Chapter XXX.Catubanganes (32).A tribe of savages inhabiting the mountains of Guinayangan in Tayabas, from whence they raid the Christian villages and drive off cattle. Nothing is known about their origin or habits; they have some wandering Negritos as neighbours.Vicols (33).The Vicols inhabit the southern half of the province of Camarines Norte, the whole of Camarines Sur and Albay, the islands of Catanduanes, Burias, and Ticao, and the northern shores of Masbate. They are civilised, and have been Christians for centuries.They speak a dialect of their own, which, according to Jagor, is midway between Tagal and Visay, which dialect is spoken in its greatest purity by the inhabitants of the Isarog volcano and its immediate neighbourhood, and that thence towards the west the dialect becomes more and more like the Tagal, and towards the east like the Visay until by degrees, before reaching the ethnographical boundary, it merges into those kindred languages.In manners and customs they appear to be half-bred between these two races, yet, according to F. Blumentritt, they preceded the Tagals, and were in fact the first Malays to arrive in Luzon. They show signs of intermixture with Polynesian or Papuan stock.They are physically inferior to the Tagals, nor do they possess the proud warlike spirit of the dwellers in north Luzon. They are less cleanly, and live in poorer houses.The men dress like the Tagals, but the women wear thepatadioninstead of a saya, and a shirt ofguinára.Blumentritt says the men carry the Malaykrisinsteadof thebolo, but I did not see akriscarried by any one when I visited the province.In fact, the regulations enforced at that time by the Guardia Civil were against carrying such a weapon. Thebolo, on the other hand, is a necessary tool.I visited the province of Camarines Sur, going from Manila to Pasacao by sea, and from there travelled by road to an affluent of the River Vicol, and then by canoe on a moonlit night to Nueva Cáceres, the capital of the province.Here I met a remarkable man, the late Bishop Gainza, and was much impressed by his keen intellect and great knowledge of the country.He was said to be a man of great ambition, and I can quite believe it. Originally a Dominican monk, it was intended that he should have been made Archbishop of Manila, but, somehow, Father Pedro Paya, at that time Procurator of the Order in Madrid, got himself nominated instead, and Gainza had to content himself with the bishopric of Nueva Cáceres.He was a model of self-denial, living most frugally on a small part of his revenue, contributing a thousand dollars a year to the funds of the Holy Father, and spending the remainder in building or repairing churches and schools in his diocese, or in assisting undertakings he thought likely to benefit the province.Amongst other works, I remember that he had tried to cut a canal from the River Vicol to the Bay of Ragay. He had excavated a portion of it, but either on his death, or from the difficulties raised by the Public Works Department, the work was abandoned.The Franciscan friars, who held the benefices in that province, opposed him, and annoyed him in every possible way.The present bishop, Father Arsenio Ocampo, formerly an Augustinian monk, is a clever and enlightened man, with whom I had dealings when he was Procurator-General of his Order.I have made this digression from my subject, because so much has been said against the clergy of the Philippines, that I feel impelled to bring before my readers this instance of a bishop who constantly endeavoured to promote the interests of his province.Nueva Cáceres possessed several schools, a hospital, alepers’ hospital, and a training-college for school-mistresses had just been established by Bishop Gainza’s initiative.The shops were mostly in the hands of Chinese, who did a flourishing trade in Manchester goods,patadoins, and coloured handkerchiefs.There were several Spanish and Mestizo merchants who dealt in hemp and rice.From Nueva Cáceres I travelled by a good road to Iriga, a town near the volcano of that name, passing close to the Isarog on my way. From Iriga I visited the country round about, and Lake Bula.Some years after I went from Manila by sea to Tabaco, on the Pacific coast of Albay, getting a fine night view of the Mayon volcano (8272 feet) in violent eruption.From Tabaco I drove to Tivi and visited the celebrated boiling-well and hot-springs at that place, much frequented by the natives, and sometimes by Europeans, for the cure of rheumatism and other diseases.Now that the Stars and Stripes float over the Philippines it is to be hoped that a regular sanatorium will be erected at this beautiful and health-restoring spot, the advantages of which might attract sufferers from all the Far East.On these journeys I had a good opportunity of studying the people. The chief exports are Abacá (Manila hemp), and rice. In Camarines Sur the principal crop is rice, whilst in Albay the hemp predominates, and they import rice.The cultivation of rice, which I have briefly described when writing of the Tagals, is not an occupation calculated to improve the minds or bodies of those engaged in it, and I have noticed that wherever this is the staple crop the peasantry are in a distinctly lower condition than where cane is planted and sugar manufactured. Their lives are passed in alternate periods of exhausting labour and of utter idleness, there is nothing to strive for, nothing to learn, nothing to improve. The same customs go on from generation to generation, the same rude implements are used, and the husbandman paid for his labour in kind lives destitute of comfort in the present, and without hope for the future.Nor can the cultivation and preparation of hemp be considered as a much more improving occupation.Little care, indeed, is required by theMusa textilisafter the first planting, and the cleaning of the fibre is a simple matter, but very laborious.Several Spaniards are settled in these provinces, also a few agents of British houses in Manila, and some Chinese and Mestizos. They usually complain bitterly of the difficulty they experience in getting hemp delivered to them owing to the laziness and unpunctuality of the natives.Yet, notwithstanding this, most of them live in affluence and some have amassed fortunes by Vicol labour. There is, in fact, a good deal of money in Albay, Daraga, and other towns in the hemp districts, and they are the happy hunting-ground of the Jew pedlar who there finds a good market for yellow diamonds and off-colour gems unsaleable in London or Paris. Houndsditch and Broadway will do well to note.The peasantry, however, either from improvidence or aversion to steady labour, seem to be rather worse off than the Tagals and Pampangos, more especially those amongst them who cultivate paddy.The whole of the large amount of hemp exported from Manila and Cebú is cleaned by hand.Several attempts have been made to employ machinery, but the inherent conditions of the industry are unfavourable to success in this line.The plants are grown principally on the eastern slopes of the volcanic mountains of Southern Luzon, and the adjacent islands where the soil is soft and friable and roads are unknown.The heavy stems of the plants cannot profitably be conveyed to fixed works for treatment, and no machine has yet been devised light enough to be carried up to thelátesor plantations and able to compete with hand labour. In a recent report to the British North Borneo Company, Mr. W. C. Cowie mentions his hopes that Thompson’s Fibre Company are about to send out a trial decorticator, with engine and boiler to drive it, to the River Padas, in that company’s territories, for cleaning the fibre of the numerous plants of theMusa textilisgrowing in that region. It will be interesting to learn the result. Possibly the conditions of transport by rail or river are more favourable than in the Philippines, and in that case a measure of success is quite possible. But few errors are more expensive than to unwarrantably assume that machinery must necessarily be cheaper than hand labour.Vicols Preparing Hemp.Cutting the Plant.Cutting the Plant.Adjusting under the Knife.Adjusting under the Knife.Separating the Petioles.Separating the Petioles.To face p. 287.Anyhow, as regards the Philippines here is a nicelittle problem. If the mechanics of Massachusetts and Connecticut cannot solve it, I do not know who can.The Vicol labourers proceed to thelátesin couples, carrying their simple and efficient apparatus, all of which, except the knife, they make themselves.One man cuts down the plant, removes the outer covering, and separates the layers forming the stem, dividing them into strips about one and a half inches wide, and spreading them out to air.The other man standing at his bench, takes a strip and places the middle of it across the convex block and under the knife, which is held up by the spring of a sapling overhead. Then, placing one foot on a treadle hanging from the handle of the knife, he firmly presses the latter down on the block. It should be explained that the knife is not sharp enough to cut the fibres. Firmly grasping the strip in both hands, and throwing his body backwards, he steadily draws the strip towards him till all the fibre has passed the knife; then, removing his foot from the treadle, the knife is lifted from the block by the spring, leaving the pulp and waste behind it. Sweeping this off, he reverses the half-cleaned strip, and twisting the cleaned fibre round one hand and wrist, and grasping it also with the other, he draws the part he formerly held, under the knife, pressing the treadle with the foot as before, and thus completes the cleaning of one strip. The fibre is often six feet long, and only requires drying in the sun to be marketable.A man is able to clean about twenty-five pounds of hemp per day, and receives one half of it for his labour.He usually sells his share to his employer for a trifle under the market price.
