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.
LETTER XI.
SOME RESULTS OF THE AMERICAN OCCUPATION
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.
[Illustration: SPANISH ARCHITECTURE IN THE PHILIPPINES.
An old church at Daraga.
_To face page 89._]
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.