A Trip to the South--Contents of the "Puchero"--Romblon--Cebu,
the Southern Hemp-Centre--Places Touched At--A Rich Indian
at Camiguin--Tall Trees--Primitive Hemp-Cleaners--A New
Volcano--Mindanao Island--Moro Trophies--Iligan--Iloilo--Back
Again at Manila.
December 23, 1894.
I have just returned from the south, and feel able enough to begin
the narrative. On Saturday, December 1, thick clouds obscured the
sky, and gusty showers of rain continued to fall until evening,
when they formed themselves into a respectable downpour. It was
objectionable weather for the dry season just commencing, but the
northwest monsoon was said to be heavy outside, and the rain on
our east coast evidently slid over the mountains back of Manila,
instead of staying where it belonged. Such was the day of starting,
while, to cap the climax, just before the advertised leaving-time of
the Uranus, word came from the Jesuit observatory that a typhoon was
apparently getting ready to sail directly across the course we were
to take, and up went signal No. 3 on the flag-staff at the mouth of
the river. Philosophers, however, must not be bothered by trifles,
and although my friends predicted a miserable voyage, and told
me to take all my water-proofs and sou'westers, I went aboard the
steamer with a smiling countenance only, followed by three "boys"
who deposited my traps in a state-room of lean proportions.
At half after seven in the evening the whistle blew, the visitors
departed, and the Uranus slowly began to back down the narrow river
into the black night. She is one of the largest and newest "province
steamers" in the Philippines, and it took a great deal of manipulation
to turn her around and get her headed toward the Bay. As large,
perhaps, as one of our coasting boats that runs to the West Indies,
she has a flush deck from stem to stern, and is ruled over by a very
jolly, stubby, little Spanish captain who looks eminently well fed
if not so well groomed.
We got out of the river at eight o'clock, saw the three warning,
red, typhoon lanterns glaring at us, and started full speed ahead for
Romblon, our first calling-port, eighteen hours away. Dinner was served
on deck from a large table formed by closing down the huge skylights
to the regular dining-saloon below, and the eaters took far more
enjoyment in their Spanish bill of fare under the awnings than they
would have done had the same victuals been dished up downstairs. I
say "victuals," for the word seems to be the only invention for just
such combinations as were set before us, and "dished up" suggests
the scooped-out-of-a-kettle process far better than "served." Spanish
food is rather too mixy, too garlicky, too unfathomable for me, but
as one can get used to anything I accommodated myself to the puchero
(a mixture of meat, beans, sausages, cabbage, and pork), and was soon
eating fish as a fifth course instead of a second. The feast began
with soup and sundries, and was continued by the puchero which was
merely an introduction to the fish course, the roast, and all the
cheese and things that followed. Every dinner was practically the
same, differing slightly in details, and the deck each time played its
part as dining-room. Early breakfast came at six, late breakfast came
at ten, and dinner poked along at five--a combination of meal hours
which was enough to give one indigestion before touching a mouthful.
During the night we all waited in vain to hear the sizzling of the
typhoon that came not, and got up next morning to find the scare
had been for nothing. The clouds and rain were clearing away, and
the prow of the Uranus was headed directly for a region of blue
sky. By breakfast-time there was hardly a cloud in the heavens,
the rooster up for'ard began to crow, the mooly-cow which we were
soon to eat began to moo, the islands in front drew nearer, and the
scene became fairer each moment. At noon we steamed below a great
mountainous island, crossed a sound between it and another group,
entered a narrow channel, and at one o'clock dropped anchor in
the small land-locked harbor of Romblon. Everywhere the hills fell
abruptly into the water, and houses looked as if they had slid down
off the steep slopes to hobnob with each other in a mass below. There
was a public bath down beside a brook, where everybody came to wash,
an old church, the market-place, and a prodigious long flight of steps
leading up to the upper districts, where the view down back over the
low nipa houses toward the bay was most extensive.
We stayed in this little Garden of Eden until after three o'clock,
then pulled out to the steamer, and left again for the south, over
a calm sea and beneath a glorious sky. Some of us slept on deck in
the moonlight, but, finding it if anything too cool and breezy, were
up betimes to see the island of Cebu looming on our right hand. Our
early six-o'clock breakfast finished, we sat up on the bridge in
easy-chairs, beneath the double awning, as the Uranus poked down along
the mountainous coast toward the city of Cebu. At ten o'clock we passed
through the narrow channel that leads between a small island and its
big brother Cebu, and soon saw the white houses of the town lapping
the harbor's edge. Two American ships were apparently taking in their
cargoes of hemp, and beside them a small fleet of native craft and
steamers smudged the little bay. Anchor was dropped again and those of
us who cared to go ashore met some of our former friends from Manila on
'change and took a look over this great hemp-centre of the South.