Chapter XXX.Catubanganes (32).A tribe of savages inhabiting the mountains of Guinayangan in Tayabas, from whence they raid the Christian villages and drive off cattle. Nothing is known about their origin or habits; they have some wandering Negritos as neighbours.Vicols (33).The Vicols inhabit the southern half of the province of Camarines Norte, the whole of Camarines Sur and Albay, the islands of Catanduanes, Burias, and Ticao, and the northern shores of Masbate. They are civilised, and have been Christians for centuries.They speak a dialect of their own, which, according to Jagor, is midway between Tagal and Visay, which dialect is spoken in its greatest purity by the inhabitants of the Isarog volcano and its immediate neighbourhood, and that thence towards the west the dialect becomes more and more like the Tagal, and towards the east like the Visay until by degrees, before reaching the ethnographical boundary, it merges into those kindred languages.In manners and customs they appear to be half-bred between these two races, yet, according to F. Blumentritt, they preceded the Tagals, and were in fact the first Malays to arrive in Luzon. They show signs of intermixture with Polynesian or Papuan stock.They are physically inferior to the Tagals, nor do they possess the proud warlike spirit of the dwellers in north Luzon. They are less cleanly, and live in poorer houses.The men dress like the Tagals, but the women wear thepatadioninstead of a saya, and a shirt ofguinára.Blumentritt says the men carry the Malaykrisinsteadof thebolo, but I did not see akriscarried by any one when I visited the province.In fact, the regulations enforced at that time by the Guardia Civil were against carrying such a weapon. Thebolo, on the other hand, is a necessary tool.I visited the province of Camarines Sur, going from Manila to Pasacao by sea, and from there travelled by road to an affluent of the River Vicol, and then by canoe on a moonlit night to Nueva Cáceres, the capital of the province.Here I met a remarkable man, the late Bishop Gainza, and was much impressed by his keen intellect and great knowledge of the country.He was said to be a man of great ambition, and I can quite believe it. Originally a Dominican monk, it was intended that he should have been made Archbishop of Manila, but, somehow, Father Pedro Paya, at that time Procurator of the Order in Madrid, got himself nominated instead, and Gainza had to content himself with the bishopric of Nueva Cáceres.He was a model of self-denial, living most frugally on a small part of his revenue, contributing a thousand dollars a year to the funds of the Holy Father, and spending the remainder in building or repairing churches and schools in his diocese, or in assisting undertakings he thought likely to benefit the province.Amongst other works, I remember that he had tried to cut a canal from the River Vicol to the Bay of Ragay. He had excavated a portion of it, but either on his death, or from the difficulties raised by the Public Works Department, the work was abandoned.The Franciscan friars, who held the benefices in that province, opposed him, and annoyed him in every possible way.The present bishop, Father Arsenio Ocampo, formerly an Augustinian monk, is a clever and enlightened man, with whom I had dealings when he was Procurator-General of his Order.I have made this digression from my subject, because so much has been said against the clergy of the Philippines, that I feel impelled to bring before my readers this instance of a bishop who constantly endeavoured to promote the interests of his province.Nueva Cáceres possessed several schools, a hospital, alepers’ hospital, and a training-college for school-mistresses had just been established by Bishop Gainza’s initiative.The shops were mostly in the hands of Chinese, who did a flourishing trade in Manchester goods,patadoins, and coloured handkerchiefs.There were several Spanish and Mestizo merchants who dealt in hemp and rice.From Nueva Cáceres I travelled by a good road to Iriga, a town near the volcano of that name, passing close to the Isarog on my way. From Iriga I visited the country round about, and Lake Bula.Some years after I went from Manila by sea to Tabaco, on the Pacific coast of Albay, getting a fine night view of the Mayon volcano (8272 feet) in violent eruption.From Tabaco I drove to Tivi and visited the celebrated boiling-well and hot-springs at that place, much frequented by the natives, and sometimes by Europeans, for the cure of rheumatism and other diseases.Now that the Stars and Stripes float over the Philippines it is to be hoped that a regular sanatorium will be erected at this beautiful and health-restoring spot, the advantages of which might attract sufferers from all the Far East.On these journeys I had a good opportunity of studying the people. The chief exports are Abacá (Manila hemp), and rice. In Camarines Sur the principal crop is rice, whilst in Albay the hemp predominates, and they import rice.The cultivation of rice, which I have briefly described when writing of the Tagals, is not an occupation calculated to improve the minds or bodies of those engaged in it, and I have noticed that wherever this is the staple crop the peasantry are in a distinctly lower condition than where cane is planted and sugar manufactured. Their lives are passed in alternate periods of exhausting labour and of utter idleness, there is nothing to strive for, nothing to learn, nothing to improve. The same customs go on from generation to generation, the same rude implements are used, and the husbandman paid for his labour in kind lives destitute of comfort in the present, and without hope for the future.Nor can the cultivation and preparation of hemp be considered as a much more improving occupation.Little care, indeed, is required by theMusa textilisafter the first planting, and the cleaning of the fibre is a simple matter, but very laborious.Several Spaniards are settled in these provinces, also a few agents of British houses in Manila, and some Chinese and Mestizos. They usually complain bitterly of the difficulty they experience in getting hemp delivered to them owing to the laziness and unpunctuality of the natives.Yet, notwithstanding this, most of them live in affluence and some have amassed fortunes by Vicol labour. There is, in fact, a good deal of money in Albay, Daraga, and other towns in the hemp districts, and they are the happy hunting-ground of the Jew pedlar who there finds a good market for yellow diamonds and off-colour gems unsaleable in London or Paris. Houndsditch and Broadway will do well to note.The peasantry, however, either from improvidence or aversion to steady labour, seem to be rather worse off than the Tagals and Pampangos, more especially those amongst them who cultivate paddy.The whole of the large amount of hemp exported from Manila and Cebú is cleaned by hand.Several attempts have been made to employ machinery, but the inherent conditions of the industry are unfavourable to success in this line.The plants are grown principally on the eastern slopes of the volcanic mountains of Southern Luzon, and the adjacent islands where the soil is soft and friable and roads are unknown.The heavy stems of the plants cannot profitably be conveyed to fixed works for treatment, and no machine has yet been devised light enough to be carried up to thelátesor plantations and able to compete with hand labour. In a recent report to the British North Borneo Company, Mr. W. C. Cowie mentions his hopes that Thompson’s Fibre Company are about to send out a trial decorticator, with engine and boiler to drive it, to the River Padas, in that company’s territories, for cleaning the fibre of the numerous plants of theMusa textilisgrowing in that region. It will be interesting to learn the result. Possibly the conditions of transport by rail or river are more favourable than in the Philippines, and in that case a measure of success is quite possible. But few errors are more expensive than to unwarrantably assume that machinery must necessarily be cheaper than hand labour.Vicols Preparing Hemp.Cutting the Plant.Cutting the Plant.Adjusting under the Knife.Adjusting under the Knife.Separating the Petioles.Separating the Petioles.To face p. 287.Anyhow, as regards the Philippines here is a nicelittle problem. If the mechanics of Massachusetts and Connecticut cannot solve it, I do not know who can.The Vicol labourers proceed to thelátesin couples, carrying their simple and efficient apparatus, all of which, except the knife, they make themselves.One man cuts down the plant, removes the outer covering, and separates the layers forming the stem, dividing them into strips about one and a half inches wide, and spreading them out to air.The other man standing at his bench, takes a strip and places the middle of it across the convex block and under the knife, which is held up by the spring of a sapling overhead. Then, placing one foot on a treadle hanging from the handle of the knife, he firmly presses the latter down on the block. It should be explained that the knife is not sharp enough to cut the fibres. Firmly grasping the strip in both hands, and throwing his body backwards, he steadily draws the strip towards him till all the fibre has passed the knife; then, removing his foot from the treadle, the knife is lifted from the block by the spring, leaving the pulp and waste behind it. Sweeping this off, he reverses the half-cleaned strip, and twisting the cleaned fibre round one hand and wrist, and grasping it also with the other, he draws the part he formerly held, under the knife, pressing the treadle with the foot as before, and thus completes the cleaning of one strip. The fibre is often six feet long, and only requires drying in the sun to be marketable.A man is able to clean about twenty-five pounds of hemp per day, and receives one half of it for his labour.He usually sells his share to his employer for a trifle under the market price.
