Our First Few Days in the City
The Pasig River, With Its Swarm of House-boats--Through Manila into
the Walled City--Our First Meal--A Walk and a Drive in Manila--The
Admirable Policemen--We Superintend the Preparation of Quarters for
Additional Teachers--That Artful Radcliffe Girl.
Our guide from the Educational Department appeared about eleven
o'clock the next day, which happened to be Sunday. We and our trunks
were bundled into a launch, and we left the _Buford_ forever.
We were familiar with the magazine illustrations of the Pasig long
before our pedagogic invasion of Manila, but we were unprepared for
the additional charm lent to these familiar views by the play of
color. The shipping was as we had imagined it--large black and gray
coasters in the Hong-Kong and inter-island trade, a host of dirty
little _vapors_ (steamers) of light tonnage, and the innumerable
_cascos_ and _bancas_. The bancas are dug-out canoes, each paddled
by a single oarsman. The casco is a lumbering hull covered over in
the centre with a mat of plaited bamboo, which makes a cave-like
cabin and a living room for the owner's family. Children are born,
grow up, become engaged, marry, give birth to more children--in short,
spend their lives on these boats with a dog, a goat, and ten or twelve
lusty game-cocks for society.
The cascos lie along the bank of the river ten deep; every time a
coasting steamer wants to get out, she runs afoul of them in some way,
and there is a pretty mess. It always seems to turn out happily,
but the excitement is great while it lasts, and it is apparently
never dulled by repetition.
We swept up the Pasig with Fort Santiago and the ancient city wall on
the right; and, on the left, warehouses, or _bodegas_, a customhouse
with a gilded dome, and everywhere the faded creams and pinks of
painted wooden buildings. Some of the roofs were of corrugated iron,
but more were of old red Chinese tiles, with ferns and other waving
green things sprouting in the cracks. The wall was completely hidden
with vegetation.
We landed at the customhouse, left our trunks for inspection, and
entered gig-like vehicles which were drawn by diminutive ponies and
were called _carromatas_. Two of us were a tight fit, and, as I am
stout, I was afraid to lean back lest I should drag the pony upon his
hind legs, and our entrance into Manila should become an unseemly
one. The carromata wheels were iron-tired, and jolted--well, like
Manila street carromatas of that day. Since then a modification of the
carromata and of another vehicle called _calesin_ has been evolved. The
modern conveyance has rubber tires and a better angle of adjustment,
and the rat-like pony will dash about with it all day in good spirits.
We rattled up a street which I have since learned is called San
Fernando, and which looks like the famous Chinatown of San Francisco,
only more so. We passed over a canal spanned by a quaint stone
bridge, arriving in front of the Binondo Church just as the noon
hour struck. Instantly there burst out such a clamor of bells as we
had never before heard--big bells and little bells, brass bells and
broken bells--and brass bands lurking in unknown spots seemed to be
assisting. I do not know whether the Filipinos were originally fond
of noise or whether the Spaniards taught them to be so. At any rate,
they both love it equally well now, and whenever the chance falls, the
bells and the bands are ranged in opposition, yet bent to a common end.
The Bridge of Spain is approached from the Binondo side by almost the
only steep grade to be found in Manila. I was leaning as far forward
as I could, figuring upon the possible strain to be withstood by the
frayed rope end which lay between us and a backward somersault, when
my ears were assailed by an uncanny sound, half grunt, half moan. For
an instant I thought it was the wretched pony moved to protest by
the grade and my oppressive weight. But the pony was breasting the
steep most gallantly, all things considered. The miserable sound was
repeated a second later, just as our little four-footed friend struck
the level, and I discovered that it was my driver's appeal to his
steed. It is a sound to move the pity of more than a horse; until you
are thoroughly accustomed to it it leaves you under the apprehension
that the _cochero_ has been stricken with the plague. This habit of
grunting at horses seems to be disappearing at the present time, the
haughty customs of livery carromatas perhaps being responsible. Also
English is spreading. Apart from swear words, which appear to fill
a long-felt want for something emphatic, there are at least three
phrases which every Filipino who has to do with horses seems to have
made a part of his vocabulary. They are "Back!" "Whoa, boy!" and
"Git up!" Your cochero may groan at your horse or whine at it, but
when the need arises he can draw upon that much of English.
