with bands and processions; and they have so ordered the ceremony that
the graves of those who fell out here in the war with Spain and the
Insurrection are supposed to be decorated, Americans and Filipinos alike.
But the two events become hopelessly confused in the native mind; and
it is no wonder that the Filipinos have some dim idea that they are
rejoicing over the fall of those of the Americans whom they managed to
kill in the Insurrection. There are not many American soldiers’ graves
out here to decorate, however, as the dead American warriors are being
dug up everywhere and sent back to their homes—such a queer idea! Fancy
if we dug up all the men who fell in our innumerable wars and sent them
to their relations at home! There is nothing left but bones, of course,
but each man is identified by a bottle containing his name, etc., which
was buried with him. At least, they are identified to a certain extent;
but a man who had the job of bringing a lot of these defunct warriors
down the Pasig for shipment told C—— that the only thing to be done
as a rule was to put a name on a coffin and then lay inside as many
bones as you could find to make a complete skeleton. It sounds rather
horrible, but I must say one can’t have much sympathy with such unheroic
and superstitious sentimentality, which seems to me no better than the
customs of the Chinese.
LETTER XXXI.
MR TAFT—TROPICAL SUNSETS—UNPLEASANT NEIGHBOURS—FILIPINO LAW
ILOILO, _June 5, 1905_.
I don’t think I have yet mentioned to you the great excitement in Manila,
and in the Philippines generally, which are convulsed by the wind of the
coming of Mr Taft, the Secretary of War in the U.S.A., who, as I told
you before, used to be Governor out here. He is returning now to the
Philippines on a sort of tour of instruction for the benefit of a party
of Senators who, so say the papers, have been opposed to Philippine
interests at Washington, owing to these interests clashing with their
own sugar plantations, mines, and tobacco industries. Everyone seems to
think this expedition a very good idea, and it is going to be gay and
social as well, for a good many ladies—wives and other relations of the
Senators—are to be included, and they say that the President’s daughter,
Miss Alice Roosevelt, may come too. Some say that she will come for the
trip, as a pleasure party, and others declare that she is only to be sent
as a pawn and symbol of the President’s goodwill towards Mr Taft and his
schemes.
In the meantime the papers are full of personal descriptions and puffs
preliminary of the members of this party, but by far the most popular
figure seems to be that of the President’s daughter, about whom we get
columns of description and narrative. She must be a very fascinating
and charming and lovely girl, for though she is only twenty, she has
refused numberless offers of marriage from all sorts and conditions of
men, including the “effete hand” of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, he
to whom our Princess Margaret of Connaught is now engaged. About this
latter affair there is a very long account copied from another American
paper—I mean a U.S.A. one, not a Manila paper—where it is said that Miss
Roosevelt had declined to be a princess because she will not marry a man
she does not love. I think that is highly creditable to her, don’t you?
And such a fine example to some of her countrywomen.
This last week has been sunny every morning, and then clouded over
in the afternoon, and generally there is rain towards evening, so we
cannot make up our minds about our second trip to Nagaba, which has
been on the _tapis_ for some time. We were going last week, but put it
off for various reasons till to-morrow. Now, however, the weather looks
so threatening that I doubt if we shall go at all. We are not without
compensations, though, as the cool-looking grey skies are delicious,
and the nights almost cold, so that a sheet is necessary, and sometimes
even a blanket. In spite of the lowness of the temperature, however, I
do not feel refreshed, as I had hoped to do, for the S.-W. wind is very
enervating and relaxing, and everyone really feels more languid than in
the heat. This wind has unshipped our green sunblinds, as it comes in
great gusts, roaring and tossing in the thick belt of high palms that
fringes the beach in the distance. The sound of the surf and the wind in
the palms is delightful to me, for it reminds me of the pine-woods at
home.
