Discharging Hemp from Paraos (Native Boats).To face page 10.
Discharging Hemp from Paraos (Native Boats).
To face page 10.
The hemp comes on board in great oblong bales, looking like oakum, and a man told me it was the fibre of a plant like a banana tree, which the natives split and shred very skilfully, and then it is dried and done up in bales, and “that is all there istoit,” as the Americans say.
Opposite the town of Cebú is a long, low island called Mactan, where the great Portuguese Navigator Magellan was killed in the year 1521. The story is that the natives of the islands, finding Magellan invincible, and believing him to be enchanted, lured the great explorer away by treachery to the little island of Mactan, where they had prepared a pit covered with branches, such as they use to trap wild pigs. Magellan fell into this trap, whereupon the savages rushed out of their hiding-places and shot him in the joints of his harness with poisoned arrows, and one bold man finally finished him off with a spear. They poison their arrows to this day as they did then, by dipping the tip into a decomposed human body.
There is a monument to Magellan on the spot where he died, but we did not have time to go and see it, so I had to be content with looking at a photograph, which gave me a very good idea of the quaint old three-decker edifice of grey stone, tapering to a column at the top. The real and original spelling of Mactan is as I have written it, but it is now altered to Maktan, and for this change there is a very curious reason, dating from the days, some ten years ago, when the Filipinos, headed by a patriot of the name of Emilio Aguinaldo, revolted against the authority of Spain. The chief element in the uprising was a secret society, called the Katipunan, the device of which, on flags and so forth, was K K K, and to make this fact memorable, or to prove his power, Aguinaldo ordered the hard letter C to be replacedby K in all names in the Philippines, making Mactan, Maktan; Capiz, Kapiz; Catbologan, Katbologan, and so on. This alteration the Americans, some think unwisely, have not taken the trouble to abandon, so the revolutionary spelling remains a monument of the success of disloyalty, to say nothing of the names having thus lost all philological significance.
We are now passing round the north end of the Island of Cebú, for Panay lies to the westward, in a rough parallel. Sometimes the north passage is taken, and sometimes the south, according to the wind and current. The currents are very strong between these islands—all the Philippine Islands, I mean, and in many places the sea is always rough, in fact it is very seldom really calm anywhere, I believe.
Our fellow-passengers are all Americans, half of them military, officers and privates, who address each other in most unceremonious fashion, and the rest school-teachers. A most appropriate and characteristic company, as the American scheme out here is to educate the Filipino for all he is worth, so that he may, in the course of time, be fit to govern himself according to American methods; but at the same time they have ready plenty of soldiers to knock him on the head, if he shows signs of wanting his liberty before Americans think he is fit for it. A quaint scheme, and one full of the go-ahead originality of America.
I can understand the conduct of the free and easy soldiers, for such equality is not inconsistent with American social theories; but what puzzles me is the use of these astounding pedagogues, who are honest, earnest, well-meaning folk, but their manners are those of ordinary European peasants. And as to the language they speak and profess, it is so unlike English that literally I find it difficultto catch their meaning when one of them speaks to me direct, and quite impossible when they talk to each other. Yet I could forgive them their dreadful lingo, if only they would not use the same knife indiscriminately to lap up yolk of egg, or help themselves to butter or salt. Of course these good people are fresh from America, and utterly ignorant of all things and people outside their native State (such ludicrous questions they ask!), but quite apart from that, and the hopeless blunders they must make on that account, it seems a pity that such rough diamonds should represent to these natives the manners and intellect of a great and ruling white nation.
But here comes the most curious phenomenon of all, for I am told that the United States does not pose as either “white” or “ruling” in these islands, preferring, instead, to proclaim Equality, which seems a very strange way to treat Malays, and I find myself quite curious to see how the theory works out. I only hope it won’t mean that we shall have unmanageable servants and impudence to put up with. Our friends in Manila told me ominously that housekeeping was “difficult,” and I begin to wonder if Equality has anything to do with it!
They are a funny little people, these Filipinos, the women averaging well under 5 feet, with pretty, slender figures and small hands and feet. The original race was a little, fuzzy-headed, black people, remnants of which are still to be found in the mountains and in the smaller islands, but the Filipino, as one sees him, is the result of Malay invasions. Up in the north, in Luzon, the Malays are a race or tribe called Tagalo, but all this part of the Archipelago is called Visaya, and the people Visayans. Of these broad outlines there are many subdivisions of type of course, in the way thatphysique is different even in different counties in so small a space as England; but the average Filipino is the same everywhere. The Filipinos (by which are meant the Tagalos and Visayans) are, as nearly as one can say, a short, thick-set people, with yellowy-brown skins, round, flat faces, very thick lips, which frequently jut out beyond the tip of the nose, and more bridge to the same said nose in proportion to the amount of foreign blood in the owner’s veins. It is not easy to lay down any very definite rule about their appearance though, as the race is so hopelessly mixed with Spanish, Chinese, European—every nation under the sun, that it is difficult to say what is a Filipino face. One feature they have in common, and that is magnificent, straight, jet-black hair, which the women turn back from the forehead, where it makes a roll so thick that it looks as if it must be done over a pad, while they twist the back high up, in shiny coils. The men look as if their thick mops were cut round a basin, and they have no beards and moustaches—I mean they can’t grow any, not that they don’t want them! As far as I have seen, they appear to be very lazy, and to talk a great deal. They are not a bit like the Chinese or Japanese in any way, unless they happen to have a strain of that blood in them, and even then the resemblance is only physical, for though the type may be varied, the universal character remains unalterable.
I forgot to tell you that at Cebú we “collected” C——’s dog, a dear old brown person, with one of the sweetest faces I ever saw, who answers to the name of Tuyay, which is the Visayan for Victoria. I really must leave off writing now, as it is long past time to “turn in,” though I feel as if I could write on for hours, there is so much to tell you.
A Filipino Girl, aged 10.A Casco (Barge).To face page 14.
A Filipino Girl, aged 10.
A Casco (Barge).
To face page 14.
Iloilo,December 4, 1904.
We arrived here on Friday last (the 2nd), and I at once sent off a letter to you, written on board theKai-Fong, which letter ought to reach you some time in the middle of January.
