Chapter I: Manila as We Found It

High on the bridge of the Pacific Mail Steamer _Siberia_ we stood as we passed through the Boca Chica--the narrow channel--into the historic waters of Manila Bay. On one side was the mountainous island of Corregidor, rising steeply out of the sea and masking in its tropic growth many batteries and guns, on the other was the splendid mountain, Mariveles, and in the distance fine ranges rising from the sparkling ocean. Far away on the horizon, across the huge bay, lay Manila, the capital of the Philippine Islands.

Three weeks before we had left Hawaii, two days later we had steamed by Midway Island. Then we passed a few days in Japan, and coasted along the superb island of Formosa, rightly named "the beautiful"--where great mountains dipped down into the still sea--and now we were entering the Philippines, the real objective point of the official party--there were eight of us--in which we were so fortunate as to be included. We were at last going to see the interesting results of Spanish rule for three centuries, upon which were being grafted all the energy and scientific and social knowledge of the twentieth-century American.

Although both Hawaii and the Philippines are under American rule, they are like different worlds. The Land of the Palm and Pine is a much bigger problem for the United States than Hawaii. The latter is nearer home, a smaller group of islands, and is quite Americanized. It is the commercial hub of the Pacific, an important coaling station, an outlying protection for the California coast. The natives are of Polynesian extraction and American education; they are quite unlike the Filipinos in character, who are Malaysian and have had centuries of Spanish influence. The Filipinos clamour for independence, the Moros and the wild tribes must be carefully handled, while the Hawaiian is contented with his lot. Besides the necessity of maintaining an army in the Philippines so far from home, one hundred and one other difficulties are to be considered. With these facts in mind, we looked forward to interesting experiences in the Islands, and we were not disappointed.

As we approached Manila, some small scout boats, all flag bedecked, came out and joined us, and fell in behind in procession, then larger boats, one bringing the excellent Constabulary Band, which played gaily. Another, which had officials on board, exchanged greetings with us across the water, and others with unofficial people added their welcome. Quarantine was made easy, and all difficulties with customs officials were spared us. When we reached the dock it was massed with the people who had landed from the boats and with crowds from the town.

At once Governor General Cameron Forbes came on board to greet the Secretary of War, and then followed a reception, the guests ranging from the apostolic delegate in his robes, the consular officials and insular officers, and the army and navy in spotless gold-braided uniforms, to the leading citizens, very intelligent looking and well mannered, and members of the Assembly. The dock was lined with troops, who paid the military honours.

After the reception on shipboard the Secretary and Mrs. Dickinson and the official members of the party were whirled off in autos, with a squadron of cavalry clattering along as escort. Another motor was waiting for us, and we soon joined the procession as it moved to the palace.

We were much interested in the sights in the streets. There were numbers of _carromatos_, little covered two-wheeled carriages, drawn by stocky Filipino ponies. The streets in this part of the town are wide, and the houses have overhanging balconies, in Spanish style. In honour of the Secretary, the buildings were draped with flags. Near the wharf the land had lately been filled in, and great docks were in construction. There was a new boulevard near the old Luneta, and an avenue named after President Taft, besides a big hotel and a hospital that had then just been finished. The harbour was filled with vessels, electric cars were running, and autos were to be seen, so at first it all looked quite up to date, until you met a carabao slowly swaying down the street, hitched to a two-wheeled cart, with a brown boy in red trousers, _piña_ shirt and a big straw hat sitting on his back--"carry boy," as Secretary Dickinson named the animal. The "carry boys" do not like white people, and sometimes charge them, stamping and goring them with their horns, but a small Filipino boy seems to have perfect control of them, and if they are allowed occasionally to wade in a puddle, which cools them off, they do not "go _loco_," or crazy.