Chapter XXX.Catubanganes (32).A tribe of savages inhabiting the mountains of Guinayangan in Tayabas, from whence they raid the Christian villages and drive off cattle. Nothing is known about their origin or habits; they have some wandering Negritos as neighbours.Vicols (33).The Vicols inhabit the southern half of the province of Camarines Norte, the whole of Camarines Sur and Albay, the islands of Catanduanes, Burias, and Ticao, and the northern shores of Masbate. They are civilised, and have been Christians for centuries.They speak a dialect of their own, which, according to Jagor, is midway between Tagal and Visay, which dialect is spoken in its greatest purity by the inhabitants of the Isarog volcano and its immediate neighbourhood, and that thence towards the west the dialect becomes more and more like the Tagal, and towards the east like the Visay until by degrees, before reaching the ethnographical boundary, it merges into those kindred languages.In manners and customs they appear to be half-bred between these two races, yet, according to F. Blumentritt, they preceded the Tagals, and were in fact the first Malays to arrive in Luzon. They show signs of intermixture with Polynesian or Papuan stock.They are physically inferior to the Tagals, nor do they possess the proud warlike spirit of the dwellers in north Luzon. They are less cleanly, and live in poorer houses.The men dress like the Tagals, but the women wear thepatadioninstead of a saya, and a shirt ofguinára.Blumentritt says the men carry the Malaykrisinsteadof thebolo, but I did not see akriscarried by any one when I visited the province.In fact, the regulations enforced at that time by the Guardia Civil were against carrying such a weapon. Thebolo, on the other hand, is a necessary tool.I visited the province of Camarines Sur, going from Manila to Pasacao by sea, and from there travelled by road to an affluent of the River Vicol, and then by canoe on a moonlit night to Nueva Cáceres, the capital of the province.Here I met a remarkable man, the late Bishop Gainza, and was much impressed by his keen intellect and great knowledge of the country.He was said to be a man of great ambition, and I can quite believe it. Originally a Dominican monk, it was intended that he should have been made Archbishop of Manila, but, somehow, Father Pedro Paya, at that time Procurator of the Order in Madrid, got himself nominated instead, and Gainza had to content himself with the bishopric of Nueva Cáceres.He was a model of self-denial, living most frugally on a small part of his revenue, contributing a thousand dollars a year to the funds of the Holy Father, and spending the remainder in building or repairing churches and schools in his diocese, or in assisting undertakings he thought likely to benefit the province.Amongst other works, I remember that he had tried to cut a canal from the River Vicol to the Bay of Ragay. He had excavated a portion of it, but either on his death, or from the difficulties raised by the Public Works Department, the work was abandoned.The Franciscan friars, who held the benefices in that province, opposed him, and annoyed him in every possible way.The present bishop, Father Arsenio Ocampo, formerly an Augustinian monk, is a clever and enlightened man, with whom I had dealings when he was Procurator-General of his Order.I have made this digression from my subject, because so much has been said against the clergy of the Philippines, that I feel impelled to bring before my readers this instance of a bishop who constantly endeavoured to promote the interests of his province.Nueva Cáceres possessed several schools, a hospital, alepers’ hospital, and a training-college for school-mistresses had just been established by Bishop Gainza’s initiative.The shops were mostly in the hands of Chinese, who did a flourishing trade in Manchester goods,patadoins, and coloured handkerchiefs.There were several Spanish and Mestizo merchants who dealt in hemp and rice.From Nueva Cáceres I travelled by a good road to Iriga, a town near the volcano of that name, passing close to the Isarog on my way. From Iriga I visited the country round about, and Lake Bula.Some years after I went from Manila by sea to Tabaco, on the Pacific coast of Albay, getting a fine night view of the Mayon volcano (8272 feet) in violent eruption.From Tabaco I drove to Tivi and visited the celebrated boiling-well and hot-springs at that place, much frequented by the natives, and sometimes by Europeans, for the cure of rheumatism and other diseases.Now that the Stars and Stripes float over the Philippines it is to be hoped that a regular sanatorium will be erected at this beautiful and health-restoring spot, the advantages of which might attract sufferers from all the Far East.On these journeys I had a good opportunity of studying the people. The chief exports are Abacá (Manila hemp), and rice. In Camarines Sur the principal crop is rice, whilst in Albay the hemp predominates, and they import rice.The cultivation of rice, which I have briefly described when writing of the Tagals, is not an occupation calculated to improve the minds or bodies of those engaged in it, and I have noticed that wherever this is the staple crop the peasantry are in a distinctly lower condition than where cane is planted and sugar manufactured. Their lives are passed in alternate periods of exhausting labour and of utter idleness, there is nothing to strive for, nothing to learn, nothing to improve. The same customs go on from generation to generation, the same rude implements are used, and the husbandman paid for his labour in kind lives destitute of comfort in the present, and without hope for the future.Nor can the cultivation and preparation of hemp be considered as a much more improving occupation.Little care, indeed, is required by theMusa textilisafter the first planting, and the cleaning of the fibre is a simple matter, but very laborious.Several Spaniards are settled in these provinces, also a few agents of British houses in Manila, and some Chinese and Mestizos. They usually complain bitterly of the difficulty they experience in getting hemp delivered to them owing to the laziness and unpunctuality of the natives.Yet, notwithstanding this, most of them live in affluence and some have amassed fortunes by Vicol labour. There is, in fact, a good deal of money in Albay, Daraga, and other towns in the hemp districts, and they are the happy hunting-ground of the Jew pedlar who there finds a good market for yellow diamonds and off-colour gems unsaleable in London or Paris. Houndsditch and Broadway will do well to note.The peasantry, however, either from improvidence or aversion to steady labour, seem to be rather worse off than the Tagals and Pampangos, more especially those amongst them who cultivate paddy.The whole of the large amount of hemp exported from Manila and Cebú is cleaned by hand.Several attempts have been made to employ machinery, but the inherent conditions of the industry are unfavourable to success in this line.The plants are grown principally on the eastern slopes of the volcanic mountains of Southern Luzon, and the adjacent islands where the soil is soft and friable and roads are unknown.The heavy stems of the plants cannot profitably be conveyed to fixed works for treatment, and no machine has yet been devised light enough to be carried up to thelátesor plantations and able to compete with hand labour. In a recent report to the British North Borneo Company, Mr. W. C. Cowie mentions his hopes that Thompson’s Fibre Company are about to send out a trial decorticator, with engine and