We are so glad to be at the end of this long journey—exactly seven weeks from London—seven weeks to the very day, for we left London on a Friday and got here on a Friday; and all that time we have been travelling steadily, and have seen so much that it seems years already since we left home. I hope you got all the letters I wrote on the way? One each from Gibraltar, Marseilles, Port Saïd, Aden, Colombo, Singapore, Penang, Hong Kong, Manila, and lastly, Cebú. I give you this list because I always have a fixed conviction that letters posted on a sea voyage seldom turn up, as the last one sees of them is going over the side in a strange land, in the clutches of some oily, dark person, who swears he will spend the money one has given him in stamps. I try to believe him, but he, like Victor Hugo’s beggar, thinks he has to live somehow, I suppose.
Well, so here we are at last on our “Desert Island,” as you call it—which is really a vast and fertile country, with several big towns, of which this is the chief and largest.
We got in at dawn as usual, the run from Cebú (which I notice the Americans callSee-boo) beingabout twelve hours, so our first view of the Island of Panay and the town of Iloilo was in the early morning light, from the deck of the steamer, which lay, waiting forpratique, in the “roads,” at the mouth of a river. We saw a long, flat, dark-green coast line, with a high range of purple mountains far inland, and the town of Iloilo, like Manila, almost imperceptible, as it lies so low on the mud-flats of a big estuary. It did not look at all inviting, just a line of very green trees, with some grey iron roofs amongst them, and it seemed as if it must be baking hot, but, as a matter of fact, the very flatness and the direction of the mountains keep the place cool, for, as I told you before, it lies exposed to the N.-E. and S.-W. Monsoons, the great arbiters of fate in the China seas.
On the map you may find marked a small island called Guimaras, which is about 4 or 5 miles off, but in this air it looks so close that trees and houses can be seen over there with the naked eye, and yesterday evening, in driving down a street of Iloilo and seeing Guimaras at the end, I thought it was part ofthisisland at the end of the road!
Guimaras is very small, with low, pointed hills, covered with forests, as are all these islands; and behind it, 7 miles further away, lies the big island of Negros, the mountains of which loom up, a dim, pale purple outline behind bright green Guimaras, making one more of these marvellous colour effects. One of the high peaks we see is a volcano called Malaspina or Canloon, which is 4592 feet high, and only half quiescent. At any rate, if we cannot actually see it, there is such a volcano in Negros. There are plenty of volcanoes in the Philippines, twenty-three of them all told, and that fact and the frequent earthquakes give an uncomfortable impression, as of a thin crust of rocks and trees over vast subterranean fires.
Here, in Panay, the mountains are 20 miles inland, away to the west—a long range of peaks and serrated ridges, behind which the sun sets with magnificent effects. From the foot of the mountains the land stretches away quite flat, watered by big rivers, and where one of these streams forms a wide estuary, this town is built, as I told you, on the mud, in the same way that Manila stands on the mud-flats of the Pasig.
The first settlement of white men in Panay was only a Spanish garrison, inside a fort built in the days when a few Spaniards in armour lurked under shelter from the poisoned arrows of the savage natives, while now and then a priest ventured out to see what a little talk and baptism would do towards making life more pleasant for everyone concerned.
When the island became more civilised, or settled, or subdued, or all three, a town called Jaro (pronounced Hahro) was founded about 3 miles up the river, and became the capital of Panay, but now the tide of commerce has swept down-river, and the chief town is Iloilo, all crammed down at the edge of the sea, with many of its suburbs nothing more nor less than sandy beach. It is a big town, with long, straggling streets, and the houses, all two stories high, with grey corrugated iron roofs, stand apart, separated by little bits of garden with palms and flowering trees, which makes it quite pretty, in spite of all the buildings being totally devoid of any architectural beauty whatsoever.
At present the N.-E. Monsoon is blowing, and everyone is anxious to point out to me how deliciously cool the weather is, and it is certainly not so overpowering as I had expected, but all the same I find it quite hot enough to be pleasant and a little over. Though there is no dew, the nights are refreshing—almost cold by contrast withthe day, and the evenings charming, while the early mornings are simply delicious. Dawn begins at half-past five, and by six the sun is up, but the air is exquisite till about half-past eight, when it begins to get too hot for anything but shade and fans, if one has any choice. I think the average Fahrenheit now is 83°, but as life here is adapted to such temperature, you must not think that means anything like what 83° would be in England. Still, when all is said and done, it is very hot, and if this is what they call “winter,” I am only thankful that I have not plunged at once into “summer.” This “winter” goes on till March, and then the weather begins to get hotter and hotter till June, when the Monsoon shifts to the S.-W., and the rainy season begins.
Four months dry and cool; four months dry and hot; four months wet and hot—that is the climate over most of the Philippine Islands, but it varies in sequence in different places—areas is a better word—and on the Pacific seaboard the seasons are quite reversed, so that it is rainy there when it is dry here. By rain and dry, however, I gather that a great deal of drought or a long, steady rain is not meant, for all during the dry season there are heavy showers, and everything remains green, while in the wet season there are spells of fine weather. Now I think I have described to you all I can of Iloilo till I see more of the place, but I know how anxious you will be to have some idea of what it is like.
We are busy house-hunting, which is a tedious and toilsome business, as there is not such an institution as a house agency—you allow a rumour to get about that you want a house, and then people tell other people to tell you where an empty building, such as you say you want, is to be found.Then you go off and “find” the house—a matter, usually, of infinite difficulties and sometimes quite impossible, as the Filipino cab-drivers don’t know the names of the streets, or the numbers, or the names of the people. The best plan is, get into a rickety old trap and let the man drive about, while you lean out and ask for the house you started out to find, and end by seeing another one withse aquila(to let) written up, and stopping as near to it as the driver can pull up his pony, and getting out there instead.
Having thus “found” a house, you set to work to “find” the owner of it, who is probably at the club, or a cock-fight, or playing cards; and when he, or she, appears, you ask—and this is quite necessary—if the house is to let; for the board does not signify much, as they seldom take the trouble to remove one when once it has been put up. Most of the boards are obligingly going through the process of removing themselves, one nail at a time.
When the house really is to let, you ask the rent, and whatever the answer is you throw up your hands in horror, and declare it ismuy caro(very dear), and that you will give half, calling assorted Saints to testify to all the drawbacks which make the house unfit for human habitation at any price.
Then a long argument ensues, for the people never really want to lose a tenant, as they know there is no lack of choice, for trade is very bad, and so many houses stand empty. All the same, the rates and taxes are appallingly high, and the rents are preposterous for this sort of town, and for the accommodation offered. Moreover you have a strangely lazy, supercilious, half-bred sort of people to deal with, who would rather keep a house empty and say they must have 100 dollarsa month and starve, than take 50 for it and live on the fat of their land.
