not interpret His sayings quite as we do ourselves.”
“No, _no_, they are _wicked_ people! The Filipinos _must_ be saved! Do,
_do_, when you are out there, interest yourself in this noble work. I
will send you little books——”
Strange, isn’t it? And of course about the people, the laws, the climate,
she knew less than nothing, though I am sure the poor old soul gave many
a shilling out of her miserable income towards the fund that gives the
missionary’s well-dressed wife a “nice little holiday in Japan.”
In these civilised (?) parts of the Philippines there is a good deal of
religious trouble and dissension already, without missionary enterprise
to stir it up, as a very determined patriot of the name of Aglipay has
cut himself adrift from the authority of Rome and started a church
called La Iglesia Filipina Independiente, which title, I am sure, needs
no translating. His followers are numerous, in fact it is generally
believed that they now out-number the orthodox; and the whole movement is
known to be the outward and visible sign of inward and hidden fires of
Insurrection and Independence. The _Aglipayanos_, as these independent
thinkers are usually styled, have churches of their own, and processions
and ceremonies almost indistinguishable from those of the Papists. Do
you remember a procession I described to you when we were in Manila?
The bringing down of the Virgin of Antipolo? I now learn that that was
all to do with this quarrel amongst the followers of the gentle Christ,
though to which side the Virgin of Antipolo belonged, and who was to be
galvanised into loyalty by the contemplation of her journey, I am not
quite clear, and do not much care, for the fate of the little old wooden
doll is uninteresting—it is only the people who are ready to fly at each
other’s throats about it who are remarkable. What poor “worms that bite
and sting in the dust!”
LETTER XIV.
VOYAGE TO MANILA
S.S. “BUTUAN,” _March 1, 1905_.
I am launched, you see, and on my journey to Manila after all, though
I do not feel at all well again yet; but that is not surprising, as it
takes such a long time to pull round in this climate. It is not that the
climate is so much worse than any other, as long as you keep well, but as
soon as you get ill you go all to pieces, and the first thing to be done
is to ship you off to Hong Kong or Japan as soon as possible. The climate
of the Philippines is very much abused, more than it really deserves,
I think, for the chief causes of all illness are anæmia or liver, both
arising more from the dreadful food and the lack of fresh vegetables,
fruit, milk, and good meat than from the actual climate; though, of
course, the illnesses arising from each bad diet are aggravated by the
heat. The amount of tinned things the people eat would be trying in
any climate, but out here they must be simply deadly. I have just been
reading a book by a traveller, who announces that there is nothing the
matter with the Philippine climate at all, because he tore round the
Archipelago in record time, crossing the islands on foot at astounding
speed, and living on native food—and he was not ill. Naturally, he was
not ill; but then his experience is of little value to men who have to
work for their living, sitting in offices for eight hours a day on six
days of the week, whose food is the sort of provisions one can get in
the towns, and their houses rooted on ill-drained mud-flats.
Everyone would like to rush about and live a free, wild life, and, no
doubt, if they did, there would be fewer illnesses and less human wrecks;
but the trouble is that no one would pay them for doing it; and men must
work out here just the same as in other climates—in fact they seem to me
to work longer hours and harder than anywhere I ever saw; and the wonder
to me is, not that they are ill, but that so many of them survive at all.
Undoubtedly the only billets worth having in the tropics are those of a
tea-planter, a British officer, or a professional traveller.
I am in the regular mail steamer, you see, as I told you I should be,
and we were certainly not given to understand more than the truth anent
her shortcomings, for she is about the same size and class as those
pestiferous little nightmares which run between Gibraltar and Ceuta.
There is no deck but a plank or two outside the saloon, the latter a sort
of excrescence on the ship, leaving just room to squeeze a chair between
its sides and the scuppers. The space in the bows is thickly occupied by
marine wonders covered with tarpaulins. What these may be, as they are
not deck cargo, I can’t think, but they are evidently important enough to
want all the fresh air in the ship.
Aft, the galley treads upon the heels of the saloon, its fragrance
extending still further, and the strip of deck outside it is completely
blocked by dirty little tables, where frowzy men of the crew seem to
carry on a perpetual March Hare’s tea-party.