boiler to drive it, to the River Padas, in that company’s territories, for cleaning the fibre of the numerous plants of theMusa textilisgrowing in that region. It will be interesting to learn the result. Possibly the conditions of transport by rail or river are more favourable than in the Philippines, and in that case a measure of success is quite possible. But few errors are more expensive than to unwarrantably assume that machinery must necessarily be cheaper than hand labour.Vicols Preparing Hemp.Cutting the Plant.Cutting the Plant.Adjusting under the Knife.Adjusting under the Knife.Separating the Petioles.Separating the Petioles.To face p. 287.Anyhow, as regards the Philippines here is a nicelittle problem. If the mechanics of Massachusetts and Connecticut cannot solve it, I do not know who can.The Vicol labourers proceed to thelátesin couples, carrying their simple and efficient apparatus, all of which, except the knife, they make themselves.One man cuts down the plant, removes the outer covering, and separates the layers forming the stem, dividing them into strips about one and a half inches wide, and spreading them out to air.The other man standing at his bench, takes a strip and places the middle of it across the convex block and under the knife, which is held up by the spring of a sapling overhead. Then, placing one foot on a treadle hanging from the handle of the knife, he firmly presses the latter down on the block. It should be explained that the knife is not sharp enough to cut the fibres. Firmly grasping the strip in both hands, and throwing his body backwards, he steadily draws the strip towards him till all the fibre has passed the knife; then, removing his foot from the treadle, the knife is lifted from the block by the spring, leaving the pulp and waste behind it. Sweeping this off, he reverses the half-cleaned strip, and twisting the cleaned fibre round one hand and wrist, and grasping it also with the other, he draws the part he formerly held, under the knife, pressing the treadle with the foot as before, and thus completes the cleaning of one strip. The fibre is often six feet long, and only requires drying in the sun to be marketable.A man is able to clean about twenty-five pounds of hemp per day, and receives one half of it for his labour.He usually sells his share to his employer for a trifle under the market price.
Chapter XXX.Catubanganes (32).A tribe of savages inhabiting the mountains of Guinayangan in Tayabas, from whence they raid the Christian villages and drive off cattle. Nothing is known about their origin or habits; they have some wandering Negritos as neighbours.Vicols (33).The Vicols inhabit the southern half of the province of Camarines Norte, the whole of Camarines Sur and Albay, the islands of Catanduanes, Burias, and Ticao, and the northern shores of Masbate. They are civilised, and have been Christians for centuries.They speak a dialect of their own, which, according to Jagor, is midway between Tagal and Visay, which dialect is spoken in its greatest purity by the inhabitants of the Isarog volcano and its immediate neighbourhood, and that thence towards the west the dialect becomes more and more like the Tagal, and towards the east like the Visay until by degrees, before reaching the ethnographical boundary, it merges into those kindred languages.In manners and customs they appear to be half-bred between these two races, yet, according to F. Blumentritt, they preceded the Tagals, and were in fact the first Malays to arrive in Luzon. They show signs of intermixture with Polynesian or Papuan stock.They are physically inferior to the Tagals, nor do they possess the proud warlike spirit of the dwellers in north Luzon. They are less cleanly, and live in poorer houses.The men dress like the Tagals, but the women wear thepatadioninstead of a saya, and a shirt ofguinára.Blumentritt says the men carry the Malaykrisinsteadof thebolo, but I did not see akriscarried by any one when I visited the province.In fact, the regulations enforced at that time by the Guardia Civil were against carrying such a weapon. Thebolo, on the other hand, is a necessary tool.I visited the province of Camarines Sur, going from Manila to Pasacao by sea, and from there travelled by road to an affluent of the River Vicol, and then by canoe on a moonlit night to Nueva Cáceres, the capital of the province.Here I met a remarkable man, the late Bishop Gainza, and was much impressed by his keen intellect and great knowledge of the country.He was said to be a man of great ambition, and I can quite believe it. Originally a Dominican monk, it was intended that he should have been made Archbishop of Manila, but, somehow, Father Pedro Paya, at that time Procurator of the Order in Madrid, got himself nominated instead, and Gainza had to content himself with the bishopric of Nueva Cáceres.He was a model of self-denial, living most frugally on a small part of his revenue, contributing a thousand dollars a year to the funds of the Holy Father, and spending the remainder in building or repairing churches and schools in his diocese, or in assisting undertakings he thought likely to benefit the province.Amongst other works, I remember that he had tried to cut a canal from the River Vicol to the Bay of Ragay. He had excavated a portion of it, but either on his death, or from the difficulties raised by the Public Works Department, the work was abandoned.The Franciscan friars, who held the benefices in that province, opposed him, and annoyed him in every possible way.The present bishop, Father Arsenio Ocampo, formerly an Augustinian monk, is a clever and enlightened man, with whom I had dealings when he was Procurator-General of his Order.I have made this digression from my subject, because so much has been said against the clergy of the Philippines, that I feel impelled to bring before my readers this instance of a bishop who constantly endeavoured to promote the interests of his province.Nueva Cáceres possessed several schools, a hospital, alepers’ hospital, and a training-college for school-mistresses had just been established by Bishop Gainza’s initiative.The shops were mostly in the hands of Chinese, who did a flourishing trade in Manchester goods,patadoins, and coloured handkerchiefs.There were several Spanish and Mestizo merchants who dealt in hemp and rice.From Nueva Cáceres I travelled by a good road to Iriga, a town near the volcano of that name, passing close to the Isarog on my way. From Iriga I visited the country round about, and Lake Bula.Some years after I went from Manila by sea to Tabaco, on the Pacific coast of Albay, getting a fine night view of the Mayon volcano (8272 feet) in violent eruption.From Tabaco I drove to Tivi and visited the celebrated boiling-well and hot-springs at that place, much frequented by the natives, and sometimes by Europeans, for the cure of rheumatism and other diseases.Now that the Stars and Stripes float over the Philippines it is to be hoped that a regular sanatorium will be erected at this beautiful and health-restoring spot, the advantages of which might attract sufferers from all the Far East.On these journeys I had a good opportunity of studying the people. The chief exports are Abacá (Manila hemp), and rice. In Camarines Sur the principal crop is rice, whilst in Albay the hemp predominates, and they import rice.The cultivation of rice, which I have briefly described when writing of the Tagals, is not an occupation calculated to improve the minds or bodies of those engaged in it, and I have noticed that wherever this is the staple crop the peasantry are