The money here is a dollar currency called Conant, which is worth 2s. 1d.—half the American dollar. This is the Philippine currency, and is named after its inventor, an American called Conant, and I wish he had invented a cheaper unit, for 10 Conant dollars, orpesos, as they are called, are nothing to spend, whereas the equivalent, an English guinea, is an important sum, and represents four times the spending value of 10pesos. It is a silver currency, dollars and notes, and the coins have rather a pretty design of a man sitting looking at the sea, surrounded by most amusing inscriptions. For instance, the 5-cent, piece is: “Five Centavos,” and underneath is “Filipinas.” Why not “Five cents.” and “Philippines,” or else “Cinco centavos, Filipinas?” Why such mongrel? One can only suppose it is the notion of Equality coming out in some mysterious way by meeting the natives half-way in Spanish, which, by-the-bye, is not their native language, and only a few of them speak it at all.
The houses here, as I said before, are all two-storied, the upper part of wood, and the lower of stone or concrete. The floors are of long planks of hard, dark, native woods, which the servants polish with petroleum pads on their feet, sliding about till the surface is like brown glass. The walls are merely wooden partitions, painted white or green, and in the corners of the rooms appear the big tree trunks to which the house is lashed, sometimes just painted white like the walls, or encased in a wooden cover. The word “lashed,” I must tell you, is not a figure of speech, as the houses really are tied together withbejuco, rattan (a strong, fibrous vine), so as to allow sufficient play for earthquakes, which, it appears, are sofrequent in these islands as to be in no way remarkable.
Old Spanish Houses at MoloTo face page 20.
Old Spanish Houses at Molo
To face page 20.
The “windows” are really the greater part of each side of the house left open and fitted with shutters, sliding in grooves. Even with these “windows” closed against rain or sun the rooms remain cool, as the shutters are composed of wooden slats a little apart. Inside these is another set for very rainy weather, made of small square panes, each filled with a very thin, white, pearl oyster shell.
Taken all round, the Philippine houses are very pretty, and capable of a great deal of decoration, though, of course, one does not want any draperies or many ornaments about in such a climate, where such superfluities would simply become the homes and nurseries of clouds of mosquitoes and other small fry, besides being unendurably hot even to look at.
At first it appears very odd to see houses without chimneys and rooms without fireplaces, though I can’t think why they have none, as it must be very difficult to keep the houses dry in the wet Monsoon.
Iloilo,December 10, 1904.
I am sure you will be pleased to hear that we have already found a house to suit us, in fact we are quite charmed with it, and can’t be too thankful that we did not hastily take any of the others we saw. C—— went to look at some on Tuesday, but on the way he saw this one, and liked it so much that he at once came back for me to look at it, and I went off to inspect, even in the middle of the day! I agreed with him in thinking the house charming, so we took it at once—or as soon as we had finished the preliminary pantomime with the Filipino landlady, a pleasant woman, married to a Spaniard.
The house is in one of the two nicest streets, a little out off the town, on the spit of land formed by the estuary and the open sea. These two streets run parallel, but as the spit gets narrower they leave off, and end in the Government Hospital, the CavalryCorral(stables), some Government buildings, and diminish gradually to a long road, a house, some barren land, a few palms, a pilot’s hut, a little bit of beach, some pebbles, and one small crab.
Our house faces S.-W. on a garden, and the back is all open to the river and the N.-E. Monsoon—the most important consideration here, for houses that do not get the wind are stifling and unhealthy.We saw two or three that would have suited us very well, but for the fact that they stood the wrong way, or because the through draught was impeded by some tree or building outside.
The house we have taken is in the usual style, such as I described to you in my last letter, and in one-half of the lower part lives our Spanish landlord, while in the other half, rather vault-like,se aquila. The lower parts of the houses are unhealthy, because of the malarial gases arising from the soil, and the damp, so no one lives in the basements if they can afford anything else.
The upper part of this house we are going to live in is quite a separate dwelling, as it is approached by an outside staircase, coming up upon an open balcony running round three sides of the upper story. The balcony is a great charm, and very few of the houses have this addition. I thought that the Spaniards would have made open balconies the fashion out here, but was very much surprised to see none, and can only attribute the lack of them to the fact that the settlers came from the North, in the same way that the houses have nopatios, and so forth. A roofed balcony like this is not only a delightful lounge, but it keeps the house very cool, besides catching a lot of the heavy rains, and it seems incomprehensible that any sane person could build a house in this climate without one. Verandahs are, of course, quite unknown, but I daresay there is a reason for all this in the terrible Typhoons which sweep over these islands, and would make short shrift of any fancy out-works.
We come into a big hall at the back of the house, with the outer side almost all (with shutters) open to the estuary, and the front portion of the house is thesala. Off these two, open five rooms, all large and airy, and freshly painted white. In many of the houses the top of each room has a deepfrieze in the shape of a pretty wooden grill, a Chinese fashion, which allows the air to circulate freely through the house—to say nothing of the remarks of the dwellers! We have not got this extra luxury, which I suppose has not been considered necessary in so airy a house.
At the back is what is called theAzotea, which in this case happens to be built over the house below. It is a big, sloping, concrete floor, on which are built the kitchen, bathroom, store-room, etc.—all very compact, and quite away from the house, and not coming between us and the wind. In this, again, some of the houses we saw were impossible, for the outbuildings on the Azotea were placed so that they stopped the draught through the house. You may think I am a little foolish on the subject of a current of air, but I assure you I am not, for in a position with no draught the pores of the skin open like so many sluices, and one’s head begins to throb.
So that is our house, which, after genuine Spanish haggling, we got for 50pesosa month, a sum working out at about £60 a year, a very low rent indeed out here. In fact, when we set out and said we meant to give no more than 50 dollars a month for a house, we were simply laughed at, and at first were almost inclined to think it could not be done, but when we saw the numbers of houses standing empty in all the nice streets, we stuck to our sum, and are very glad now that we did so. A Spaniard orMestizo(Eurasian) would not dream of giving more than thirty for a house like the one we have taken, but an American would give a hundred. That is where the trouble comes in—in making the people understand that we don’t mean to grind them down, nor, on the other hand, to pay foolish sums, but to give the right value for what we get.
The Back of our House.Showing Azotea and Outbuildings.To face page 24.
The Back of our House.
Showing Azotea and Outbuildings.
To face page 24.