The local excitement was limited, and, except that a Chinaman had
been beheaded by some enemy the night before as he was walking home
through the street, news was scarce. Numerous people, however, were
gathered together outside the police-station, looking at the remains,
and several sailors from the American ships, who had swum ashore
during the night to get drunk, were being returned to their vessels
in charge of the civil guard.
The Uranus was not to stop long, and most of the through
passengers returned early to the steamer to enjoy a view tempered
by rather more breeze and less smell than that which the narrow
streets afforded. Cebu, from the deck, was worthy of a sonnet; the
white houses and church spires were set off against the dark-green
background of mountains, and as the sun got lower the place did not
have the broiled-alive aspect that it bore during the middle of the
day. At four the stubby little Captain came aboard, and soon we turned
northeast for our next stopping-place, Ormoc. Another colored sunset,
another dinner in the golden light, another moonrise, another sail up
among the islands, and at eleven on the evening of Monday we entered
the harbor of Ormoc. Here two or three ponies were hoisted overboard to
be taken landward, a can of kerosene was loaded into the purser's boat
as he went ashore with the papers, and a little chorus of shoutings
concluded our midnight visit to the second stop of the day.
Tuesday morning the sun rose over the lofty mountains on the island
of Leyte, and the Uranus shaped her course for Catbalogan, another
of the larger hemp-ports. The steam up the bay blotched with islands
was perfection, and by ten o'clock the anchor hunted round for a
soft bed in the ooze, some eight hundred yards off a sandy beach,
above which lay the town. Those of us who had energy enough to bolt
our hearty breakfast were taken by the jolly-boat onto the mud flats,
and were carried through the shallow water on oars to dry land. On
the slopes of the higher mountains, behind the town, the hemp-plants
(looking exactly like banana-trees), grew luxuriously, and in front
of many of the houses in Catbalogan the white fibre was out drying
on clothes-lines. A short taste of the hot sun easily satisfied our
curiosity as to Catbalogan, and we were off to the ship again for more
breakfast, just as several hungry-looking Spanish guests, including
the Governor's family, came aboard from the town to partake of a meal
hearty enough to last them till the arrival of the next steamer.
From Catbalogan to its sister town, Tacloban, four hours to the south,
the course leads among the narrow straits between high, richly wooded
islands, and the scenery was most picturesque. Here and there little
white beaches gleamed along the shore, and in front of the nipa
shanties that now and then looked out from among the trees hung rows
of hemp drying in the sun. Off and on the big waves, kicked up by the
forward movement of the Uranus in the land-locked waters, woke up the
stillness resting on the banks, and nearly upset small banca loads of
the white fibre which was perhaps being paddled down to some larger
centre from more remote stamping-grounds. From the bridge our view
was most comprehensive, and it wasn't long before the steamer actually
entered the river like strait that separates the islands of Samar and
Leyte. We twisted around like a snake through the narrow channel,
on each side of which were high hills and mountains, richly treed
with cocoanuts and hemp-plants, and, just as the sun was getting low,
hauled into Tacloban, situated inside an arm of land that protects
it from the dashing surges of the Apostles' Bay beyond.
At Tacloban there was little to see. A high range of hills rose
behind the town, and in the evening half-light everything looked more
or less attractive. We climbed a small knoll that looked off over
the Bay of St. Peter and St. Paul to the south and down over the
village. The strait through which we came stretched up back among
the hills like a river, and in the foreground lay the Uranus. A
number of hemp store-houses lined the water-front, and as usual the
ever-present Chinese were the central figures of the commercial part
of the community. At eight the anchor came up once more, and we left
Tacloban to steam religiously down the bay of St. Peter and St. Paul
for Cabalian, eight hours to the south.
Cabalian is another little hemp-town, at the foot of a huge mountain;
but in the starlight of the very early morning we stopped there only
long enough to leave the mail and drop a pony overboard. Sunrise caught
us still steering to the south, but nine o'clock tied our steamer to
a little wharf in Surigao, directly in front of a large hemp-press
and store-house belonging to the owners of the ship on which we were
journeying. Some of the best hemp that comes to the Manila market
is pressed at Surigao, and all around were stacks of loose fibre
drying in the sun or being separated into different grades by native
coolies. Several of us left the ship and walked to the main village,
but, as before, found little to note except the intense heat of a
boiling sun.
