We went from Manila to Iloilo on a Spanish steamer. I gave one look at the stateroom that was assigned to me and decided to sleep on deck in my steamer chair. I had been told that I positively could not eat the food which the ship would prepare, so I took a goodly supply with me.

The captain was so gracious that I could not let him know my plans, so I pleaded illness but he ordered some things brought to me. There was a well prepared chicken with plenty of rice but made so hot with pepper that I threw it into the sea; next, some sort of salad floating in oil and smelling of garlic, it went overboard. Eggs cooked in oil followed the salad; last the “dulce,” a composition of rice and custard perfumed with anise seed oil, made the menu of the fishes complete. I now gladly opened my box of crackers and cheese, oranges, figs and dates.

As the sun declined, I sat watching the islands. We were passing by what is known as the inner course. They lay fair and fragrant as so many Edens afloat upon a body of water as beautiful as any that mortal eyes have ever seen. Huge palms rose high in air, their long feathery leaves swaying softly in the golden light. Darkness fell like a curtain; but the waters now gleamed like nether heavens with their own stars of phosphorescent light.

On the voyage to Japan, a fellow passenger asked if I were sure that Iloilo was my destination in the Philippines and, being assured that it was, informed me that there was no such place on the ship’s maps, which were considered very accurate. The Island of Panay was there, but no town of Iloilo.

Iloilo (É-lo-É-lo) is the second city in size of the Philippines. It stands on a peninsula and has a good harbor if it were not for the shifting sands that make it rather difficult for the large steamers to come to the wharf and the tide running very high at times makes it harder still. There is a long wharf bordered with huge warehouses full of exports and imports. Vast quantities of sugar, hemp and tobacco are gathered here for shipment. It is a center of exchange, a place of large business, especially active during the first years of our occupation.

Immense caravan trains go out from here to the various army posts to carry food and other supplies, while ships, like farm yards adrift, ply on the same errand between port and port. Cebu and Negros are the largest receiving stations.

In the center of the town is the plaza or park. Here, after getting things in order, a pole was set, and the stars and stripes unfurled to the breeze. The quarters of our soldiers were near the park and so our boys had a pleasant place to lounge when off duty in the early morning or evening. When our troops first landed here in 1898 there was quite a battle, but I am not able to give its details. The results are obvious enough. The native army set fire to the city before fleeing across the river to the town of Jaro (HÁr-ro). The frame work of the upper part of the buildings was burned but the walls or lower part remains.

After the battle at Jaro, I went out to live for awhile in the quarters of Captain Walter H. Gordon, Lieutenant J. Barnes, and Lieutenant A. L. Conger, 18th U. S. A. I soon realized that the war was still on, for every day and night, the rattle of musketry told that somewhere there was trouble.

One day I went out to see the fortifications deserted by the Filipinos. They were curious indeed; built as an officer suggested, to be run away from, not to be defended. One fortification was ingeniously made of sacks of sugar. Everywhere was devastation and waste and burned buildings. The natives had fled to distant towns or mountains.

All this sounds bad and looked worse, and yet it takes but a little while to restore all. The houses are quickly rebuilt; a bamboo roof is made, it is lifted to the desired height on poles set in or upon the ground. The walls are weavings of bamboo or are plaited nepa. The nepa is a variety of bamboo grown near shallow sea water. When one of these rude dwellings is completed, it is ready for an ordinary family. They do not use a single article that we consider essential to housekeeping. Some of the better class have a kind of stove; its top is covered with a layer of sand or small pebbles, four or five inches thick; on this stand bricks or small tripods to hold the little pots used in cooking. Under each pot is a tiny fire. The skillful cook plays upon his several fires as a musician upon his keys, adding a morsel of fuel to one, drawing a coal from another; stirring all the concoctions with the same spoon. The baking differs only in there being an upper story of coals on the lid.

It has been said that fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Two or three of us American women, eager to learn all we could, because we were daily told that the war was over and we should soon be going home, were rashly venturesome. But we soon found that it was unsafe to go about Molo or Iloilo even with a guide, and so we had to content ourselves with looking at the quantities of beautiful things brought to our door. We were tempted daily to buy the lovely fabrics woven by the native women. Every incoming ship is beset by a swarm of small traders who find their best customers amongst American women. Officers and men, too, are generous buyers for friends at home. The native weaves of every quality and color are surprisingly beautiful.