You know the way Americans go about in Europe spending the unit, which is lower than their own, like water, with no sense of value? And how they raise prices wherever they go! Well, they have done the same thing here, and an American woman, who was talking to me the other day, told me it was now beginning to be apparent to them what a mistake they had made, and they bitterly regretted having made the Philippines as expensive as America, but that it was very difficult for them to go back now to the more reasonable scale, for as soon as a Filipino found out you were an American, nothing would move him from American prices. Poor thing, she was very bitter about it, and I felt very sorry for her (as well as rather alarmed for myself), for the sums she was paying in rent and wages to live at all in Iloilo, would have kept her in comfort in London or Paris.
Well, when we had settled on the house, we drove straight to the shop-streets of the town—or rather, street, for there is only one with shops, the principal thoroughfare, called the Calle Real. Some of the shops have quite big, handsome windows of plate glass, with wonderful things displayed in them, but when you get inside you find they are, like the shop window in Browning’s poem, only “astonishing the street,” and beyond the window there is nothing but a large half-empty hall, where a few languid, sallow Eurasians stand trimming their nails behind long, untidy counters. These are the Spanish, Filipino, and German shops; but the Chinese are just the reverse, with no show in the little low window, and the inside a small, poky room, crammed with everything any human being ever invented, and kept by energetic, slant-eyed men who simply won’t let you go without buying something.
The principal shop, however, is the greatStore, which is kept by an English firm called Hoskyn & Co., and is said to be the best in the islands, and there we bought elemental necessaries, in the way of a few pieces of furniture, some groceries, china, glass, and so forth, at prices, when translated into shillings, to turn one faint with dismay. It was maddening to think of the lovely things we could have got for the same money at home, nevertheless these were very cheap for the Philippines, for this is a notoriously cheap “store,” which can afford to sell at low prices, as they have such an immense business, even being able to compete with the shops in Manila, where they send all manner of life’s necessaries. Though I am once more reminded of papa’s remark that he never realises what a curse human life has become till he reads through a store list.
When we had done our shopping, we came back to the house and unpacked our new household goods as they came in, hung lamps, and so on, and all that day worked hard at the house. At intervals prospective servants kept dropping in, for servants are secured here in much the same way as houses—people tell other people about the opportunity, and the news flies about in servant-land.
All shapes and sizes of Filipinos loomed on the balcony at intervals, and drifted into the hall and stood watching us till we had time to attend to them. In this country all the doors stand always open for coolness, and there are no bells, and when you go to a house you walk in at the door and sing out for a servant. Some people go so far as to have a hand bell at the top of the stairs, but the whole system seems to me ridiculous, so I have persuaded C—— to invest in a door bell, which he is going to fix to the main door into the hall.
We were unpacking and going about the house,and every now and then we would come upon a silent figure waiting, just waiting, anywhere, leaning up against something, and perfectly indifferent to time or place. This stamped him as a candidate. To each one C—— put first of all the question:
“Can you speak English?”
And when the man said “Yeees, sair,” he was refused without any further parley, for nothing will induce us to take servants who can understand what we are saying, which would make life impossible in these open houses. Besides that, when they speak English it means they have been with Americans, who spoil the Filipino servants dreadfully with their well-meant notions of equality, and give ridiculous wages as well. In the Spanish days a Filipino head-servant got 5 or 6pesosa month, and thepesothen was the Mexican dollar, which is only about two-thirds of the Conant unit. It was, and is, riches to them, but so changed are these things now, that we are considered wonderful because we have found amayordomoor head boy willing to come to us for 10pesosa month and a second boy for 6. An American would give them twice as much, if not more, which would simply turn them into drunkards, or gamblers, or both, or worse.
All the Philippine servants are men, as all over the East, though some women do have a native maid; but as all the women I have met do nothing but complain of the laziness and uselessness of these handmaidens, I have no idea of saddling myself with such a burden.
The two men we have engaged are about twenty years of age, but it is always very difficult to tell how old Filipinos are, as they look old when they are young and young when they are old. They can give no particular account ofthemselves, these two, and have unaccountably mislaid their little books of references; but we are taking them on the recommendation of their faces, which are nice, and that is just as good a standard to go by in a Filipino as in anyone else! One is a native of Guimaras; the other a Tagalo, from Luzon; and both are short, thick-set, sturdy-looking fellows who ought not to give us much trouble with falling ill. Half the time here the servants are ill with fever, or colds, or heaven knows what, for it is a race without much stamina.
One of the most aggravating characteristics of the Filipinos is the way they murmur, for they have naturally very soft voices, which become positively a whisper with shyness and awe. The English people here adopt the custom, which prevails throughout the East, of calling their servants “boys,” but the Americans use the Spanish wordmuchacho, and that is unfortunate, as they give all vowels the narrow, English value, making it this wordmuchaycho. It sounds so odd, this lack of ear, and quite alters some of the Spanish names—such as saying Cavyt for Cavite (the naval port of Manila), Caypiz for Capiz (a town in Panay), and so on, and though they pronounce Jaro exactly the same as the English town of Harrow, thank goodness they don’t go so far as to call this place Eye-low-Eye-low!
Filipino Servants.To face page 28.
Filipino Servants.
To face page 28.
But I am wandering away from the servants, and I have not yet introduced the cook to you. We had less trouble to get this treasure than the others, as all the natives cook well by instinct—at least, they know how to make the best of what food there is to be had, which is all one wants. This particularchefis a shrivelled, pock-marked person, about 4 feet6 in height, with an array of immense teeth, and an air of intense importance; this last characteristic being funny or annoying according to the mood one happens to be in oneself. His wages are 15pesosa month, and as he is a married man, or says so, he is to live with his family in the town.
And that was the end of the first day, and a very long and fatiguing one in this climate.
When we came back next morning we found that theboys, who had been left in charge of the house and what furniture we had fixed up, had already swept and polished the floors, which made an immense difference to the appearance of the place, and the lamps were filled and trimmed. There is electric light in the town, but it is so very bad, and is the cause of so much complaint, that all have to supplement their expensive electricity with oil lamps before they can read. We are, therefore, not going to have it put on, though it would be quite easy, as the wire passes over us from next door. The efficiency and intelligence of the new servants pleased us very much, but all the same we observed cautiously to each other: “New brooms sweep clean.”