There was the customary hill behind the town, and at the risk of
going entirely into solution during the effort, two of us climbed to
the top for a breath of air and a panoramic view.
Dinner came along as usual at five; but I must say that the more I
ate of those curiously timed meals the less I could accommodate my
mental powers to the comprehension of what I was doing. Everybody
knows what a difficult psychological problem it is to determine the
exact numerical nature of the feeling in the second and third toes of
his feet, as compared with that in the fingers of his hands. On your
hands you can distinctly feel the first finger, the middle finger, and
the fourth finger; but on your feet your second toe doesn't feel like
your first finger nor as a second toe should naturally feel. The great
toe corresponds in sensation to one's first finger, and all the other
toes save the last seem to be muddled up without that differentiated
sensation which the fingers have. And so with these meals aboard
ship. A ten o'clock breakfast was neither breakfast nor luncheon,
and it bothered me considerably to know what in the dickens I was
really eating. In fact, it affected my mind to such a degree that
somehow the food tasted as if it did not belong to any particular
meal, but came from another order of things; and I spent long,
serious moments between the courses in trying to locate the repast
in my library of prehistoric sensations, just as I have often tried
to locate the digit which my second toe corresponds to in feeling.
We left Surigao an hour before midnight, sailed away over moonlit
seas toward the island of Camiguin, and when I stuck my head out of
the port-hole at half after five next morning, the two very lofty
mountain-peaks which formed this sky-scraper of the Philippines
were just ridding themselves of the garb of darkness. Three of us
went ashore at seven, and were introduced to a rich Indian, who,
although the possessor of four hundred thousand dollars, lived in a
common little nipa house. He invited us to see the country, fitted
us out with three horses and a mounted servant, and sent us up into
the mountains, where his men were working on the hemp-plantations.
We started up the sharp slopes, and were soon getting a wider and
wider view back over the town and blue bay below. First the path was
bounded with rice-fields, but, as we rose, the hemp plants which, as
before said, look just like their relatives, the banana-trees, began to
hem us in. Now and again we came to a little hut where long strings of
fibre were out drying in the sun, but our boy kept going upward until
we were rising at an angle of almost forty-five degrees. Everywhere the
tall twenty-five-foot hemp-trees extended toward the mountain summit as
far as the eye could carry, and we were much interested in seeing so
much future rope in its primogenital state. Up we went across brooks,
over rocks, beneath tall, tropical hardwood trees, nearly two hundred
feet high, that here and there lifted themselves up toward heaven and
at last came to the place where the natives were actually separating
the hemp from strippings by pulling them under a knife pressed down
on a block of wood. The whole little machine was so absurdly simple,
with its rough carving-knife and rude levers, that it hardly seemed
to correspond with the elaborate transformation that took place from
the tall trees to the slender white fibre separated by the rusty
blade. One man could clean only twenty-five pounds of hemp a day,
and when it is remembered the whole harvest consists of about 800,000
bales, or 200,000,000 pounds per year, it seems the more remarkable
that so rude an instrument should have so star a part to play. We
each tried pulling the long, tough strippings under the knife that
seemed glued to the block, but there was a certain knack which we did
not seem to possess, and the thing stuck fast. All in all this visit
to the hemp-cleaners will supply us with strong answers to letters
from manufacturers who have written us to make efforts in introducing
heavy machines for separating hemp from the parent tree, but who have
failed to understand that a couple of levers and a carving knife are
far easier to carry up a steep mountain-slope than a steam engine,
and an arrangement as big as a modern reaper. We lingered about all
the morning on these up-in-the-air plantations, and at noon picked
our way slowly back again over the stony path to the village, glad
that we didn't have to earn fifty cents a day by so laborious a method.