in a distinctly lower condition than where cane is planted and sugar manufactured. Their lives are passed in alternate periods of exhausting labour and of utter idleness, there is nothing to strive for, nothing to learn, nothing to improve. The same customs go on from generation to generation, the same rude implements are used, and the husbandman paid for his labour in kind lives destitute of comfort in the present, and without hope for the future.Nor can the cultivation and preparation of hemp be considered as a much more improving occupation.Little care, indeed, is required by theMusa textilisafter the first planting, and the cleaning of the fibre is a simple matter, but very laborious.Several Spaniards are settled in these provinces, also a few agents of British houses in Manila, and some Chinese and Mestizos. They usually complain bitterly of the difficulty they experience in getting hemp delivered to them owing to the laziness and unpunctuality of the natives.Yet, notwithstanding this, most of them live in affluence and some have amassed fortunes by Vicol labour. There is, in fact, a good deal of money in Albay, Daraga, and other towns in the hemp districts, and they are the happy hunting-ground of the Jew pedlar who there finds a good market for yellow diamonds and off-colour gems unsaleable in London or Paris. Houndsditch and Broadway will do well to note.The peasantry, however, either from improvidence or aversion to steady labour, seem to be rather worse off than the Tagals and Pampangos, more especially those amongst them who cultivate paddy.The whole of the large amount of hemp exported from Manila and Cebú is cleaned by hand.Several attempts have been made to employ machinery, but the inherent conditions of the industry are unfavourable to success in this line.The plants are grown principally on the eastern slopes of the volcanic mountains of Southern Luzon, and the adjacent islands where the soil is soft and friable and roads are unknown.The heavy stems of the plants cannot profitably be conveyed to fixed works for treatment, and no machine has yet been devised light enough to be carried up to thelátesor plantations and able to compete with hand labour. In a recent report to the British North Borneo Company, Mr. W. C. Cowie mentions his hopes that Thompson’s Fibre Company are about to send out a trial decorticator, with engine and boiler to drive it, to the River Padas, in that company’s territories, for cleaning the fibre of the numerous plants of theMusa textilisgrowing in that region. It will be interesting to learn the result. Possibly the conditions of transport by rail or river are more favourable than in the Philippines, and in that case a measure of success is quite possible. But few errors are more expensive than to unwarrantably assume that machinery must necessarily be cheaper than hand labour.Vicols Preparing Hemp.Cutting the Plant.Cutting the Plant.Adjusting under the Knife.Adjusting under the Knife.Separating the Petioles.Separating the Petioles.To face p. 287.Anyhow, as regards the Philippines here is a nicelittle problem. If the mechanics of Massachusetts and Connecticut cannot solve it, I do not know who can.The Vicol labourers proceed to thelátesin couples, carrying their simple and efficient apparatus, all of which, except the knife, they make themselves.One man cuts down the plant, removes the outer covering, and separates the layers forming the stem, dividing them into strips about one and a half inches wide, and spreading them out to air.The other man standing at his bench, takes a strip and places the middle of it across the convex block and under the knife, which is held up by the spring of a sapling overhead. Then, placing one foot on a treadle hanging from the handle of the knife, he firmly presses the latter down on the block. It should be explained that the knife is not sharp enough to cut the fibres. Firmly grasping the strip in both hands, and throwing his body backwards, he steadily draws the strip towards him till all the fibre has passed the knife; then, removing his foot from the treadle, the knife is lifted from the block by the spring, leaving the pulp and waste behind it. Sweeping this off, he reverses the half-cleaned strip, and twisting the cleaned fibre round one hand and wrist, and grasping it also with the other, he draws the part he formerly held, under the knife, pressing the treadle with the foot as before, and thus completes the cleaning of one strip. The fibre is often six feet long, and only requires drying in the sun to be marketable.A man is able to clean about twenty-five pounds of hemp per day, and receives one half of it for his labour.He usually sells his share to his employer for a trifle under the market price.
Catubanganes (32).A tribe of savages inhabiting the mountains of Guinayangan in Tayabas, from whence they raid the Christian villages and drive off cattle. Nothing is known about their origin or habits; they have some wandering Negritos as neighbours.
Catubanganes (32).
A tribe of savages inhabiting the mountains of Guinayangan in Tayabas, from whence they raid the Christian villages and drive off cattle. Nothing is known about their origin or habits; they have some wandering Negritos as neighbours.
A tribe of savages inhabiting the mountains of Guinayangan in Tayabas, from whence they raid the Christian villages and drive off cattle. Nothing is known about their origin or habits; they have some wandering Negritos as neighbours.
Vicols (33).The Vicols inhabit the southern half of the province of Camarines Norte, the whole of Camarines Sur and Albay, the islands of Catanduanes, Burias, and Ticao, and the northern shores of Masbate. They are civilised, and have been Christians for centuries.They speak a dialect of their own, which, according to Jagor, is midway between Tagal and Visay, which dialect is spoken in its greatest purity by the inhabitants of the Isarog volcano and its immediate neighbourhood, and that thence towards the west the dialect becomes more and more like the Tagal, and towards the east like the Visay until by degrees, before reaching the ethnographical boundary, it merges into those kindred languages.In manners and customs they appear to be half-bred between these two races, yet, according to F. Blumentritt, they preceded the Tagals, and were in fact the first Malays to arrive in Luzon. They show signs of intermixture with Polynesian or Papuan stock.They are physically inferior to the Tagals, nor do they possess the proud warlike spirit of the dwellers in north Luzon. They are less cleanly, and live in poorer houses.The men dress like the Tagals, but the women wear thepatadioninstead of a saya, and a shirt ofguinára.Blumentritt says the men carry the Malaykrisinsteadof thebolo, but I did not see akriscarried by any one when I visited the province.In fact, the regulations enforced at that time by the Guardia Civil were against carrying such a weapon. Thebolo, on the other hand, is a necessary tool.I visited the province of Camarines Sur, going from Manila to Pasacao by sea, and from there travelled by road to an affluent of the River Vicol, and then by canoe on a moonlit night to Nueva Cáceres, the capital of the province.Here I met a remarkable man, the late Bishop Gainza, and was much impressed by his keen intellect and great knowledge of the country.He was said to be a man of great ambition, and I can quite believe it. Originally a Dominican monk, it was intended that he should have been made Archbishop of Manila, but, somehow, Father Pedro Paya, at that time Procurator of the Order in Madrid, got