We left the new brooms still sweeping, and went off to the shops again, and once more spent important and heart-breaking sums on the bare necessities of life. This time it was furniture, at the shop of a Chinese Eurasian, where we got a lot of things that look very nice, though they are not anything wonderful in the way of wood; but in these light, open houses with no fires and no carpets, it is not necessary to have such rich-looking furniture as at home. If one likes to spend still more money, there are beautiful things to be had made from magnificent hard Philippine woods, but the high price of labour,the poverty everywhere, and lack of capital and enterprise, have made these hard-wood things so dear that they are luxuries. The ordinary furniture is, in spite of the cent.-per-cent. import duties, either made out of Oregon pine, or else imported ready made from Vienna; but an insect calledbuc-buc, with which the country abounds, eats these soft pine woods, though it will not touch the native mahogany, teak, ebony, etc. It is not as if this Philippine timber were swept off for export, for no trade is done with it as no cheap labour is to be had, and splendid trees just decay in the crowded forests on the hills.
For oursalawe invested in basket furniture, a necessity in this heat, for padded chairs or cushions would be unendurable. The bamboo and rattan, of which Chinamen would make all sorts of pretty chairs and couches for a fewpesosa piece, grow plentifully here, but in the Philippines such articles are only to be had at three times the price, as they are imported from China, for the Filipinos are too lazy and stupid to make anything of the materials given them by “el buen Dios,” and if they did, the scale of wages, set by the American Government, would make the things even more expensive than those imported. So the reeds rot, and the woods rot; and we, for our part, cannot cease to regret that we did not, while we were in Hong Kong, invest in some of the cheap and beautiful furniture we saw there, but we took local advice and forbore to import anything into this land of prohibitive tariffs; though now we discover that, tariffs and all, we should have found it cheaper to have brought the things with us.
All this expense of life springs from the accepted interpretation of the maxim, “Philippinesfor the Filipinos,” which saying was invented by the late (and first) Governor-General of the Philippines, a man of the name of Taft, who is now Secretary of War in the United States. I suppose the idea caught on in America, and the good people there, whose opinion controls affairs in this country, which they have never seen, think that prohibitive tariffs and the exclusion of cheap Chinese or Japanese labour, must be a good thing for these depopulated islands if it is a benefit to the overcrowded U.S.A.
As a matter of fact, when applied to an indolent, indifferent race, the result is stagnation and starvation prices, which is a terrible state of affairs in a hot country like this, where food and labour ought to be plentiful and cheap, or nothing will pay. I can’t think that the Americans really believe the Filipinos to be as high a development of the human race as they are themselves; but since they wish, with the best intentions, to allow the Filipinos to benefit by American systems of government, these Malays must first learn the A B C of such a system. Whether they are capable of profiting by such lessons, or whether they are so foreign to the essence of this race as to ruin it, remains to be demonstrated.
Well, I must get back to the house again, and the end of the story is that we moved into our house on Thursday, the 8th, and slept here that night. We were able to do this so soon, as people have been very kind in lending us things—sheets and towels from one, table-linen from another, and so on—but all the same I wish our cases would come, as there is such a responsibility about other people’s gear.
À proposof these same cases, we are rather uneasy in our minds about them, as we are beginning to hear alarming rumours of Customs dutiesto be paid. Wedding presents used to be exempt, but quite lately duties were levied on them, and I am afraid we shall have to pay for our own things, which is a bore, not to say rather a blow.
We got through all our trunks, etc., that we had with us with a perfunctory opening of one box, a few questions, and the signing of papers, the only trouble being C——’s gun, which they took away, and he will not be able to get a licence, or allowed to have it out of the Customs House before he finds two “bonds” of 100 dollars each. That is, in clear English, he must find two people who are prepared to bet the American Government 100 dollars each that he is not going to sell the gun to an Insurgent.
So, barring the gun anxiety, we got our boxes in all right, and are told it would have gone equally well with the cases had we had them with us, but as they are coming out by freight, they will be subject to the duties. However, the authorities tell us it will not be very severe—C—— went and inquired about it, as he said he would rather not take our spoons and forks and things out of bond, but would prefer to send them back to Hong Kong rather than pay a large sum. So, all things considered, C—— is not reassured, so he has arranged to have the cases sent here unopened and in bond; and is going to open them, in bond, at the Custom House, and have the contents appraised before he decides what to do with them. The only reasonable hope is that many of the contents, such as plate, may be exempt, or very lightly taxed, as they are articles that could not possibly be produced in the Philippines; but when I mentioned this to a Customs official, he replied that such an idea had nothing to do with the system of taxation.
This is a fearfully long letter, but even now I feel I have not told you half I wanted to.
Iloilo,December 17, 1904.
We are settling down very comfortably into our charming house, which we like more and more, and are continually congratulating ourselves on our luck in having found such a nice home.
There is nothing special to tell you about since I last wrote, so I will try to give you some idea of my housekeeping, of which I think I have not yet told you anything beyond just mentioning how many servants we have.
I find that the cook—he with the important manner and the big teeth—has been an under-cook in an American hotel, or what he is pleased to call an American hotel, by which I take it he means one of the saloons or eating-houses in the town. So far, however, he has proved himself a very good cook indeed, which is even more necessary here than anywhere else, for food in the Philippines has but little variety, and is not nourishing at its best. Every morning I give this person apesoand a half, with which he goes off to the market and buys whatever takes his fancy, or, more probably, what is to be had, which generally takes the form of an incredibly small and thin fowl—alive; one or two little fish; some green peppers or egg-plants, and always a few very small, half-ripe tomatoes. With these and with help from the store-room, he concocts a very good lunch and dinner, and, doubtless, makes a good thingout of it, but most cooks charge 2 dollars for the samemenu, and he really provides for us very well. I supply tea, salt, butter, lard, tinned fruits, potatoes, macaroni—in fact all the dry provisions usually kept in a store-room, I don’t know what is the technical name for them.
The store-room (dispensa, they call it), where these treasures are hoarded up, is a very nice little dark cabin, with shelves all round, which I made the boys clean out and wipe everywhere with petroleum, an excellent precaution against the numberless and extraordinary animals with which one has to share the house. I got tall glass jars for protection against cockroaches, and tins to keep mice off, and wire-netting for rats, and naphthaline to astonish the scorpions and spiders; and last, but by no means least, a good strong padlock for human beings! When the tins and bottles were all arranged, they looked very home-like.
We get up at half-past five or six, and I give one of theboys20[2]cents, with which he goes out and buys bread for the day at the shop of some Chinaman down the street. It is necessary to get small daily supplies of everything, for food will not keep. Some people have told me fearful anecdotes about the horrors perpetrated by the Chinamen in the making of their bread, and these faddists have theirs made at home, but the Chinese bread tastes quite good, and is much more light and digestible than that made by the house-cooks. As our cook has cooked for Americans, he knows how to make the hot cakes which are the great feature of American breakfasts, but we won’t have them, for they are deadly anywhere, especially in the tropics.