Beyond that, again, a half-clad native is for ever killing hens, and all
in a muddle with a couple of terribly mangy but very kind dogs nosing
about for snacks.
She is a Spanish steamer, and the officers all Spaniards, very polite,
but unkempt, unshaven, and dressed in soiled white linen suits with no
attempt at a uniform.
It is astonishing to think that this is the mail between Manila and the
chief town of the Islands, and I can’t understand how it is that in six
years no American enterprise has stepped in to do something better. I
have asked Americans about this, but they tell me the question does
not affect them, for they can always get permits to go in their own
transports, and then, besides that, there is nothing to tempt American
capital in so slow and jog-trot a fashion of making dollars. As we went
out of the river, I tried to see our house in the estuary, but all the
blue-grey houses, and corrugated roofs, and green trees and palms look so
exactly alike that I found it impossible to distinguish ours from amongst
the jumble.
While I was looking over the side, a Filipino passenger, a middle-aged
man, came up and said something to me, waving his hand towards the shore.
I daresay he took me for his equal and meant no harm, but I thought it
very cool of him to speak to me, so I simply drew myself up and said that
I did not “habla Castellano,” whereupon he shuffled off and has not been
seen again.
Luckily the weather was very calm, and is so still, so I was able to
appear at the evening meal, which came off at six! A deadly hour—when you
have not had time to get up any interest in food since lunch, and yet if
you don’t eat you are starving before bed-time. The dinner consisted of
a thick meat-and-drink soup, such as one might imagine Russian convicts
yearning for in the depths of a Siberian winter, but for which it was
hardly possible to return thanks in a stifling cabin in the tropics.
After this nice, comforting brew followed a procession of eight courses
of thick and greasy fried lumps or appalling stews, each one more fatal
and more full of garlic and spices than the last. I thought that even if
I had been feeling fresh and hungry on a winter’s day at home I could
hardly have faced the _Butuan_ _menu_, but, as it was, the mere sight and
smell of the dishes made me almost hysterical.
The polite little captain pressed me to eat, and I did not like to hurt
his feelings by refusing what he thought was excellent fare; but I
escaped alive by waiting till his head was turned, and then dexterously
passing lumps down to one of the kind, mangy dogs until the poor beast
was detected by a _muchacho_ and kicked, howling, on to the deck. After
that I assured the skipper that I had had quite enough; an excellent
dinner; I positively could not eat any more. He bowed and offered me
coffee. I took a cup, and with that and dry biscuit made a tolerable meal.
About eight o’clock I went below, as I felt very tired, because it was
almost my first day out of bed since my illness. Besides that, even if I
had been in keen and robust health there would have been nothing to tempt
me to remain on the narrow deck, which was pitch dark, or in the stuffy
saloon with a couple of guttering candles in tall stands on the table by
way of sole illumination.
The accommodation below is of much the same type as the luxury above,
below decks being just of the build of one of the old penny steamers
that used to go up and down the Thames—you remember the sort of things—a
very low roof supported by small iron pillars. Off a narrow passage open
seven small cabins, with four berths in each of them, but they are really
not so bad when you get one all to yourself, and I have the best one, at
the end of the ship. I caught the fat _Mayordomo_ (chief steward), and
after endless trouble, managed to get a key for my cabin door, though
the choice lay between having it open or dying of asphyxiation; but I
preferred the latter risk of the two, as at least I could be certain what
to expect if I kept it locked.
One look at the mattresses was enough. I slept, or rather lay awake
sweltering, on all the coverlets piled on the least filthy of the upper
berths. The cabin smelt horrible, and the only light there, as in the
saloon, was a candle in a bracket, the glass of which was so grimed with
dirt that it gave hardly any light at all. No water was laid on to the
filthy basin, and it did not do to let one’s mind dwell for one instant
on cockroaches—like a child who tries not to think of some horrible ghost
story in the dark.
About six this morning the _muchacho_ (they have no word for steward
apparently) woke me by rattling at the handle of my door, when I climbed
down and held parley with him through the crack. He said something in
English about “washing,” and I thinking he had brought me water to put in
the unspeakable basin, said: “No, not yet,” and tried to shut the door.
