and after C—— has gone to the office, I open the door of the _dispensa_
and serve out the day’s supplies; but this routine was not brought about
without a struggle, for at first the cook persisted in coming to me
intermittently all day long to ask for things. At least, he invented
wants, but I had an idea his only object was the key of the _dispensa_,
as these Filipinos have a full measure of the cunning of the brown-faced
person all the world over. However, I disappointed him about that, always
leaving whatever I was doing to go and open the door and get out what he
wanted, at the same time remarking, as best I could, that if he did not
ask for things at the proper time he must do without them. Then once or
twice I carried the threat into effect, and when he heard what C—— had
to say about the dinner, that cured him. Everyone tells me doleful tales
about the way the _muchacho_ or _boy_ robs them, so I thought it would be
better to start from the first by giving as few opportunities as possible
for trouble of this sort.
In the morning the servants’ food is also given out, each one getting an
allowance of rice (for which purpose we lay in a large sackful), and this
they boil and eat with some tiny fish which they buy for themselves with
a few extra cents I give them. I believe it is unheard-of extravagance
to give the extra money; and I never measure out the rice, but let them
take it, for, after all, it is all the poor souls live on. All over the
Philippines the natives of all classes live almost entirely on rice,
which formerly used to be grown in all the islands, but rinderpest
destroyed many of the _carabaos_ (buffaloes), which worked the soil, and
high wages and heavy taxes have wrought even greater havoc, so that now
the supply nearly all comes from China. You see, high wages are offered
in the towns, and what with that and the unsuitable education they
receive, the country-people all flock into the towns, and the country
places are empty. It is on the coast, in the towns, that rice is so much
eaten, for inland the staple food is _camote_ (sweet potato); so the
country-people think rice a luxury, and the town’s-people eat _camote_ as
a treat.
When I wrote last, I don’t think the staff was completed by the
washerwoman, was it? A person with a huge, almost black, pan face came
and stood in the picture of blue sky and green palm-branches framed in
the doorway, dressed in a skirt formed of a tight fold of red cloth and a
muslin bodice with huge sleeves (the native costume), holding a big black
umbrella in one hand, and muttering in an undertone, while she kept one
dull, rolling eye on Tuyay, who was disposed to growl and sniff.
We were at breakfast at the time, and as we ate we conversed patiently
with her till we found that this person wanted to be taken on as a
_lavandera_ at 20 _pesos_ a month, which is about twenty-six guineas a
year. This offer we refused with imprecations, and we added that we would
not give more than 10.
She melted away, murmuring, from the front door, and presently reappeared
at the back door (both opening upon the hall, but at different ends),
and murmured afresh. I must tell you, by-the-bye, that, following a very
general custom here, we use one end of the hall as dining-room, though
there is a room which has been used for that purpose, but it looks on the
alley between this house and the next, and is not so cool as the hall.
After more conversation, we decided to engage this pan-faced individual
at 12 _pesos_ a month as a stop-gap, till we should be able to find some
more intelligent woman, and there and then I gave her a bagful of soiled
linen, and off she went.
Next day at lunch she suddenly reappeared, perfectly cow-like and stolid,
leaning up against the door-post and murmuring so that C—— simply got
_wild_ with her, and would have thrown everything on the table at her
head, I believe, if I had not been there.
As the cook is the only one of the servants who speaks above a whisper,
he was sent for, and he told us that pan-face wanted soap, starch, and
charcoal. All the washing is done in cold water at some well, it appears,
and they only want a little charcoal to put in the iron. So C—— wrote an
order, a _vale_ they call it, upon Hoskyn’s for soap, a box-iron, starch,
and charcoal, and away went the new _lavandera_.
But we had not seen the last of her, for the next day she came again, at
breakfast this time, and murmured again, clutching the bulgy gamp and
leaning against the door-post. This time the cook told us she wanted tin
tubs, and C—— gave a sort of roar as he asked her when the devil she was
going to begin the washing, but she only looked more hopelessly stupid,
and her face became more like a gorilla’s. At last she got her _vale_ for
tubs, and off she went—but about mid-day she reappeared, on the balcony,
outside the front door, with the tubs, huge tin baths, sitting beside her.
