Adam W---- having on a former shooting expedition been at Tanay,
had at the time made the acquaintance of some of the townspeople,
who had shown him all the attentions in their power; so that soon
after our arrival, having dressed and refreshed at the Casa Real,
we sallied out together to call on several of his old acquaintances,
hoping to obtain from some of them such information and assistance
as would help us discovering the whereabouts of a good huntsman and
guide, in order that we might avail ourselves of his local knowledge
in selecting the best district of the neighbourhood for sport.
On entering the house of the Fiel of Tobacco, we were most hospitably
received and warmly invited to take quarters there during our residence
in Tanay; and as the offer was much too good to be refused, even
had it been less warmly backed by the unequivocal demonstrations
of welcome than those which they evinced, it was at once accepted,
with not the less good-will because there was only the Casa Real
to sleep in had we chosen to refuse it, which assuredly no one who
had the fear of bugs, fleas, or musquitoes before his eyes would do,
these animals being of the utmost size and activity in every one of
the Casas Reales I have ever slept in.
After some conversation with our host, who was rather a fine-looking
Spanish Mestizo, as to our plans, &c., he most good-naturedly set
off to seek a huntsman whom he recommended as a guide, leaving us in
the meantime to the society of his wife--a strapping native beauty,
although somewhat swarthy, full of good nature and the gossip of the
place. From her, Adam soon learned all about his former acquaintances,
and among others of the Capitan Tomas, his buxom wife, and pretty
daughter, who we were told was considered the beauty of the town.
After their names had been mentioned with that addition, he got
rather impatient all of a sudden for a stroll about the town; so we
started together, after paying a visit to our portmanteaus and the
still insensible Fernando, at the town-house, where my friend armed
himself with a bottle of eau de Cologne, a box of which I found that
he carried about with him for distribution among such native beauties
as he was ambitious of standing well with, for they were sure to like
this perfume, which his experience of the country taught him was seldom
procurable in such out-of-the-way places, and to a dead certainty
always procured him favour in the eyes of the unsophisticated fair,
whom he taught how to use it.
For this it was that he had hinted something about thieves and the
state of Fernando, and proposed looking in to see if the portmanteaus
were still safe at the Casa Real, so I resolved to be revenged
for the double dealing of his proposal upon seeing the top of the
Cologne bottle peeping out from his shooting-jacket pocket. I watched
a chance, and snatched it away without being noticed, determined that
the half-caste beauty whose praises he was so eloquent in during our
promenade, should not have him to thank it for at all events.
We reached the house, and were well received by the Capitan, who
pressed us to stop with him, and when he found we were engaged, invited
us to pass next day with him, which, as the beauty was looking her very
best, there was great risk of our doing, in preference to prosecuting
our pig-shooting scheme, as had been originally intended. Poor Adam was
evidently smitten by her attractions. After talking with these good
people for some time, I observed that his attention was engrossed
in watching Rita's movements, when, as the Capitan, his wife, and
myself were all standing at an open window, looking at the flowers in
his garden, and talking away, and their daughter, occupied in some
household duty, was leaving the sala, Adam, who had been watching
like a lynx for such an opportunity, seized it on the moment, and
managed to slip away from us, and get out of the room after her, in
the hopes of being able to snatch a kiss or something of the sort,
and to present the scented water, which he had not missed from his
pocket, although as he slipped away in all the agitation of pursuit,
I saw first one hand and then the other slipped into the pockets of
the coat where it should have been; but he was so much engaged in
getting out of the room quickly and silently, that he did not miss
it. Reaching the open door just as she had gone out, when about two
paces beyond it, he popped his head over her shoulder unobserved, and
stole a kiss; I heard the smack, then a rustle, and then a titter,
during which Adam was searching his pockets for the missing bottle,
which of course he did not find there; and when he said something
or other about the kiss, he foolishly, in his search for it, told
her that he had lost so very desirable a present; upon which, as he
afterwards told me, the beauty looked saucy, and very plainly did
not believe a word about it, but fancied he had invented the story to
excuse the kiss, and pretended to get a little angry with the liberty
taken with her blooming cheek; so she walked off, and left him quite
at a loss to account for its disappearance.
Before leaving, I took an opportunity of presenting the missing bottle
at a time when the owner of it was not by, and fancied, from the blush
which gave additional beauty to her cheek as I did so, that with the
natural quickness of a woman and a beauty, she had read the stratagem
played off on poor Adam; so she frankly offered me the same reward,
by presenting her blooming lips to be kissed, even by so very recent
an acquaintance.
On making arrangements for a shooting party, it is quite necessary to
hire beaters to drive the game, which there would be little chance
otherwise of sighting, without undergoing more walking than most
people find pleasant under a tropical sun.
