S.S. “Butuan,” March 1, 1905.

I am launched, you see, and on my journey to Manila after all, though I do not feel at all well again yet; but that is not surprising, as it takes such a long time to pull round in this climate. It is not that the climate is so much worse than any other, as long as you keep well, but as soon as you get ill you go all to pieces, and the first thing to be done is to ship you off to Hong Kong or Japan as soon as possible. The climate of the Philippines is very much abused, more than it really deserves, I think, for the chief causes of all illness are anÆmia or liver, both arising more from the dreadful food and the lack of fresh vegetables, fruit, milk, and good meat than from the actual climate; though, of course, the illnesses arising from each bad diet are aggravated by the heat. The amount of tinned things the people eat would be trying in any climate, but out here they must be simply deadly. I have just been reading a book by a traveller, who announces that there is nothing the matter with the Philippine climate at all, because he tore round the Archipelago in record time, crossing the islands on foot at astounding speed, and living on native food—and he was not ill. Naturally, he was not ill; but then his experience is of little value to men who have to work for their living, sitting in offices for eight hours a day on six days of the week, whose food is the sort of provisions one can get in the towns, and their houses rooted on ill-drained mud-flats.

Everyone would like to rush about and live a free, wild life, and, no doubt, if they did, there would be fewer illnesses and less human wrecks; but the trouble is that no one would pay them for doing it; and men must work out here just the same as in other climates—in fact they seem to me to work longer hours and harder than anywhere I ever saw; and the wonder to me is, not that they are ill, but that so many of them survive at all. Undoubtedly the only billets worth having in the tropics are those of a tea-planter, a British officer, or a professional traveller.

I am in the regular mail steamer, you see, as I told you I should be, and we were certainly not given to understand more than the truth anent her shortcomings, for she is about the same size and class as those pestiferous little nightmares which run between Gibraltar and Ceuta. There is no deck but a plank or two outside the saloon, the latter a sort of excrescence on the ship, leaving just room to squeeze a chair between its sides and the scuppers. The space in the bows is thickly occupied by marine wonders covered with tarpaulins. What these may be, as they are not deck cargo, I can’t think, but they are evidently important enough to want all the fresh air in the ship.

Aft, the galley treads upon the heels of the saloon, its fragrance extending still further, and the strip of deck outside it is completely blocked by dirty little tables, where frowzy men of the crew seem to carry on a perpetual March Hare’s tea-party.

Beyond that, again, a half-clad native is for ever killing hens, and all in a muddle with a couple of terribly mangy but very kind dogs nosing about for snacks.

She is a Spanish steamer, and the officers all Spaniards, very polite, but unkempt, unshaven, and dressed in soiled white linen suits with no attempt at a uniform.

It is astonishing to think that this is the mail between Manila and the chief town of the Islands, and I can’t understand how it is that in six years no American enterprise has stepped in to do something better. I have asked Americans about this, but they tell me the question does not affect them, for they can always get permits to go in their own transports, and then, besides that, there is nothing to tempt American capital in so slow and jog-trot a fashion of making dollars. As we went out of the river, I tried to see our house in the estuary, but all the blue-grey houses, and corrugated roofs, and green trees and palms look so exactly alike that I found it impossible to distinguish ours from amongst the jumble.

While I was looking over the side, a Filipino passenger, a middle-aged man, came up and said something to me, waving his hand towards the shore. I daresay he took me for his equal and meant no harm, but I thought it very cool of him to speak to me, so I simply drew myself up and said that I did not “habla Castellano,” whereupon he shuffled off and has not been seen again.

Luckily the weather was very calm, and is so still, so I was able to appear at the evening meal, which came off at six! A deadly hour—when you have not had time to get up any interest in food since lunch, and yet if you don’t eat you are starving before bed-time. The dinner consisted of a thick meat-and-drink soup, such as one might imagine Russian convicts yearning for in the depths of a Siberian winter, but for which it was hardly possible to return thanks in a stifling cabin in the tropics. After this nice, comforting brew followed a procession of eight courses of thick and greasy fried lumps or appalling stews, each one more fatal and more full of garlic and spices than the last. I thought that even if I had been feeling fresh and hungry on a winter’s day at home I could hardly have faced the Butuan menu, but, as it was, the mere sight and smell of the dishes made me almost hysterical.