C—— managed to control himself sufficiently to ask her if there was
anything the matter with the tubs, and she was understood to say no, but
she only wanted to show us she had got tubs; and she melted away.
Next afternoon I was told the _lavandera_ had arrived, so I went out
to tell her the _señor_ would soon be in and ready to listen to her,
though I really had some doubt about the latter statement, but I found
her undoing a huge bundle of washing—all finished and ready! And such
beautiful work, C——’s white linen suits done to perfection, my frocks and
blouses like new—I never saw clothes look more fresh and lovely. It was a
pleasant surprise.
So pan-face remains, but all the same we are quite prepared to find this
standard not kept up for long, and if any remonstrance has to be made, we
know we shall have that blank look and that murmuring to face again.
The _boys_ are shaping very well, and if they go on as they are doing, no
one could wish for better servants. I did not bewilder them more than I
could help at first, but sprang a routine on them by degrees in a mixture
of pantomime, Italian and a word or two of Spanish, that seems to answer
the purpose very well. Two things C—— insisted on from the first: one,
that the servants should wear native costume and bare feet in the house;
and the other, that they must address us as _señor_ and _señora_, none of
which little marks of etiquette are insisted on in American households,
but we think, and I believe rightly, that they are of the greatest
importance in dealing with Orientals. C—— said if they didn’t like these
rules they could go, but apparently they did like them, and they have
stayed.
We asked some friends to dinner a few nights ago, and just before they
arrived C—— went into the hall and found an unknown young man, in a very
smart, white, buttoned-up, linen European suit with starched collar, and
white canvas shoes, standing on a chair in the middle of the hall, doing
something to one of the lamps. When the man turned round, we saw, to our
amazement, that he was Domingo—our second _boy_!
When he saw C——’s expression, the servant was quite frightened, not
having any idea what crime he could be committing or have committed, but
he very soon understood that if he did not take off those shoes and that
coat he would be fired out of the house. I don’t think the poor creature
meant any harm, in fact he was supposed to be got up in his best to do
honour to our guests, but he fled at once to the Azotea, and has never
been seen again except in the Filipino dress, which is a loose shirt
rather like a Chinaman’s coat, only fastening up the middle, and with
bare feet.
Yesterday the cook appeared, carrying four huge, tall orchid plants,
with very green leaves and pale mauve flowers, such lovely things, which
he suggested would look well in the _sala_, and I quite agreed, so we
began to negotiate for them. The countryman who had brought the flowers
was ushered to the back door, and there was understood to murmur that
he wanted 2 _pesos_ (four shillings) for the four plants, but the cook,
who said this was _muy caro_, got him down to a _peso_ and 20 cents;
only, the people here use many terms applicable to the old coinage, such
as _real_, _peseta_, and so on, which make it so extremely puzzling to
discover what the price of things really is, that I found it difficult
to make out what to give; but the cook fished out a _peso_ and 20 cents
out of a pile of money I put on the table, and the man picked the two
coins up and went off quite content. In my ignorance, I thought it rather
a shame to insist on so low a price for such lovely plants—and orchids,
too! However, I have since found out that these plants grow wild in
great profusion in the woods over in the Island of Guimaras, and that
what I had paid was like giving a man at home two shillings for a bunch
of primroses. In spite of this, I decline to consider myself swindled, or
to be dissatisfied with my bargain.
When the orchids had been bought, I asked the cook where he proposed to
find pots to put them in, and he smiled in a very superior fashion, and
said they only wanted some earth and a piece of sacking to live in, and
they could be kept alive by certain airings and drinks of water; and when
I said, “Who is going to do all this?”
“Domingo, _señora_,” he said in a great hurry. “Domingo is the only one
who really understands plants”—and he grinned and nodded his head with
marvellous rapidity.
I rather fancied the placid Domingo would be told he knew about plants
and have to attend to them, after the fashion of one or two other “jobs”
I had noticed, but I thought it best not to interfere, as Domingo is
twice the size of the cook, and ought to be able to look after himself.
Later on I saw the two of them fixing the tall plants, with roots neatly
tied up in sacking bags, to the walls of the _sala_, or rather, Domingo
very adroitly tying and nailing up, while the cook stood by to talk
twenty to the dozen, and came afterwards to me for approval.