It was in the palace of Malacañan, or Government House, as it is sometimes called, that Secretary and Mrs. Dickinson and ourselves stayed with the Governor General. This is a large, rambling structure in a garden by the Pasig River. Under the porte-cochère we entered a stone hall, off which were offices, then went up a long flight of stairs to a big hall looking into a court. This hall was hung with oil paintings of Spanish governors, quite well done by native artists, and in the center stood a huge one-piece table of superb _nara_ wood, covered with gleaming head-axes and spears, _bolos_, _krisses_, _campilans_, and _lantankas_, used by the wild tribes and Moros.

Our rooms were large and empty, as was the entire palace--indeed, so are all the houses on account of the heat. The polished floors, too, are made of huge planks, sometimes of such valuable tropical woods as rosewood and mahogany, and are left bare. It took a little time to accustom ourselves to the hard beds with rattan bottoms, covered only by two sheets. They were carved and four-posted, and draped with mosquito netting. Two little brown lizards squeaked at us in a friendly manner, and crept down the walls, out of curiosity, no doubt, little ants kept busily crawling across the room in a line, and the mosquitoes that hid in my clothes in the rack during the daytime buzzed about at night. The heat was great, notwithstanding the electric fan, but the sliding screens that formed the sides of the room gave us some relief. These shutters are like Japanese _shoji_, made of small panes of an opalescent shell to soften the intensity of tropic sunlight, with green slit bamboo shades pulled halfway down.

When I used to write or read I sat on my rattan bed under the mosquito netting; there I could look out of the parted sides of the house to the red hibiscus border of the garden stretching along the narrow Pasig. Boatmen, in conical straw hats, perched at the ends of their _bancas_, paddled the hollowed-out logs rapidly through the water, or floated idly by, smoking their cigarettes; these boats were loaded to the gunwale with green grasses, and had canopies of matted straw. Launches, too, came chugging past, towing the big high poops covered with straw-screened _cascos_. Over beyond the river was a flat all in a green tangle, with the thatched _nipa_ houses on their stilts. For the palace stands outside the more thickly settled parts of the city, which in turn surround the walled town.

Manila to-day is a curious mixture of native _nipa_ shacks and old Spanish churches and forts with the up-to-date American buildings and improvements. There are the different quarters, as in all cities of the Orient--Chinese, native and so on--and each has its own distinctive sights. The street smells, which are never lacking in a city, reminded us of India.

The walled city has picturesque gates breaking through the old gray battlements--the massive wall was begun in 1590--and ancient sentry houses at the corners, while behind rise the white balconies of old convents and monasteries, and buildings now used for government purposes, and towers of churches. The old moats have been filled up for sanitary reasons and are being made into wide sweeps of lawn and flower gardens, and the famous Malecon, the drive beneath the city walls, which was once upon the sea front, has been removed too far inland by the filling of the harbour to retain its old charm.

"Intramuros" (within the walls) more than half the land belongs to the Church, and church buildings abound. These are really inferior, compared with those we saw in Mexico, but some of them are very old. The Augustinian Church, finished in 1605, has enormously thick walls and a stone crypt of marvelous strength.

In the center of the town is Plaza McKinley, but the main business street is the narrow Escolta, made to look still narrower by the overhanging second stories of the buildings.

We visited the botanical gardens, a shaded park with winding paths beneath acacias and mango trees. We drove, too, through the narrow streets of the suburb of San Miguel, where we looked into tangled gardens of tropical plants, behind which were houses with broad verandas and wide-opening sides, covered by a wonderful screen of a sort of mauve morning glory, which blooms, however, all day long.

The native houses are built of bamboo with braided grass walls and thatched roofs, and are raised on stilts because of the rainy season. We went to order some embroidery one day of a Tagalog woman. Climbing a ladder into a small house, we saw the whole family sitting on the floor, working over a long frame. In some of these shacks they have a small room for visitors, with chairs and a table, and cheap prints of the Virgin on the walls. Under the house are kept usually a pig and a pony. One woman was very successful--she not only had waist patterns to show and to sell, but had a standing order from Marshall Field, in Chicago. We also visited a still more prosperous embroidery house, built of stucco, with a courtyard. These people were Spanish _mestizos_.