Jusa (hoÓ-sa) cloth is made from jusi fibre; piÑa (peen-yah) from pineapple fibre; cinemi is a mixture of the two; abaka (a-ba-ka) from hemp fibre; algodon from the native cotton; sada is silk; sabana is a mixture of cotton and hemp.

We visited many of the places where the most extensive weaving is done, and there we saw the most wretched-looking, old women handling the hair-like threads. Each one had by her side some emblem of the Roman Church as she sat at her daily task. These poor, dirty, misshapen creatures, weaving from daylight to dark, earn about fifty cents a month. So many of the women are deformed and unclean, both the makers and the sellers, that it seemed utterly incongruous that they should handle the most delicate materials. In all my observations, I saw but one nice, clean woman of the lower classes. In our happy country we do not think of seeing a whole class of people diseased or maimed. In the Philippines one seldom sees a well formed person; or if the form is good, the face is disfigured by small-pox.

I was surprised, at first, on looking out after breakfast, to find at my door every morning from two to a dozen women and boys in sitting posture, almost nude, only a thin waist on the body, and a piece of cotton drawn tightly round the legs. Many would be solemnly and industriously chewing the betel nut, which colors lips and saliva a vivid red.

It would not only be impertinent on my part to relate particulars of our army, but I should undoubtedly do as Mrs. Partington did—“open my patrician mouth and put my plebeian foot in it.” The first thing I did on arriving at Iloilo was to call mess “board” and go to bed instead of “turning in.”

In time of special danger, the various commanders were very kind in providing guards—mostly, however, to protect Government property. I felt no great uneasiness about personal safety, though I always “slept with one eye open.” We were so frequently threatened that we stood ready every moment to move on. Shots during the night are not, as a rule, conducive to sleep, and I did not like the sound of the balls as they struck the house. I had my plans laid to get behind the stone wall at the rear of the passage and lie on the floor. It was necessary to keep a close watch on the servants who were “muchee hard luc” (very much afraid) at the slightest change in the movements of either army, home or foreign.

Their system of wireless telegraphy was most efficient, so much so that one day at 2 P. M. I was told by a native of an engagement that had taken place at 10 A. M. in a distant part of the island, remote from the telegraph stations. I wondered how he could have known, and later learned of their systems of signaling by kites. For night messages the kites are illuminated. They are expert, not only in flying, but in making them.

Their schools are like pandemonium let loose; all the pupils studying aloud together, making a deafening, rasping noise. Sessions from 7 to 10 A. M., 3 to 6 P. M.

The large Mexican dollars are too cumbersome to carry in any ordinary purse. If one wishes to draw even a moderate sum, it is necessary to take a cart or carriage. A good sized garden shovel on one side and a big canvas bag on the other expedites bank transactions in the islands.