We had a very amusing scene of this description at the very beginning,
when we fixed up the mosquito nets, on which occasion all hands, myself
included (with needle and cotton) did something tangible, while the cook
devoted the time to talking and jabbering and hopping about, uncannily
like a monkey.
The orchids are really lovely, and make the _sala_ look charming with
their masses of little blooms of mauve and yellow against the white
walls, and in time I must try to get some small trees in tall Chinese
stands of blue and green earthenware, which adorn the houses here in
profusion, and suit the white paint and brown floors admirably.
LETTER VI.
A WASTED LAND
ILOILO, _Christmas Eve, 1904_.
We have just come back from a delightful drive, to a town called Molo,
which lies inland, in the direction of the river, but on the opposite
bank to Jaro, the latter, as I think I told you, having been the capital
of the Island of Panay in the olden days. There is a good road out to
both of these towns, which crosses the river at Molo, and makes a circle,
passing through a village called Mindoriao, and this is the great drive
of the place, in fact the only one. The whole round is about 8 or 9
miles, however, which is too long for a _paseo_ (promenade), so the
carriages roll out at sunset to one of the two towns, turn round the
quaint, ramshackle, old _plazas_, and return whence they came, spinning
along in the fresh night air, with lamps lighted, and all the little
ponies gallantly determined to pass each other.
Along the sides of the road, for a long way out of the town, stretches
a vast suburb of picturesque native huts of palm thatch, built on high
poles in the jungle, or standing in the edge of the river, surrounded
by palms and all sorts of tropical trees of different brilliant greens,
through which may be caught glimpses of intensely blue river or sea and
exquisite mauve mountain ranges.
We enjoyed our drive immensely, and kept wishing that Papa could see the
endless pictures of brown and yellow huts, women in bright red dresses,
the groups of children and animals, the grey old Spanish churches and
belfries—I think if you ever came out here he would spend his whole time
on a camp stool, sketching for dear life!
Our cases have come from home at last, though I don’t know why I should
say that, as they have not been so very long after us, but we were rather
grubbing along till they came, which made the time seem longer. When
C—— was informed they had arrived, he went down to the Custom House and
spent a long day with the official appraiser, a most polite and patient
young man, weighing and examining everything. The methods of doing this
are wonderful and alarming, for they weigh the silver and plate with
their leather or wooden cases, and the duty is charged by so much on the
kilo! Imagine what the proportion is on a dozen silver spoons or knives
in a handsome oak case! All the italics and exclamations in the biggest
printing house in the world could not convey my sentiments upon this
subject. The textiles are examined with a magnifying glass, appraised as
materials, and taxed as such, at the rate of 50 per cent., upon what the
Customs people choose to say was their original value. If the material is
made up, there is extra duty of 100 per cent., which makes me glad that
I put so few of my frocks in the cases. The only way to console oneself
is to think that even with the duty added, they cost about half what they
would if one bought the materials and had them made up here.
Well, the end of it was that C—— came home late in the afternoon and told
me that the duty came to 300 _pesos_—a little over £30!—and did I think
the things were worth it, or should we send them back to Hong Kong in
bond?
After we had discussed the matter, going into it all carefully, we came
to the conclusion that we could not find substitutes for our things here
for that sum. So we decided to take them, and the cases were brought up
here by coolies, two or four carrying each one slung with _bejuco_ ropes
on to a hard-wood pole.
It is very nice to have all our own things about, but all the same it is
a fearful hardship to have to pay their value for things that belong to
us, and particularly annoying in the case of the wedding presents.
This, the arrival of the cases, has been the great excitement of the
week, and from the look of the box-room, bids fair to continue to excite
all hands for some time to come.