A visit to the cigarette factory to which we were taken by Mr. Legarda showed us one of the characteristic industries of the city and gave us an idea of the deftness and quickness of those who are employed in this work. The little women who pack the cigarettes can pick up a number of them and tell in a twinkle by the feeling just how many they hold, and the cigar wrappers work with greatest rapidity and sureness and make a perfect product. It was all very clean and fresh, with hundreds of employees in the large, airy rooms. A band played as we went through the building, and we had a generous luncheon and received innumerable presents from the managers.

Opportunity was given us for sundry little exploring trips into the suburbs of Manila.[11] We rode on horseback, in company with Secretary Dickinson, Governor Forbes and General Edwards, among little native shacks, through overgrown lanes beyond the city, and along the beach, where we saw fishermen's huts and men mending their nets, to the Polo Club. The Governor, who was most generous in giving money of his own to benefit the Islands, not only built the clubhouse and laid out the field at his own expense, but even imported Arabian horses and good Western ponies. This club is a fine thing to keep army officers in good condition and give them exercise and amusement, as well as to bring good horses into the Islands. The clubhouse, of plaited grasses, bamboo and wood, is on the edge of the beach, from which one can see the beautiful sunsets across the bay and catch the faint line of the mountains in the distance. It all seemed very far-away and tropical and enchanting.

The English-speaking residents of Manila have various other clubs, among which the Army and Navy, the English, and the University are perhaps the most important. The Officers' Club, at Fort McKinley (seven miles from Manila) has a superb situation, commanding a fine view of the mountains.

As we landed in Manila early Sunday morning, we were in time for service in the Episcopal cathedral, which had just been built. This is a handsome building in the Spanish style, large and airy, with an effective altar. It was erected by an American friend of Bishop Brent, the Episcopal bishop, who has done fine work in the Islands. According to a story that is related of this good man, he made a journey at one time into the interior of Luzon, where he found the natives sadly in need of instruction in ways of personal cleanliness. As soon as he reached the mail service again, he wrote to America for a ton of soap, which was duly shipped to him and used for the purification of the aborigines.

I was glad to visit also Bishop Brent's orphan school, consisting principally of American-mestizo children. The native women, when deserted by their white lovers, generally marry natives, who often ill-treat these half-white children, and sometimes sell them as slaves. Miss Sibley, of Detroit, was in charge of this school, which was in a big, comfortable house near the native shacks on the edge of the town, and had twelve pupils at that time.

A convent of Spanish nuns on a small island in the river, interested me greatly. It was then under the supervision of the government, for it was at that time not only a convent but also a poorhouse, a school for orphans, an asylum for insane men and women, and a reformatory for bad boys. The embroidery done at the convent was better than that made by the natives in their houses, as the thread used was finer. The nuns charged more than the natives, but they would also cut and sew, thus finishing the garments. Articles embroidered by native women were never made up by them, but had to be taken to a Chinese tailor.

The linen must first be bought, however, so I tried to do a little shopping in the city, but found it very unsatisfactory. The shops are poor, and, as one traveler has said, you can get nothing you want in them, but plenty of things you don't want, for which you can pay a very high price.

One day I was taken to a cockpit, where a cockfight was to come off. This is one of the characteristic amusements of the Filipinos, which they have engaged in since the year 1500. It is so popular that it would be difficult to put a stop to it all at once, but it has been restricted by the government to Sundays and legal holidays, which is something of a victory. (They are also passionately fond of horse racing, in regard to which other restrictions have been made.) Outside, beggars, old and blind, were crawling over the ground; natives strolled around, petting their birds, which they carried under their arms; and vendors with dirty trays of sweetmeats wandered about. We bought our tickets and passed into the rickety amphitheater.

Cocks were crowing, and such a howling as went on, the audience all looking toward us as we entered. It seemed as if they were angry with us for stepping into the arena, and yet there was no other way to reach the seats. Our guides pointed to a shaky ladder that led into a gallery, but we preferred to sit far back in the chairs about the pit. There were natives, Chinese, and mestizos present. We soon discovered that they were not angry with us, but we had entered at a moment when the betting was going on, and the cocks in the ring were so popular that there was great excitement.