A few evenings ago we got into some real country by leaving the trap on
the Molo road and walking along a path that led away through some tall
brakes of bamboo. These clumps of bamboo are very graceful and beautiful,
and the outline of their tapering stems and little flat leaves against
the sunset skies always reminds me of that embroidered Japanese screen we
have at home—by which you are perhaps sitting as you read this! We passed
the bamboos and bushes by the roadside, and came at once to big grass
fields and palm-groves, with ramshackle huts dotted about and half-clad
native—how well I can sympathise with their prompt abandonment of the
unnecessary extras of the civilised wardrobe, and only wish it were our
fate out here to be able to wear one garment in a palm-grove! We wandered
about there for a long time, up and down paths and tracks, and enjoying
wonderful glimpses of glades and green vistas that were like impossible
fairylands. There was the pink and orange bloom of a fine sunset, too,
to add to the unearthly beauty of the palm-groves, where we lingered a
long time, just admiring everything in sight, and smelling the delicious
freshness of the wet earth.
We are very anxious to go there some day and try to get a few snap-shots,
as a reminder of the scenes, though nothing could reproduce the colour.
It is difficult to get enough light, as C—— is very busy just now, and
does not get home before six. Eight to twelve and two to six—good long
hours for office-work in the tropics! Still, we manage sometimes to get
out before the daylight has quite gone, as the days are getting longer,
but then it is, of course, too late to take the camera. That, by-the-bye,
is another illusion dispelled, for I am sure I have always read and heard
that the sun in these latitudes sinks suddenly at the same moment all the
year round. I have already told you that I have watched in vain for this
phenomenon. I don’t know what happens in other places, but since the sun
has come North here, the sunset has gradually changed to quite half an
hour later than it was in December. In fact, it may be even later than
that, for I can read on the balcony for a long time after tea before the
light fades. Of course the twilight is brief compared to the length of
time it lingers on at home, and I suppose it is sudden if it is compared
to a long summer evening in England, but then you can think of our
longest twilight as a flash if you compare it with Greenland!
About a month ago the basement of the empty house next door was taken
by a typical Eurasian family—such a crew! beginning with an old father
who goes about in a vest, slack, dirty trousers, and blue socks; an old
mother, vastly fat, in petticoat, chemise, and slippers; some sons and
daughters of all ages, and their husbands and wives and children, and two
native servants. The basement they occupy consists of three large rooms.
From our side windows we look right down into their windows, and get many
astounding glimpses of their _vie intime_, including fearful revelations
of _déshabillé_, which are the delight of C——’s life.
This family, who are quite well known in Iloilo Filipino and _Mestizo_
society, and turn out great swells at the band, sleep about on _petates_
(mats) on the floor, in native fashion, and some of their notions of
sanitation are indescribable. The old father has a fearful voice, a
loud, not-human bellow of insanity, which echoes in our rooms sometimes
and quite frightens me, and C—— says I should be still more alarmed if
I could understand the awful expressions he is using. They are always
having horrid rows amongst themselves, all in slatternly rags in their
filthy rooms—in the streets they are well-dressed and well-behaved,
in true Eurasian fashion, all the world over. The sons are in various
employments, which would keep the whole family in comfort, if not in
decency, but one need hardly say that it all goes in _Monte_ and buying
diamond rings.
About a week ago, just as we had finished breakfast, there was a terrible
hullabaloo coming from the dovecote next door, and we said to each other
that they must be having a worse row than usual; when we heard yells
and loud voices, and the old man bellowing out even worse words than
the awful things he shouts out when he wants salt, or a cigarette, or a
sock. We rushed to the side of the house looking on their windows, but
a hand was pulling the shutters together, and the screams and yells and
oaths were terrible. So we ran out on to the balcony in time to see one
of the sons-in-law shoot out of the house, as from a cannon, yelling
“_Policia! Policia!_” and go running up the street to the police station
at the corner. A crowd began to collect at once in the street, while
heads appeared at every window, and the pandemonium in the house became
deafening.
Then, suddenly, a young woman in two garments ran out sobbing, with her
hair down; followed a minute later by the fat old woman in her chemise
and petticoat, wringing her hands and moaning, and running up and down,
till someone caught hold of her and led her away to a house up the
street. Then Juanita, the little native servant, with her hair streaming,
rushed out with the baby in her arms; and the little girl of six came
running in to the people below us, terrified and white and blubbering.