Leaving our host with a promise to come ashore again and use his
horses in the afternoon, we went down to the long pier and rowed
off to the Uranus in one of the big ship's boats that was feeding
her empty forehold with instalments of hemp. In the early afternoon
we again went ashore, took other ponies and started off up the coast
toward a remarkable volcano, which, though not existing in 1871, has
since been business-like enough to grow up out of the sandy beach,
until it is now a thousand feet high. A whole town was destroyed
during the growing process, but to-day the signs of activity are not
so evident. The path up the mountain-side was terrifically stony and
somewhat obscure. Long creepers frequently caught us by the neck,
or wound themselves about our feet, in attempts to rid the ponies of
their burden. It was a laborious undertaking, and it didn't look as
if we should reach the crater before dark, but we kept on ascending,
thinking each knoll would give us that longed-for look into the
business office of the volcano. But in vain. It was now getting so
near sunset that we feared to lose the way, and, instead of pushing on
farther, we reluctantly turned about and went full speed astern. The
descent was unspeakable; the horses' knees were tired; they stumbled
badly; the vines and creepers snarled us up, and everyone muttered
yards of cuss-words. On the way down we saw several wonderful views
over the hemp-trees to the coast below, met numerous natives cleaning
up their last few stalks of fibre for the day, and at last came out
once more on the rough pasture-road leading to Mambajao, off which
the Uranus was anchored. It was now moonlight, we all broke into a
gallop for the three-quarter-hour ride to the village, and everybody,
including the jaded ponies, thanked Heaven when we reached the first
lights of the town.
Late the same evening the Uranus left, sailed around the island's
western edge in the moonlight, and turned southward for Cagayan, on
Mindanao Island, the last of the Philippines to resist subjection
by the Spanish and now the scene of wars and conflicts with the
bloodthirsty savages who are indigenous to the soil.
Morning introduced us to a shaky wharf and to a group of gig-drivers,
who said the town was fully three miles away. We were in the enemy's
country, but nevertheless two of us started off to walk to the village,
following quite a party who had already taken the road. It was an
hour's plod along beneath tall cocoanut-palms before we came to the
main part of the settlement, surrounding the jail, court-house, and
residence of the Spanish Governor. Hard by ran a river spanned by a
curious suspension-bridge. It carried the high road to the village
and country on the other bank, and in our party from the steamer was
an engineer who had come down to inspect this structure, which but
a short time ago had utterly collapsed under the strain of its own
opening exercises, killing a Spaniard, and cutting open the head of
the Governor's wife. Of late, however, the bridge had been repaired,
and the question seemed to be, was it safe? For my benefit, as I walked
over the long eight-hundred-foot span, the old bridge wobbled around
like a bowl of jelly, and considering that there were alligators in
the reflective waters below, I did not feel I was doing the right
thing by my camera and friends to stay longer where I was. Some of
the secondary cables were flimsy affairs, and inspection revealing
the fact that the structure was just one-twentieth as strong as it
ought to be, placards were put up to the effect that the bridge was
closed except for the passing of one person at a time.
At the bridge we fell into talk with a pleasant Spaniard, who was the
interventor or official go-between in affairs concerning Governor and
natives. We asked him as to the prospects of finding some Moro arms,
knives, and shields in the settlement for being in a district upon
which a recent descent had been made it seemed as if the town should
be rich in bloody curios. He gave us some encouragement, and off we
trotted across the central plaza with its old church, on an expedition
of search. It seems that all the houses around this plaza were armed
to the teeth, and in time of need the whole place could be transformed
into a fort. Every house in the pueblo had one of the newest type
of Mauser rifles standing up in the corner, and in fifteen minutes
fifteen hundred men could be mustered ready armed to fight the savage
Moros. We really felt as if we were in one of the Indian outposts of
early American days, and were quite interested in the conversation
of our guide, who seemed to take a great liking to two foreigners. We
went into several little huts where knives and spears were hung upon
the doors, and succeeded in exchanging many of our dollars for rude,
weird weapons with waving edges or poisoned points. We passed several
"tamed" Moros in the street and took off some bead necklaces, turbans,
and bracelets which they had on. Further search revealed shields and
hats, and before the morning turned to afternoon we had visited nearly
half the houses in the village. Sometimes a tune on the ever-present
piano, coaxed out by yours truly, would bring a shield from off the
wall, and at others the more telling music coming from the jingling
dollars was more effectual.