Each cock was allowed to peck the neck of the other and get a taste of blood, while they were still held under their owners' arms. The fighting cocks did not look quite like ours. They were armed for the fray with sharp "slashers" attached to their spurs. When the betting had subsided the cocks were left to themselves in the ring, and they generally went for each other at once. What a hopping and scuttling! Feathers flew, the crowd cheered, and the cocks went at each other again and again until they were hurt or killed. The referee then decided upon the victor. Sometimes the cocks did not seem to interest the crowd, and then their owners would take them out of the ring before fighting; at times the cocks refused to fight. It was not so exciting as I had expected, and when we considered that the birds were to be eaten anyway, it did not seem so cruel and terrible as I thought it would.

Speaking of cocks being eaten, the principal foods of the Filipinos are fowls and eggs, as well as rice, fish and carabao meat, but as the "carry-boys" are good workers they are not often eaten. Pigs are kept by the Filipinos, and are put on a raised platform for about six weeks before killing, so as to keep them clean and fatten them with good food. Salads, crawfish and trout, as well as cocoanut milk, red wine and wild coffee, are among the things they live on. Army people in the Islands often have, in addition, wild deer and wild boar which are shot by the American officers, besides excellent game birds, such as the minor bustard, jungle fowl, wild chicken, quail, snipe and duck.

I was asked to receive with the Secretary and Mrs. Dickinson and General and Mrs. Edwards, at the Governor General's reception at Malacañan, where we stood in line and shook hands with some seventeen hundred persons. It was a remarkable scene. The palace, which opens up handsomely, and the terrace overhanging the river, were outlined by a myriad electric lights, while launches came and went with guests, and the Philippine Constabulary Band played in the interior court. The papal delegate was there in his canonicals, with his accompanying monsignors, and barefooted friars in cowls. There were foreign consuls in their uniforms, and many Filipina women, with pretty manners and dainty ways, some in their native dress, which is so quaint and gaily coloured. Insurrecto generals came, too, who looked like young boys, and members of the high courts, very wise and dignified.

After most of the guests had arrived, there was a _rigodon_ of honour, in which all took part. The rigodon is the dance of the Filipinos, and of so much importance to them that it was considered essential that the Secretary and his party should be able to join in it. Accordingly, we had all practised it on the ship before reaching Manila. It is said that ex-President Taft won much of his way into the hearts of these island people by his skill and evident delight in this dance, which is something like a graceful and dignified quadrille, with much movement and turning.

To show that traveling in an official party is not "all play and no work," I may just note the program carried out by the men on the day following this reception. Rising at six o'clock and taking an early breakfast, they went on board the commanding general's yacht and cruised across Manila Bay to visit the new defenses on the island of Corregidor, which rises a sheer five hundred feet out of the water. For hours they moved from one place to another in the heat, inspecting huge guns and mortars and barracks and storehouses, all hidden away so as not to be seen from the sea, although great gashes in the cliffs showed where the trolley roads and the inclined planes ran. It is really the key to our possessions in the Far East. Thousands of men were working like ants all over the place. It was two o'clock before the party reached the tip-top, where they had a stand-up luncheon at the quarters of the commanding officer. Then they came back to the yacht, and fairly tumbled down just wherever they happened to be for a siesta. They were then taken to Cavite, ten miles away, which is one of the two naval stations. There they landed again and visited the picturesque old Spanish fortifications and the quarters.

