Florence Kimball Russel

“ There were Moro chiefs, looking world-wearied and indifferent, followed by their attendant slaves; there were thrifty Moros willing to sell one anything from a kris or a barong to the very clothes on their backs; there were handsome young Moro blades, who stared shyly at the strange white faces and chatted volubly the while in their soft Malay tongue; there were Philippine market women in camisa and panuela, some of them carrying large, flat baskets of vegetables or fruits on their heads, the green of ripe oranges and bananas making an effective splash of colour above their dusky hair ”

“ The saloon was entirely covered, ceiling and all, by American and ship’s flags, interspersed with palms, while over the sideboard were suspended the American flag and Union Jack intertwined, this last in honour of our two cable experts, both of them being Britishers. We women donned our smartest frocks, the electric piano, slightly out of tune, did rag-time to perfection, the menu included every conventional Christmas dish, and yet—and yet it was not Christmas, and all the roast turkey and plum pudding in the world could not make it so. ”

“ Our last day in Bongao the Governor secured a little pearling launch, the Hilda, and took several of the Burnside people on a jaunt to the island of Siminor, as it is written on the map, or Siminol, as it is called by the natives. Siminol is about ten miles south of Bongao, and our destination was the town of Tampakan. It was a misty, moisty afternoon, with a sharp salt smell to the air, and through the haze distant mountains loomed spectre-like, or else melted into blue clouds on the horizon. ”

“ Before leaving the ship, the Americans joked about their possible fate, as Americans will, while the natives, on going down the gangway, crossed themselves and commended their souls to the Virgin, each race brave and stout-hearted in its own fashion. To be sure, they carried with them life-preservers and signals in case of accident, while the ship stayed as near the little twinkling lights on the small boat as possible, like some big mother hen hovering over her only chick.
The next morning the buoy at Flecha Point was picked up, the splice made, and the journey to Zamboanga continued. ”

“ Being a fiesta, the town was full of natives from the provinces, all smartly dressed and all beaming with good-natured curiosity at the advent of two and a half American women,—the only Americanas most of them had ever seen,—and quite an escort gathered around us as, accompanied by the officers of the post and those from the ship not otherwise engaged, we walked down the dusty streets toward the cockpits, where in honour of the day there was to be a contest of unusual interest. At every corner came new recruits to swell the ranks of our followers. ”

“ After Dumaguete, Misamis, and Iligan, the harbour of Cagayan presented a truly metropolitan appearance, what with a transport, a coasting vessel, and a navy gunboat, all in at the same time. From the Burnside we could see nothing of the town save a very dingy wharf, a few white tents pitched near the water’s edge for the convenience of soldiers guarding the unloading of vessels, and a settlement of nipa shacks, in front of which were gaily coloured washings hung out to dry in the hot sun. ”

“ All day long men and boys, innocent of even an excuse for clothes, hovered about the ship in bancas or dugouts, chattering volubly with each other in Visayan, or begging us in broken Spanish to throw down coins that they might exhibit their natatorial accomplishments, and, when we finally yielded, diving with yells of delight for the bits of silver, seeming quite as much pleased, [28] however, with chocolates wrapped in tin-foil as they had been with the money, and uttering shrill cries that sounded profanely like “Dam’me—dam’me,” to attract our attention. ”

“ Finally on the outskirts of the crowd I caught a glimpse of three Moro women, and forced my way to them, shaking hands and smiling as affably as possible. They shook hands in return, rather awkwardly, but answered smile with smile, talking excitedly in their native tongue, and seeming surprised that I could speak only a word or two of Malay, without doubt a more agreeable language than that harsh and unintelligible one in which the white officers were bargaining for barongs and krises. ”

“ On the evening of our second day in Dumaguete, the natives of the town gave a ball in honour of the cable-ship, at the house of one of the leading citizens. There, on a floor made smoother than glass with banana leaves, we danced far into the night to the frightfully quick music of the Filipino orchestra. One would hardly recognize the waltz or two-step as performed by the Visayan. ”

“ The day was wet, and raw, and gray, and we could see the beach strewn with trees and timber, the thatched roof of a bamboo house, and all the aftermath of a terrible storm that had swept over the islands five days before, and of which we, in the safe shelter of Cebu’s harbour, were ignorant. It was here we were told by cable that the line from Iligan to Cagayan had not been working since the storm had torn up the wharf and beach at the former place a week before, so the next morning we sailed for Iligan again, feeling as blue as the day itself. ”

“ My little kris dagger seemed scarcely to make an impression on the stout Manila rope. “Faster! Harder!” called some one, and we sawed with all our strength. A moment more and the green waters of the bay had opened and closed over the cable—the first stretch of it laid on the trip—and we women had helped do it.
Everyone on board was excited over the great event, the very natives, tired as they were, sending up a faint viva, and at dinner that evening it was easy to see a strain had been lifted from all the officers. ”

“ Even the natives themselves, guiding the heavy, unwieldy, treacherous cable round and round in the water-soaked tank, that only one turn should be lifted at a time, grinned affably and perspiringly at those of us peering over the railing at them—grimy tar-stained figures that they were, the sunlight bringing their faces out in strong relief against the dark backgound. ”

