as 77°, and hardly ever above 80°, and at night it has even been down
to 64°. We have had some spells of hot sunshine, which have brought the
flowers out in the few gardens and the cemeteries. We get a trayful now
and then of all sorts of queer-looking blossoms, mostly bright reds
and yellows, with no smell, and very gaudy and handsome. Many of them
I have seen in hothouses at home, especially one big bright yellow
funnel-shaped flower; but I don’t know any of their names, except the
native words told me by the charming white-haired old Filipino gardener
who brings them. Amongst the last lot was a thing exactly like a large
periwinkle, which made me think at once of the garden at home, and some
stuff like May-blossom, which made me feel more homesick than ever! They
are beautiful, all these flowers, when they come in fresh, but there is
no scent about them, and they seldom live twenty-four hours. One I do
recognise, and that is the Canna lily, which I have seen in hothouses
at home, and some irises of different sorts. I am feeling much better,
so we went for a drive yesterday between the showers, but got caught in
two tremendous squalls—one in the town and one on the Molo road. The
_calesa_ has a hood, which is raised on crooks, and one can shut oneself
in altogether in heavy rain, with an arrangement of waterproof curtains,
the reins passing through a hole in the high apron. It looks so funny, in
wet weather, to see the bottled-up _calesas_ going about, being driven as
by magic, with the miserable _sota_ (groom) trying to make the best of
his narrow perch behind.
[Illustration: WATERING CARABAOS.
_To face page 293._]
The roads were a maze of huge pools of water, through which we just
splashed anyhow, and all the palm-groves were brilliantly green, and full
of new little fairy lakes, which looked so lovely that they were well
worth the discomforts of the drive. Near the huge Priests’ College, a
little way out of Iloilo, we saw some _carabaos_ having a glorious time
in various new pools. They looked very picturesque, with their great dark
curved horns, standing out against the shining water and the green grass.
The greenness is wonderful—too wonderful. There is no beauty of purples
and soft blues about a wet day here; it is all grey and green, and even
the little lakes in the palm-groves are very garish, and all exactly
alike. One longs for a change of colouring, and these crude tints get on
one’s nerves like an oleograph in a hotel.
Talking of nerves, the perpetual sounds were added to, as soon as the
rainy season set in, by the bell-like voices of countless frogs, singing
in every ditch and pool. They sing in the day, but at night they are
loudest, or else most noticeable, and their melodious notes might be
pretty if one heard less of them and a long way off.
A day or two ago Sotero came to me saying that a woman was at the door
wanting to sell me a ring. I said I would look at it; so he went off and
brought me a dirty little piece of newspaper, out of which emerged a
huge pearl set in a very common, florid, claw setting. I looked at the
pearl and saw that though it was white enough, it was very rough, with
no iridescent lustre, what connoisseurs call “skin,” I believe. I also
noticed that as the stone tapered away, and was discoloured under the
setting, it could not be worth more than £10 at the most. But Sotero said
the woman wanted two hundred _pesos_ (£20), so the incident came to a
rapid close. When C—— came back in the middle of the day, and I told him
about the ring, he said he knew it quite well, for it had been hawked all
over Iloilo; and everyone thought the price asked a preposterous sum. In
spite of which the woman refused all reasonable offers.
The pearl came from the pearl-fisheries of the Philippines, which are
chiefly in the Sulu Islands, far away South, where the Philippines almost
touch British North Borneo. They say the pearls are not very good ones
at the best, but none of the best specimens find their way about the
Islands, for they are sent straight away to Singapore by the Chinamen who
own the fisheries. Here there are oysters with beautiful, transparent,
white pearl shells, of which the small panes of the rain-shutters are
made; but these shells have no pearls in them, and are of very little
value. Besides these oysters, we get all manner of shell-fish—crabs,
cray-fish, clams, shrimps, as well as soles, sprats, whiting, and
quantities of other fish. Indeed the supply of fish is wonderfully varied
and always exquisitely fresh, except on Fridays, when the servants of all
good Catholics clear the markets, or even secure the fish before they get
into the markets at all. In stormy weather, too, we don’t get much fish,
but, as a rule, the supply is a great boon, and one of our chief sources
of sustenance. I was astonished to find in Manila that fish was very
scarce and dear, and people there envied us the fish here, while those
who only knew Manila refused even to believe that we could have such a
supply at all!