A _baile_, or ball, was given in honour of the Secretary by the Philippine Assembly, at their official building, where all the ladies of our party wore the Filipina dress. This is ordinarily made of piña cloth, a cheap, gauzy material, manufactured from pineapple fiber. The waist, called _camisa_, is made with winglike sleeves and a stiff kerchief-like collar, named _panuela_. The skirt may be of any material, quite often a handsome brocade, and among the Tagalogs a black silk open-work apron finishes the costume. The white suits and uniforms of the men and the bright-coloured dresses made this ball a gay and lively scene. The band played incessantly, and after the Secretary and Mrs. Dickinson had stopped receiving at the head of the stairs, there was a rigodon, which we all danced in as stately a manner as we could. But my most vivid recollection of the ball is of the heat and the pink lemonade, which poisoned a hundred people and made me deadly ill all that night.

The Governor General gave a big dinner for the Secretary of War at the palace one evening. We assisted also at the opening of the new theater--which is called the finest in the Far East--at which Marshall Darrach gave recitations from Shakespeare. I must not forget the gala performance at the new theater, too, which was arranged by the society people of the city. All the performers were amateurs, so we rather dreaded the evening, which promised to be interminable, but everything was so good that the time passed quickly. The little ladies sang quite acceptably, and played the violin and the piano; and a lot of tiny tots, children of the best people, gave an amusing vaudeville that really was exceedingly funny and was much applauded. We could hardly believe that it was all amateur.

The Government Dormitory for Girls, which we visited, I found most interesting. There were one hundred and fifty, eight sleeping in each room. These girls came from different provinces all over the Islands. As there are so many distinct dialects, some of them could understand one another only in English, and no other language is allowed to be spoken. One of the girls made a speech in English welcoming the Secretary and did it extremely well. Having learned, among other things, to cook, they gave us delicious tea and cakes and candies on a half-open veranda among the vines and Japanese lanterns. Some were taking the nurses' course, which seemed to be the most popular. These pretty girls danced for us in their stiff, bright-coloured costumes, swaying and waving their hands, and turning and twirling in their languid but dignified manner. It appeared to be a mixture of a Spanish and a native dance, and was altogether quite charming.

A morning with Mr. Worcester at the Bureau of Science was most delightful. This bureau is so much more than a museum of scientific specimens that I cannot begin to do justice to it in a single paragraph. It was started at first as a Bureau of Government Laboratories in charge of the chemical and biological work of the government, the departments of zoölogical and botanical research were subsequently added, and finally the Bureau of Ethnology and the Bureau of Mines were incorporated with it. Not only were all these departments coördinated under one head, preventing overlapping and securing economy and efficiency of administration, but this work was correlated with that of the Philippine General Hospital and the College of Medicine and Surgery. When this comprehensive plan was formed all the scientific work of the government was carried on in "a hot little shack," and the scheme was commonly referred to as "Worcester's Dream," but at the time of our visit the dream had come true. The departments were manned by thoroughly trained men from the States, and the Bureau of Science was one of the world's greatest scientific institutions.

The Philippine Bureau of Science "is now dead." When the Democratic Administration took charge it was announced that all theoretical departments, such as ethnology, botany, ornithology, photography and entomology (!) were to be "reduced or eliminated." It was afterward made plain that all work which was considered practical would be continued, but the mischief had been done, the men who made the institution had left, and under present conditions it is impossible to secure others who are equally competent in their place. Our only consolation is to be derived, as Mr. Worcester himself says, "from contemplating the fact that pendulums swing."

Though so recently established, the museum contained in 1910 a wonderful exhibit of the plants and animals of the Islands. We took a peep into the butterfly room, where we admired some rare and lovely ones with a feathery velvet sheen the colour of the sea. We saw also the huge brown Atlas moth touched with coral, like a cashmere shawl, with eyes of mother-of-pearl on his wings. We noticed that the females were larger than the males, and even those of the same variety often differed greatly in colour. In one case a female was big, and brown and violet in colour, while her mate was small, and blue and yellow.

In the next room were beetles, some of which were like the matrix of turquoise, and others had shimmering, changeable shades of green and bronze. There were beetles like small turtles, and long, horned beetles like miniature carabaos.