For dinner we went to the house of the interventor to lunch on some
grass mixed with macaroni, canned fish, bread and water, and if I
hadn't been so much occupied with our Spanish conversation I might have
felt hungry. After the meal our host wanted me to take a photograph
of him and his wife dressed up in a discarded theatrical costume,
and it was quite as ludicrous as anything on the trip. An upholstered
throne--part of the stage-setting in their play of the week before--was
rigged up in the back yard, and the señor and señora, robed as king and
queen of Aragon, put on all the airs of a royal family as they stood
before the camera. These good people pulled the house to pieces to
show us wigs, crowns, and wooden swords, and it seemed as if we should
never get away. Later, however, our good friend borrowed a horse in
one place, a carriage in another, helped us to go around and collect
our various purchases, presented me with a shield which he took down
off his own wall, and drove us back to the steamer. Here we unloaded
all the stuff, and, surrounded by a curious throng of questioners,
went aboard to stow our possessions away. The day had been a prolific
one, and, although we had not expected to go into the curio business
on the excursion, our respective staterooms were now loaded up with
gimcracks that would interest the most rabid ethnographer.
Toward midnight the Uranus steamed out of the Bay of Cagayan and
headed for Misamis, still farther south. Another calm night, and
Saturday morning saw us approaching a little collection of nipa huts
presided over by an old stone fort and backed up by the usual high
range of mountains. Two Spanish gunboats, the Elcano and Ulloa, all
flags flying, in honor of Sunday or something were at anchor in the
Bay, and at eight o'clock we pulled ashore to fritter away an hour
or so in looking about an uninteresting village. There was a saying
here that no photographer ever lived to get fairly into the town,
for the only two who had ever come before this way were drowned in
getting ashore from their vessels. As I walked about the streets,
several Indian women stuck their heads out of the windows of their
huts seeming quite amazed to see a live picture-maker, and asked
in poor Spanish how much I would charge for a dozen copies of their
inimitable physiognomies.
Misamis business detained the Uranus but for a short hour, and she then
turned her head across the Bay eastward for Iligan, the seat of all the
war operations in Mindanao. During the two hours and a half that our
course led close along the hostile shore, we had breakfast and arrived
at Iligan, the most dismal place in the world, about two o'clock in the
afternoon. Everything looked down-in-the-mouth except the thermometer,
and that was up in the roaring hundreds. The town was like all other
Philippine villages, except that around the outskirts were the ruins of
an old stockade with observation-towers, and in the streets soldiers,
both native and Spanish, held the corners at every turn.
While I paddled across a creek to get a photograph of some friendly
savages on the other bank, one of my steamer friends went up to the
Government house to make a formal visit. It seems he found no one at
home except the wife of one of the high department officials, and
she was reading the latest letters just fresh from the mail-bag of
the Uranus. As I got back from across the river I heard a tremendous
pandemonium going on in the upper story of the building in question,
and soon my fellow-passenger came bolting down the stairs and out into
the street below. The poor woman, on reading in her freshly opened
letter that her husband, who had but recently gone up to Manila for
a week's stay, was an absconder to the extent of some three hundred
thousand dollars, suddenly lost her mind. He had tried to get across to
China, so it seemed, but was taken on the sailing-day of the steamer,
and the wife now first heard the news. So, as chairs and flower-pots
came sailing out the windows or down the stairs, we wisely decided to
get out of harm's way, and together walked back to the steamer-landing,
musing on Spanish methods of pocket-lining.
The Moros themselves are sturdy beggars, though most picturesque
ones, and the tame specimens that came into Iligan were curious in
the extreme. Dressed in native-made cloths of all colors, their heads
were ornamented with turbans of red and white and blue, while gaudy
sashes gave them an air of aristocratic distinction which few of their
northern brothers possessed. Some of them black all their teeth, others
only put war-paint on their two front pairs of ivories, and while some
looked as if they had no chewing machinery at all, others appeared as
if they might only have played centre rush on a modern foot-ball team.
For years now Spain has sent men and gun-boats down to Mindanao to wipe
out the savages and bring the island under complete subjection, but
without avail. Young boys from the north have been drafted into native
regiments to go south on this fatal errand. The prisons of Manila
have been emptied and the convicts, armed with bolos or meat-choppers,
have followed their more righteous brethren to the front. Well-trained
native troops have gone there; Spanish troops have gone; officers have
tried it, but to no end. If, in the storming of some Moro stronghold,
a dozen miles back inland from the beach, the convicts in the front
rank were cut to pieces by the enemy, it was of no importance. If the
drafted youths were slaughtered, there were more at home. If the native
troops failed to carry the charge, things began to look serious. But if
the Spanish companies were touched, it was time to flee. Such have been
the tactics in this great grave-yard, and where the Moros lost the day,
fever stepped in and won. The towns along the coast are Spain's, but
the interior still swarms with savages, who are there to dispute her
advance and are daily tramping over the graves of many of her soldiers.