At the time of the evacuation of Jaro by the insurrectos, our officers chose their quarters from the houses the natives had fled from. The house which we occupied had formerly been used as the Portuguese Consulate. Like all the better houses the lower part was built of stone, and the upper part of boards. There was very little need of heavy boards or timbers except to hold the sliding windows. I should think the whole house was about eighty feet square with rear porch that was used for a summer garden. The pillars of this porch were things of real beauty. They were covered with orchids that in the hottest weather were all dried up and quite unsightly, but when the rainy season began they were very beautiful in their luxuriance of growth and bloom. The front door was in three parts; the great double doors which opened outward to admit carriages and a small door in one of the larger doors. There was a huge knocker, the upper part was a woman’s head. To open the large doors it was necessary to pull the latch by a cord that came up through the floor to one of the inner rooms. I used to occupy this room at night and it was my office and my pleasure to pull the bobbin and let the latch fly up when the scouting troop would come in late at night. Captain Gordon said that he never found me napping, that I was always ready to greet them as soon as their horses turned the corner two squares away. The entrance door admitted to a great hall with a stone floor, ending in apartments for the horses. On the right of the hall were rooms for domestic purposes, such as for the family looms, four or five of them, and for stores of food and goods. On the left there were four steps up and then a platform, then three steps down into a room about twenty feet square. There were two windows in this room with heavy gratings. We used it as a store room for the medical supplies. Returning to the platform, there were two heavy doors that swung in, we kept them bolted with heavy wooden bolts; there were no locks on any doors. At the foot of the steps was a long narrow room with one small window; it was directly over the part where the animals were. The hall was lighted with quite a handsome Venetian glass chandelier in which we used candles. From this room we entered the large main room of the house; the ceiling and side wall was covered with leather or oil cloth held in place with large tacks; there were sliding windows on two sides of the room which, when shoved back, opened the room so completely as to give the effect of being out of doors; the front windows looked out on the street, the side windows on the garden, on many trees, cocoanut, chico, bamboo, and palm. There was a large summer house in the center of the garden and the paths which led up to it were bordered with empty beer bottles. The garden was enclosed by a plastered wall about eight feet high, into the top of which were inserted broken bottles and sharp irons to keep out intruders. The house was covered with a sheet iron roof. The few dishes that we found upon our occupation were of excellent china but the three or four sideboards were quite inferior. The whole house was wired for bells. This is true of many of the houses, indeed they are all fashioned on one model, and all plain in finish, extra carving or fine wood-work would only make more work for the busy little ants. Even when furniture looked whole, we often found ourselves landed on the floor; it was no uncommon thing for a chair to give way; it had been honeycombed and was held together by the varnish alone.

My first evening in Jaro was one of great fear. We were told by a priest that we were to be attacked and burned out. While sitting at dinner I heard just behind me a fearful noise that sounded like “Gluck-co-gluck-co.” An American officer told me it was an alarm clock, but as a matter of fact it was an immense lizard, an animal for which I soon lost all antipathy, because of its appetite for the numerous bugs that infest the islands. Unfortunately they have no taste for the roaches, the finger-long roaches that crawl all over the floor. Neither were they of assistance in exterminating the huge rats and mice, nor the ants. The ants! It is impossible to describe how these miserable pests overran everything; they were on the beds, they were on the tables. Our table legs were set in cups of coal oil and our floors were washed with coal oil at least once every week. This disagreeable condition of things will not be wondered at, when I say that the horses, cattle, and carabao are kept in the lower part of the house, and the pigs, cats, and dogs allowed up stairs with the family. The servants are required to stay below with the cattle.

The animals are all diseased, especially the horses. Our men were careful that their horses were kept far from the native beasts. The cats are utterly inferior. The mongoose, a little animal between a ferret and a rat, is very useful; no well-kept house is without one. Rats swarm in such vast hordes that the mongoose is absolutely necessary to keep them down. Still more necessary is the house snake. These reptiles are brought to market on a bamboo pole and usually sell for about one dollar apiece. Mine used to make great havoc among the rats up in the attic. Never before had I known what rats were. Every night, notwithstanding the mongoose, the house snake, and the traps, I used to lay in a supply of bricks, anything to throw at them when they would congregate in my room and have a pitched battle. They seemed to stand in awe of United States officers. A soldier said one night, glancing about, “Why, I thought the rats moved out all of your furniture.” They would often carry things up to the zinc roof of our quarters, drop them, and then take after with rush and clatter, the snake in full chase. Mice abound, and lizards are everywhere, of every shape, every size, and every color.

I spent a large part of my time leaning out of my window; there was so much to see. The expulsion of the insurrectos had just been effected, and very few of the natives remained, but as soon as they were thoroughly convinced that our troops had actually taken the town, they flocked in by the hundreds, the men nearly naked, always barefoot, the women in their characteristic bright red skirts.

The entire time spent there was full of surprises, the customs, dress, food, and religious ceremonies continually furnishing matter of intense and varied interest. I noticed, especially, how little the men and women went about together, riding or walking, or to church. Neither do they sit together, or rather should say “squat,” for, even in the fine churches, the women squatted in the center aisles, while the men were ranged in side aisles. There are few pews, and these few, rarely occupied, were straight and uncomfortable. No effort was ever made to make them comfortable, not to mention ornamental.