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.
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.
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.
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'oeuvres,
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.