The polite little captain pressed me to eat, and I did not like to hurt his feelings by refusing what he thought was excellent fare; but I escaped alive by waiting till his head was turned, and then dexterously passing lumps down to one of the kind, mangy dogs until the poor beast was detected by a muchacho and kicked, howling, on to the deck. After that I assured the skipper that I had had quite enough; an excellent dinner; I positively could not eat any more. He bowed and offered me coffee. I took a cup, and with that and dry biscuit made a tolerable meal.

About eight o’clock I went below, as I felt very tired, because it was almost my first day out of bed since my illness. Besides that, even if I had been in keen and robust health there would have been nothing to tempt me to remain on the narrow deck, which was pitch dark, or in the stuffy saloon with a couple of guttering candles in tall stands on the table by way of sole illumination.

The accommodation below is of much the same type as the luxury above, below decks being just of the build of one of the old penny steamers that used to go up and down the Thames—you remember the sort of things—a very low roof supported by small iron pillars. Off a narrow passage open seven small cabins, with four berths in each of them, but they are really not so bad when you get one all to yourself, and I have the best one, at the end of the ship. I caught the fat Mayordomo (chief steward), and after endless trouble, managed to get a key for my cabin door, though the choice lay between having it open or dying of asphyxiation; but I preferred the latter risk of the two, as at least I could be certain what to expect if I kept it locked.

One look at the mattresses was enough. I slept, or rather lay awake sweltering, on all the coverlets piled on the least filthy of the upper berths. The cabin smelt horrible, and the only light there, as in the saloon, was a candle in a bracket, the glass of which was so grimed with dirt that it gave hardly any light at all. No water was laid on to the filthy basin, and it did not do to let one’s mind dwell for one instant on cockroaches—like a child who tries not to think of some horrible ghost story in the dark.

About six this morning the muchacho (they have no word for steward apparently) woke me by rattling at the handle of my door, when I climbed down and held parley with him through the crack. He said something in English about “washing,” and I thinking he had brought me water to put in the unspeakable basin, said: “No, not yet,” and tried to shut the door.

However, he was not to be ignored, for he shoved the door open, apologising as he did so, came in and shut and fastened down the scuttle, and then backed out again with many more bows and excuses. Then I understood that it was not I who was to be washed, but the decks! Somehow, it had not occurred to me that the decks of the Butuan ever could be cleaned like those of other ships!

All day long we have been slipping past these Dream Islands, sometimes so close that one can see the waves breaking on the rocks and the blue sea running up into fairy bays, and I should so much like to go ashore in some of them, and see the negritos and savages, and the beautiful jungles where monkeys swing about on great flowering vines. That is always the Tropic Island of one’s dreams, is it not? But now I begin to think that possibly life is not all a transformation scene in the lovely jungles, where there are doubtless deadly snakes; poisonous, scentless plants; swamps, and malaria, to say nothing of the fatigues and difficulties of getting there. On the whole, for beauty of scenery, health and comfort, I think I would rather live in a glen on a Scottish moor.

My luggage is rather on my mind, as I found I had to bring such a quantity, for muslin and cotton frocks take up so much room that I was compelled to abandon my first plan of one moderate trunk, and am now engineering what looks like a family “flitting.” Talking of frocks, you once asked me to tell you if those I had brought out were all right. They are quite right, thanks, at least the muslins are and the very thin cottons, but anything thicker, even print, is too warm, and the very thinnest of stuff skirts or coats are stifling and impossible. I always envy the lucky women in Hong Kong whom I left going about in white serge and grey flannel, and even being compelled to put wraps on in the evening!

Another thing I find about clothes is that every one wears white, and though one gets rather tired of it, still it is the best thing for the fashion of washing clothes by pounding them on boulders, and then drying them in this terrific sun will evaporate the strongest colours in an incredibly short time. Clothes don’t last long here anyhow, colour or no colour, as there is something in the water that rots material, so that it goes into holes and tears if you look at it, and something in the air which rots silk even more disastrously and quickly, and turns all white silk and satin quite deep yellow.

I have been writing this at intervals all day, and now it is six o’clock, and the meal is due. I can see the polite skipper standing waiting for me to enter and take my seat, and the mangy dog trying to squeeze himself in under the bench where my place is. So I will leave off and finish this in Manila, where we are to arrive in the early morning.

Manila, March 2.

I thought a mail would be going out the day I got here, but I find it does not go till to-morrow morning, of which I am rather glad, as it gives me time to let you know I have arrived safely. Yet when you get this—oh what a long way off—the trip to Manila will be a half-forgotten thing of the past!