After our seven o’clock breakfast, which consistsvery largely of eggs, and after C—— has gone to the office, I open the door of thedispensaand serve out the day’s supplies; but this routine was not brought about without a struggle, for at first the cook persisted in coming to me intermittently all day long to ask for things. At least, he invented wants, but I had an idea his only object was the key of thedispensa, as these Filipinos have a full measure of the cunning of the brown-faced person all the world over. However, I disappointed him about that, always leaving whatever I was doing to go and open the door and get out what he wanted, at the same time remarking, as best I could, that if he did not ask for things at the proper time he must do without them. Then once or twice I carried the threat into effect, and when he heard what C—— had to say about the dinner, that cured him. Everyone tells me doleful tales about the way themuchachoorboyrobs them, so I thought it would be better to start from the first by giving as few opportunities as possible for trouble of this sort.
In the morning the servants’ food is also given out, each one getting an allowance of rice (for which purpose we lay in a large sackful), and this they boil and eat with some tiny fish which they buy for themselves with a few extra cents I give them. I believe it is unheard-of extravagance to give the extra money; and I never measure out the rice, but let them take it, for, after all, it is all the poor souls live on. All over the Philippines the natives of all classes live almost entirely on rice, which formerly used to be grown in all the islands, but rinderpest destroyed many of thecarabaos(buffaloes), which worked the soil, and high wages and heavy taxes have wrought even greater havoc, so that nowthe supply nearly all comes from China. You see, high wages are offered in the towns, and what with that and the unsuitable education they receive, the country-people all flock into the towns, and the country places are empty. It is on the coast, in the towns, that rice is so much eaten, for inland the staple food iscamote(sweet potato); so the country-people think rice a luxury, and the town’s-people eatcamoteas a treat.
When I wrote last, I don’t think the staff was completed by the washerwoman, was it? A person with a huge, almost black, pan face came and stood in the picture of blue sky and green palm-branches framed in the doorway, dressed in a skirt formed of a tight fold of red cloth and a muslin bodice with huge sleeves (the native costume), holding a big black umbrella in one hand, and muttering in an undertone, while she kept one dull, rolling eye on Tuyay, who was disposed to growl and sniff.
We were at breakfast at the time, and as we ate we conversed patiently with her till we found that this person wanted to be taken on as alavanderaat 20pesosa month, which is about twenty-six guineas a year. This offer we refused with imprecations, and we added that we would not give more than 10.
She melted away, murmuring, from the front door, and presently reappeared at the back door (both opening upon the hall, but at different ends), and murmured afresh. I must tell you, by-the-bye, that, following a very general custom here, we use one end of the hall as dining-room, though there is a room which has been used for that purpose, but it looks on the alley between this house and the next, and is not so cool as the hall.
After more conversation, we decided to engage this pan-faced individual at 12pesosa month as a stop-gap, till we should be able to find some more intelligent woman, and there and then I gave her a bagful of soiled linen, and off she went.
Next day at lunch she suddenly reappeared, perfectly cow-like and stolid, leaning up against the door-post and murmuring so that C—— simply gotwildwith her, and would have thrown everything on the table at her head, I believe, if I had not been there.
As the cook is the only one of the servants who speaks above a whisper, he was sent for, and he told us that pan-face wanted soap, starch, and charcoal. All the washing is done in cold water at some well, it appears, and they only want a little charcoal to put in the iron. So C—— wrote an order, avalethey call it, upon Hoskyn’s for soap, a box-iron, starch, and charcoal, and away went the newlavandera.
But we had not seen the last of her, for the next day she came again, at breakfast this time, and murmured again, clutching the bulgy gamp and leaning against the door-post. This time the cook told us she wanted tin tubs, and C—— gave a sort of roar as he asked her when the devil she was going to begin the washing, but she only looked more hopelessly stupid, and her face became more like a gorilla’s. At last she got hervalefor tubs, and off she went—but about mid-day she reappeared, on the balcony, outside the front door, with the tubs, huge tin baths, sitting beside her.
C—— managed to control himself sufficiently to ask her if there was anything the matter with the tubs, and she was understood to say no, but she only wanted to show us she had got tubs; and she melted away.
Next afternoon I was told thelavanderahad arrived, so I went out to tell her theseñorwould soon be in and ready to listen to her, though I really had some doubt about the latter statement, but I found her undoing a huge bundle of washing—all finished and ready! And such beautiful work, C——’s white linen suits done to perfection, my frocks and blouses like new—I never saw clothes look more fresh and lovely. It was a pleasant surprise.
So pan-face remains, but all the same we are quite prepared to find this standard not kept up for long, and if any remonstrance has to be made, we know we shall have that blank look and that murmuring to face again.
Theboysare shaping very well, and if they go on as they are doing, no one could wish for better servants. I did not bewilder them more than I could help at first, but sprang a routine on them by degrees in a mixture of pantomime, Italian and a word or two of Spanish, that seems to answer the purpose very well. Two things C—— insisted on from the first: one, that the servants should wear native costume and bare feet in the house; and the other, that they must address us asseñorandseñora, none of which little marks of etiquette are insisted on in American households, but we think, and I believe rightly, that they are of the greatest importance in dealing with Orientals. C—— said if they didn’t like these rules they could go, but apparently they did like them, and they have stayed.
We asked some friends to dinner a few nights ago, and just before they arrived C—— went into the hall and found an unknown young man, in a very smart, white, buttoned-up, linen European suit with starched collar, and white canvas shoes, standing on a chair in the middle of the hall, doingsomething to one of the lamps. When the man turned round, we saw, to our amazement, that he was Domingo—our secondboy!
When he saw C——’s expression, the servant was quite frightened, not having any idea what crime he could be committing or have committed, but he very soon understood that if he did not take off those shoes and that coat he would be fired out of the house. I don’t think the poor creature meant any harm, in fact he was supposed to be got up in his best to do honour to our guests, but he fled at once to the Azotea, and has never been seen again except in the Filipino dress, which is a loose shirt rather like a Chinaman’s coat, only fastening up the middle, and with bare feet.