himself nominated instead, and Gainza had to content himself with the bishopric of Nueva Cáceres.He was a model of self-denial, living most frugally on a small part of his revenue, contributing a thousand dollars a year to the funds of the Holy Father, and spending the remainder in building or repairing churches and schools in his diocese, or in assisting undertakings he thought likely to benefit the province.Amongst other works, I remember that he had tried to cut a canal from the River Vicol to the Bay of Ragay. He had excavated a portion of it, but either on his death, or from the difficulties raised by the Public Works Department, the work was abandoned.The Franciscan friars, who held the benefices in that province, opposed him, and annoyed him in every possible way.The present bishop, Father Arsenio Ocampo, formerly an Augustinian monk, is a clever and enlightened man, with whom I had dealings when he was Procurator-General of his Order.I have made this digression from my subject, because so much has been said against the clergy of the Philippines, that I feel impelled to bring before my readers this instance of a bishop who constantly endeavoured to promote the interests of his province.Nueva Cáceres possessed several schools, a hospital, alepers’ hospital, and a training-college for school-mistresses had just been established by Bishop Gainza’s initiative.The shops were mostly in the hands of Chinese, who did a flourishing trade in Manchester goods,patadoins, and coloured handkerchiefs.There were several Spanish and Mestizo merchants who dealt in hemp and rice.From Nueva Cáceres I travelled by a good road to Iriga, a town near the volcano of that name, passing close to the Isarog on my way. From Iriga I visited the country round about, and Lake Bula.Some years after I went from Manila by sea to Tabaco, on the Pacific coast of Albay, getting a fine night view of the Mayon volcano (8272 feet) in violent eruption.From Tabaco I drove to Tivi and visited the celebrated boiling-well and hot-springs at that place, much frequented by the natives, and sometimes by Europeans, for the cure of rheumatism and other diseases.Now that the Stars and Stripes float over the Philippines it is to be hoped that a regular sanatorium will be erected at this beautiful and health-restoring spot, the advantages of which might attract sufferers from all the Far East.On these journeys I had a good opportunity of studying the people. The chief exports are Abacá (Manila hemp), and rice. In Camarines Sur the principal crop is rice, whilst in Albay the hemp predominates, and they import rice.The cultivation of rice, which I have briefly described when writing of the Tagals, is not an occupation calculated to improve the minds or bodies of those engaged in it, and I have noticed that wherever this is the staple crop the peasantry are in a distinctly lower condition than where cane is planted and sugar manufactured. Their lives are passed in alternate periods of exhausting labour and of utter idleness, there is nothing to strive for, nothing to learn, nothing to improve. The same customs go on from generation to generation, the same rude implements are used, and the husbandman paid for his labour in kind lives destitute of comfort in the present, and without hope for the future.Nor can the cultivation and preparation of hemp be considered as a much more improving occupation.Little care, indeed, is required by theMusa textilisafter the first planting, and the cleaning of the fibre is a simple matter, but very laborious.Several Spaniards are settled in these provinces, also a few agents of British houses in Manila, and some Chinese and Mestizos. They usually complain bitterly of the difficulty they experience in getting hemp delivered to them owing to the laziness and unpunctuality of the natives.Yet, notwithstanding this, most of them live in affluence and some have amassed fortunes by Vicol labour. There is, in fact, a good deal of money in Albay, Daraga, and other towns in the hemp districts, and they are the happy hunting-ground of the Jew pedlar who there finds a good market for yellow diamonds and off-colour gems unsaleable in London or Paris. Houndsditch and Broadway will do well to note.The peasantry, however, either from improvidence or aversion to steady labour, seem to be rather worse off than the Tagals and Pampangos, more especially those amongst them who cultivate paddy.The whole of the large amount of hemp exported from Manila and Cebú is cleaned by hand.Several attempts have been made to employ machinery, but the inherent conditions of the industry are unfavourable to success in this line.The plants are grown principally on the eastern slopes of the volcanic mountains of Southern Luzon, and the adjacent islands where the soil is soft and friable and roads are unknown.The heavy stems of the plants cannot profitably be conveyed to fixed works for treatment, and no machine has yet been devised light enough to be carried up to thelátesor plantations and able to compete with hand labour. In a recent report to the British North Borneo Company, Mr. W. C. Cowie mentions his hopes that Thompson’s Fibre Company are about to send out a trial decorticator, with engine and boiler to drive it, to the River Padas, in that company’s territories, for cleaning the fibre of the numerous plants of theMusa textilisgrowing in that region. It will be interesting to learn the result. Possibly the conditions of transport by rail or river are more favourable than in the Philippines, and in that case a measure of success is quite possible. But few errors are more expensive than to unwarrantably assume that machinery must necessarily be cheaper than hand labour.Vicols Preparing Hemp.Cutting the Plant.Cutting the Plant.Adjusting under the Knife.Adjusting under the Knife.Separating the Petioles.Separating the Petioles.To face p. 287.Anyhow, as regards the Philippines here is a nicelittle problem. If the mechanics of Massachusetts and Connecticut cannot solve it, I do not know who can.The Vicol labourers proceed to thelátesin couples, carrying their simple and efficient apparatus, all of which, except the knife, they make themselves.One man cuts down the plant, removes the outer covering, and separates the layers forming the stem, dividing them into strips about one and a half inches wide, and spreading them out to air.The other man standing at his bench, takes a strip and places the middle of it across the convex block and under the knife, which is held up by the spring of a sapling overhead. Then, placing one foot on a treadle hanging from the handle of the knife, he firmly presses the latter down on the block. It should be explained that the knife is not sharp enough to cut the fibres. Firmly grasping the strip in both hands, and throwing his body backwards, he steadily draws the strip towards him till all the fibre has passed the knife; then, removing his foot from the treadle, the knife is lifted from the block by the spring, leaving the pulp and waste behind it. Sweeping this off, he reverses the half-cleaned strip, and twisting the cleaned fibre round one hand and wrist, and grasping it also with the other, he draws the part he formerly held, under the knife, pressing the treadle with the foot as before, and thus completes the cleaning of one strip. The fibre is often six feet long, and only requires drying in the sun to be marketable.A man is able to clean about twenty-five pounds of hemp per day, and receives one half of it for his labour.He usually sells his share to his employer for a trifle under the market price.
Vicols (33).