The Butuan (by-the-bye, she has taken that name from a town in the big southern island of Mindanao) anchored off the mouth of the Pasig at three o’clock this morning, and deck-washing began at four. So at about five I opened my door a little bit and roared for the muchacho, till someone else in another cabin got tired of hearing me, and took up the cry, and it spread through the ship like the cock-crowing in the dawn. By-the-bye, I got away from the shrill of the crickets for a few hours, but did not, as I had hoped, escape the eternal cock-crowing, for those fowls on board the Butuan which had escaped death began to crow at four o’clock for all they were worth, poor things. Well, at last the muchacho came along and brought me a perilous candle and some hot water, and I dressed and packed up the few things I had out, and went up on deck at about six.

At sunrise—a thick, pink, hazy sunrise—we steamed up the river, but I was blasÉ about everything but food, so I stayed in the saloon and managed to get some biscuits and coffee, and to avoid a plate full of deadly-looking ham and eggs.

There was no room to anchor at the quay, which was fringed with a close line of steamers berthed stern-first, so she anchored in the stream; and until I was “fetched,” I amused myself watching the blue-green water-plants go trailing past, and trying to observe life on board the big, covered, brown lighters. No life was to be seen, however, except the natives wielding immense punt-poles, who walked along the sides of the barges on a platform one plank wide.

At about seven the company’s launch came for me, and she made quite a long trip, down the Pasig and all along outside the breakwater, as the shorter way through was blocked by a dredger. A tremendous new harbour is being built, which bids fair to be a very fine concern, and the Americans think a great deal of it, and say it will enable Manila to compete with and eclipse the shipping of Hong Kong. This is a difficult piece of reasoning to follow, for a glance at a map shows how out of the stream of the world’s traffic Manila lies; and then, besides that, there are the tariffs and customs, and all the vexations of the American system of government, which will make it impossible to compete with the traffic of a free port like Hong Kong. Moreover, it will never pay anyone to shift cargoes in a port where the coolies are so lazy and labour so expensive as in Manila.

It is the American go-ahead, run-before-you-walk way, too, to build great docks and harbours costing millions before they have spent the necessary thousands in constructing roads to bring the merchandise from inland, or sacrificed the hundreds required to encourage trade.

The same thing is being done down in Iloilo, where two millions are being spent on a harbour, when there is not one tolerable road across the island, and all the revenues that choke agriculture go to pay the officials and the school-teachers, conditions which prevail throughout the Archipelago. The Americans mean well by the Philippines, that no one can doubt for an instant, which makes it all the more sad to see them wasting magnificent energy, and earning nothing but failure and unpopularity, by going dead against everything that has ever been discovered about the successful government of Asiatics. But then, is this real government? It is very difficult to know what to call it, as at one time the venture is referred to as a “Colony,” at another as “The youngest of the United States,” and yet again as “A Sacred Trust.” I mean they use these terms indiscriminately and officially, which is very puzzling.

But I am wandering away from the trip in the launch, which went all round these same harbour works till it came right in front of our friends’ house, where a boat came off and took me through the shallow water to the steps at the end of the garden.

It was then nearly eight o’clock, so the day was getting very hot, and the cool house seemed delicious. Breakfast—nice, clean, ungreasy breakfast!—and the joys of a bath. There was a “bathroom” on the Butuan, but in a state of dirt that would have made bathing impossible, even if the bath itself had not been full of old lamps, boots, tin cans, and dirty clothes.

I have spent all the day resting in the house, to save up my energies for an entertainment which I should be very sorry to miss. This is a public reception to be held by the Governor, Mr Luke E. Wright, at his palace on the river, where one will see, as a compatriot informed me, “all Manila at a glance.” I don’t think a glance will satisfy me though, for I want to go and have a good long look. I feel better already for the change of air and scene, and am sure I shall be quite equal to the reception, besides, I would rather be ill than miss such a party!

I say I spent all the day in the house, but that is not quite accurate, for we went for a drive at sunset to a library in the town, in a Spanish book-shop; and on our way back took a turn round the Luneta, the promenade by the sea, which I fancy I may have mentioned to you already. The band plays there every evening, and everyone drives or walks about. It was a very pretty sight to see the people in white dresses, all moving about in the radius of the electric lights on the bandstand, the lights looking like spots of white fire against the yellow sunset.