We left Moro land at eight o'clock in the evening, after dining
various officials who came aboard to see what they could get to eat,
and by Sunday morning at sunrise had crossed northward to the island
of Bohol, dropping anchor in Maribojoc, a small uninteresting place
with an old church, a Spanish padre who had not been out of town
in thirty years long enough ever to see a railroad or a telephone,
and the usual collection of thick-lipped natives. We stayed here to
unload a lot of bulky school-desks and chairs destined to be used by
the semi-naked youth of the vicinity, and a few of our company went
ashore merely to walk lazily about the village.
Next, a second stop at Cebu for the mails bound Manilaward, a good-by
for the second time to our friends, and the Uranus now kept back down
the coast toward Dumaguete, a prosperous town on the rich sugar-island
of Negros. At ten o'clock that night we were off again, and Tuesday
noon ushered us in to Iloilo, the second city of the Philippines. A lot
of "go-downs" (store-houses) and dwellings on the swampy peninsula made
a fearfully stupid-looking place, and the glare off the sheet-iron
roofs was blinding. Scarcely a foot above tide-water, Iloilo was
far less prepossessing than Manila, but everyone seemed cordial,
and friends were so glad to see us that we appeared to confer a
favor in stopping off to see them. The surroundings of Iloilo are
far more picturesque than those of Manila, and just across the bay a
wooded island, whose high altitude stands out in bold contrast to the
marshes over which the city steeps, gave an outlook from the town that
compensated for the inlook over dusty streets and dirty quays. The
English club occupied its usually central position in the commercial
section of the city, and formed an oasis of refreshment in the midst
of the thirsty desert of iron roofs surrounding it. And if any single
stanza of verse could have been quoted to describe the feelings of a
newly arrived guest, sitting in a long chair on the club piazza and
looking off at the bubbling volumes of hot air rising from those roofs,
it would have been that in which the poet says:
"Where the latitude's mean and the longitude's low,
Where the hot winds of summer perennially blow,
Where the mercury chokes the thermometer's throat,
And the dust is as thick as the hair on a goat,
Where one's throat is as dry as a mummy accursed,
Here lieth the land of perpetual thirst."
The afternoon-tea hour is perhaps more carefully observed among
the English business houses here than in the capital to the north,
and we left the very good little club, with its billiard-tables and
stale newspapers, to join one of the regular gatherings in the large
office of a friend. But tea, toast, jam, and oranges had no sooner
been set before us than the deep whistle of the Uranus sounded, and
those of us who were going north had to make a hurried adjournment
to the neighboring wharf. Then, as everybody on deck began to say
"adios," and everybody on shore "hasta la vista," the stubby little
captain roared out "avante" and our steamer started for Manila,
two hundred and fifty miles away.
Next morning we got our first taste of the monsoon, and it came up
pretty rough as we crossed some of the broad, open spaces between the
islands. There were three dozen passengers aboard ship, and everybody,
including four dogs, was desperately sea-sick. But sheltering islands
soon brought relief to the prevailing misery, the dogs recovered their
equilibrium enough to renew the curl in their tails, and the heaving
vessel grew quite still. We touched again at Romblon, on our way up,
long enough to get the mail and bring off an unshaven padre or two,
bound up to the capital for spiritual refreshment, and for the last
time headed for Manila. The monsoon apparently went down with the sun;
we were not troubled further with heaving waters, and early on Thursday
morning passed through the narrow mouth of Manila Bay, just as the sun
was rising in the east, and the full moon setting over Mariveles in
the west. The Uranus made a short run across the twenty-seven miles
of water to the anchorage among the shipping, and everybody bundled
ashore in a noisy launch, almost before the town had had its breakfast.
In the afternoon, when the steamer came into the river, I brought all
of my arms, armor, and shells ashore to the office, and the American
skippers who were waiting for free breezes from the punkah began
outbidding each other with offers of baked beans and doughnuts for
the whole collection. At home, the house had not been blown away,
but was firm as ever; the dogs rejoiced to see me back; the cat,
with a crook in her tail, purred extra loudly; the ponies, that had
grown fat on lazy living, pawed the stone floor in the stable; the
boy put flowers on the table for dinner and peas in the soup, and the
moon looked in on us in full dress. Thus ended a fortnight's trip of
some two thousand miles down through the arteries of the archipelago.