Then another daughter—with a white, handsome face like a Bouguereau
Madonna—hurried out, and after her a woman carrying clothes, whereupon a
polite native clerk stepped across from an office and conducted her to
the shelter of a friendly house.
All this time the bellowing and voices in the house went on
undiminished, till the son-in-law arrived with a trim blue linen-clad
native policeman. They went into the house together and shut the shutters
and closed the door, and the noise died down, and the crowd outside
melted away!
Nothing more happened all that day, and no human eye saw the policeman
come out again. But next day we noticed that the old man was living with
the natives under us; and C—— made some enquiries, whereupon they said,
“The old man is mad,” adding quite casually that he stuck a knife into
someone, so his family chucked him out.
Well, so he lived there for a few days, with the windows of the house
next door all shuttered so that he should not be able to see in, and
every now and then he roared out “Ramon y Ju—a—ni—ta—aa!” or “Juanita y
Raaaaa—mooooon!” always the names of both servants, when the two natives
would go trembling to him, with the children for him to play with!
This went on till yesterday, when there was an afternoon of shouting and
cursing and futile advice, and the street blocked with _carabao_-carts,
and natives swarming in and out of the house carrying furniture upside
down, and trying to force it into the carts broadside on. We hear the
reason and result of all this is that the old man has moved, some say
to Manila, others, to the next street. I think the poor trembling old
fat wife must have gone too, as I have not seen her about again since
then. The house next door has its windows open on this side again, and
there seem to be more people than ever lying about there—they never _do_
anything—and Juanita-a-a-a still takes the babies out in a large wicker
washing-basket mounted on squeaking wheels; and the young men and women
look great swells at the bandstand on Sundays and Thursdays.
I mentioned the way these people slept on the floor. That is a curious
Filipino habit, but I daresay it is very nice and cool, and the floor
can’t be any harder than the Filipino bed. The servants sleep about on
mats, generally in the hall of the house, but ours refuse to sleep in
this house, as they say it is haunted by the spirit of a young Spaniard
who died here when it was occupied by the Spanish Consulate. So they
spread their mats on the Azotea, and if I wake up thirsty and go out
into the hall for a glass of water, I see them through the open door,
lying asleep on their mats in the moonlight, looking like pictures of
the corpse on the battlefield, out of the _Graphic_, and rather weird
and uncanny, with their clothes very white in the moonlight, and their
dark hands and faces and dark bare feet; but on damp or cold (or what we
call cold!) nights they look still more uncanny, rolled in blankets, and
looking like mummies.
A friend who was here the other day told me an amusing instance of
Filipino methods which happened a few days ago. A policeman came for
his cook one morning, with a summons on the part of the cook’s wife for
assaulting her. So off the cook went to the court, not the High Courts
where American dignity administers the highest justice with his boots off
and his feet, with holes in his socks, on a table before him, but the
police court where a Filipino tries to deal with small offences.
In the evening our friend noticed that his own cook and not a substitute
was in the house, so he asked the man what had happened in the morning.
“Oh,” said the cook, “they fined me five dollars and my wife five dollars
too, and sent us away.”
“But,” said Mr —— “you beat her.”
“No one said I did not beat her. But they fined us both, you see, so I
was allowed to go away again, free, in time to cook the _señor’s_ dinner.”
And you may think that sounds like a sentence out of the _Hunting of
the Snark_, but it is perfectly clear logic to the Filipino mind, and
all parties seemed to think the most lucid and satisfying law had been
administered.
LETTER XXXII.