“ If possible the people of Misamis dance faster and hop higher than the people of Dumaguete, and how the women manage to keep on their chinelas during these wild gyrations is quite beyond me.
As the secretario of the town played a harp in the orchestra—surely an evidence of versatility—we ventured to ask if he would play a two-step very, very slowly, and hummed it in ordinary time. At its beginning the Filipinos who had started to dance, stopped aghast. “Faster, faster!” they cried in Spanish. “No one could dance to such slow music. This is a ball, men, not a funeral!” ”

“ Every man there was armed with at least a barong stuck into his broad sash, and many of them boasted a kris and campilan as well, while the brilliant colours of their costumes, and the still more gaudy sarongs of the women, made them resemble a gathering of [228] strange tropic birds, our European apparel looking singularly dull and sober beside their scarlets, greens, and purples. Over this strange scene flickered the dim light of cocoanut-oil lamps, and outside a shower beat softly against the trees, and the moon looked down at us whitely from a cloudy sky. ”

“ All the women have their ears pierced, and many of them wear a round bone or stick, resembling a cigarette in shape and size, thrust through the aperture. Altogether they are as unlike European women as one could well imagine, and I do not blame the Sultan for looking forward to white wives in the hereafter, though I hope the celestial harem won’t have to blacken its teeth!
There was one beauty in Bongao, however, a slave girl of eighteen, so graceful and lithe that her every attitude suggested a bird just alighted for an instant from a flight through space. ”

“ As may be imagined everyone on the ship got to think in megohms, and scientific terms clung to our conversation just as the tar from the cable tanks clung to our wearing apparel, while few among us but had wild nightmares wherein the cable became a sentient thing, and made faces at us as it leapt overboard in a continuous suicidal frenzy. ”

“ Each of the chiefs and all their followers were dressed in the picturesque Moro costume, which we had seen first in Misamis and Iligan, and all of them were frankly curious over the American women. They discussed us freely to our very faces, and kept changing their positions to get a better view of us, staring with amazement when the old datto was brought up and introduced. How curious of the Americans not to know that a woman should be taken to a datto, not a datto to a woman. ”

“ Everybody in the Philippines knows the story of General Arolas, and of how, at the close of a brief republican administration in Spain, he was practically banished to Sulu, there to die by fever or be killed by the Moros. But Arolas, instead of settling down into an inactive life awaiting what seemed the inevitable, occupied himself in building up the town, fortifying it strongly, and at the same time making it more beautiful by laying it out in broad streets and avenues, interspersed at regular intervals with flowering squares and plazas. ”

“ After the head man had religiously shaken every newcomer’s hand, our officers began bargaining with him and with his people for their knives, and the crowd of men around us grew every moment greater, with not a woman in sight. There were men in complete Moro costume, handsome and picturesque; [237] others ruining their appearance by the addition of a hideous balbriggan undershirt, sandwiched between tight trousers with innumerable buttons and a brilliantly coloured turban; while still others, in little else than a fez and breech-clout, seemed not a whit abashed. ”

“ Another love story of different import comes from a village on the island of Siminor, just south of Bongao. There, it is said, lives an old Moro who so loved his wife, and strange to say, in this polygamous community, his only wife, that when she died he watched her grave long beyond the appointed time, after which he had his house built over her burial-place, and there lives to this day, still faithful to the mouldering bones beneath him. Surely a proof that great love sometimes stirs even savage breasts. ”

“ Even the natives in the tank, swiftly passing the cable from hand to hand, were singing in barbaric monotone to themselves, while we idle ones on the quarter-deck read a marvellous tale of love and bloodshed to the monotonous accompaniment of the cable shuffling through the wooden troughs beside us. ”

“ Others, emulating the laughing people on the big boat, put their pieces of ice into their mouths, but not for long at a time, as the intense cold made their teeth ache; while still others piously crossed themselves and refused to have aught to do with so manifest an invention of the Evil One.
Meanwhile, despite the fact of its being Christmas, the Signal Corps officers, men, and natives were hard at work establishing an office in the town, digging a trench for the shore end of the cable, and setting up the cable hut, packed in sections for convenience in transportation. ”

“ On New Year’s morning the presidente and secretario of Misamis, accompanied by their respective families and a young Moro slave, the property of the secretario, came aboard the Burnside to return our call. It was the first time any of them had ever seen a modern steamship, and loud and voluble were their exclamations of wonder at what we have come to regard as the every-day conveniences of civilization. ”

“ We were literally mobbed by natives anxious for a glimpse of the first American women ever seen in that part of Mindanao, and we walked up to the Headquarters Building with a chattering, crowding, admiring horde at our heels. There the officers held an informal reception in our honour, to which all the socially possible of Misamis were invited, and the native band serenaded us with such choice selections as “A Hot Time,” and “After the Ball,” decidedly off the key, to be sure, but with the best intentions in the world. ”

“ She shook her head deprecatingly at this, that she might not appear critical of our wearing-apparel, but she stroked each native garment wistfully as if she loved it, and smiled at our approval of the picture she made standing there in the big, sunlit room, the gaily coloured jabuls scattered about her on the polished floor, and one more gorgeous than the rest wrapped loosely around her, yet not quite hiding the European cut of her sleeve and collar. ”

“ Speaking of buying and selling women among the Moros, reminds me of an old Maharajah in Bongao who had never seen an American woman until the arrival of the Burnside. Of course all white women are considered very beautiful by these dusky savages, an evidence of how much they admire Europeans being found in the fact that they firmly believe in the Sultan’s Seventh Heaven all the wives of his harem will have white skins. ”