We jolted over the Bridge of Spain and through a masked gate into
the walled city, with the wall on our left, and the high bricked
boundaries of churches and _conventos_ on the right, till we arrived
at a low, square frame structure, with the words "Escuela Municipal"
above its portals. In Spanish times it was the training-school for
girls, and here temporary accommodation had been provided for us. We
crossed a hall and a court where ferns and palms were growing, and
were ushered into a room containing a number of four-poster beds. We
were to obtain our food at a neighboring restaurant, whither we soon
set out under guidance. The street was narrow, and all the houses
had projecting second floors which overhung the sidewalk. Box-like
shops on the ground floor were filled with cheap, unattractive-looking
European wares, with here and there a restaurant displaying its viands,
and attracting flies. We recognized the bananas and occasionally a
pineapple, but the other fruits were new to us--_lanzones_ in white,
fuzzy clusters like giant grapes; the _chico_, a little brown fruit
that tastes like baked apple flavored with caramel; and the _atis_,
which most natives prise as a delicacy, but which few Americans ever
learn to like.
We had been introduced to the alligator pear, the papaya, and the
mango at Honolulu, but we were still expecting strange and wonderful
gastronomic treats in our first Philippine meal.
We entered a stone-flagged lower hall where several shrouded carriages
would have betrayed the use to which it was put had not a stable odor
first betrayed it. Thence we passed up a staircase, broad and shallow,
which at the top entered a long, high-ceiled room, evidently a salon
in days past. It had fallen to baser uses, however, and now served as
dining-room. One side gave on the court, and another on an _azotea_
where were tropical plants and a monkey. It was a bare, cheerless
apartment, hot in the unshaded light of a tropical noonday. The tables
were not alluring. The waiters were American negroes. A Filipino youth,
dressed in a white suit, and wearing his black hair in a pompadour,
was beating out "rag time" at a cracked old piano.
"Easy is the descent into Avernus!" But there was consolation in
the monkey and the azotea, though we could neither pet the one nor
walk on the other. However, we were the sort of people not easily
disconcerted by trifles, and we sat down still expectant.
The vegetables were canned, the milk was canned, the butter was canned,
and the inference was plain that it had made the trip from Holland in
a sailing vessel going around Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope. As
for the fruits, there was but one fruit, a little acid banana full
of tiny black seeds. With guava jelly it was served for dessert. Our
landlord, an enterprising American, had been so far influenced by
local custom that he had come to regard these two delicacies as a never
inappropriate dessert. So long as we continued to "chow" with him, so
long appeared the acid, flavorless banana and the gummy, sticky jelly.
In justice to Manila it must be said, however, that such conditions
have long since been outlived. Good food and well-served American
tables are plentiful enough in Manila to-day. The cold-storage depots
provide meats and butter at prices as good as those of the home land,
if not better. Manila is no longer congested with the population,
both native and American, which centred there in war times. There
is not the variety of fruits to be found in the United States, but
there is no lack of wholesome, appetizing food.
We returned to the Escuela Municipal, and, after a nap, dressed
and went out for a walk. The narrow streets with overhanging second
stories; the open windows with gayly dressed girls leaning out to talk
with amorous swains on the pavement below; the swarming vehicles with
coachmen shouting "Ta-beh"; and the _frailes_ (friars)--tall, thin,
bearded frailes in brown garments and sandals, or rosy, clean-shaven,
plump frailes in flapping white robes--all made a novel scene to our
untravelled eyes. Mounting a flight of moss-grown steps, we found
ourselves on top of the wall, whence we could look across the moat
to the beautiful avenue, called, on the maps of Manila, the Paseo
de Las Aguadas, but familiarly known as the Bagumbayan. West India
rain-trees spread their broad branches over it, and all Manila
seemed to be walking, riding, or driving upon it. It was the hour
when everybody turns his face Luneta-ward. Seized with the longing,
we too sent for a carriage.
Our coachman wore no uniform, but was resplendent in a fresh-laundered
white muslin shirt which he wore outside his drill trousers. He
carried us through the walled city and out by a masked gate to a
drive called the Malecon, a broad, smooth roadway lined with cocoanut
palms. On the bay side the waters dashed against the sea wall just as
Lake Michigan does on the Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. But the view
across the bay at Manila is infinitely more beautiful than that at
Chicago. To the left stretches a noble curve of beach, ending with
the spires and roofs of Cavite and a purple line of plateau, drawn
boldly across the sky. In front there is the wide expanse of water,
dotted with every variety of craft, with a lonely mountain, rising
apparently straight from the sea, bulking itself in the foreground
a little to the left. The mountain is in reality Mt. Marivales,
the headland which forms the north entrance to Manila Bay, but it
is so much higher than the sierra which runs back from it that it
manages to convey a splendid picture of isolation. The sun falls
behind Marivales, painting a flaming background for mountains and
sea. When that smouldering curtain of night has dropped, and the sea
lies glooming, and the ships of all nations swing on their anchor
chains, there are few lovelier spots than the Luneta. The wind comes
soft as velvet; the surf croons a lullaby, and the little toy horses
and toy victorias spin up and down between the palms, settling at
last around the turf oval which surrounds the bandstand.