However, he was not to be ignored, for he shoved the door open,
apologising as he did so, came in and shut and fastened down the
scuttle, and then backed out again with many more bows and excuses. Then
I understood that it was not I who was to be washed, but the decks!
Somehow, it had not occurred to me that the decks of the _Butuan_ ever
could be cleaned like those of other ships!
All day long we have been slipping past these Dream Islands, sometimes
so close that one can see the waves breaking on the rocks and the blue
sea running up into fairy bays, and I should so much like to go ashore
in some of them, and see the negritos and savages, and the beautiful
jungles where monkeys swing about on great flowering vines. That is
always the Tropic Island of one’s dreams, is it not? But now I begin
to think that possibly life is not all a transformation scene in the
lovely jungles, where there are doubtless deadly snakes; poisonous,
scentless plants; swamps, and malaria, to say nothing of the fatigues
and difficulties of getting there. On the whole, for beauty of scenery,
health and comfort, I think I would rather live in a glen on a Scottish
moor.
My luggage is rather on my mind, as I found I had to bring such a
quantity, for muslin and cotton frocks take up so much room that I was
compelled to abandon my first plan of one moderate trunk, and am now
engineering what looks like a family “flitting.” Talking of frocks, you
once asked me to tell you if those I had brought out were all right.
They are quite right, thanks, at least the muslins are and the very thin
cottons, but anything thicker, even print, is too warm, and the very
thinnest of stuff skirts or coats are stifling and impossible. I always
envy the lucky women in Hong Kong whom I left going about in white serge
and grey flannel, and even being compelled to put wraps on in the evening!
Another thing I find about clothes is that every one wears white, and
though one gets rather tired of it, still it is the best thing for the
fashion of washing clothes by pounding them on boulders, and then drying
them in this terrific sun will evaporate the strongest colours in an
incredibly short time. Clothes don’t last long here anyhow, colour or no
colour, as there is something in the water that rots material, so that
it goes into holes and tears if you look at it, and something in the air
which rots silk even more disastrously and quickly, and turns all white
silk and satin quite deep yellow.
I have been writing this at intervals all day, and now it is six o’clock,
and the meal is due. I can see the polite skipper standing waiting for me
to enter and take my seat, and the mangy dog trying to squeeze himself in
under the bench where my place is. So I will leave off and finish this in
Manila, where we are to arrive in the early morning.
MANILA, _March 2_.
I thought a mail would be going out the day I got here, but I find it
does not go till to-morrow morning, of which I am rather glad, as it
gives me time to let you know I have arrived safely. Yet when you get
this—oh what a long way off—the trip to Manila will be a half-forgotten
thing of the past!
The _Butuan_ (by-the-bye, she has taken that name from a town in the big
southern island of Mindanao) anchored off the mouth of the Pasig at three
o’clock this morning, and deck-washing began at four. So at about five I
opened my door a little bit and roared for the _muchacho_, till someone
else in another cabin got tired of hearing me, and took up the cry, and
it spread through the ship like the cock-crowing in the dawn. By-the-bye,
I got away from the shrill of the crickets for a few hours, but did not,
as I had hoped, escape the eternal cock-crowing, for those fowls on board
the _Butuan_ which had escaped death began to crow at four o’clock for
all they were worth, poor things. Well, at last the _muchacho_ came along
and brought me a perilous candle and some hot water, and I dressed and
packed up the few things I had out, and went up on deck at about six.
At sunrise—a thick, pink, hazy sunrise—we steamed up the river, but I
was _blasé_ about everything but food, so I stayed in the saloon and
managed to get some biscuits and coffee, and to avoid a plate full of
deadly-looking ham and eggs.
There was no room to anchor at the quay, which was fringed with a close
line of steamers berthed stern-first, so she anchored in the stream;
and until I was “fetched,” I amused myself watching the blue-green
water-plants go trailing past, and trying to observe life on board the
big, covered, brown lighters. No life was to be seen, however, except the
natives wielding immense punt-poles, who walked along the sides of the
barges on a platform one plank wide.