[Illustration: A FILIPINO FISH-MARKET.
_To face page 294._]
LETTER XXXVIII.
AGRICULTURAL POSSIBILITIES
ILOILO, _July 31_.
I think I told you we had been very lucky in the selling of the greater
part of our furniture, and now we have got the _calesa_ and pony off our
hands as well, which is a great loss in the evenings, but we had to take
what chance we could. Some of the young Englishmen got up a Gymkhana on
the beach yesterday, and C—— rode the pony for the last time, when he was
lucky enough to win two races out of three, and only missed the third by
a misunderstanding about the start.
It was a dull, showery afternoon, unfortunately, but when the rain went
off, I strolled down to the beach to see if anything was to be seen. I
found crowds of Filipinos standing about the upper part of the beach,
and a few hurdles down on the sands, which the receding tide had left
quite firm. The competitors, who included some of the young Spaniards and
_Mestizos_, were riding up and down, and just as I arrived on the scene,
a race came flying along in great style, to the intense joy of the native
onlookers.
The occasion was enlivened by the _banda de musica popular_, the members
of which had been on their way to play in the Plaza, but had strolled
down to the beach, where they stood amongst the crowd, and every now and
then blew and tootled a tune while they goggled about.
I signalled to our _sota_ and made him go up to the house and fetch
me a chair, on which I sat and watched the race. As I sat there a
Filipino youth came up and very civilly asked me if the _señora_ wanted
a _muchacho_, but I said I did not, as I was quite content with the
servants I had at present.
We have had one or two very fine days again lately, and have been for
one or two drives, but some very blood-thirsty road-mending has been
going on, to prepare the town for the critical eyes of the Taft party,
who are to arrive here from Manila on the 14th or 15th of next month.
This road-mending is done by hauling the volcanic gravel out of the river
beds, and dumping it in huge piles along the middle of the roads, and as
the thoroughfares are not lighted, the result is a wild steeplechase with
one wheel in the air. Sometimes fellows come along and spread the gravel
out, but more generally it just spreads itself. It makes very soft roads,
which the heavy _carabao_-carts plough up at once.
One of the last drives we took was to visit the foreign cemetery, which
is on the outskirts of the town, on a road running parallel to the beach.
We got out of the trap at a tall wooden gate, which an old man opened
to us, and walked up a short avenue of flowering bushes and palms. The
graves stood on a grassy plot, with bushes growing about it, laden with
large red or yellow blossoms, and crossed at right angles by sandy paths
bordered with tiles. They were not ordinary graves, like those one sees
at home, for each one was a sort of small brick tunnel some feet from the
ground, and closed by a cemented tablet. There were names of some English
people on one or two of them, and one had just been opened to send the
bones of the occupant back to his native land. The man had been dead
twenty-five years, and it seemed to me hardly worth while to disturb him.
A little behind the main row of tombs we came on a Jewish grave—a big
marble sarcophagus—with an iron rail round it and inscriptions in Hebrew
on the flat top. The marble was native to this country, I have no doubt,
as there is plenty of it in the Philippines; in fact some of the small
islands are known to be of solid marble, but it does not pay to work
them—did I not tell you this before, though?
Mr B—— came to call this afternoon, and was very indignant about local
justice, as it appears that one of his Filipino clerks was impudent to
a white man in his firm, whereupon the white man naturally struck the
Filipino as any ordinary man of grit strikes a man who is rude to him.
However, the cur Filipino went off to the police and lodged a complaint.
The white man was had up, and has been heavily fined for “assaulting” the
Filipino, and Mr B—— says:
“What on earth are you to do with impertinent natives if you don’t hit
them? They don’t care a straw if you dismiss them, and take not the least
notice of reproof.”
But I think there is right on both sides, for the way some of the white
men hit their servants about is brutal and foolish. I said something to
this effect, whereupon Mr B—— said, very much surprised:
“Why, doesn’t your husband have to kick your fellows about?”
And he was quite incredulous when I assured him that C—— had never
dreamed of such a thing except once, when our first cook had muttered
impertinences, and been kicked out on to the Azotea for his rudeness.
“But they are such stupid fools,” argued Mr B——.
We replied that we did not think blows would make them any brighter,
on which he laughed and said perhaps we were right, as we certainly had
remarkably good servants.