OUR MONGEESE—A FIRE—THE NATIVE EDUCATION QUESTION
_June 15, 1905._
You must forgive the writing of this letter being rather bad, as I am
ill in bed again, and likely to remain there for some time, for I have
developed a tiresome complaint, which takes, so people tell me, a long
time to heal. It sounds very simple, for what has happened is that the
mosquito bites, with which my feet are covered, have become poisoned
with something in the water, or the touch of a fly, and I hobbled about
for a long time in great pain, being doctored and told to lie up, but I
would not consent to, as it is so dull, and the warmth of lying even on
a mat makes one’s prickly heat unendurable. Now, however, I am forced to
give in, for I can’t walk across a room. An American friend tells me she
has had this malady, and it extended all the way up her limbs, and she
suffered great pain, and was ill for months. I am afraid this does not
console me much, for I am a bad patient, as I have never had anything the
matter with me before I came out here. The climate is certainly trying,
but some people seem to be able to weather through it pretty well, though
I have never met anyone who is really what one would call robust. Some
become wrecks, as I apparently should do if I stayed much longer. I can’t
tell you how thankful I am to think that there is a chance of going home!
Our dear little mongeese are flourishing. We let them out of the cage
nearly all day now, and they go running and smelling about the house;
squeaking when they think they are lost, and then I have to go and find
them, when they crawl up me as up a large tree, and go to sleep on
the branches, quite safe and happy. I think you would love them. They
have the sweetest little innocent faces I ever saw, and such pluck and
individuality, each with its own little fads and manners. In India, I
believe, people keep mongeese to kill snakes; but here they seem to be
ready to pursue any and everything, and the house evidently affords good
hunting, especially the space under the roof. I saw one of the mongeese
under my wardrobe the other day, struggling with what looked like some
dreadful grey insides of a little animal, and I hauled her out, thinking
she had got hold of something that might poison her. It was the mangled
body of a house-lizard—horrible sight! Then another of the little
creatures caught an immense spider yesterday, and sat under the _sala_
table tearing off the long hairy legs, and then choking the body down in
great gulps—ugh!
One night last week I was awakened by a police-whistle in the street,
sounding an alarm, which is one long note and two short ones. We found
this alarm note out in a rather curious fashion, as one evening we
whistled for one of the servants like that—we were sitting on the balcony
at the time—and a few moments later a policeman knocked at the door and
wanted to know what murder or other trouble we were in! And when C——
enquired about it at the police station, they asked him not to blow a
whistle in that way in the street again unless we were in danger. It was
a comfort to know that the signal would work so well.
So when we heard the long note and two short ones in the night, we
turned out on to the balcony, whence we saw the glow of a big fire at the
end of the street towards the point, and Filipino policemen were running
along below with clanking buckets.
The building that was on fire was the Military _Corral_ (stables),
which made a fine blaze, and there was a stirring scene when the poor
frightened horses came tearing down the quiet, dark street in a maddened
rout. They were the American horses, which look so big and powerful and
quite alarming to eyes accustomed to the little Filipino ponies. They
clattered down the street in batches, tossing their heads and trying to
pass one another, with the glow of the fire in the sky behind them, and
we heard the sound of their hoofs dying away and away through the empty
town. After a while the light in the sky faded out, the policemen with
their buckets returned slowly, and we went back to bed; but no one else
in the street had so much as looked out of a window!
We learned afterwards that many of the horses were found wandering far
out in the country, but I believe some of them have not been caught even
yet. The _Corral_ was burnt to the ground, as they had to wait till
the police arrived to put it out, because there were only two soldiers
sleeping there, all the rest living in houses in the town and suburbs
with their _queridas_ (native mistresses). This seems a very strange
state of affairs, but it is a well-known fact, and on this particular
occasion was referred to quite casually by the soldier on duty (of whom
C—— was asking information), and who apparently thought it was the most
natural arrangement for troops in a disaffected country.