Here are soldiers in clean khaki on the benches; officers of the army
and navy in snow-white uniforms; Chinamen in robes of purple or blue
silk, smoking in their victorias; Japanese and Chinese nursemaids in
their native costumes watching their charges at play on the grass;
bareheaded American women; black-haired Spanish beauties; and native
women with their long, graceful necks rising from the stiff folds of
azure or rose-colored kerchiefs. American officers tower by on their
big horses, or American women in white drill habits. There are droves
of American children on native ponies, the girls riding astride,
their fat little legs in pink or blue stockings bobbing against the
ponies' sides. There are boys' schools out for a walk in charge of
shovel-hatted priests. There are demure processions of maidens from
the _colegios_, sedately promenading two and two, with black-robed
_madres_ vainly endeavoring to intercept surreptitious glances and
remarks. There are groups of Hindoos in turbans. There are Englishmen
with the inevitable walking-sticks. There are friars apparently of
all created orders, and there is the Manila policeman.
As I recall those early impressions, I think the awe and respect for
the Manila police was quite the strongest of all. They were the picked
men of the army of invasion, non-commissioned officers who could show
an honorable discharge. Size must have been taken into consideration
in selecting them, for I do not remember seeing one who was of less
than admirable proportions. Soldierly training was in every movement.
There was none of the loafing stride characteristic of the professional
roundsman. They wore gray-green khaki, tan shoes, tan leather leggings,
and the military cap; and a better set up, smarter, abler body of law
preservers it would be difficult to find. The "machinery of politics"
had not affected them, the instinct of the soldier to do his duty was
strong in them, and they would have arrested Governor William H. Taft
himself as gleefully as they would have arrested a common Chinaman,
had the Governor offered sufficient provocation.
We enjoyed that first night's entertainment on the Luneta as do all
who come to Manila, and I must confess that time has not staled it for
me. It is cosmopolitan and yet typically Philippine. Since that day
the fine Constabulary Band has come into existence, and the music has
grown to be more than a mere feature of the whole scene. The concert
would be well worth an admission fee and an hour's confinement in
a stuffy hall. Enjoyed in delightful pure air with a background of
wonderful beauty, it is a veritable treat.
On the following day we had our interview with the Superintendent
of Public Instruction. He informed us that in the course of a week
the transport _Thomas_ would arrive, carrying some five hundred or
more pedagogues. He suggested that, as we were then drawing full pay,
we might reimburse the Government by making ourselves useful at the
Exposition Building, which was being put in order to receive them.
So to the Exposition Building we betook ourselves, and for several
days made herculean efforts to induce the native boys and Chinese
who were supposed to clean it up to do so properly. We also helped
to put up cots and to hang mosquito nettings, and at night we lay and
listened to the most vociferous concert of bull frogs, debutante frogs,
tree toads, katydids, locusts, and iku lizards that ever murdered the
sleep of the just. We also left an open box of candy on the table of
the dormitory which we had preëmpted, starting therewith another such
frantic migration in the ant world as in the human world once poured
into the Klondike. They came on all trails from far and near. They
invaded our beds, and when the sweets gave out, took bites out of us
as the next best delicacy.
Manila seemed to be more or less excited over the new army of invasion,
the local papers teeming with jokes about pretty schoolma'ams and
susceptible exiles. The teachers were to land at the Anda Monument at
the Pasig end of the Malecon Drive, and thence were to be conveyed to
the Exposition Building in army ambulances and Doherty wagons which
the military had put at the disposal of the Civil Government.
Owing to the fact that I was appointed a sort of matron to the women's
dormitory, and had to be on hand to assign the ladies to their
cots and to register them, I did not go down to the Anda Monument
to see the disembarkation. Plenty of people who might have pleaded
less legitimate interest in the pedagogues than I had, were there,
however. By half-past ten the first wagon-load had arrived at the
Exposition Building in a heavy shower, and from then till early
noon they continued to pour in. On the whole, they were up to a
high standard--a considerably higher standard than has since been
maintained in the Educational Department. The women were a shade in
advance of the men.
Both men and women accepted their rough quarters with
few complaints. Nearly all were obliging and ready to do their
best to make up for the deficiencies in bell boys and other hotel
accommodations. We arranged a plan whereby twelve women teachers were
to be on duty each day,--a division of four for morning, afternoon,
and evening, respectively. The number of each woman's cot and room
was placed after her name, and one teacher acted as clerk while the
others played bell boy and hunted for those in demand.
And they were overworked! By five o'clock in the afternoon the parlor
of the Exposition Building looked like a hotel lobby in a town where a
presidential nominating convention is in session. To begin with, there
were the one hundred and sixty schoolma'ams. Then the men teachers,
who had been assigned to the old _nipa_ artillery barracks, found the
women's parlors a pleasant place in which to spend an odd half-hour,
and made themselves at home there. In addition, each woman seemed to
have some acquaintance among the military or civil people of Manila;
and officers in white and gold, and women in the creams, blues, and
pinks of Filipino _jusi_ thronged the rooms till one could hardly get
through the press. Victorias and carromatas outside were crowded as
carriages are about the theatres on grand opera nights at home.