At about seven the company’s launch came for me, and she made quite a
long trip, down the Pasig and all along outside the breakwater, as the
shorter way through was blocked by a dredger. A tremendous new harbour is
being built, which bids fair to be a very fine concern, and the Americans
think a great deal of it, and say it will enable Manila to compete with
and eclipse the shipping of Hong Kong. This is a difficult piece of
reasoning to follow, for a glance at a map shows how out of the stream
of the world’s traffic Manila lies; and then, besides that, there are
the tariffs and customs, and all the vexations of the American system of
government, which will make it impossible to compete with the traffic of
a free port like Hong Kong. Moreover, it will never pay anyone to shift
cargoes in a port where the coolies are so lazy and labour so expensive
as in Manila.
It is the American go-ahead, run-before-you-walk way, too, to build great
docks and harbours costing millions before they have spent the necessary
thousands in constructing roads to bring the merchandise from inland, or
sacrificed the hundreds required to encourage trade.
The same thing is being done down in Iloilo, where two millions are
being spent on a harbour, when there is not one tolerable road across
the island, and all the revenues that choke agriculture go to pay the
officials and the school-teachers, conditions which prevail throughout
the Archipelago. The Americans mean well by the Philippines, that no
one can doubt for an instant, which makes it all the more sad to see
them wasting magnificent energy, and earning nothing but failure and
unpopularity, by going dead against everything that has ever been
discovered about the successful government of Asiatics. But then, is
this real government? It is very difficult to know what to call it, as
at one time the venture is referred to as a “Colony,” at another as “The
youngest of the United States,” and yet again as “A Sacred Trust.” I
mean they use these terms indiscriminately and officially, which is very
puzzling.
But I am wandering away from the trip in the launch, which went all round
these same harbour works till it came right in front of our friends’
house, where a boat came off and took me through the shallow water to the
steps at the end of the garden.
It was then nearly eight o’clock, so the day was getting very hot,
and the cool house seemed delicious. Breakfast—nice, clean, ungreasy
breakfast!—and the joys of a bath. There was a “bathroom” on the
_Butuan_, but in a state of dirt that would have made bathing impossible,
even if the bath itself had not been full of old lamps, boots, tin cans,
and dirty clothes.
I have spent all the day resting in the house, to save up my energies for
an entertainment which I should be very sorry to miss. This is a public
reception to be held by the Governor, Mr Luke E. Wright, at his palace on
the river, where one will see, as a compatriot informed me, “all Manila
at a glance.” I don’t think a glance will satisfy me though, for I want
to go and have a good long look. I feel better already for the change
of air and scene, and am sure I shall be quite equal to the reception,
besides, I would rather be ill than miss such a party!
I say I spent all the day in the house, but that is not quite accurate,
for we went for a drive at sunset to a library in the town, in a Spanish
book-shop; and on our way back took a turn round the Luneta, the
promenade by the sea, which I fancy I may have mentioned to you already.
The band plays there every evening, and everyone drives or walks about.
It was a very pretty sight to see the people in white dresses, all moving
about in the radius of the electric lights on the bandstand, the lights
looking like spots of white fire against the yellow sunset.
LETTER XV.
AN OFFICIAL ENTERTAINMENT
MANILA, _March 3, 1905_.
I sent a long letter to you by the mail, which went out this morning; but
I must begin another at once, as I want to tell you about the reception
last night. Indeed, if I don’t keep a letter always going on while I
am here, I shall not be able to tell you half what I want to say about
Manila.
We dined at half-past seven last night, and then, with a small party
of friends, drove through the town to a wharf in front of the large
Cold-Storage buildings by the river. Here we had to pass over some large,
flat lighters, on the decks of which the moonlight revealed myriads of
enormous cockroaches hurrying about in all directions, which made us
catch up our skirts and run for the launch lying alongside the lighters,
and all decorated with palms and Japanese lanterns.