Afterward we visited the birds. Bright-coloured sun birds, with long beaks, which feed on the honey of flowers; clever tailor birds, small and brown, with green heads and gray breasts, which sew leaves together with vegetable fiber to make their nests; birds of whose nests the Chinese make their famous soup, and the blue kingfishers, of whose brilliant feathers these same Chinese make jewelry; fire-breasted birds, too, and five-coloured birds. There were birds that build their nest four feet or more under the ground, and hornbills, that wall up their wives in holes in the trees while they are hatching their eggs, the males bringing them food and dropping it through a small opening. There, too, I saw the fairy bluebird.

Near by, we visited an orchid garden, and passed under gates and bamboo trellises dripping with every kind of orchid. The Philippines are the paradise of these remarkable plants, and many are the adventures that collectors of them have had in the interior of these Islands.

Then we passed into the Jesuit chapel and museum. We were greeted at the door by several black-robed priests, who smiled and bowed and talked all at once. They escorted us first to the museum, where there were cases of shells--heart-shaped shells, trumpet shells, scalloped shells big enough for a bathtub--all kinds of shells, and the paper nautilus, which is not a shell but an egg case. Then there were land shells, polished red and green, Venus' flower baskets, exquisite glass sponges, corals of all kinds--fine branches of the red and the white--and an enormous turtle that weighed fifteen hundred pounds.

In the cases at the side of the room were animals of the country--flying monkeys, with sucking pads on their toes to help them climb the trees, big, furry bats and flying lizards. A tiny buffalo, which was discovered only a few years ago up in the hills, and a small spotted deer were in the collection. A big monkey-catching eagle, white and brown, was here, and the paroquet that carries leaves for her nest in her red tail, as well as a pigeon with ruffs of green and blue about her neck, and a bald crown, which was caused, the natives say, by flying so high that her head hit the sky.

Numerous entertainments and receptions were crowded into that too short visit to Manila. July 25th had been declared a national holiday. A musical program was given in honour of the Secretary by five thousand Manila school children. One afternoon Mrs. Dickinson received some of the Filipina ladies, who sang and played on the piano quite well.

Another day the officers and ladies at Fort McKinley entertained the party at luncheon at the Officers' Club. Before luncheon there was a military review in which the troops from all over the islands participated, followed by some good shell firing out in the chaparral, as under war conditions, and a display of wireless work. A special drill was given by Captain Tom Anderson--the son of General Anderson--whose company was one of the best drilled in the army, and went through the manual and marching with only one order given, counting to themselves in silence the whole seventeen hundred counts, all in perfect unison.[12]

In the Secretary of War's speech that afternoon he took occasion to say, "General Duvall, you have not said too much in favour of the Army. You have not overdrawn the picture, for a steadier moving column or brighter eyed men and a more soldierly set of men I have never seen anywhere."

The reception by General and Mrs. Duvall was a brilliant affair, chiefly of the army and navy. The handsome house with its wide verandas stood in a garden overlooking Manila Bay.

On the Luneta there was, one evening, the largest gathering that had assembled on that historic plaza since the days of the "Empire," for the Secretary of War was expected to be there. The people hoped that he brought with him a proclamation of immediate independence to be announced at that time. The Luneta had once been at the edge of the water, but a great space had been filled in beyond it, and buildings were going up--a large hotel, which would make all the difference in the world to tourist travel in the Philippines, and a huge Army and Navy Club--so that it was planned to remove the Luneta farther out some day, again to the water's edge. On this particular evening, the oval park was crowded with picturesque people, almost all the men in white, the soldiers in their trig khaki, and the women in their gaily coloured dresses and panuelas. Rows of carriages circled round and round, as the two bands played alternately. After a time we left our automobiles and walked in the throng. A magnificent sunset was followed by the gorgeous tints of the afterglow, and dusk came on and evening fell while we watched and were watched. Soon a thousand electric lights, that were carried in rows around the plaza and over the kiosks of the bands, sparkled out in the darkness. The beauty of the scene, the animation of the crowd, driving or walking in groups, and the refreshing coolness after the heat of the day, made this a lasting memory.