Iloilo, April 9, 1905.

Many thanks for the book about carpentry, which arrived quite safely by this mail, and is a treasury of delight to C——, who has got all sorts of ideas out of it. One of the first things he did was to swarm up the box-room door, getting through a flap in the matting ceiling and up into the roof, to see what hold there would be to fix up a punkah over the dinner-table. All the English people, and many of the Americans, have punkahs in the dining-room, but we have not troubled about one so far, as we are so lucky in our splendid draught through the hall, right across the dinner-table. Now, however, the Monsoon is changing, and with the wind this other side of the house, we want a punkah badly, for, you see, if you get out of a draught here you nearly suffocate.

C—— said it was like a huge hall up in the roof, and fearfully hot, which I could quite believe, as the thermometer in the dark, airy rooms below stood at 91°. Many of the houses have a sort of small top roof, like a little hat, with a wide gap, which acts as a ventilator, and lets off this heat out of the space above the ceilings; but, of course, the corrugated iron always makes a dreadfully hot roof, however it is treated. The only cool, healthy, and reasonable houses are the native ones of palm thatch, but they are so very inflammable and dangerous that no company will insure them. Though the way the native huts are lighted with naked, flaring lights or rickety lamps, and remain unburnt for two hours, is a marvel and a never ceasing source of interest to us when we go about after dark. In each grass-covered carabao-cart, too, there is a flaring torch by way of complying with the lighting regulations, and when one sees them jolting and swaying along, it is impossible to imagine why the regulations are not exceeded by the whole cart going along in a blaze.

We went a walk last night, down this street, through the Plaza Libertad, and down two more streets to the Muelle Loney, the quay along the estuary. As C—— had come back from the office late, we did not have tea till sunset, and by the time we went out it was nearly dark, and the moon had not risen. The Muelle was all deep shadows and spots of light, and the lamps in La Paz, the suburb the other side of the river, made long reflections of yellow light in the dark water, while the masts and sails of the ships at anchor stood out like Indian ink-drawings against the deep blue sky. All along the quay are offices of business houses, stevedores, customs, etc., and vast camarins (warehouses) with low, corrugated iron roofs, and open in front with iron bars like colossal menagerie cages. Inside the camarins could be seen shadowy piles of sacks of sugar, which is to be detected by a certain heavy, sweet, nauseous smell.

The quay itself is a very wide road, with a stone wall going into the river—the latter deep enough to allow steamers of a fair size, such as the Kai-Fong and the Butuan, to come up and lie at anchor opposite the wharves and camarins, as I told you when I went to Manila. There are a lot of curious, rusty old steamers huddled together at the side of the quay, with open decks and fixed iron awnings, which ply between here and Negros, and other neighbouring islands; little launches belonging to the offices; and the big steamers that go to Manila and Hong Kong, which all look quite commonplace by daylight, but seemed very mysterious in the darkness, with a light burning here and there, and always the tinkle of a guitar, and a voice singing softly in a minor key.

There was one big, dark bulk, larger than the others, which was a Hong Kong steamer, and we heard the funny, quacking jabber of the Chinese crew on the fo’c’sle. They can’t get ashore in the Philippines, as a guard is placed on the gangway, and the captain is liable to a fine of 2000 dollars if a Chinaman escapes ashore. Now and then one reads in the Manila papers about a Chinaman without a passport having been caught, sentenced to a few months of Bilibid prison, and returned to Hong Kong. As we passed the Chinese steamer, I could not help thinking how tantalising it must be for such keen, industrious men to be almost on the soil of this Eldorado of lazy natives and high wages. The few who do enter, as I told you, make fortunes very quickly, or what is a fortune to them, as well as the fortunes of those who employ them. It is most unfortunate that popular opinion in the far-away U.S.A. is so dead set against this source of prosperity and revenue.

At intervals along the Muelle, with its jumble of dark buildings on one side and jumble of dark ships on the other, in front of the offices and camarins, and at the corners of the little dark alleys that turn off into the town, were numbers of little stalls, each with a flaring naphtha light, round which natives were sitting about laughing and talking, and chewing betel-nut, and haggling for hours over the price of some little bunch of eggplant, or a tiny, insanitary fish. The wares were laid out on flat rush trays—bananas, maize, horrible-looking toffee, native fruits, and tumblers of pink tuba—a drink made of the sap of the palm tree coloured red. The stall-keeper was invariably a little brown native woman, with a huge cigar in her thick-lipped mouth—not such cigars as are sold at home, but a loose bundle of tobacco leaves about four times the size of the largest cigar you ever saw, and tied round with cotton or fibre. The way their mouths stick out beyond their noses when they are pulling at these big “weeds” makes their flat faces look very funny. I saw a native girl the other day, walking round the Plaza at Jaro, in a very tight sarong and freshly-starched camisa, puffing at a big black cigar all coming to pieces and tied up with white cotton, and her swaggering gait, and the way she looked to right and left for admiration, displaying a profile with absolutely no nose, was one of the most comical things I have ever had the luck to see.

