P. H. Eley

“ Life in Manila is pleasant, but expensive. It is pleasant from the fact that it is not only the capital but also metropolis of the archipelago. Thus the combination of wealth and high official position has given to Manila a society of the highest and most refined type. The process of beautifying and improving the city which is constantly going on bids fair to give us at no distant day a city of which we may well be proud. ”

“ In these quiet secluded nooks successive generations of Filipinos are born, reared, grow old and die in an even chain of events broken only by the occasional erection of a new grass house on the identical spot where its predecessors have stood for ages. ”

“ Love, hatred, sorrow, and joy—every passion that enters into the complex structure of the human heart even here, in this scene of sadness and despair, was playing apparently as freely as where misfortune and disease had never crossed the portals of life. ”

“ Few people pause to think that Tuesday, the twenty-third day of July, nineteen hundred and one, not only placed a mile-stone on the road of civilization, but also marked an epoch in the history of the world. ”

“ Our club of American officials decided to run a mess, so we employed a cook and a house boy, then each of us provided himself with a personal servant, making a total of six servants for four men—it takes about this proportion of servants to live in any sort of comfort in the Philippines—and launched ourselves boldly upon the sea of domestic 57economy. But there were shoals ahead of us, for the question of regulating servants is one of no small importance in the Philippines, and one of its most disadvantageous features is the long chain of dependents that usually attends it. ”

“ In cases where teachers are sent to a town in which there is no school-house, they are expected to secure the aid of the people and have one built. The American teacher is to see that all studying aloud is stopped. All supplies must be kept under lock and key. In towns 39where there is no case or box to lock the supplies in, and it is also impossible to get the town council to furnish a case, a requisition may be sent to Manila, and, if an appropriation can be secured, one will be made and sent out. ”

“ Beyond this narrow horizon he never looks. So narrow and contracted is the life that the languages of two towns a few miles apart are so different that one would scarcely recognize them as belonging to the same race of people. ”

“ They do not use chop sticks as the Chinese do, but the rice and fish are caught in a hollow formed by the first three fingers of the right hand. The thumb is then placed behind the mass. It is raised up and poised 75before the mouth, with a skill coming from the evolution of ages, when a contraction of the muscles of the thumb throws the mass into the mouth with a skill that is marvelous to any but a Filipino. To judge from the most reliable information, the poorest class do not have an abundance of food, although it would seem that such a condition of things would be well-nigh impossible. ”

“ A long flat wooden shield, a bolo, and a long bamboo spear with a sharp, flat, iron point, completed his equipment for battle.
Here stood the first and the twentieth centuries side by side. The Filipino who had advanced only a stage beyond the condition of primitive man with his knife, spear, and wooden shield, stood side by side with the American soldier, a representative of modern life with his magazine rifle, his canteen, his knapsack,—with every article of his clothing made to give him the highest possible efficiency as the unit of a military organization. ”

“ Thus it can easily be seen that life in the Philippines, if lived according to American ideals, is dependent upon a highly developed and highly complex commerce. However, the difficulties of transportation and the restriction of large stocks of merchandise to Manila and some half a dozen other towns, make so great a difference between country life and city life that a short comparison 61of the two will not be out of place, and life in Manila may well be taken as being fairly typical of the latter. ”

“ A long chain of dependents is attached to the household of the rich Filipino. The master has his special body servant to be present at all times to do his master’s bidding, in short, to be the visible mechanism of his master’s volition. So, too, the lady of the house has her servant 73woman to do the slightest bidding of her ladyship. Then there is the cook who is almost invariably a man, a house boy or two, and the coachman. ”

“ What an indissoluble enigma is life! Here in a little cluster of grass huts in a secluded nook of a secluded island of an all but secluded archipelago was gathered together 84a little community of wretched natives, driven by their loathsomeness from association with others even of the same half-savage race. Yet here, men and women loved and were married, by mutual trust if not by law, and children were born of the union to live forever under the unspeakable horror that overshadowed the unfortunate parents. ”

“ Everybody in the Philippines lives up-stairs, for the ground is so soaked 36with water during the rainy season that it is a menace to health to live upon the ground floor. So even the poorest nippa hut is built upon stakes four or five feet above the ground.
Bacalod is a typical Philippine town. As we landed, a broad open square was spread out before us. Two sides of the square were lined with two-story houses in which were Chinese stores below and Filipino homes above. ”

“ The rich Filipino’s house is usually of wood built upon a wall of stone or brick from ten to fifteen 72feet high. The floors are kept highly polished in his hallway, dressing-room, and bed-rooms. There are, of course, no fire-places in any of the rooms, but on some occasions something is needed to dry the rain-soaked atmosphere, for even in the dry season it has been seen to rain for five successive days and nights without the cessation of a moment. ”

“ But let him who intends living well in Manila on a small income bid farewell at once to so idylic a dream, for it costs much to live well 62there. In the city of Manila one can get almost anything he wishes, but it must be paid for at the price it commands. Especially in the case of eatables, this price is by no means small, because to the first cost of articles must in most cases be added the expense of distant shipment from American, European, or Australian ports, and not infrequently the cost of long refrigeration must also be taken into consideration. ”

“ As one enters a Filipino sitting-room for the first time, there is one feature in the arrangement of the furniture that impresses itself upon him at once, and it may be stated without fear of serious contradiction that this same peculiar feature in its arrangement will continue to face him, as he enters different homes, about as certainly as he crosses the threshold. ”

