper standing waiting for me to enter and take my seat, and the mangy dog trying to squeeze himself in under the bench where my place is. So I will leave off and finish this in Manila, where we are to arrive in the early morning.
Manila, March 2.
I thought a mail would be going out the day I got here, but I find it does not go till to-morrow morning, of which I am rather glad, as it gives me time to let you know I have arrived safely. Yet when you get this—oh what a long way off—the trip to Manila will be a half-forgotten thing of the past!
The Butuan (by-the-bye, she has taken that name from a town in the big southern island of Mindanao) anchored off the mouth of the Pasig at three o’clock this morning, and deck-washing began at four. So at about five I opened my door a little bit and roared for the muchacho, till someone else in another cabin got tired of hearing me, and took up the cry, and it spread through the ship like the cock-crowing in the dawn. By-the-bye, I got away from the shrill of the crickets for a few hours, but did not, as I had hoped, escape the eternal cock-crowing, for those fowls on board the Butuan which had escaped death began to crow at four o’clock for all they were worth, poor things. Well, at last the muchacho came along and brought me a perilous candle and some hot water, and I dressed and packed up the few things I had out, and went up on deck at about six.
At sunrise—a thick, pink, hazy sunrise—we steamed up the river, but I was blasé about everything but food, so I stayed in the saloon and managed to get some biscuits and coffee, and to avoid a plate full of deadly-looking ham and eggs.
There was no room to anchor at the quay, which was fringed with a close line of steamers berthed stern-first, so she anchored in the stream; and until I was “fetched,” I amused myself watching the blue-green water-plants go trailing past, and trying to observe life on board the big, covered, brown lighters. No life was to be seen, however, except the natives wielding immense punt-poles, who walked along the sides of the barges on a platform one plank wide.
At about seven the company’s launch came for me, and she made quite a long trip, down the Pasig and all along outside the breakwater, as the shorter way through was blocked by a dredger. A tremendous new harbour is being built, which bids fair to be a very fine concern, and the Americans think a great deal of it, and say it will enable Manila to compete with and eclipse the shipping of Hong Kong. This is a difficult piece of reasoning to follow, for a glance at a map shows how out of the stream of the world’s traffic Manila lies; and then, besides that, there are the tariffs and customs, and all the vexations of the American system of government, which will make it impossible to compete with the traffic of a free port like Hong Kong. Moreover, it will never pay anyone to shift cargoes in a port where the coolies are so lazy and labour so expensive as in Manila.
It is the American go-ahead, run-before-you-walk way, too, to build great docks and harbours costing millions before they have spent the necessary thousands in constructing roads to bring the merchandise from inland, or sacrificed the hundreds required to encourage trade.
The same thing is being done down in Iloilo, where two millions are being spent on a harbour, when there is not one tolerable road across the island, and all the revenues that choke agriculture go to pay the officials and the school-teachers, conditions which prevail throughout the Archipelago. The Americans mean well by the Philippines, that no one can doubt for an instant, which makes it all the more sad to see them wasting magnificent energy, and earning nothing but failure and unpopularity, by going dead against everything that has ever been discovered about the successful government of Asiatics. But then, is this real government? It is very difficult to know what to call it, as at one time the venture is referred to as a “Colony,” at another as “The youngest of the United States,” and yet again as “A Sacred Trust.” I mean they use these terms indiscriminately and officially, which is very puzzling.
But I am wandering away from the trip in the launch, which went all round these same harbour works till it came right in front of our friends’ house, where a boat came off and took me through the shallow water to the steps at the end of the garden.
It was then nearly eight o’clock, so the day was getting very hot, and the cool house seemed delicious. Breakfast—nice, clean, ungreasy breakfast!—and the joys of a bath. There was a “bathroom” on the Butuan, but in a state of dirt that would have made bathing impossible, even if the bath itself had not been full of old lamps, boots, tin cans, and dirty clothes.
I have spent all the day resting in the house, to save up my energies for an entertainment which I should be very sorry to miss. This is a public reception to be held by the Governor, Mr Luke E. Wright, at his palace on the river, where one will see, as a compatriot informed me, “all Manila at a glance.” I don’t think a glance will satisfy me though, for I want to go and have a good long look. I feel better already for the change of air and scene, and am sure I shall be quite equal to the reception, besides, I would rather be ill than miss such a party!
I say I spent all the day in the house, but that is not quite accurate, for we went for a drive at sunset to a library in the town, in a Spanish book-shop; and on our way back took a turn round the Luneta, the promenade by the sea, which I fancy I may have mentioned to you already. The band plays there every evening, and everyone drives or walks about. It was a very pretty sight to see the people in white dresses, all moving about in the radius of the electric lights on the bandstand, the lights looking like spots of white fire against the yellow sunset.