It would have been difficult in all that crowd to say who was there
with good and sufficient reason. Many a man drifted in and out with the
hope of picking up acquaintance, and doubtless some were successful.
I was at the desk one day, doing duty for a teacher who was sick,
when two forlorn but kind-looking young men approached and asked if
I could tell them the names of any of the teachers from Michigan. We
had a list of names arranged by States, and I at once handed this
over. They pored over this long and sorrowfully. Then one heaved a
sigh, and one took me into his confidence. They were from Michigan,
and they had hoped to find, one or the other, an acquaintance on the
list. The eagerness of this hope had even led them to bring a carriage
with the ulterior motive of doing the honors of Manila if their search
proved successful. Their disappointment was so heavy, and they were
so naively unconscious of anything strained in the situation, that my
sympathy was honest and open. But when they suggested that I introduce
them to some of the women teachers from Michigan, and I declined the
responsibility as gently as I could, the frigidity of their injured
pride made me momentarily abject. They drifted away and hung about
with expectancy printed on their faces--that and a mingled hate and
defiance of the glittering uniforms which quite absorbed all feminine
attention and left their civilian dulness completely overshadowed.
One of the Radcliffe maidens had an experience which goes far to show
that higher culture does not eradicate the talent for duplicity for
which the female sex has long been noted, and which illustrates a
happy faculty of getting out of a disagreeable situation. It also
illustrates a singular mingling of unsophistication and astuteness,
which may be a result of collegiate training.
One of the chief difficulties which beset us was the matter of
transportation. In those days there was no street-car system--or
at least the apology for one which they had was not patronized by
Europeans. The heat and the frequent showers made a conveyance an
absolute necessity. The livery stables were not fully equal to the
demand upon them, and, in addition, there was no telephone at the
Exposition Building. As a consequence, we had to rely largely on street
carromatas. We had a force of small boys, clad in what Mr. Kipling
calls "inadequate" shirts, whose business it was to go forth in
response to the command, "_Busca carromata_," and to return not till
accompanied by the two-wheeled nightmare and the Lilliputian pony.
On the morning on which we drew our travel-pay checks, one of the
Radcliffe girls was most eager to get down town before the bank
closed. The shops of Manila had been altogether too alluring for the
very small balance which remained in her purse after our ten days at
Honolulu. The efforts of the small boys were apparently fruitless,
so she resorted to the expedient of trying to gather up a carromata
from some one leaving his at the Exposition Building. Every time a
carromata drove up, she thrust her cherubic countenance out of the
window and inquired of its occupant whether he was going to retain
his conveyance or to dismiss it. Most of the visitors signified
their intentions of never letting go a carromata when once they
had it; and failure had rather dimmed the bravery of her inquiry,
when one young man replied that he wished to retain his carromata,
but that he was returning immediately to the city and would be happy
to assist her and to take her wherever she wanted to go.
The Radcliffe girl closed with this handsome offer at once, accepting
it in the chummy spirit which is supposed to be generated in the
atmosphere of higher culture. A more worldly-wise woman might have
suspected him, not only on grounds of general masculine selfishness,
but on the fact that he had no business to transact at our hostelry. He
did not enter its doors, but remained sitting in the carromata till
she joined him. The girl had her mind on salary, however, and had
no time to question motives. The banks had closed, but her guardian
angel drove her to a newspaper office, where he introduced her,
vouched for her, and induced the bookkeeper to cash her check. He then
expressed a desire for a recognition of his services in the form of
introductions to some of the teachers at the Exposition Building. The
young woman was rather taken aback, for she had put all his civility
down to disinterested masculine chivalry; but she reflected that
she ought to pay the price of her own rashness. She was, however,
a girl of resources. She agreed to let him call that afternoon and
to introduce him to some of her new friends.
Then she came home and outlined the situation to an aged woman who
was chaperoning her daughter, to a widow with two children, and to
an old maid in whom the desire for masculine conquest had died for
want of fuel to keep the flame alive. When the young man appeared,
he found this austere and unbeautiful phalanx awaiting him. When the
introductions were over and conversation was proceeding as smoothly as
the caller's discomfiture would permit it to do, the artful collegian
excused herself on the ground of a previous engagement. She went away
blithely, leaving him in the hands of the three. Nor was he seen or
heard of on those premises again. Doubtless he still thinks bitterly
of the effects of higher education on the feminine temperament. It
was duplicity--duplicity not to be expected of a girl who could stick
her head out of a window and hail the chance passer-by as innocently
as she did.