I have been reading a great deal since I have taken to bed, and
besides all the home papers you send me, I have the Manila papers and
_El Tiempo_ (Iloilo), which I find I can read quite easily now. _The
Manila Times_ of June 10 had a long article about the eternal education
question, headed “Arbitrary Race Distinctions,” in which, as you may
gather from the title, some American works out his nation’s theory
that there is no real difference between East and West. The writer
very amiably wishes to point out that Filipino children are just as
intelligent at school as are American children, and I think this is about
the hundredth article I have read to that effect; but I have still to
read or hear any observation to the effect that precocity is the natural
heritage of every Oriental child. Americans always appear to judge the
Philippines by no standard, precedent, or parallel; which I suppose
is very natural for anyone coming straight from such an absolutely
different country as the U.S.A. In this article, of which I am speaking
at present, there are many long and fine words recklessly thrown about,
such as “introspection,” “collective individuality,” and so forth, which
I think are meant to prove that if a Filipino child is precocious, he
will grow up a clever, cultured, and enlightened man or woman; whereas
every unprejudiced person knows that the Filipino people learn with
intelligence (an intelligence which is, after all, only remarkable when
compared to a very ordinary white child) till they reach manhood or
womanhood, and then it is as though a veil were drawn over the brightness
of their minds, and they not only progress no further, but even go
_backwards_!
This optimist also pictures a future “in three generations,” when “the
iron horse will spin merrily up and down the passes,” by which I take
it he implies that means of communication will at last (instead of at
first) be established; and after a lot of hyperbolical descriptions of
machinery, he winds up with this, “a sleek, well-nourished Filipino
will garner the grain and check the tree boles”—which is very fine talk,
but, to begin with, no one ever saw a Filipino who was not sleek and
well-nourished, and what one wants to know is, what labourers will toil
at the “iron horse” and the machinery with sufficient thrift and honesty
to make those concerns worth the attention of the American or even
Filipino capitalist? It is easy to imagine that some day the natives of
the Philippines may be allowed to administer their own government and
deal out laws of life and death to each other, but where is capital to
come from? For the notion of Wall Street putting money into a business
run by a Filipino, would be beyond the wildest dreams of the most
uninstructed voter in the remotest State.
Now, what I can’t make out is this, are all these essays and writings
and leaders about the absolute equality of the Filipino mind with the
best white intellect really genuinely what the Americans think of these
people, or are they just so much dust in the eyes of the native as well
as the foreign critic to excuse and justify the position the U.S.A. has
chosen to assume towards these Islands?
LETTER XXXIII.
A PAPER-CHASE—LACK OF SPORTS—PREPARATIONS FOR MR TAFT
ILOILO, _June 26, 1905_.
C—— and another man got up a paper-chase last Sunday, and, by way of
being cordial, advertised the event in _El Tiempo_ a day or two before,
C—— and his friend arranging to be the hares, and let all Iloilo chase
them, if it cared to. They were very keen and excited about their
venture, which was something quite new in the way of local enterprise.
The “meet” was in Plaza Libertad at six in the morning, and when they
got there and found a large company of Spaniards, _Mestizos_, Swiss, and
one or two other Englishmen, they were delighted, and set off in great
feather. Our pony is a very good “goer,” and can fly along ahead of
almost any other pony here, so C—— and his friend started and tore along
the Jaro road in the cool morning, with the “field” after them.
Beyond Jaro, where they were out in the open country, they noticed that
the hunt was far out of sight and hearing, so they ambushed in some
bamboo brake, and hung about, peeping round bushes for about a quarter
of an hour, and then went cautiously back a few yards and hung about
again, and so on till by degrees they got back into Jaro. Imagine their
disgust when they at last tracked the other sportsmen to a bar where they
were sitting at little tables drinking cold beer! Their fury about the
incident is comical, but one cannot help sympathising with them after
all the trouble they took to infuse a little sport into the place.
One of the chief things Cebú crows about is possessing a race-course and
a Jockey Club, and I think they are quite right so to crow, as something
of the sort would be a boon here. One need hardly say that when anything
like that is done in Manila or anywhere else, the Americans have no part
in the initiative, as they are not a very sporting people, and all they
do to keep themselves alive is base-ball. It seems so odd to be in a
garrison town, and not see officers with sports or a club, or polo or
gymkhanas or anything. The Filipinos have no games, and the great idea is
to teach them base-ball, which, by-the-bye, the Americans call ball-game.
When I say the Filipinos have no games, I forget a sort of ball they
throw about, in the streets or anywhere, made of strips of bamboo bent
into a hollow, spherical frame; but the throwing about is not conducted
on any principle or according to any rules.