The Vicols inhabit the southern half of the province of Camarines Norte, the whole of Camarines Sur and Albay, the islands of Catanduanes, Burias, and Ticao, and the northern shores of Masbate. They are civilised, and have been Christians for centuries.They speak a dialect of their own, which, according to Jagor, is midway between Tagal and Visay, which dialect is spoken in its greatest purity by the inhabitants of the Isarog volcano and its immediate neighbourhood, and that thence towards the west the dialect becomes more and more like the Tagal, and towards the east like the Visay until by degrees, before reaching the ethnographical boundary, it merges into those kindred languages.In manners and customs they appear to be half-bred between these two races, yet, according to F. Blumentritt, they preceded the Tagals, and were in fact the first Malays to arrive in Luzon. They show signs of intermixture with Polynesian or Papuan stock.They are physically inferior to the Tagals, nor do they possess the proud warlike spirit of the dwellers in north Luzon. They are less cleanly, and live in poorer houses.The men dress like the Tagals, but the women wear thepatadioninstead of a saya, and a shirt ofguinára.Blumentritt says the men carry the Malaykrisinsteadof thebolo, but I did not see akriscarried by any one when I visited the province.In fact, the regulations enforced at that time by the Guardia Civil were against carrying such a weapon. Thebolo, on the other hand, is a necessary tool.I visited the province of Camarines Sur, going from Manila to Pasacao by sea, and from there travelled by road to an affluent of the River Vicol, and then by canoe on a moonlit night to Nueva Cáceres, the capital of the province.Here I met a remarkable man, the late Bishop Gainza, and was much impressed by his keen intellect and great knowledge of the country.He was said to be a man of great ambition, and I can quite believe it. Originally a Dominican monk, it was intended that he should have been made Archbishop of Manila, but, somehow, Father Pedro Paya, at that time Procurator of the Order in Madrid, got himself nominated instead, and Gainza had to content himself with the bishopric of Nueva Cáceres.He was a model of self-denial, living most frugally on a small part of his revenue, contributing a thousand dollars a year to the funds of the Holy Father, and spending the remainder in building or repairing churches and schools in his diocese, or in assisting undertakings he thought likely to benefit the province.Amongst other works, I remember that he had tried to cut a canal from the River Vicol to the Bay of Ragay. He had excavated a portion of it, but either on his death, or from the difficulties raised by the Public Works Department, the work was abandoned.The Franciscan friars, who held the benefices in that province, opposed him, and annoyed him in every possible way.The present bishop, Father Arsenio Ocampo, formerly an Augustinian monk, is a clever and enlightened man, with whom I had dealings when he was Procurator-General of his Order.I have made this digression from my subject, because so much has been said against the clergy of the Philippines, that I feel impelled to bring before my readers this instance of a bishop who constantly endeavoured to promote the interests of his province.Nueva Cáceres possessed several schools, a hospital, alepers’ hospital, and a training-college for school-mistresses had just been established by Bishop Gainza’s initiative.The shops were mostly in the hands of Chinese, who did a flourishing trade in Manchester goods,patadoins, and coloured handkerchiefs.There were several Spanish and Mestizo merchants who dealt in hemp and rice.From Nueva Cáceres I travelled by a good road to Iriga, a town near the volcano of that name, passing close to the Isarog on my way. From Iriga I visited the country round about, and Lake Bula.Some years after I went from Manila by sea to Tabaco, on the Pacific coast of Albay, getting a fine night view of the Mayon volcano (8272 feet) in violent eruption.From Tabaco I drove to Tivi and visited the celebrated boiling-well and hot-springs at that place, much frequented by the natives, and sometimes by Europeans, for the cure of rheumatism and other diseases.Now that the Stars and Stripes float over the Philippines it is to be hoped that a regular sanatorium will be erected at this beautiful and health-restoring spot, the advantages of which might attract sufferers from all the Far East.On these journeys I had a good opportunity of studying the people. The chief exports are Abacá (Manila hemp), and rice. In Camarines Sur the principal crop is rice, whilst in Albay the hemp predominates, and they import rice.The cultivation of rice, which I have briefly described when writing of the Tagals, is not an occupation calculated to improve the minds or bodies of those engaged in it, and I have noticed that wherever this is the staple crop the peasantry are in a distinctly lower condition than where cane is planted and sugar manufactured. Their lives are passed in alternate periods of exhausting labour and of utter idleness, there is nothing to strive for, nothing to learn, nothing to improve. The same customs go on from generation to generation, the same rude implements are used, and the husbandman paid for his labour in kind lives destitute of comfort in the present, and without hope for the future.Nor can the cultivation and preparation of hemp be considered as a much more improving occupation.Little care, indeed, is required by theMusa textilisafter the first planting, and the cleaning of the fibre is a simple matter, but very laborious.Several Spaniards are settled in these provinces, also a few agents of British houses in Manila, and some Chinese and Mestizos. They usually complain bitterly of the difficulty they experience in getting hemp delivered to them owing to the laziness and unpunctuality of the natives.Yet, notwithstanding this, most of them live in affluence and some have amassed fortunes by Vicol labour. There is, in fact, a good deal of money in Albay, Daraga, and other towns in the hemp districts, and they are the happy hunting-ground of the Jew pedlar who there finds a good market for yellow diamonds and off-colour gems unsaleable in London or Paris. Houndsditch and Broadway will do well to note.The peasantry, however, either from improvidence or aversion to steady labour, seem to be rather worse off than the Tagals and Pampangos, more especially those amongst them who cultivate paddy.The whole of the large amount of hemp exported from Manila and Cebú is cleaned by hand.Several attempts have been made to employ machinery, but the inherent conditions of the industry are unfavourable to success in this line.The plants are grown principally on the eastern slopes of the volcanic mountains of Southern Luzon, and the adjacent islands where the soil is soft and friable and roads are unknown.The heavy stems of the plants cannot profitably be conveyed to fixed works for treatment, and no machine has yet been devised light enough to be carried up to thelátesor plantations and able to compete with hand labour. In a recent report to the British North Borneo Company, Mr. W. C. Cowie mentions his hopes that Thompson’s Fibre Company are about to send out a trial decorticator, with engine and boiler to drive it, to the River Padas, in that company’s territories, for cleaning the fibre of the numerous plants of theMusa textilisgrowing in that region. It will be interesting to learn the result. Possibly the conditions of transport by rail or river are more favourable than in the Philippines, and in that case a measure of success is quite possible. But few errors are more expensive than to unwarrantably assume that machinery must necessarily be cheaper than hand labour.Vicols Preparing Hemp.Cutting the Plant.Cutting the Plant.Adjusting under the Knife.Adjusting under the Knife.Separating the Petioles.Separating the Petioles.To face p. 287.Anyhow, as regards the Philippines here is a nicelittle problem. If the mechanics of Massachusetts and Connecticut cannot solve it, I do not know who can.The Vicol labourers proceed to thelátesin couples, carrying their simple and efficient apparatus, all of which, except the knife, they make themselves.One man cuts down the plant, removes the outer covering, and separates the layers forming the stem, dividing them into strips about one and a half inches wide, and spreading them out to air.The other man standing at his bench, takes a strip and places the middle of it across the convex block and under the knife, which is held up by the spring of a sapling overhead. Then, placing one foot on a treadle hanging from the handle of the knife, he firmly presses the latter down on the block. It should be explained that the knife is not sharp enough to cut the fibres. Firmly grasping the strip in both hands, and throwing his body backwards, he steadily draws the strip towards him till all the fibre has passed the knife; then, removing his foot from the treadle, the knife is lifted from the block by the spring, leaving the pulp and waste behind it. Sweeping this off, he reverses the half-cleaned strip, and twisting the cleaned fibre round one hand and wrist, and grasping it also with the other, he draws the part he formerly held, under the knife, pressing the treadle with the foot as before, and thus completes the cleaning of one strip. The fibre is often six feet long, and only requires drying in the sun to be marketable.A man is able to clean about twenty-five pounds of hemp per day, and receives one half of it for his labour.He usually sells his share to his employer for a trifle under the market price.
The Vicols inhabit the southern half of the province of Camarines Norte, the whole of Camarines Sur and Albay, the islands of Catanduanes, Burias, and Ticao, and the northern shores of Masbate. They are civilised, and have been Christians for centuries.
They speak a dialect of their own, which, according to Jagor, is midway between Tagal and Visay, which dialect is spoken in its greatest purity by the inhabitants of the Isarog volcano and its immediate neighbourhood, and that thence towards the west the dialect becomes more and more like the Tagal, and towards the east like the Visay until by degrees, before reaching the ethnographical boundary, it merges into those kindred languages.
In manners and customs they appear to be half-bred between these two races, yet, according to F. Blumentritt, they preceded the Tagals, and were in fact the first Malays to arrive in Luzon. They show signs of intermixture with Polynesian or Papuan stock.
They are physically inferior to the Tagals, nor do they possess the proud warlike spirit of the dwellers in north Luzon. They are less cleanly, and live in poorer houses.