Having had the precaution to bring our own saddles with us, some
miserable-looking ponies were procured, and started with a guide at
an early hour in the morning, along a path formed for the most part,
up and down thickly wooded hills, the road being sometimes a dry
watercourse, or mountain stream.
However, we got over the ground, passing through a beautiful country,
and arrived at the meet after a four hours' ride, the place appointed
being a hut belonging to the huntsman, and surrounded by three paddy
fields, which he tilled, with his family, but did not live there,
except at planting and reaping time, or for about six weeks of the
year, from fear of the tulisanes, who, he said, frequented this
wild and uninhabited neighbourhood. This is a frequent effect of the
bad police of the Philippines, as much of the country that might be
most advantageously cultivated, is abandoned to the jungle, solely
from fear of these robbers, who sometimes add to their plundering
propensities crimes of a more atrocious dye.
After some good sport with deer and pigs, which constituted the supper
of ourselves and all the beaters, night was very welcome, and seldom,
indeed, did either of us enjoy repose more than in this hut, although
through the holes in the grass walls of it the wind was whistling,
and near us the beaters were noisily carousing, miscellaneously,
upon sherry, cognac, and beer, it mattered not which to them, for we
had presented some bottles of each, in order to celebrate the good
day's sport.
Next morning we heard of a wild cimmarone (or buffalo) having been
seen in the neighbourhood some days previously, and endeavoured to
find out his whereabouts, but none of the scouts could get a trace of
him. Although these splendid animals are occasionally found in the
country, they are not very common, and their reputation for savage
ferocity is so great, that few of the Indians like to shoot them,
because, if merely wounded without being disabled, they are certain
to charge the hunter, which is more than Oriental nerves are fond of.
Monkeys chattering in the trees are very common; but I never shot
any of them, having, in truth, an antipathy to kill a brute with a
shape so nearly human.
Near this end of the lake few Europeans ever go, as it is quite out
of the beaten track, which leads them in an opposite direction, to
look down the crater of a volcano, generally simmering, but seldom
boiling over to such an extent as to spout lava to any distance.
Calamba and Calawan are also places they usually go to see; at
the latter of which, there is a cotton-spinning mill, the property
of a Mestizo, who dresses like a Spaniard, and no doubt wishes to
be considered such. The machinery employed is of Belgian or French
make, and of a very simple construction, and far from being equal to
the sort now used at home for the purpose; but is considered by its
owner to be the only sort that would answer well there, as it can be
kept in order, and even, I believe, put into repair on occasion by a
native blacksmith, who acts as engineer, which could not, of course,
be the case were machinery of a finer and more complex and elaborate
construction employed, as that would render a staff of good European
workmen essential to keep it in order and good repair, and their pay
in this climate, would run away with all the profits of the adventure.
The yarn produced is of the coarser descriptions, and is only saleable
to the native weavers of cotton cloth, by the excessive duty put on
grey cotton twist of British manufacture, which is 40 per cent. on a
high _ad valorem_ valuation if imported by a Spanish ship, and 50 per
cent. if by any foreign vessel, amounting virtually to a prohibition
on its importation.
At the village of Los Baños, on the shores of the laguna, there are
some hot springs, flowing into baths cut out of the natural rock.
The temperature of the water as it issues from the rock is sufficient
to boil an egg; but not having a thermometer, we were unable to
ascertain it more exactly. As it mixes with the cool water of the
laguna, however, the heat decreases, and at sunrise on a cool morning
forms just there a very pleasant bath. The baths, from which the place
is named, having for long been little frequented by invalids, are now
in a semi-ruinous state. In cases of debility they are said to be most
beneficial, and the old Manilla doctor, Don Lorenzo Negrao, whose long
experience of the country and of the diseases incidental to it is most
valuable, in such cases sometimes recommends his patients to try these
baths for some peculiar diseases, and once recommended them to me.
The great mistake of our doctors in India is dosing their patients
with calomel, which, although necessary in some cases, where it is the
only medicine powerful enough to arrest the rapid strides with which
disease advances in tropical countries, is too often had recourse to,
when simples would be just as effective. And this mistake of theirs is
equalled, in bad effects only, by the practice of the Spanish doctors,
who will never administer calomel at all, even in the most urgent
cases, as they prefer trusting altogether to simple remedies for a
cure, and if a patient dies who has had calomel administered to him,
do not hesitate to tell the practitioner who gave it that the medicine
killed him.
Within the tropics lengthened residence is the most essential
qualification in a medical attendant, as although old men may not be
so well up to the latest improvements of the science as those fresh
from college, yet they have from practice found out the best way of
treating tropical diseases, to which the treatment applicable in a
London, Edinburgh, or Paris hospital in similar cases, would be quite
out of place when practised in so different a climate as the tropics,
where the symptoms vary and succeed each other with ten times the
rapidity they do in Europe.