When we get the sketches hung up, the house will look very pretty, I
think, and we are going to have some of them put in some frames that came
in an old case full of C——’s things from Cebú. They will look very nice
done up with enamel, and we can get some glass at a Chinaman’s shop, but
all “crystal” comes from outside, of course, and is subject to a very
heavy duty. You may be surprised, perhaps, to hear me mention Chinese
shops so much, but nearly all the “stores” in the Philippines are kept
by Chinamen, one (as I told you) by an English company here, and I don’t
know if there are others, but I fancy not, and the rest by Spaniards and
Germans. The chief businesses, big trading firms, are English all through
the islands, and have been so for fifty years or more; and there are some
Spanish companies, dealing in tobacco chiefly, and besides these, one or
two Germans and Swiss, who import their native productions. Nearly all
the Americans are official, military, educational, or missionaries. I am
told that a few of the American soldiers, when the war was, or was said
to be over, settled down on small plantations in the southern islands,
and there are some saloon-keepers in the towns, a boot shop in Manila,
and a struggling mechanic here and there; but so far, that is the extent
of the American business interest in the place. Planters bringing in
capital, such as our colonies profit by, do not, and never can, come into
this country, for a new American law exists which prohibits all persons
who are not natives from acquiring more than 40 acres of Philippine soil,
and 40 acres in the tropics is not worth having, I believe.
I rigged up my bed with my own pillow-cases and sheets yesterday.
They were delicious to sleep in, and the idea of linen pillow-cases
for coolness and cotton sheets for health is excellent, for a cotton
pillow-covering would be very hot and uncomfortable, and linen sheets
would be dangerous in such heat. I have got myself an iron bed with
a wire mattress, for I cannot sleep on the Filipino bed, which is a
little platform of woven cane, and quite hard and unyielding. They are
wooden four-posters, these native beds, with a cotton roof, usually
red, set off by a frill of lace all round the top, above the mosquito
curtains. Some of the bedsteads I have seen, made of native woods, are
very prettily carved round the pillars, and a really handsome piece of
carving fills the space at each end to the height of two feet or so. All
right so far as looks go, but the bed itself is an appalling instrument
of torture to lie on, for in pattern and material it is the same as the
seats of cane chairs, and as hard as iron—all for coolness. On the cane
is spread a native grass mat called a _petate_; the luxurious and faddy
add a sheet, but humbler folk sleep on the mat, which is aired in the
sun every day, or ought to be, and frequently washed. In the bed there
always lies a small, round bolster, called in Spanish an _embrasador_,
but the Europeans name it Dutch Wife, and this is used to fling a leg
and an arm over, for, in this climate, to lie with the limbs touching
would be intolerable discomfort. It is also a well-known fact that the
_embrasador_ is a great protection for the stomach against chills and
fevers, which are a danger towards the small hours of the morning.
Bedclothes, in the way of covering, are out of the question, but in every
bed a small, thin blanket lies folded up, ready for the sudden chill of a
rainy night. Once or twice people have said to me: “It was so cold last
night. I was shivering even with my blanket.” This is the winter to them,
you see. I only wish it struck me in the same way, for though the nights
are by no means stifling or anything like that, it would be delightful to
feel cold now and then.
It is so difficult to realise that this is Christmas Eve—so odd to hear
people talking of children’s parties; and Christmas trees seem absurdly
out of place! The churches began to get excited some time ago, and for
the last week some deadly bells have begun to clang before the dawn.
The dawn, by-the-bye, is not what I expected, for I have often read
descriptions of the coming of the tropic day—that is, night one
minute and broad daylight the next. I find, however, that there is a
considerable interval of twilight, both morning and evening. The other
day I read a book by a very well-known writer, in which a description
was given of the dayspring in Egypt coming like “the opening of an oven
door,” which I knew to be nonsense as applied to Egypt, and now I find
the same sort of hyperbole about the tropics equally false; for I have
watched the grey dawn come gradually nearly every morning here, and I sit
reading on the balcony in the twilight, in the evening. It is certainly
not a long twilight, but all one reads about the sun shooting up from the
night into the tropic day, and so forth, must be what they call “word
pictures,” because it is certainly not truth, or even decent exaggeration.
_Christmas Day._—I always write my letters to you all at one sitting,
but I had to break off yesterday before I considered that I had covered
enough paper to satisfy you, and I feel I can’t begin again to-day
without this fresh heading; though it is not like Christmas a bit, and
I think the bright green palms, blue sea and sky, and scorching sun are
a very poor substitute for the lovely brown and purples of the winter
landscape at home, the invigorating cold, and the exquisite skeletons of
oaks and elms.