The men dress like the Tagals, but the women wear thepatadioninstead of a saya, and a shirt ofguinára.
Blumentritt says the men carry the Malaykrisinsteadof thebolo, but I did not see akriscarried by any one when I visited the province.
In fact, the regulations enforced at that time by the Guardia Civil were against carrying such a weapon. Thebolo, on the other hand, is a necessary tool.
I visited the province of Camarines Sur, going from Manila to Pasacao by sea, and from there travelled by road to an affluent of the River Vicol, and then by canoe on a moonlit night to Nueva Cáceres, the capital of the province.
Here I met a remarkable man, the late Bishop Gainza, and was much impressed by his keen intellect and great knowledge of the country.
He was said to be a man of great ambition, and I can quite believe it. Originally a Dominican monk, it was intended that he should have been made Archbishop of Manila, but, somehow, Father Pedro Paya, at that time Procurator of the Order in Madrid, got himself nominated instead, and Gainza had to content himself with the bishopric of Nueva Cáceres.
He was a model of self-denial, living most frugally on a small part of his revenue, contributing a thousand dollars a year to the funds of the Holy Father, and spending the remainder in building or repairing churches and schools in his diocese, or in assisting undertakings he thought likely to benefit the province.
Amongst other works, I remember that he had tried to cut a canal from the River Vicol to the Bay of Ragay. He had excavated a portion of it, but either on his death, or from the difficulties raised by the Public Works Department, the work was abandoned.
The Franciscan friars, who held the benefices in that province, opposed him, and annoyed him in every possible way.
The present bishop, Father Arsenio Ocampo, formerly an Augustinian monk, is a clever and enlightened man, with whom I had dealings when he was Procurator-General of his Order.
I have made this digression from my subject, because so much has been said against the clergy of the Philippines, that I feel impelled to bring before my readers this instance of a bishop who constantly endeavoured to promote the interests of his province.
Nueva Cáceres possessed several schools, a hospital, alepers’ hospital, and a training-college for school-mistresses had just been established by Bishop Gainza’s initiative.
The shops were mostly in the hands of Chinese, who did a flourishing trade in Manchester goods,patadoins, and coloured handkerchiefs.
There were several Spanish and Mestizo merchants who dealt in hemp and rice.
From Nueva Cáceres I travelled by a good road to Iriga, a town near the volcano of that name, passing close to the Isarog on my way. From Iriga I visited the country round about, and Lake Bula.
Some years after I went from Manila by sea to Tabaco, on the Pacific coast of Albay, getting a fine night view of the Mayon volcano (8272 feet) in violent eruption.
From Tabaco I drove to Tivi and visited the celebrated boiling-well and hot-springs at that place, much frequented by the natives, and sometimes by Europeans, for the cure of rheumatism and other diseases.
Now that the Stars and Stripes float over the Philippines it is to be hoped that a regular sanatorium will be erected at this beautiful and health-restoring spot, the advantages of which might attract sufferers from all the Far East.
On these journeys I had a good opportunity of studying the people. The chief exports are Abacá (Manila hemp), and rice. In Camarines Sur the principal crop is rice, whilst in Albay the hemp predominates, and they import rice.
The cultivation of rice, which I have briefly described when writing of the Tagals, is not an occupation calculated to improve the minds or bodies of those engaged in it, and I have noticed that wherever this is the staple crop the peasantry are in a distinctly lower condition than where cane is planted and sugar manufactured. Their lives are passed in alternate periods of exhausting labour and of utter idleness, there is nothing to strive for, nothing to learn, nothing to improve. The same customs go on from generation to generation, the same rude implements are used, and the husbandman paid for his labour in kind lives destitute of comfort in the present, and without hope for the future.
Nor can the cultivation and preparation of hemp be considered as a much more improving occupation.
Little care, indeed, is required by theMusa textilisafter the first planting, and the cleaning of the fibre is a simple matter, but very laborious.
Several Spaniards are settled in these provinces, also a few agents of British houses in Manila, and some Chinese and Mestizos. They usually complain bitterly of the difficulty they experience in getting hemp delivered to them owing to the laziness and unpunctuality of the natives.
Yet, notwithstanding this, most of them live in affluence and some have amassed fortunes by Vicol labour. There is, in fact, a good deal of money in Albay, Daraga, and other towns in the hemp districts, and they are the happy hunting-ground of the Jew pedlar who there finds a good market for yellow diamonds and off-colour gems unsaleable in London or Paris. Houndsditch and Broadway will do well to note.
The peasantry, however, either from improvidence or aversion to steady labour, seem to be rather worse off than the Tagals and Pampangos, more especially those amongst them who cultivate paddy.
The whole of the large amount of hemp exported from Manila and Cebú is cleaned by hand.
Several attempts have been made to employ machinery, but the inherent conditions of the industry are unfavourable to success in this line.
The plants are grown principally on the eastern slopes of the volcanic mountains of Southern Luzon, and the adjacent islands where the soil is soft and friable and roads are unknown.
The heavy stems of the plants cannot profitably be conveyed to fixed works for treatment, and no machine has yet been devised light enough to be carried up to thelátesor plantations and able to compete with hand labour. In a recent report to the British North Borneo Company, Mr. W. C. Cowie mentions his hopes that Thompson’s Fibre Company are about to send out a trial decorticator, with engine and boiler to drive it, to the River Padas, in that company’s territories, for cleaning the fibre of the numerous plants of theMusa textilisgrowing in that region. It will be interesting to learn the result. Possibly the conditions of transport by rail or river are more favourable than in the Philippines, and in that case a measure of success is quite possible. But few errors are more expensive than to unwarrantably assume that machinery must necessarily be cheaper than hand labour.
Vicols Preparing Hemp.
Cutting the Plant.Cutting the Plant.
Cutting the Plant.
Adjusting under the Knife.Adjusting under the Knife.
Adjusting under the Knife.
Separating the Petioles.Separating the Petioles.To face p. 287.
Separating the Petioles.
To face p. 287.
Anyhow, as regards the Philippines here is a nicelittle problem. If the mechanics of Massachusetts and Connecticut cannot solve it, I do not know who can.
The Vicol labourers proceed to thelátesin couples, carrying their simple and efficient apparatus, all of which, except the knife, they make themselves.
One man cuts down the plant, removes the outer covering, and separates the layers forming the stem, dividing them into strips about one and a half inches wide, and spreading them out to air.
The other man standing at his bench, takes a strip and places the middle of it across the convex block and under the knife, which is held up by the spring of a sapling overhead. Then, placing one foot on a treadle hanging from the handle of the knife, he firmly presses the latter down on the block. It should be explained that the knife is not sharp enough to cut the fibres. Firmly grasping the strip in both hands, and throwing his body backwards, he steadily draws the strip towards him till all the fibre has passed the knife; then, removing his foot from the treadle, the knife is lifted from the block by the spring, leaving the pulp and waste behind it. Sweeping this off, he reverses the half-cleaned strip, and twisting the cleaned fibre round one hand and wrist, and grasping it also with the other, he draws the part he formerly held, under the knife, pressing the treadle with the foot as before, and thus completes the cleaning of one strip. The fibre is often six feet long, and only requires drying in the sun to be marketable.
A man is able to clean about twenty-five pounds of hemp per day, and receives one half of it for his labour.
He usually sells his share to his employer for a trifle under the market price.