At the wharf some more friends had joined us, so we were quite a large
party in the bows of the launch as she steamed up the Pasig, and the
cool, or comparatively cool, night air was delicious. The river looked
quite pretty in the moonlight, and though it was only a small, rather new
moon, the light was quite strong, and the green of the trees was quite
perceptible, for there is colour in the moonlight in this part of the
world, where the moon does not make mere black and white outlines, but
you can distinguish colours quite plainly. The Palace of Malacañan soon
came in sight—a big building blazing with lights, and adorned by rows of
little lamps in festoons all along the water’s edge, like Earl’s Court
Exhibition.
[Illustration: MANILA.
Malacañan Palace.
_To face page 120._]
We landed at a low stone wall, outlined for the occasion with red and
yellow electric lights. The launch immediately in front of ours was
that of the Chinese Consul, very profusely and beautifully decorated,
and filled with Celestials in bright silk dresses. We stepped at once
into the gardens, which come right down to the water’s edge, and found
ourselves in the _fête_—all in full swing, with crowds of people walking
up and down paths covered with sailcloth to protect the dresses. Of
course everyone was going about in evening dress, as if in a ball-room
at home, and feeling very hot, and looking for cool places. The idea of
this perpetual heat soon becomes familiar, but sometimes it strikes the
imagination, on occasions of this kind, with particular insistence. In
my letters to you I can’t go on saying “It is very hot,” “It is very
sultry,” and so on, and yet I know that you reading them at home, can
have no idea of the _setting_ of all I tell you; of the terrible blazing
sun all day long; the hot nights only bearable by comparison with the
day; of one’s skin always moist, if it is not actually running in little
rivulets, as in a Turkish bath; of even the dogs and cats spending all
their lives trying to find draughts to lie in. And this, I am informed,
is the “winter.”
Well, this entertainment, which was very well done indeed, reminded me
more and more of Earl’s Court, as we passed under arcades of coloured
lights, and the Constabulary Band played selections on a grass lawn
under the trees. There was a huge open-air ball-room, built over some
lawn-tennis courts, raised up and approached by a little flight of steps,
and with seats all round inside a rail.
Our first duty was to present ourselves to the Governor, Mr Luke E.
Wright, and his wife, who stood under a canopy of white silk, on which
were embroidered the Arms of the Philippines. This coat of arms is a
new invention, and this was its first appearance. It was designed by
an American called Gillard Hunt, and its heraldic description is very
complicated, and would probably convey as little to you as it does to
me. It happened to be on the front of the programmes as well as on the
canopy, so I had a good look at it, and the gist of the design is that it
is all red and silver and blue, and the symbols are the Castle of Spain
and a sea-lion, with a background of the stripes of the American flag.
Above is the crest, which takes the form of the American Eagle, and the
inscription written below is “Philippine Islands.” It makes a very pretty
crest, but it is difficult to understand why the Philippine shield should
be quartered with the Arms of Spain any more than if the American flag
should have the Lion and the Unicorn in the corner. In fact the latter
device would be far the more reasonable of the two.
Well, as I say, the Wrights and their party stood under this white silk
canopy, and the aide-de-camp introduced those whom they did not know
already; whereupon our hosts shook hands, repeating each guest’s name,
and adding “Pleased to meet you” in kindly American fashion.
This little ceremony, the American introduction, always appals me,
because I never know what one is supposed to say in answer. I am afraid I
smile helplessly and murmur, “Thank you so much!” but I am sure that is
not the right thing to do.
Having passed what the Manila papers call “The Gobernatorial Party,”
we proceeded to drift about the grounds, which were really charmingly
pretty. I met a good many people I knew, and enjoyed the evening
immensely. After a time I began to feel very tired, and Mr P—— took me to
the ball-room, where he managed to find places, and we wedged ourselves
into the row of people sitting all round. I did not dance, but I found
quite enough amusement to compensate me in looking on.
The crowd was pretty mixed, of course, but “Manila at a glance” included
one or two who looked like gentle-folk, and there were certainly a
great many pretty dresses, which, I am told, the wearers import from
Paris recklessly. Some of the _camisas_ worn by the native ladies were
quite lovely—beautiful, delicate fabrics exquisitely embroidered and
hand-painted—and in the Official Rigodon, with which the ball began, I
noticed how well the wearers moved.