Yesterday the cook appeared, carrying four huge, tall orchid plants, with very green leaves and pale mauve flowers, such lovely things, which he suggested would look well in thesala, and I quite agreed, so we began to negotiate for them. The countryman who had brought the flowers was ushered to the back door, and there was understood to murmur that he wanted 2pesos(four shillings) for the four plants, but the cook, who said this wasmuy caro, got him down to apesoand 20 cents; only, the people here use many terms applicable to the old coinage, such asreal,peseta, and so on, which make it so extremely puzzling to discover what the price of things really is, that I found it difficult to make out what to give; but the cook fished out apesoand 20 cents out of a pile of money I put on the table, and the man picked the two coins up and went off quite content. In my ignorance, I thought it rather a shame to insist on so low a price for such lovely plants—and orchids, too! However, I have since found out that these plants grow wild in greatprofusion in the woods over in the Island of Guimaras, and that what I had paid was like giving a man at home two shillings for a bunch of primroses. In spite of this, I decline to consider myself swindled, or to be dissatisfied with my bargain.
When the orchids had been bought, I asked the cook where he proposed to find pots to put them in, and he smiled in a very superior fashion, and said they only wanted some earth and a piece of sacking to live in, and they could be kept alive by certain airings and drinks of water; and when I said, “Who is going to do all this?”
“Domingo,señora,” he said in a great hurry. “Domingo is the only one who really understands plants”—and he grinned and nodded his head with marvellous rapidity.
I rather fancied the placid Domingo would be told he knew about plants and have to attend to them, after the fashion of one or two other “jobs” I had noticed, but I thought it best not to interfere, as Domingo is twice the size of the cook, and ought to be able to look after himself. Later on I saw the two of them fixing the tall plants, with roots neatly tied up in sacking bags, to the walls of thesala, or rather, Domingo very adroitly tying and nailing up, while the cook stood by to talk twenty to the dozen, and came afterwards to me for approval.
We had a very amusing scene of this description at the very beginning, when we fixed up the mosquito nets, on which occasion all hands, myself included (with needle and cotton) did something tangible, while the cook devoted the time to talking and jabbering and hopping about, uncannily like a monkey.
The orchids are really lovely, and make thesalalook charming with their masses of littleblooms of mauve and yellow against the white walls, and in time I must try to get some small trees in tall Chinese stands of blue and green earthenware, which adorn the houses here in profusion, and suit the white paint and brown floors admirably.
Iloilo,Christmas Eve, 1904.
We have just come back from a delightful drive, to a town called Molo, which lies inland, in the direction of the river, but on the opposite bank to Jaro, the latter, as I think I told you, having been the capital of the Island of Panay in the olden days. There is a good road out to both of these towns, which crosses the river at Molo, and makes a circle, passing through a village called Mindoriao, and this is the great drive of the place, in fact the only one. The whole round is about 8 or 9 miles, however, which is too long for apaseo(promenade), so the carriages roll out at sunset to one of the two towns, turn round the quaint, ramshackle, oldplazas, and return whence they came, spinning along in the fresh night air, with lamps lighted, and all the little ponies gallantly determined to pass each other.
Along the sides of the road, for a long way out of the town, stretches a vast suburb of picturesque native huts of palm thatch, built on high poles in the jungle, or standing in the edge of the river, surrounded by palms and all sorts of tropical trees of different brilliant greens, through which may be caught glimpses of intensely blue river or sea and exquisite mauve mountain ranges.
We enjoyed our drive immensely, and kept wishing that Papa could see the endless pictures of brown and yellow huts, women in bright reddresses, the groups of children and animals, the grey old Spanish churches and belfries—I think if you ever came out here he would spend his whole time on a camp stool, sketching for dear life!
Our cases have come from home at last, though I don’t know why I should say that, as they have not been so very long after us, but we were rather grubbing along till they came, which made the time seem longer. When C—— was informed they had arrived, he went down to the Custom House and spent a long day with the official appraiser, a most polite and patient young man, weighing and examining everything. The methods of doing this are wonderful and alarming, for they weigh the silver and plate with their leather or wooden cases, and the duty is charged by so much on the kilo! Imagine what the proportion is on a dozen silver spoons or knives in a handsome oak case! All the italics and exclamations in the biggest printing house in the world could not convey my sentiments upon this subject. The textiles are examined with a magnifying glass, appraised as materials, and taxed as such, at the rate of 50 per cent., upon what the Customs people choose to say was their original value. If the material is made up, there is extra duty of 100 per cent., which makes me glad that I put so few of my frocks in the cases. The only way to console oneself is to think that even with the duty added, they cost about half what they would if one bought the materials and had them made up here.
Well, the end of it was that C—— came home late in the afternoon and told me that the duty came to 300pesos—a little over £30!—and did I think the things were worth it, or should we send them back to Hong Kong in bond?
After we had discussed the matter, going into it all carefully, we came to the conclusion that wecould not find substitutes for our things here for that sum. So we decided to take them, and the cases were brought up here by coolies, two or four carrying each one slung withbejucoropes on to a hard-wood pole.
It is very nice to have all our own things about, but all the same it is a fearful hardship to have to pay their value for things that belong to us, and particularly annoying in the case of the wedding presents.
This, the arrival of the cases, has been the great excitement of the week, and from the look of the box-room, bids fair to continue to excite all hands for some time to come.
When we get the sketches hung up, the house will look very pretty, I think, and we are going to have some of them put in some frames that came in an old case full of C——’s things from Cebú. They will look very nice done up with enamel, and we can get some glass at a Chinaman’s shop, but all “crystal” comes from outside, of course, and is subject to a very heavy duty. You may be surprised, perhaps, to hear me mention Chinese shops so much, but nearly all the “stores” in the Philippines are kept by Chinamen, one (as I told you) by an English company here, and I don’t know if there are others, but I fancy not, and the rest by Spaniards and Germans. The chief businesses, big trading firms, are English all through the islands, and have been so for fifty years or more; and there are some Spanish companies, dealing in tobacco chiefly, and besides these, one or two Germans and Swiss, who import their native productions. Nearly all the Americans are official, military, educational, or missionaries. I am told that a few of the American soldiers, when the war was, or was said to be over, settled down on small plantations in the southern islands, and there aresome saloon-keepers in the towns, a boot shop in Manila, and a struggling mechanic here and there; but so far, that is the extent of the American business interest in the place. Planters bringing in capital, such as our colonies profit by, do not, and never can, come into this country, for a new American law exists which prohibits all persons who are not natives from acquiring more than 40 acres of Philippine soil, and 40 acres in the tropics is not worth having, I believe.