Another guest, Mr M——, was talking about Philippine food, and observed
that tomatoes grew so well here. I said I thought they were miserable
failures, as they are about the size of walnuts, and quite green. But
he maintained that that was because the Filipino just sticks his tomato
plants in the ground and goes off to sit in the shade or to a cock-fight,
and when he sees any sign of fruit on the plants, he picks it and takes
it to market. Any notion of tilling the soil—weeding or manuring—is
absolutely unknown to these people, or if known, carefully avoided. Mr
M—— said he had seen tomatoes, grown by Chinamen, as good as the very
best out of a hothouse at home. There are several Chinese _potagères_
in the town where rows of trim little beds may be seen thick with
extraordinarily luxuriant crops of vegetables of every sort, but out here
no one will eat anything grown by the Chinamen, as those enterprising
people employ some dreadful and unmentionable methods of agriculture.
Besides this, there are many germs in the teeming, prolific air which
invest vegetables such as cabbages, lettuce, etc., and make them very
unsafe experiments, even if one can procure any. When I was in Manila,
there was a good deal of talk at dinner tables, and much writing in the
papers about some American scientist who professed to have found out a
way to “treat” the Philippine green lettuces before eating them, so as
to destroy some dreadful germ which causes horrible complaints. But it
seemed to me less trouble and a great deal safer to give up lettuce as a
bad job!
The great and terrible fear in the Philippines is the germ of a disease
called “sprue”—a sort of wasting away—which is very difficult to remedy,
and almost ineradicable.
Melons would grow well here, for in the wet season anything in the nature
of a gourd springs up like a weed—a habit which suits the Filipino
agriculturist to perfection. Some of the more energetic spirits fasten a
piece of _bejuco_ from the marrow plant up to a window, and gourd vines
may often be seen obligingly toiling up a string to hand fruit in to the
weary dwellers in a _nipa_ hut. Nevertheless, melons are only to be got
from Hong Kong, and even then they are a costly delicacy. Some friends
sent us half a watermelon a few days ago, as a present, but we did not
like to accept anything so valuable, and insisted on paying for it. What
a treat it was!
With the rainy season we also have a tiny hard native fruit that
looks like a damson outside, but has white flesh with a stone like a
date-stone, and is entirely devoid of any flavour of any sort. I tried
having this fruit stewed, but it was even nastier than when raw. When we
were at Nagaba for the day, in the spring, we got some fruit like knobs
of rose-coloured wax, pink all through, with black pips, and rather tart,
but also tasteless. I suppose all these insipid, nasty little native
fruits could be cultivated into something nice, in the way that cherries
have been developed, and apples and everything else, from the tasteless
wild fruit. At present, however, they are tolerable only to the native
palate. The best of them is a tiny brown fruit called _lazones_, which
has a fluffy thin brown skin, and grey brown flesh in divisions like an
orange, each division containing a large green seed. The flavour of the
_lazones_ is sharp, rather nice, and very refreshing, but this fruit only
comes from Luzon, and is very expensive, besides being half-rotten by
the time it gets here. Bananas, pine-apples, and mangoes—that is all.
Bananas one gets unutterably sick of, and pine-apples too—and mangoes,
even if one likes them (which we do not), give one prickly heat. In fact
tinned strawberries and raspberries are about the best Philippine fruits.
We have received an invitation to the banquet in honour of Mr Taft and
his party on the 15th—on the payment of 12 _pesos_ each. But we may have
to sail before that date if our Hong Kong steamer comes in. I shall be
very sorry if we miss that event, for I think the Taft utterances would
be well worth 25 shillings a head, though that does seem a pretty stiff
sum for an Iloilo banquet!
LETTER XXXIX.
A LAST DAY AT NAGABA—THE “SECWAR”
ILOILO, _August 11, 1905_.
We went a last trip to Nagaba on Sunday, but only for the day, and were
lucky in having very fine weather and delightfully cool, only 80°, with a
lovely breeze blowing, and the sky a little overcast.
We roused ourselves up after lunch, and two friends came to the house to
join the party, and we sent the “boy” for two _quilezes_. When we went
down, I stepped into the first one; there was Tuyay lying in it already!
How she knows when we are going out is simply marvellous.