I should not complain, though, for the weather here is really delicious
just at present, with frequent heavy showers, which keep the vegetation
fresh, and fill the water-tanks. There are lots of wells, in which the
water is very hard, and people say it is sea-water filtered through the
soil; and it must be so, for at high tide the wells are at their fullest,
and quite brackish. So the water-supply one chiefly depends upon is that
out of the rain-water tanks, which are fed from the corrugated roofs
of the houses. However, it is not safe to drink even that unfiltered,
and some people are very fanciful and boil it first, but that is rather
absurd if one gets a good filter.
Out of the filter, Sotero, the head boy, fills up soda-water bottles,
which he takes to the English Club, where they are laid on the ice for
a charge of 2 cents apiece, and these, after an hour or two on the ice,
give us very refreshing drinks. Good and light beer is to be had, brewed
in Manila; it works out at about a shilling a bottle, and the Americans
drink it, but the English people consider beer an unwholesome beverage
in this climate, and stick to whisky and soda very faithfully. Some
adopt the Spanish custom of drinking light red wine, _vino tinto_,
which is supposed to be strengthening and blood-making in a country
where the prevailing trouble is anæmia. This wine comes from Spain in
barrels, and I expect it really is the most wholesome of all. For my
part, I keep pretty generally to lime juice and soda, or lemon squash.
Lemons, which come from China, are about 2d. apiece. At this season,
in the way of fruit, small tangerines are to be had also, hailing from
China, and oranges, another luxury, 6d. each. It is rather a bore that
such necessary and wholesome fruit should cost such ridiculous prices.
Bananas, everlasting bananas, are the chief fruit, and even they are not
astonishingly cheap, as they are sold here at exactly the same price
as in London. Vegetables there are none, except miserable tomatoes and
egg-plants. The lack of fresh fruit and vegetables is very trying,
especially the vegetables. Whatever is sold is imported, except the
bananas, tomatoes, and egg-plants. Fresh meat, too, would be a boon, and
butter, and milk, for all these can only be obtained tinned—“canned”
as they call it here. Once a week we get some provisions from the Cold
Storage in Manila, Australian meat and butter, and sometimes vegetables,
but this is only a private enterprise of a few of the English community,
who club together and get down an ice-chest by the _Butuan_, the weekly
Manila mail. It would be unwise to venture to lay in more than one day’s
supply, which has to be cooked and eaten at once before it goes bad, even
with an ice-chest to stand it in.
It might be possible to put up with these discomforts with more or less
philosophic calm, and not mind the deprivations if they were inevitable,
but they are not so by any means, as the soil of the Philippines is
one of the richest in the world, volcanic and full of natural chemical
manures, the islands having also every sort of advantage and variety
of climate from the plains to the mountain-tops, and being plentifully
watered. I am for ever being told that anything and everything will grow
and flourish here, which is so aggravating when all the fresh food to
be procured is miserable poultry, fish, and egg-plants, tomatoes you
would not look at in England, and costly bananas. Rice and potatoes
from China, live cattle from China, or frozen meat from Australia, and
_everything_ else under the sun in tins from London or America! This,
after six years of what we are told is the most enlightened system of
Colonial or Tropical Government yet invented. It is useless to point out
that no roads exist inland, except one in Luzon for the Governor and his
family to go to the hills; or to remark that labour is too dear for any
enterprise to pay, and that all healthy foreign competition in the way of
labour is excluded—the reply is an invitation to contemplate the splendid
work that is being done in education. For these schools and swarming
schoolmasters this pastoral country is taxed and tariffed to breaking
point—schools to which the natives are being taken from the fields, and
in which they are taught a crude wash of bad English and mathematics. The
chief result is to bring all the “scholars” into the towns to loaf along
in clerkships, if they can get them.
You will laugh at my vehemence! But it does seem such a pity to see a
splendid country wasted, as it were, thrown away, for the sake of a windy
theory propounded by some well-meaning though ignorant sentimentalists at
the other side of the globe.
LETTER VII.
CUSTOMS AND DRESS OF THE NATIVES
ILOILO, _December 31, 1904_.