There are always any amount of natives along the Muelle in the evening, for it is a favourite lounge, and they make such picturesque groups, loafing about the stalls or lying against the walls in deep thought or opium. Their voices are subdued, and they are all perfectly good-humoured, and another point about such a crowd here is that there is no smell from them, for the clothes of the poorest Filipino are spotlessly white and clean, and their bodies carefully washed. One or two costumes made up from empty sacks amused us very much, and they are really very effective, for the wearers imagine the names on them to be a pattern, and arrange the rows of letters quite carefully, generally across the back and chest. Beyond the offices and ships we came to immense mud-flats, which are partially covered at high tide, and look quite nice when they are a sheet of shallow water, but appear depressing, and smell nasty when they are bare. The tide was far out, and the rising moon showed up a lot of curious tracks and channels, with planks across them, and in the distance the backs of some of the houses in the town. Such a desolate place! The spot to which one would think sick animals would crawl when they feel they are going to die.

A lot of little native boys were rushing and screaming about in a remote corner, their short shirts fluttering behind them, playing some mysterious, meaningless game, revolving round certain heaps of manure and dead dogs. The little chaps seemed happy enough, but they looked so uncanny, like little black and white imps in the moonlight.

In time, I daresay, all this desolate waste will be reclaimed and built over, for someone told me that the Harbour Company are filling it up with dredgings. In Manila I saw a vast mud-flat being reclaimed in the same way by harbour-dredging, and the flattened, finished part had lines drawn on it, which I was told were the ground plans of streets and houses. It seems so strange to go on building the towns out on the mud-flats in a climate like this, when there are acres and acres of native huts standing on sound land a few feet above the sea-level. I asked a man who has lived here many years why this was done, and he told me that it was because of the great cost of transport, owing to the high rate of wages, which would take away all profit if one had one’s shops and camarins far from the water’s edge. I said I thought it must be very unhealthy on the mud.

“Absolutely fatal,” he said. “But then, you see, it is a toss-up between a chance of fever on the mud and a certainty of starvation in the town.”

I enjoy the walks about very much, or rather, I am more interested and amused than exhilarated; but all the same I am looking forward so to having our trap and going for drives, and even though there are only two roads, still we shall be able to get out of the town. I keep thinking that it is spring at home—or rather, I try not to think of it! How one longs to see a bunch of daffodils or a snow-drop; to hear a blackbird sing; to see beautiful oaks and elms coming into leaf instead of these eternal green palms, and to feel fresh and invigorating air instead of this everlasting swelter and sun!

We have a queer old neighbour here, an ancient Spaniard, who lives on the ground-floor of a house, in two rooms which are, so C—— tells me, hung with pictures of Isabella and the King; medals on velvet, framed and glazed; and certificates and memorials, for he was once some official in the Royal Household of Spain.

He is a courtly and dignified old person, though about 4 feet 6 in height, and as broad as he is long. He is very poor, and when he can sell some piece of land, he is going back to Spain to die.

This personage came to call on me a few evenings ago, on account of having on a black evening suit, as he had been to a funeral. We stumbled along in Spanish, and would have done better if my guest had not persisted in trying to remember French so as to convince me that he really had been in Paris. However, we got on very well, and I showed him some of papa’s sketches of Spain, which enchanted the poor old thing. Over the Alhambra he waxed quite sentimental, with his head on one side and one podgy hand raised to heaven. Of course the fact of my having been in his native land made me quite charming, and compliments bloomed like spring-flowers in the gardens of the Vega.

He had told C—— that he wished to come and pay his respects, as he had heard that the seÑora had good custumbres, which is a Spanish word for good breeding and good manners—not that I mean the two can be separated, but that the expression conveys those two, in a sort of way. This fact he repeated to me again, with much decorative compliment, and many assurances that I did not look the least like an Englishwoman—and oh, no! not a bit like a Frenchwoman—and still less like an Italian! Anyone would know at once that I must be a Spaniard—and from the southern land, where the women are elegant as flowers, and their eyes speak of love.

At last he backed himself out, still showering compliments, and offering to teach me “la lengua Castellana.” His Spanish was beautiful to listen to, so round and full and correct, and he implored me, with his hands clasped, not to learn the language of “los Indianos,” as I told you the Spaniards call the Filipinos.

All the Spaniards here long and yearn for Spain, and everything Spanish, which is only natural, I suppose. They hate the Archipelago, as they call it, but confess that the prospect of continuing to earn a living here ties them by the leg.

Another old Spanish friend of C——’s, a man in business, amused me very much one day, by giving me, as one of his reasons for disliking the Philippines, that he was in constant terror of “los Indianos” coming and “click”—he drew his finger across his throat.

“Really?” I said. “But you don’t, honestly, think that, do you?”

“SeÑora,” he said, “I know it will happen some day. There will be such an uprising as will wipe us all out. Mi corazon” (my heart) “beats perpetually with terror.”

I thought, however, that this life of secret anguish could not have done much harm to the old fellow’s system, for he looked remarkably flourishing after thirty years of life in the tropics, without any idea of panic at all.

As to this panic, I am surprised to find how prevalent is this notion of a general uprising, for though the Philippines are full of Insurrection, and many of them in a state of open warfare, still one can hardly believe that a reign of horror could sweep over these slow little towns. Not that the Filipinos are not capable of any atrocities when roused—and in the War many terrible and horrible things happened, which are not printed in newspapers or found in books.