We drove to the Muelle Loney, at the farther end of which _paraos_ are
moored for hire, and chose a nice big boat, the _Valentino_, with an
upper deck of split bamboo, a rabbit-hutch cabin of _nipa_ matting, and a
crew of eight men, and set sail for Nagaba.
The sun came out soon after we started, so we lay half in and half out
of the cabin and the shade it cast. It was a “three-man breeze,” so some
of the crew ran out on the outriggers and others hauled ropes, while
three ruffians sat on the deck, which was 3 feet wide, by-the-bye, and
spread out a piece of blue paper, which they held down with their bare
brown toes. We could not think what they were going to do, when, to our
astonishment, one of them produced a pack of greasy cards and pieces of
money and began the three-card trick! They did their best to get us
interested in the game, the chief little old brown swindler losing to
his confederates all in the best Derby style. We looked on with deep
interest, but showed no signs of wishing to take part in the gamble,
except for C—— to ask casually if they knew he was in the Secret Police,
which made them look quite serious for a few minutes. This remark about
Secret Police was no empty jest, for it is an Institution of the Free and
Enlightened U.S.A., worthy of Russia or the Dark Ages. Well, after this
disquieting joke about the Secret Police, the three-card trick seemed to
lose its flavour, and the gamblers shifted billet again, to our intense
amusement, crawling along the outriggers, and past the “cabin,” and on
to the tiny space of after-deck, where the steersman sat huddled up with
his legs round the tiller. Here they spread the blue paper out again,
one of the confederates lying airily across the stern entrance, betting
excitedly, with an occasional squint into the cabin to see if anyone was
inclined to slip aft on the sly. But we never even looked round, so they
soon abandoned that tactic and climbed on to the “cabin” roof, where they
crouched like monkeys, chattering, and now and then a great flat brown
face hung over the edge and looked down in on us; but we got rather tired
of them, so C—— leaned out and hit one of them, and they gave that up too.
All this time we were skimming through the water, going at a tremendous
pace, the boat leaning over first to one side and then to the other, with
the white foam spurting up from the brilliant green sea, the half-naked
brown sailors running out on the long poles of the outriggers, and the
big sails filled out tight. It was most exhilarating.
We went straight across, a little wide of Nagaba, and then made a wide
tack, which enabled the boat to go quite close to the beach, as the tide
was high, and we came up right opposite the village. One of the boatmen
carried me ashore, and the moment Tuyay saw me leave the ship, she flung
herself into the water and swam after me in a sort of tragic despair that
made us all laugh very much.
Then other brawny little natives took C—— and our two friends astride on
their shoulders and set us all down on the dry sand, and we walked up
through the little village of huts, all amongst the babies and dogs and
pigs. There were several new swamps to be seen, and everything was even
greener than when we were last there, which was before the S.-W. Monsoon
had really set in. I noticed, too, that the bushes had flowered, as our
friends had predicted, and one of them was a beautiful, scentless yellow
blossom, a little like a snapdragon.
We had meant to go for a real walk, but the sun was too hot, as it was
not more than four o’clock, so we wandered along to “our” house, through
the fields and village. It was delightful to feel the fresh country air,
and to smell the earth and plants after the streets of Iloilo, and we
actually felt hungry, and began to ask each other what was to be done
about food. Nothing was to be had at any house in the village, as we
all knew by experience, but by luck we came upon a sort of open _nipa_
shed, where a little Filipino woman was standing behind a wooden tray
containing ears of maize, little heaps of rice, and betel-nut, which
was by way of being a shop. From her, and a youth who cropped up from
nowhere and conducted the bargaining, we bought what the Americans call
corn-pone, which is whole ears of young maize roasted. We munched the
corn, which was very sweet and tender, and uncommonly filling—after about
half a “pone” one could hardly breathe.
A little further on we regretted our haste in satiating ourselves with
maize, as we saw a big open shed, with two steps up to it, and all sorts
of glasses and dishes glittering on a table spread with a white cloth,
evidently a sort of _Fiesta_ restaurant. We cheered up at this, and
hurried along with talk of fizzing drinks, but when we came nearer, and
out of the full glare of the sunlight, we got a horrible shock on finding
it to be the Aglipay church!
So we trailed on, rather despondent, and very thirsty, between the huts
and boats, through the deep soft sand, which was unpleasant to walk on.