“ We gave the cooks so much a day with which to buy supplies in the local market, for our own table, making him render a daily list of expenditures, and a fixed amount besides to purchase rice and fish for himself and the other servants. Of course, if they wished to vary their diet and get chicken and fresh pork, which could be had at far distant intervals, it was wholly a matter of their option, but the allowance was 58made on the basis of so much rice and fish a day for each. This allowance was about fifteen cents a day in Spanish coin per servant. ”

“ The son lives in the house of his father, cultivates the same few square feet of soil planted in edible roots, climbs the same cocoanut trees, follows the same winding path down to the stream, pounds rice in the same mortar and with the same stick that his 66ancestors have used from time unremembered, and, in case of illness, curls up on a grass mat in a corner of the room until he dies or by some good fortune recovers. ”

“ Its passenger, a belated teacher who at the last moment had wandered from the pier, was shouting for some one to throw him a rope, and a 8few moments later our last passenger whose silvery hair little indicated the probability of such a blunder was landed in a heap on the deck. Our ship was now under way and soon passed out of the Golden Gate bearing on and between her decks the largest number of teachers as well as the largest cargo of pedagogical equipment that any vessel in the history of the world ever bore to a foreign land to instruct an alien people. ”

“ When our sail boat ran aground on the sandy bottom a hundred yards or more from the shore, a crowd of Filipino men who were on the beach slowly rolled up their pantaloons and waded out to the rescue,—for the money that was in it. ”

“ But there is so vast a difference between the mode of life of the highest class and the tao, or lowest class, that it is well to speak of them separately, and the great middle class of Filipinos can easily be imagined to occupy the intervening ground. ”

“ The wind which always blows in tropical countries is gathered in between the long projecting arms of a mountain chain and rushes over the face of cliff with such force that it is said by travelers to be one of the strongest continual winds on the globe. ”

“ In less than a week he had employed an assistant at four dollars a month; in less than another week that assistant had employed him an assistant at two dollars a month; in less than another week that assistant to the 59assistant had employed him an assistant at the princely salary of fifty cents a month; and from fear that the chain of dependents would end only by our having the whole Filipino race attached to our culinary force, we broke up house-keeping and went boarding again, choosing that as the less of the two evils. ”

“ From then until about five o’clock in the afternoon it is best to take things as they come, even though one of those things be a Filipino dinner. But then you may have your vehiclo attached to a young bull with a ring in his nose and go for a drive. If it is the dry season you will probably enjoy the drive unless you object to the frequent clouds of dust swept along by the evening wind. If it is in the rainy season your pleasure will depend to a considerable extent upon how wet you get ”

“ So our first impressions on coming on deck were that we had run aground. But the captain assured us that everything was ship-shape and that this was the nearest point of approach to Capiz, a town of considerable importance on the island of Panay, where a body of troops was 28to embark for home. Not even the grass hut of a native was in sight. Search as we would, not a sign was seen of a stream flowing into the sea, indicating the probable presence of a town. There was not a sign of life of any kind save one lone column of thin, blue smoke that arose from the side of a mountain miles away. ”

“ A few days after reaching the town and securing a home the presidente of the town had it publicly announced that the following Monday morning at eight o’clock a public school for boys would be opened in a building that had been rented for the purpose by the municipal council. About the middle of the afternoon of the same day a man beat a little drum throughout all the streets of the town to call the people out and the town clerk announced both in Spanish and in the native 42language that this public school would begin at the time and place mentioned above ”

“ WHAT THE TEACHERS DID.
There is a remarkable sameness about the towns in the Philippines. They all have a large open square about the middle of the town, around three sides of which are Chinese stores, unless one side lies open to the sea, and on the fourth is the great stone ecclesia. The streets run at right angles to one another and divide up the town into creditable squares. ”

“ Even the petty officers of the ship are not free from being made the objects of the sport, and passengers of especial prominence have often been treated to a bath in a tub of cold water or had their faces 14lathered with a broom as a shaving brush while a bar of old iron served the purpose of a razor. ”

“ The long, black, glossy hair of the young women hung loosely down their backs, in many cases reaching below the hips—heads of hair that almost any lady would be proud to own. Many of the women had in their mouths long poorly-made cigars that were wrapped and tied with small white threads to hold them together while the lady owners chewed and pulled away with vigor at the end opposite the fire. ”

“ The wooden houses in the Philippines are built by setting large posts upright into the ground, extending into the air from twenty to thirty feet. Cross timbers are fastened to these upright posts about eight or ten feet above the ground and then not sawed off even with the posts, but allowed to extend beyond them each way. ”

“ No traveler who lands at Honolulu will feel unrequited for his time and his money should he visit two places in the vicinity of the town. The first is the Pali and the second, 10the Bishop Museum of Polynesian Ethnology. ”

“ Some few children, apparently from six to thirteen years of age, almost wholly nude, were romping and playing in the open space around which the huts stood, and no one would ever have thought that any cloud so horrible as leprosy could hover over a place apparently so happy. ”

“ One arises in the morning about the time the sun’s first rays silver the 64top leaves of the cocoanut trees and then stirs around until nine or ten o’clock, when it is found expedient to avoid a further exposure to the sun. ”

“ The work is submitted to the reader in the hope that it will prove to be pregnant with interest to those who are in sympathy with great movements and to those who listen with delight to stories of personal experiences in distant lands and among strange peoples. ”