I rigged up my bed with my own pillow-cases and sheets yesterday. They were delicious to sleep in, and the idea of linen pillow-cases for coolness and cotton sheets for health is excellent, for a cotton pillow-covering would be very hot and uncomfortable, and linen sheets would be dangerous in such heat. I have got myself an iron bed with a wire mattress, for I cannot sleep on the Filipino bed, which is a little platform of woven cane, and quite hard and unyielding. They are wooden four-posters, these native beds, with a cotton roof, usually red, set off by a frill of lace all round the top, above the mosquito curtains. Some of the bedsteads I have seen, made of native woods, are very prettily carved round the pillars, and a really handsome piece of carving fills the space at each end to the height of two feet or so. All right so far as looks go, but the bed itself is an appalling instrument of torture to lie on, for in pattern and material it is the same as the seats of cane chairs, and as hard as iron—all for coolness. On the cane is spread a native grass mat called apetate; the luxurious and faddy add a sheet, but humbler folk sleep on the mat, which is aired in the sun every day, or ought to be, and frequently washed. In the bed there always lies a small, round bolster, called in Spanish anembrasador, but the Europeans name it Dutch Wife, and this is used to fling a leg andan arm over, for, in this climate, to lie with the limbs touching would be intolerable discomfort. It is also a well-known fact that theembrasadoris a great protection for the stomach against chills and fevers, which are a danger towards the small hours of the morning. Bedclothes, in the way of covering, are out of the question, but in every bed a small, thin blanket lies folded up, ready for the sudden chill of a rainy night. Once or twice people have said to me: “It was so cold last night. I was shivering even with my blanket.” This is the winter to them, you see. I only wish it struck me in the same way, for though the nights are by no means stifling or anything like that, it would be delightful to feel cold now and then.
It is so difficult to realise that this is Christmas Eve—so odd to hear people talking of children’s parties; and Christmas trees seem absurdly out of place! The churches began to get excited some time ago, and for the last week some deadly bells have begun to clang before the dawn.
The dawn, by-the-bye, is not what I expected, for I have often read descriptions of the coming of the tropic day—that is, night one minute and broad daylight the next. I find, however, that there is a considerable interval of twilight, both morning and evening. The other day I read a book by a very well-known writer, in which a description was given of the dayspring in Egypt coming like “the opening of an oven door,” which I knew to be nonsense as applied to Egypt, and now I find the same sort of hyperbole about the tropics equally false; for I have watched the grey dawn come gradually nearly every morning here, and I sit reading on the balcony in the twilight, in the evening. It is certainly not a long twilight, but all one reads about the sun shooting up from the night into the tropic day, and soforth, must be what they call “word pictures,” because it is certainly not truth, or even decent exaggeration.
Christmas Day.—I always write my letters to you all at one sitting, but I had to break off yesterday before I considered that I had covered enough paper to satisfy you, and I feel I can’t begin again to-day without this fresh heading; though it is not like Christmas a bit, and I think the bright green palms, blue sea and sky, and scorching sun are a very poor substitute for the lovely brown and purples of the winter landscape at home, the invigorating cold, and the exquisite skeletons of oaks and elms.
I should not complain, though, for the weather here is really delicious just at present, with frequent heavy showers, which keep the vegetation fresh, and fill the water-tanks. There are lots of wells, in which the water is very hard, and people say it is sea-water filtered through the soil; and it must be so, for at high tide the wells are at their fullest, and quite brackish. So the water-supply one chiefly depends upon is that out of the rain-water tanks, which are fed from the corrugated roofs of the houses. However, it is not safe to drink even that unfiltered, and some people are very fanciful and boil it first, but that is rather absurd if one gets a good filter.
Out of the filter, Sotero, the head boy, fills up soda-water bottles, which he takes to the English Club, where they are laid on the ice for a charge of 2 cents apiece, and these, after an hour or two on the ice, give us very refreshing drinks. Good and light beer is to be had, brewed in Manila; it works out at about a shilling a bottle, and the Americans drink it, but the English people consider beer an unwholesome beverage in thisclimate, and stick to whisky and soda very faithfully. Some adopt the Spanish custom of drinking light red wine,vino tinto, which is supposed to be strengthening and blood-making in a country where the prevailing trouble is anæmia. This wine comes from Spain in barrels, and I expect it really is the most wholesome of all. For my part, I keep pretty generally to lime juice and soda, or lemon squash. Lemons, which come from China, are about 2d. apiece. At this season, in the way of fruit, small tangerines are to be had also, hailing from China, and oranges, another luxury, 6d. each. It is rather a bore that such necessary and wholesome fruit should cost such ridiculous prices. Bananas, everlasting bananas, are the chief fruit, and even they are not astonishingly cheap, as they are sold here at exactly the same price as in London. Vegetables there are none, except miserable tomatoes and egg-plants. The lack of fresh fruit and vegetables is very trying, especially the vegetables. Whatever is sold is imported, except the bananas, tomatoes, and egg-plants. Fresh meat, too, would be a boon, and butter, and milk, for all these can only be obtained tinned—“canned” as they call it here. Once a week we get some provisions from the Cold Storage in Manila, Australian meat and butter, and sometimes vegetables, but this is only a private enterprise of a few of the English community, who club together and get down an ice-chest by theButuan, the weekly Manila mail. It would be unwise to venture to lay in more than one day’s supply, which has to be cooked and eaten at once before it goes bad, even with an ice-chest to stand it in.
It might be possible to put up with these discomforts with more or less philosophic calm,and not mind the deprivations if they were inevitable, but they are not so by any means, as the soil of the Philippines is one of the richest in the world, volcanic and full of natural chemical manures, the islands having also every sort of advantage and variety of climate from the plains to the mountain-tops, and being plentifully watered. I am for ever being told that anything and everything will grow and flourish here, which is so aggravating when all the fresh food to be procured is miserable poultry, fish, and egg-plants, tomatoes you would not look at in England, and costly bananas. Rice and potatoes from China, live cattle from China, or frozen meat from Australia, andeverythingelse under the sun in tins from London or America! This, after six years of what we are told is the most enlightened system of Colonial or Tropical Government yet invented. It is useless to point out that no roads exist inland, except one in Luzon for the Governor and his family to go to the hills; or to remark that labour is too dear for any enterprise to pay, and that all healthy foreign competition in the way of labour is excluded—the reply is an invitation to contemplate the splendid work that is being done in education. For these schools and swarming schoolmasters this pastoral country is taxed and tariffed to breaking point—schools to which the natives are being taken from the fields, and in which they are taught a crude wash of bad English and mathematics. The chief result is to bring all the “scholars” into the towns to loaf along in clerkships, if they can get them.
You will laugh at my vehemence! But it does seem such a pity to see a splendid country wasted, as it were, thrown away, for the sake of a windy theory propounded by some well-meaning though ignorant sentimentalists at the other side of the globe.