We saw a big _parao_ lying drawn up, hewn out of one vast tree-trunk,
which is the original model of these long, narrow boats, and it looked
like a huge _baroto_ (canoe).
When we got to the house, Tuyay was greeted most enthusiastically by a
little spaniel friend, and the caretakers were civil enough to us, but
incredibly stupid about a request for coffee. At last C—— made them
understand by talking to them in Visayan, but it is really very strange
how very few of the people in the country know any Spanish, and the
town’s-people can only say a few words or phrases at the best.
We took chairs out of the house, opened the sliding bamboo frames
shutting off the balcony, and established ourselves out there in the
cool shade. There we sat for an hour, munching maize, and watching three
fowls and three brown babies picking up mysterious food on the rocks and
in the shallow pools. One of the babies was an elderly person of five or
six, who was “minding” the other two, and one could see that he was older
and more important, as he had on a very short and entirely foolish white
muslin shirt, but the other two were in nothing but fat brown skin. The
tiniest was a very serious and bullet-headed little chap, with thin arms
and legs, and a huge rice-tummy. All three mites were squatting about,
very busy and solemn, finding some little shell-fish, which they cracked
between stones and ate with the gestures of monkeys.
They were to us a source of absolute delight, and it was not till the
elderly pastor in the muslin shirt led his flock off to fresh pools out
of sight that we went into the house and drank the coffee which the woman
had prepared for us. It was excellent black coffee, made in the native
fashion by holding the grounds in a little bag at the end of a piece of
bamboo in a coffee pot—simple, but effective. With it went large flat
cakes of yellowish sugar, called _caramelo_, and she had also produced
from somewhere four ship’s biscuits. The latter were rather a relief
after the maize, and indeed we thought the meal a delicious feast, though
I have no doubt we would not have looked at it over the other side of the
Guimaras Channel.
After this, as it was about six o’clock, and the sun was going down, we
walked down to the river mouth and got on board the good ship _Valentino_
by crawling along another _parao_, which was beached in the shallower
water further inshore, and thence by perilous ventures along those
outriggers on which the sailors run about in a gale as if they were on
firm land!
The sail back in the sunset was exquisite, all the mountains of Panay
dark blue against an orange sky, a young moon overhead, and the air
exquisitely fresh.
Altogether it was a most delightful trip, and I only wish we had had more
such days, but with only one day a week to choose from it is often too
hot, and sometimes too wet to go on the water. Most of the time, too,
I have not been well enough for expeditions under the most favourable
circumstances, and then, over and above all these reasons is the fact
that one seldom has the inclination here to do anything or go anywhere.
I think it must be owing to this latter phenomenon that there is no
sort of “week-end resort” at Nagaba, for one can hardly understand
how such an enterprising people as the Americans have neglected this
golden opportunity for a business that, I believe, they understand so
admirably—I mean sort of Simple Life Hotels. I remember an American
whom I met at home once, in England, telling me a long story about
some place in the Adirondaks, where people from New York (or was it
Chicago?—no matter) go and live in tents; and millionaires catch food,
and their priceless wives and daughters cook and sweep. The story came
up _à propos_ the daughter of a millionaire who had just married an
English duke, as this personage had been roughing it in the next tent
to my friend. I think I may have told you the story at the time. But I
have read so much and heard so much about the American love of country
life that I am astounded to see how they all sit grilling in Iloilo when
they might have a hotel at Nagaba. The truth is, of course, that such an
enterprise might be a doubtful undertaking, as every American I have ever
yet met or seen, from the highest to the humblest, is simply saving money
to get away from the Philippines and back to “God’s Country.”
We are still undecided about our departure, as the _Sung-Kiang_ (the
sister-ship of the _Kai-Fong_ and the same Line) has come in before what
the Americans call her “scheduled” time. That is a very queer word of
theirs, by-the-bye, and they work the poor thing to death, making it
do all sorts of unnatural gymnastics in place of good, ready, useful
English. Probably we shall wait for the _Kai-Fong_, but whichever we
decide for, we shall not miss the Taft party after all, which I am very
pleased about, and we have put our names down for the banquet.
They are in Manila now, the first intimation of their arrival having been
a telegram in the Iloilo _El Tiempo_, headed “Impresiones de Miss Alice
Roosevelt”—who had not been an hour in the Philippines, if she had landed
at all, when the impression was what newspaper language calls “voiced.”